This ‘Wolf’ Doesn’t Run With Pack : The unusual short story, falling somewhere between horror and mystery, has earned two award nominations and lots of praise for Mission Viejo writer Maxine O’Callaghan.

This has been the Year of the Wolf for Maxine O’Callaghan.

The Mission Viejo author’s short story “Wolf Winter” was not only nominated for a Bram Stoker Award by the Horror Writers of America in June (it lost), but it was recently nominated for an Anthony Award. The winner will be announced in October at Bouchercon, an annual convention of mystery professionals and fans to be held this year in Toronto.

The story, which appeared in the 1991 “Sisters in Crime 4” anthology, is set in Montana Territory in 1885 where a woman is trapped alone in a snowbound cabin with a large wolf prowling outside.

“It’s a very eerie story,” says O’Callaghan, who originally wrote the story with the intention of submitting it to a horror anthology. “When I was asked to submit a short story for the Sisters in Crime anthology, I told the editor I had this short story but it was very unusual. I wasn’t sure it was suitable.”

But the editor--and reviewers--liked the unusual story. Mystery News called it “a chilling picture of the deadly challenges faced by women in times less comfortable than our own.”

So which is it--a mystery or horror story?

“Obviously the Horror Writers of America considered it horror and the people from Bouchercon consider it mystery,” O’Callaghan said. “Sometimes I think the dividing line is very thin.”

Although she hasn’t written many short stories since switching to novels in 1980, O’Callaghan recently sold a story featuring her Santa Ana private eye Delilah West to a mystery anthology.

Delilah West first saw print in 1974 as a short story in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and since 1981 has appeared in four mystery novels. The feisty West is considered one of the first of the modern women PIs--and also one of the grittiest.

“They talk about hard-boiled and soft-boiled, but I consider Delilah somewhere between hard and soft--about a five-minute egg,” O’Callaghan said. “She’s definitely on the tougher side. She’s very persistent, stubborn and she is sensitive, I think, for all that.”

For the past decade, O’Callaghan has been alternating between writing horror novels and mysteries.

“I don’t really like to do the same kind of book all the time. I like to switch back and forth,” said the author, whose fourth horror novel, “Dark Time,” has just been published.

A paperback original from Berkley/Diamond Books, “Dark Time” is about two young people who witness the death of an alien being in the Oregon backcountry. Shortly afterward, the boy has horrific visions of slaughter on alien worlds--visions that are coming true as ordinary people commit impulsive acts of unspeakable violence.

Or, as O’Callaghan describes it, “Ancient forces of good and evil clash, and the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.”

“That,” she added with a laugh, “is what we call a pitch.”