Thana Niveau lives in the Victorian seaside town of Clevedon, where she shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert, in a gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities. Her stories have appeared in Best New Horror 22 and 23, Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, The Black Book of Horror 7, 8 and 9, Death Rattles, Delicate Toxins and the charity anthology Never Again, in addition to the final issue of Necrotic Tissue. She has just published her first collection, From Hell to Eternity.
Robert Shearman is probably best known for writing that episode that brought the Daleks back to the revived series of Doctor Who, but he started out as a theatre and radio dramatist, writing strange comedy plays for the likes of Alan Ayckbourn, about people falling in love with their younger selves, or imaginary friends magically coming to life; his two series of the interactive BBC radio series Chain Gang both won Sony Awards, with a third series due in 2013. He has written three collections of short stories, Tiny Deaths, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, and Everyone’s Just So So Special, and collectively they have won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Readers Prize; individual stories have been selected by the National Library of Singapore for the Read! Singapore campaign, and nominated for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Award. A fourth collection, the horror-themed Remember Why You Fear Me, is published by ChiZine in Canada later this year. His ongoing quest to write one hundred new short stories can be found at justsosospecial.com. He is currently writer in residence at Edinburgh Napier University.
Melanie Tem’s recent and forthcoming stories include ‘Corn Teeth’ (Asimov’s,Aug 2011), ‘The Classmate’ (HorrorZine anthology edited by Jeanie Rector) and ‘Timbrel and Pipe’ (Dark Fantastic edited by Jason V. Brock & William Nolan). Her play Comfort Me with Peaches was produced in May 2011 at the Academy Theatre in Pennsylvania. She is currently at work on a science fiction story set in a world in which writing and music have been lost, as well as a novel that, so far, defies categorization.
Steve Tem’s newest collection is Ugly Behaviour (New Pulp Press), gathering the best of his noir fiction. This will be followed in 2013 by Celestial Inventories (ChiZine) collecting his recent contemporary fantasy, and Onion Songs (Chomu) collecting his more off-beat and experimental work.
Liz Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She is currently published by Bantam Spectra (US) and Tor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press and appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers’ Workshop, and also teaches creative writing and the history of Science Fiction. Her novels include The Ghost Sister (Bantam Spectra), Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Banners of Souls (Bantam Spectra – US, Tor Macmillan – UK), Darkland, Bloodmind (Tor Macmillan UK), Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion (Night Shade Press) Winterstrike (Tor Macmillan) and The Iron Khan (Morrigan Press). Forthcoming in 2012 are Morningstar (Morrigan) and Wordsoul (Prime). Her first short story collection The Banquet of the Lords of Night is also published by Night Shade Press, and her second, A Glass of Shadow, is published by New Con Press. Her novel Banner of Souls has been nominated for the Philip K Dick Memorial Award, along with 3 previous novels, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Liz writes a regular column for the Guardian and reviews for SFX.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Nina Allan is a regular contributor to magazines such as Interzone and Black Static, and her stories have featured in the anthologies Catastrophia, Year’s Best SF 28, and Best Horror of the Year Volume 2. She won Ireland’s Aeon Award in 2007 and has twice been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. A first collection of her stories, A Thread of Truth, is published by Eibonvale Press. Her new book, Stardust, will be available from PS Publishing in autumn 2012.
Chaz Brenchley has been making a living as a writer since the age of eighteen. He is the author of nine thrillers, most recently Shelter, and two fantasy series, The Books of Outremer and Selling Water by the River. As Daniel Fox, he has published a Chinese-based fantasy series, beginning with Dragon in Chains; as Ben Macallan, an urban fantasy, Desdaemona. A British Fantasy Award winner, he has also published books for children and more than 500 short stories in various genres. His time as crimewriter-in-residence on a sculpture project in Sunderland resulted in the collection Blood Waters. His first play, A Cold Coming, was performed and then toured in 2007. He is a prize-winning ex-poet, and has been writer-in-residence at the University of Northumbria. He was Northern Writer of the Year 2000, and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with two squabbling cats and a famous teddy bear.
Eric Brown has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published forty books. His latest include the novel The Kings of Eternity and the children’s book A Monster Ate My Marmite. His work has been translated into sixteen languages and he writes a monthly science-fiction review column for the Guardian. He lives near Cambridge, England, with his wife and daughter. His website can be found at www.ericbrownsf.co.uk.
Christopher Fowler was born in Greenwich, London. He is the award-winning author of thirty novels and ten short story collections, and author of the popular Bryant & May mysteries. He has fulfilled several schoolboy fantasies, releasing a terrible Christmas pop single, becoming a male model, posing as the villain in a Batman graphic novel, running a night club, appearing in the Pan Books of Horror and standing in for James Bond. His work divides into black comedy, horror, mystery and tales unclassifiable enough to have publishers tearing their hair out. After living in France and the USA he is now married and lives in King’s Cross, London. His latest novel, Hell Train, is due out with Solaris in January 2012.
Jonathan Green is a writer of speculative fiction, with more than thirty books to his name. Well known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy range of adventure gamebooks, and numerous Black Library publications, he has also written fiction for such diverse properties as Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is the creator of the Pax Britannia series for Abaddon Books and, to date, has written seven novels set within this steampunk universe. He currently divides his time between West London and rural Wiltshire. To find out more about his latest projects visit www.jonathangreenauthor.com.
Garry Kilworth has just reached the biblical age of 3-score-years-and-10. As a creative writer he feels he is at his happiest with the short story form. He loves travelling, both inside and outside his own head. Garry lives quite close to the Dunwich in the tale in this collection and frequently walks the long and lonely beach below the cliffs, sometimes running into the ghost of MR James, who also set stories in the same location. On such occasions Garry does not forget to tip his hat to the great writer’s phantom and acknowledge that James’ story ‘Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad’ scared the pants off him when he heard it on the wireless programme The Man In Black at the age of 8.
Terry Lamsley’s early stories were set in his then-home town of Buxton in Derbyshire, but lately he has widened his horizon somewhat. In 1994 his first collection Under the Crust was nominated for three World Fantasy Awards and was given the award for Year’s Best Novella for the title story. Since then his tales have appeared in a number of magazines, collections and anthologies, the most recent being The Very Best of Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and published by Earthling in 2010. For the past ten years he has lived an interesting life in Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of thirty novels and numerous short stories and short articles, as well as comic and film scripts. He has been awarded the Edgar, eight Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, the Herodotus Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, and many other recognitions. He has been recognized four times by the International Martial Arts Hall of fame, and occasionally teache
s writing at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas where he is writer-in-residence. His novella, Bubba Hotep, was made into a cult film of the same name, and his story ‘Incident On and Off a Mountain Road’ was filmed for Showtime’s Masters of Horror, and he recently was Executive Producer of Christmas with the Dead, a forthcoming film based on his short story of the same title. It was directed by Terrill Lee Lankford from a script by Keith Lansdale.
Tim Lebbon is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had twenty novels published to date, including Echo City from Orbit, The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Wild for HarperCollins (co-authored with Christopher Golden), The Island, The Map of Moments (with Christopher Golden), Bar None, Fallen, Hellboy: The Fire Wolves, Dusk, and Berserk, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards. Forthcoming books include another novel for Orbit in the UK, the zombie/SF novel Coldbrook, and the massive short story collection Ghosts and Bleeding Things from PS Publishing, as well as several other projects. Fox 2000 recently acquired film rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London, and Tim and Christopher Golden have delivered the screenplay. His story Pay the Ghost is in development with a Hollywood studio, and several more of his novels and novellas are also currently in development. He is working on several TV and movie proposals, solo and in collaboration.
Rebecca Levene has neither shame nor pride. She likes writing and rarely says no when someone asks her to do some. This might explain how she’s come to write a children’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers, a Beginner’s Guide to Poker, an extremely sweary video game and an erotic romance. She’s currently working on the third volume of her series of supernatural thrillers. The first two – Cold Warriors and Ghost Dance – are available from all good bookshops.
Graham Joyce has said of Paul Meloy that ‘he is one of the best writers of short stories in Britain’ and, indeed, Paul has wonthe British Fantasy Award for his short fiction, much of which has been collected in the acclaimed Islington Crocodiles (TTA Press). When he’s not dreaming up dark and surreal worlds, he works as a psychiatric nurse.
Adam Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels, Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, and The Ritual. He lives in London and can be contacted through www.adamlgnevill.com.
Weston Ochse absolutely believes in haunted houses. He’s lived in two of them. He was able to come to terms with the ghost in the most recent haunted house, a lonely old man who died and was forgotten for months. But the entity that lives in the attic of his first haunted house is another story altogether. Although he was only eight years old when he lived between those vile walls, the entity still haunts him. That his mother has dreams of it too is a cause for worry. Perhaps that’s what drove him to write dark fantasy. He’s won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize for Fiction. His work has appeared in comic books, magazines, How-To writing guides, anthologies and most recently, his collection entitled Multiplex Fandango. He lives in Southern Arizona within sight of the Mexican-US border.
Sarah Pinborough is a horror, thriller and YA author who has had ten novels published thus far across that range. Her latest releases are The Shadow of the Soul (Gollancz, April 2011) – the second of the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy – and The Traitor’s Gate, (Gollancz, June 2011 under the name Sarah Silverwood) which is the second volume of The Nowhere Chronicles. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies and she has a horror screenplay currently in development. Sarah was the 2009 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, and has three times been short-listed for Best Novel. She has also been short-listed for a World Fantasy Award. Her novella, The Language of Dying (PS Publishing) was short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award and won the 2010 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968. He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction. His novel The Separation won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the BSFA Award while the Hugo-nominated The Prestige was adapted for the big screen by director Christopher Nolan. His latest novel is The Islanders, available from Gollancz.
Nicholas Royle is the author of more than a hundred and fifty short stories. He has published one short story collection, Mortality, two novellas – The Appetite and The Enigma of Departure – and six novels including Counterparts, Antwerp and Regicide. He teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and reviews fiction for the Independent and the Warwick Review. His small press, Nightjar Press, publishes original short stories in a gothic/uncanny vein as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. Forthcoming from Two Ravens Press is Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds, which he has edited, and from No Exit Press a new collection of his London stories.
Robert Shearman is probably best known for writing that episode that brought the Daleks back to the revived series of Doctor Who, but ever since then he’s been trying desperately to channel his silliness into short stories instead. His first collection, Tiny Deaths, won the World Fantasy Award, and the second, Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, picked up the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Edge Hill Short Story Readers Prize. His latest, Everyone’s Just So So Special, published by Big Finish, is so new and fresh that Rob can’t stop stroking the cover. He has written two series of the interactive BBC radio series Chain Gang, both of which won Sony Awards; the third series begins in the New Year. He is currently writer-in-residence at Edinburgh Napier University.
Lisa Tuttle made her first professional sale forty years ago, with the short story ‘Stranger in the House’ – now the opening entry in Stranger in the House, Volume One of her collected supernatural fiction, published by Ash-Tree Press. Perhaps best known for her short fiction, which includes the International Horror Guild Award-winning ‘Closet Dreams,’ she is also the author of several novels, including The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries and The Silver Bough, as well as books for children, and non-fiction works. Although born and raised in America, she has been a British resident for the past three decades, and currently lives with her family in Scotland.
Stephen Volk was the creator of the award-winning TV drama series Afterlife and the notorious BBCTV ‘Halloween hoax’ Ghostwatch. His latest feature film (co-written by director Nick Murphy) is The Awakening, a supernatural mystery starring Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton, while his other movie credits include Ken Russell’s Gothic and The Guardian, co-written with its director William Friedkin.He has also written for Channel Four’s Shockers and won a BAFTA for The Deadness of Dad starring Rhys Ifans. His short stories and novellas, a selection of which are collected in Dark Corners (Gray Friar Press), have so far earned him nominations for the British Fantasy Award, HWA Bram Stoker Award, and Shirley Jackson Award, plus appearances in several ‘Best of’ anthologies. He can be found online at www.stephenvolk.net.
INTRODUCTION
JONATHAN OLIVER
THE ROAD STORY is a genre explored widely in film, from the dark – Mad Max, The Hitcher, Long Weekend – through to the comic – Any Which Way but Loose, Identity Theft. In literature, the road story is a central part of fantasy, the journey itself often making up the better part of the tale – The Lord of The Rings and Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of The Fallen series being good examples. However, while there are fantastical elements to many of the stories to be found here, this is not a fantasy anthology per se. Like its sister anthology, The End of The Line (2010), End of The Road presents stories that are dark in tone, often venturing into outright horror. The key word I used when conta
cting contributors to submit to this collection was weird.
And we certainly start in a very weird world, with Philip Reeve’s ‘We Know Where We’re Goin’, in which our young protagonist embarks on a journey that cleverly subverts the expectations of the quest narrative. Destination (expected or otherwise) is a theme running throughout this anthology, but often it is the journey itself that is the key to the tales. And that needn’t be a physical journey (though, naturally, the majority of these tales do feature one); the journey into the self is also explored in various ways. Benjanun Sriduangkaew’s beautiful and moving ‘Fade to Gold’ explores identity and desire while depicting a creature from Thai myth. ‘Through Wylmere Woods’ by Sophia McDougall likewise plays with identity and self-discovery in a rich tale that is a companion piece to ‘MailerDaemon’ from Magic (2012). I also love the way Sophia plays with the idea of what constitutes a road, with her depiction of the electronic highways of the World Wide Web. Lavie Tidhar’s ‘Locusts’ mixes the cultural and spiritual journeys of its protagonists with a story from history that is told in an usual and immersive style.
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