TORONTO, Ont. – Edo van Belkom, author of the Mark Dalton: owner/operator series published monthly in Truck News, has been nominated in two categories for an Aurora Award – Canada’s top speculative fiction prize.

Nominated in the English Long Form category is van Belkom’s novel Martyrs, about a battle between a modern-day Jesuit and an age-old demon on the campus of a fictitious college in Northern Ontario.

Also nominated is van Belkom’s young-adult horror anthology Be Very Afraid! in the category of Work in English (Other).

The awards will be presented in Toronto at Torcon 3, the 61st World Science Fiction Convention, to be held Aug. 28 through Sept. 1.

These Aurora nominations are not van Belkom’s first. Nominated several times previously, van Belkom won a 1998 Aurora for his short story Hockey’s Night in Canada, which speculated on how Canadian hockey would be different today if Paul Henderson had not scored the winning goal in the 1972 eight-game series against the Russians.

“I’ve been nominated many times before but I’ve only won once, which I believe is a testament to the quality of the finalists every year. But just like every year I’m going to have my fingers crossed and hope for the best,” van Belkom said, in an exclusive interview with Truck News.

Van Belkom’s latest novel Scream Queen, published out of New York, is currently on the shelves of major bookstores across North America.

And fans of van Belkom’s trucker-oriented fiction can look forward to the publication of his next novel, about a trucker who also happens to be a vampire, in March 2004.

“He’s a vampire with a potbelly who’s bitter about how Hollywood has portrayed vampires as always beautiful and glamorous,” explained van Belkom.

“But he has to make a living and live among humans just like everyone else.”