KillerCon 2026 Splatterpunk Award Nominees
As many books and stories as I can find/add to PB from the KillerCon 2026 Splatterpunk Awards nominees || Categories (5 nominees each): Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Collection, Best Anthology
Note that two anthologies contain multiple short story nominees: Full Throttle and The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand
Buy from INDIE presses as often as you can!
created by ChengBogdani
last updated March, 2026
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My Rankings for Best Novella
1 Strange Stones by Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni Clearly the best of the field, but you'd expect that from Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni. This reimagining of HP Lovecraft's most famous stories is fit for both fans of HPL, and people like me who aren't enamored with the original works. Additionally, it works great as an introduction to HPL's main tropes for people new to the genre. Solidly written, gory, sexy and worthy of the prize.
2 Runts by Daniel J. Volpe A fairly standard setup in the genre, but it's done well and the gore and sex are on point - and I did not see the resolution of the Final Girl coming, that's impresssive.
3 Disco Rice Robert Essig This is extreme gross-out horror to the max. Reasonably well written, but relies too much on plot armor and vivid descriptions over thematic content and conflict.
4 The Freakshow: Rebirth In Drayton Falls This felt to me like fairly (Ha! see what I did there?) slasher horror; I feel like this has all been well tread before. The characters and conflicts were all meh and not especially memorable.
5 Playground 2: Child of Divorce This story didn't need to be written. Extreme horror, relies entirely on breaking the "harming children" taboo, boring characters and a boring plot that relies entirely on a wildly unrealistic premise.
I sourced all of these nominees. It's really disappointing how many of these titles are only available from amazon 😭😭😭
GL godless.com BH badhandbooks.com TY tachyonpublications.com EB ebooks.com BN barnesandnoble.com AZ amazon.com [I am not a KindleUnlimited subscriber]
BEST NOVEL
EB The Buffalo Hunter Hunter EB At Dark, I Become Loathsome BN Janitors vs. The Living Dead AZ Music To Sacrifice Virgins To GL The Home
BEST NOVELLA
AZ Disco Rice AZ Playground 2: Child of Divorce AZ Runts by Daniel J. Volpe AZ Strange Stones by Edward Lee and Mary SanGiovanni AZ The Freakshow: Rebirth In Drayton Falls
BEST SHORT STORY
GL And She Was Made of Glass” by Lucas Milliron (from Full Throttle) GL “Executive Decision” by Christine Morgan (from Full Throttle) AZ [no charge] “Red Womb” by C.M. Guidroz (Independently Published) EB “The Tripps” by Wrath James White (from The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand) EB “Wrong Fucking Place, Wrong Fucking Time” by C. Robert Cargill (from The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand)
BEST COLLECTION
BH Let Not Your Sorrow Die by Bracken MacLeod BN Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper TY The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale AZ This Is Splatterpunk: The John Skipp Primer by John Skipp AZ Violent Nights by Candace Nola
BEST ANTHOLOGY
BN Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror GL Full Throttle edited by Candace Nola (Uncomfortably Dark) AZ Splatterpunk’s She Dotted Her Eyes edited by Jack Bantry AZ Stories From the Motel Sick edited by Michael Allen Rose AZ The Rack II: More Stories Inspired by Vintage Horror Paperback
This is amazing! I love that you broke it down between the different formats (which I guess since it was an awards type thing that’s probably how they do it too 😅 but I just don’t always think to organize this way so I appreciate it nonetheless 🙂↕️)
This is such a good list, I have to catch up with all of these new releases after midterms!
Yeah, I'm working my way through the whole list. I wish award nominee lists could be automagically converted into quests.
My Rankings for Best Novel
My Criteria: Is it splatterpunky and did I like reading it?
1 At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca FAR AND AWAY my number one rank, the rest of the field is just fighting for scraps. This hit me right in the guts in all the best ways. It was literal when it needed to be, allegorical at other times, dealt with themes that are meaningful to me and was extremely well written. This should be on every horror and queer person's Must Read List.
2 Janitors vs. The Living Dead by The Slaughter Sisters Splatterpunk done fun! It's not pretentious, it's not trying let "extreme" carry the whole story, it's a well written homage to the latenight drivein doublefeature and it was a lot of fun to read.
3 The Home by Judith Sonnet It's a haunted house story, it's a generational trauma story, no wait - it's cosmic horror! Despite my issues with the execution, it is a well written and complex story that allows the reader to navigate a complicated interdimensional timeline easily.
4 Music to Sacrifice Virgins To by Kristopher Triana I really wanted to like this more than I did. Unfortunately, the story lacked any real conflict which made reading the book feel like going through a checklist of perverse blasphemies until Boop! - The End. Each individual scene was well written, but all together the book lacked interesting, relatable characters and a meaningful plot.
5 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones This is a great book, but I don't think I'd consider it to be capital "S" Splatterpunk. For that reason, I'm ranking it last. Though on purely literary merit, this could get bumped up to #2 and knock the others down a notch. I feel like this is highbrow contemporary horror - it's not litfic, but it can see litfic from where it sits. This book - and some specific scenes - will stay with me for a long time, and I don't hesitate to recommend this to anyone who wants to try horror but isn't into extreme violence or gore.
My Rankings for Best Short Story
**1 "And She Was Made of Glass” by Lucas Milliron (from Full Throttle) ** A fresh take on the "media gains it's own consciousness", in glorious 3D splatterpunk. It's haunting and touching and the writing is simultaneously sparse and vivid.
2 “The Tripps” by Wrath James White (from The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand) I wasn't a big fan of The Stand. I know that's an unpopular opinion but there it is. I did like this story from that world though, it's goes all over the place while keeping the tension ratcheted up and tugs at the heartstrings to amplify the horror. I've been a WJW fan for a while and this is an example of why.
3 “Red Womb” by C.M. Guidroz (Independently Published) This is gory and timely and well written, but doesn't really go anywhere new. I felt like the premise had so much more potential than what we got. Good, if not great, on it's own, it edges out the rest of the list because it centers feminine rage.
4 “Executive Decision” by Christine Morgan (from Full Throttle) Another mediocre gore fest that relise on an implausable premise to make the whole thing work. I can see the author twisting the Final Girl trope around a bit, but the result is still a big bowl full of "meh".
5 “Wrong Fucking Place, Wrong Fucking Time” by C. Robert Cargill (from The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand) This is not a bad story. It's just not what I'd call splatterpunk. It's a buddy story and an homage to cheesy horror films, and it's fantastic in that context. But it lacks the visceral punch and explicit violence and gore that I was looking for.
