The Rondo Awards

Another year over and the Rondo Awards are awaiting your votes again.

Here are some of my absolutely biased recommendations in case you are unsure in some categories.

There are scores of worthwhile blogs to vote for in the best horror blog category and in actual fact I have been in touch with a number of the owners of those blogs, read them regularly and could easily vote for most of them, but Curt Purcell’s Groovy Age of Horror just needs to win this year. Every year this blog shows up for the Awards and every year it gets snuffed. Yes, this may be very niche market (dedicated to pulp paperbacks and comics/fumetti), but it is a labour of love and always highly readable. Your truly in the early days of this blog also wrote some entries about German pulp horror series and about sleazy Modesty Blaise rip-off The Baroness. So if you’re undecided, you now know what to do.

Dick Klemensen’s Little Shoppe of Horrors again features in several categories. The magazine was published twice last year, so take your pick of the entries you would like to vote for:
11. Best Magazine of 2008
12. Best Article of 2008 (PLEASE PICK TWO)
-- 'Scream and Scream Again: The Uncensored History of Amicus Productions,' by Philip Nutman, LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS #20. Deep examination of the studio that emerged from Hammer's shadows.
13. Best Magazine Cover
LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS #20
Alternate cover by Bruce Timm

As you can pick two articles I would suggest to also vote for
-- 'El Vampiro Speaks,' by Bryan Senn, Richard Sheffield and Jim Clatterbaugh, MONSTERS FROM THE VAULT #24. Rare interview with Mexican horror star German Robles.
I have shared many a happy drink with Bryan Senn. He was even around when I created a new cocktail, the Grandma Baileys i.e. Grand Marnier and Baileys on ice. (Now that this is out I expect every bar in the world to serve this, but at least you dear readers now know where this came from.) Bryan’s writing is always highly entertaining and he is also the author of two of my favourite genre-books-with-an-unusual-angle, Drums of Terror: Voodoo in the Cinema and A Year of Fear: A Day-by-day Guide to 366 Horror Films, so it would definitely be nice to see him earn a Rondo.

I have always been an admirer of Michael Wilks, who together with me is also a member of the Isle of the Dead Yahoo Group, so I also recommend voting for his cover of the new (or should I say relaunched) Scarlet #1 magazine.

And last, but not least:

10. Best Book of 2008
Truth be told, the only newly published genre cult film book I read last year was David Zuzelo’s and Paul Cooke’s TOUGH TO KILL which is *not* on the list for the awards, but a few buddies of mine from the Eurotrash Paradise figured it would be fun if we all start voting for it regardless as in every category you can also vote for entries that were not featured on the list. David is a good buddy of mine and runs the excellent TOMB IT MAY CONCERN blog, so drop by his blog and vote for the man. Wouldn’t it be funny if a book is picked for the Rondos that wasn’t on anyone’s horizon before?

Voting finishes on March 21, 2009. So what are you waiting for?