Halloween
Page 63
She never would be again. She lifted her head and faced the crowd once again. “Let’s get to it.”
Everyone smiled, the Hallowe’en moon grew brighter as the church bell gave a triumphant ring, and, as a family, they began to raise a dream from the silent, ancient dust of death.
In Loving Memory of My Father,
Frank Henry Braunbeck
May 22, 1926–June 15, 2001
“No, good sir; the privilege was mine.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Gary A. Braunbeck is the author of the acclaimed Cedar Hill series of stories and novels, which includes In Silent Graves, Coffin County, Far Dark Fields, and the forthcoming A Cracked and Broken Path. His work had garnered five Bram Stoker Awards, as well as an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Worthington, Ohio with his wife, author Lucy A. Snyder, and five cats that do hesitate to draw blood if he fails to feed them in time. He has been rumored to sing along with Broadway show tunes, but no recorded evidence of this exists or has yet to be found.
Peter Crowther is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, his editing and, as publisher, for the hugely successful PS Publishing (now including the Stanza Press poetry subsidiary and PS Artbooks, a specialist imprint dedicated to the comics field). As well as being widely translated, his short stories have been adapted for TV on both sides of the Atlantic and collected in The Longest Single Note, Lonesome Roads, Songs of Leaving, Cold Comforts, The Spaces Between the Lines, The Land at the End of the Working Day, and the upcoming Jewels In The Dust. He is the co-author (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap and The Hand That Feeds, and author of the Forever Twilight SF/horror cycle and By Wizard Oak. He lives and works with his wife and business partner, Nicky on the Yorkshire coast of England.
Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who lives in Ottawa, Canada. With thirty-six novels and thirty-five books of short fiction published, he is known as a pioneer and master of the contemporary fantasy genre. Recent books include his young adult novel, The Painted Boy, published by Viking Books in November 2010; a short story collection, The Very Best of Charles de Lint from Tachyon Press (also 2010); and The Mystery of Grace, an adult novel published in 2009. Charles is currently at work on a new young adult series, and recently released Old Blue Truck, an album of his original Americana story songs.
Nebula Award winner Esther Friesner is the author of thirty-seven novels and over 185 short stories, in addition to being the editor of ten popular anthologies. Her latest novels include Nobody’s Princess and Nobody’s Prize (about young Helen of Troy), Sphinx’s Princess and Sphinx’s Queen (about young Nefertiti), from Random House, and Threads and Flames, from Viking/Penguin. She is presently working on a two-book series about Japan’s Queen Himiko—Spirit’s Princess and Spirit’s Bride—for Random House. On the editorial front, her most recent publications include Witch Way To The Mall?, Strip Mauled, and Fangs for the Mammaries, an anthology series about witches, werewolves, and vampires in Suburbia. She is married, the mother of two, and lives in Connecticut.
The story reprinted in this volume (first published in 1924 in Weird Tales) is the only known fiction by Lyllian Huntley Harris (1885-1939).
Glen Hirshberg’s novelette, “The Janus Tree,” won the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award, and both of his collections, American Morons and The Two Sams, won the International Horror Guild Award. He is also the author of two novels, The Book of Bunk and The Snowman’s Children. His new collection, The Janus Tree and Other Stories, will be published in late 2011. He co-founded, with Dennis Etchison and Peter Atkins, the Rolling Darkness Revue, a traveling ghost story performance troupe that tours the west coast of the United States and elsewhere each October. His fiction has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Inferno, Dark Terrors 6, Trampoline, and Cemetery Dance, and has appeared frequently in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, and Best Horror of the Year.
Over the past twenty-some years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult, tie-in, middle-school, and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread that Binds the Bones, won a Stoker award, and her short story, “Trophy Wives,” won a Nebula Award in 2009. Novel Fall of Light was published by Ace in 2009. Her latest series is Magic Next Door: Thresholds was published in 2010, Meeting, was released in 2011 by Viking. Hoffman lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats and many strange toys and imaginary friends. For a list of her publications, see: ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.
Four-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Nancy Holder has published seventy-five books and more than two hundred short stories and essays. She has written or co-written dozens of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Saving Grace, and Angel projects. Novels from her series, Wicked, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and she is writing two more young adult dark fantasy series, Crusade and The Wolf Springs Chronicles, both with Debbie Viguié. She teaches in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program, offered through the University of Southern Maine. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, and their growing assortment of pets. Visit her at nancyholder.com.
Charlee Jacob has been a digger for dinosaur bones, a seller of designer rags, and a cook—to mention only a few things. With more than 950 publishing credits, Charlee has been writing dark poetry and prose for more than twenty-five years. Some of her recent publishing events include the novel Still, the poetry collection Heresy, and the novel Dark Moods. She is a three-time Bram Stoker Award winner, two of those awards for her novel Dread In The Beast and the poetry collection Sineater; the third award for collaborative poetry collection, Vectors, with Marge Simon. Permanently disabled, Jacob has begun to paint as one of her forms of phsycial therapy. To see some of Charlee’s paintings visit www.charleejacob.com. She lives in Irving, Texas with her husband Jim and a plethora of felines.
K.W. Jeter is widely credited as having coined in 1987 the term “steampunk,” and is the author of Morlock Night and Infernal Devices, two of the earliest novels in the genre. Both have recently been reprinted by Angry Robot. Fiendish Schemes, his long-awaited sequel to Infernal Devices, will be available soon from Tor. In addition, he has written many other novels, including Dr. Adder, Farewell Horizontal, Soul Eater, and In the Land of the Dead. In addition to his writing career, he has worked as a researcher for the University of California Medical Center on AIDS-related bereavement issues with heroin addicts, and as a creative writing instructor for Portland State University in Oregon. After residences in England and Spain, he currently lives with his wife Geri in San Francisco, California. For more information see: www.kwjeter.com.
Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of several novels, including Low Red Moon, Daughter of Hounds, and The Red Tree, which was nominated for both the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. Her next novel, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, will be released by Penguin in 2012. Since 2000, her shorter tales of the weird, fantastic, and macabre have been collected in several volumes, including Tales of Pain and Wonder; From Weird and Distant Shores; To Charles Fort, With Love; Alabaster; A is for Alien; and The Ammonite Violin & Others. In 2012, Subterranean Press will release a retrospective of her early writing, Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One). She lives in Providence, RI, with her partner Kathryn.
Nancy Kilpatrick (and her noms de plume Amarantha Knight and Desirée Knight) has published eighteen novels, a nonfiction book, over 200 short stories, and five collections. (A sixth collection, Vampire Variations, is forthcoming.) She has also has edited twelve anthologies, the most recent of which are Evolve: Vampire Stories of the Undead and Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead. An new anthology, Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper, will be published in 2012. A Bram Stoker finalist three times, a finalist for the Aurora Award five times, and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for best mystery, she lives with h
er calico cat Fedex in lovely Montréal. As with previous dwellings, this one features Gothic decor, which suits the sensibilities of both residents.
Sarah Langan is a three-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. She is the author of the novels The Keeper and The Missing, and her most recent novel, Audrey’s Door, won the 2009 Stoker for best novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the magazines Cemetery Dance, Phantom, and Chiaroscuro, and in the anthologies Darkness on the Edge and Unspeakable Horror. She is currently working on a post-apocalyptic young adult series called Kids and two adult novels: Empty Houses, which was inspired by The Twilight Zone, and My Father’s Ghost, which was inspired by Hamlet.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His novella, Bubba Hotep, was made into an award-winning film of the same name, as was Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. Both were directed by Don Coscarelli. His works have received numerous recognitions, including the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the Grinizani Prize for Literature, American Mystery Award, the International Horror Award, British Fantasy Award, and many others. His most recent novel is Devil Red, the eighth featuring Hap and Leonard. All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, his first novel for young adults has just been published.
Thomas Ligotti’s fiction has been collected in a dozen books. He also has a collection of poetry and one of nonfiction to his credit. The winner of the Small Press Writers and Artists Organization, three Bram Stoker Awards, and an International Horror Guild Award, Ligotti has collaborated with the musical group Current 93 on four albums. Fox Atomic Comics published two graphic titles—The Nightmare Factory and The Nightmare Factory: Volume 2—based on the author’s stories. Wonder Entertainment has released The Frolic Collector’s Edition DVD and Book set, which contains a short film adaptation of Thomas Ligotti’s short story “The Frolic.”
H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of weird fiction and what he termed “cosmic horror.” According to Joyce Carol Oates, Lovecraft “an incalculable influence on succeeding generations of writers of horror fiction,” comparable to Edgar Allan Poe. Stephen King has called Lovecraft “the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
Gary McMahon’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S and has been reprinted in both The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight, The Harm, and Hungry Hearts. He has also edited an anthology of original novelettes titled We Fade to Grey. Current and forthcoming projects include anthology The End of the Line, novels Pretty Little Dead Things, and Dead Bad Things from Angry Robot, and The Concrete Grove trilogy from Solaris. His website: www.garymcmahon.com.
Best known as the author of such children's novels as The Railway Children and The Story of the Treasure-Seekers, the English writer E. Nesbit (1858-1924) also authored fiction, drama, and poetry for adults. According to Gore Vidal: “After Lewis Carroll, E. Nesbit is the best of the English fabulists who wrote about children (neither wrote for children) and like Carroll she was able to create a world of magic and inverted logic that was entirely her own.” In addition she was active in political causes and together with her husband, Hubert Bland, the playwright Bernard Shaw, and others, founded the Fabian Society in England to further socialist aims.
William F. Nolan is best known for co-authoring the novel Logan’s Run, with George Clayton Johnson. The novel has been adapted to film, a television series, comic books, and an alternative reality game. Nolan co-wrote the screenplay for the 1976 horror film Burnt Offerings and has scripted fourteen teleplays. The author of more than 150 short stories, a dozen novels, and editor or co-editor of a dozen anthologies, Nolan had been named as a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild, received the honorary title of Author Emeritus from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and is a Horror Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.
Stewart O’Nan’s dozen novels include Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, The Night Country (set on Halloween!), and cult favorite and International Horror Guild winner A Prayer for the Dying. He was born in Pittsburgh on George A. Romero’s birthday.
Norman Partridge’s fiction includes horror, suspense, and the fantastic—“sometimes all in one story” according to Joe R. Lansdale. Partridge’s novel Dark Harvest was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the 100 Best Books of 2006, and two short story collections were published in 2010—Lesser Demons from Subterranean Press and Johnny Halloween from Cemetery Dance. Other work includes the Jack Baddalach mysteries Saguaro Riptide and The Ten-Ounce Siesta, plus The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which was adapted for film. Partridge’s compact, thrill-a-minute style has been praised by Stephen King and Peter Straub, and his work has received multiple Bram Stoker awards. He can be found on the web at NormanPartridge.com and americanfrankenstein.blogspot.com.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an author, poet, editor, and literary critic. Poe, one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, is considered the inventor of the genre of detective fiction and credited with contributing to the then-emerging genre of science fiction. A master of the macabre, his influence on horror and dark fantasy is incalculable.
Tina Rath has made radio and television appearances and lectured on vampires and other aspects of Gothic literature for various groups and societies. Her fiction has been published in periodicals such as All Hallows, Ghosts and Scholars, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Supernatural Tales 16, Visionary Tongue, and Weird Tales. Anthology appearances include Strange Tales, Exotic Gothic 3, and The Mammoth Book of Vampires. She edited the anthology Conventional Vampires.
Al Sarrantonio is the author of forty-five books. He is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Locus Award, and the Shamus Award. His novels include Orangefield and Hallows Eve. He has edited numerous anthologies including Halloween: New Poems, Portents, and, with Neil Gaiman, Stories. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. His best horror stories have been collected in Toybox, Hornets and Others, and Halloween and Other Seasons.
Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet and the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime. Many of his works remain classics of English-language literature.
John Shirley’s many novels include City Come A-Walkin’, Eclipse, Demons, Crawlers, Cellars, In Darkness Waiting, Black Glass, Bleak History, and the forthcoming Everything Is Broken. His numerous short stories have been collected in eight volumes including the Stoker and International Horror Guild Award-winning Black Butterflies (chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of the Year) and, most recently, In Extremis: The Most Extreme Short Stories of John Shirley. Considered seminal to the cyberpunk genre, he has been termed “the post-modern Poe.” His dark fiction has been called “astonishingly consistent and rigorously horrifying” by The New York Times Review of Books. Co-screenwriter of the film The Crow, he has written scripts for television. His website is: www.john-shirley.com.
Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, A Dark Matter, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction. Straub edited the Library of America’s edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s Tales and the forthcoming Library of America’s two-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. He has won the British Fantasy Award, nine Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2006, he was given the HWA’s Life Achievement Award and, in 2
008, both the International Horror Guild’s Living Legend Award and the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award by Poets & Writers.
The author of about 250 short stories, Steve Rasnic Tem is the recipient of British Fantasy, World Fantasy, and International Horror Guild Awards. His new novel Deadfall Hotel will come out in the spring of 2012 from Solaris Books, with simultaneous US and UK editions. A limited hardcover will appear in late 2011 from Centipede Press. In August 2012, New Pulp Press will publish his dark noir story collection, Ugly Behavior. He lives in Colorado with his wife, author Melanie Tem. Their website: http://www.m-s-tem.com.
F. Paul Wilson is the New York Times bestselling author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything in between. His books include the Repairman Jack novels—including Ground Zero, Fatal Error, and The Dark at the End—the Adversary cycle—including The Keep, and The Tomb—and a young adult series featuring the teenage Jack. Wilson has won the Prometheus Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Inkpot Award from the San Diego ComiCon, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers of America, among other honors.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild (2006). She was honored in 2009 with a Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association. Yarbro was named as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention in 2003. She is the recipient of the Fine Foundation Award for Literary Achievement (1993) and (along with Fred Saberhagen) was awarded the Knightly Order of the Brasov Citadel by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in 1997. She has been nominated for the Edgar, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards and was the first female president of the Horror Writers Association. Best known for her Saint-Germain Cycle of twenty-four (and still counting) books, she is the author of numerous short stories and scores of novels in many genres.