BRIDGEWATER, Maine — An Aroostook County horror writer joined a short list of famed authors like Stephen King, Peter Straub and George R.R. Martin, after being awarded a coveted 2023 Bram Stoker Award in June.
Cindy O’Quinn, who moved to the Old Tessier Homestead in Bridgewater eight years ago, was nominated for the award five times in recent years and the fifth nomination was the one that did it, she said, referring to her short story “Quondam.”
“To be in that category of famous horror writers, when I think I’m just teeny tiny,” O’Quinn said. “Each time I was nominated, I thought it was just a fluke.”
In 2021, she was one of five women — representing New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and two from the U.S. — nominated for the award in the short fiction category. It was the first time all the nominees were women and since that happened, the five wrote a horror book together, “Discontinue if Death Ensues: Tales from the Tipping Point,” which will be released in September.
Each year since 1987, the Horror Writers Association presents the Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in 13 categories. Bram Stoker was the famed Irish gothic horror story writer who wrote “Dracula.”
Stephen King has the top number of nominations with 32. He also has the most wins at 12, according to the Horror Writers Association.
O’Quinn’s mother taught her to love horror stories at a young age. Starting when she was six, the two would go to a local White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia drive-in to see a horror film every Saturday.
“She got me hooked,” O’Quinn said, laughing that she was watching films like “The Exorcist” at a very young age.
By the time she was 11, she read her first Stephen King novel, “Salem’s Lot,” and has read every one since.
“I couldn’t wait for the next one to come out,” she said.
It is her love of horror stories and a long family tradition of oral story traditions steeped in Appalachian Folk Tales that made her fall in love with telling stories.
It wasn’t until O’Quinn and her husband Tim moved to Maine in 2016 that she began submitting her stories for publication.
Her first published work, “The Handshake,” was a nod to Stephen King. It was about a neophyte who receives the gift of writing by shaking hands with a famous writer, she said.
When O’Quinn’s husband said, “I want to move to a Maine cabin,” she said let’s not go too far north. But they ended up in Aroostook County.
When they first visited the homestead they purchased, it was like stepping back in time 100 years, she said.
Together, along with their two sons, they grew all their own food and herbs and raised chickens, pigs and milk goats.
“We really enjoyed it, despite all the snow,” she said.
But when COVID-19 hit, her husband caught the virus and died in seven days. The two were “glued at the hip,” and the pain and isolation was profound.
“I never knew how alone, aloneness could be,” she said.
And for several years she was the stereotypical reclusive writer of dark things.
In her award-winning story “Quondam,” a woman thinks her husband is suffering from Alzheimers, but also thinks he is having an affair with an old flame. The woman has him committed to a nursing home where the woman from his past appears. In a total, almost Twilight Zone flip, it is actually the woman who has Alzheimers and these are her imaginings.
O’Quinn said her horror is often the horror of real life.
Just recently, she said she was ready to leave the homestead they grew together and move closer to her West Virginia home and her mountains.
“I always thought the mountains were my protector. My heart is in those Appalachian Mountains,” she said. “They were calling me home.”
Expecting it to take about a year, she put her homestead on the market in late June but it sold in 48 hours, leaving her scrambling to find a place to live. As life sometimes happens, O’Quinn found a home back in West Virginia across the street from a lifelong best friend.
Along with her sons, she is packing and getting ready to head south.
Still, her time in Maine led to her award-winning stories, her many publications and winning the Bram Stoker Award, she said.
O’Quinn is working on several projects right now and there is the possibility that one of her stories will be optioned for a film, she said.
“I know these things can fall through, but I can’t help being excited,” O’Quinn said.
During her time at the Old Tessier homestead in Bridgewater, she connected with Thomas Tessier, a family member who is also a horror writer, who has convinced her she still needs to write a New England gothic horror tale about her years at the homestead.
And she will, she said.
