Crimes by Moonlight

INTRODUCTION

After years of belonging to the mystery community, I’m used to being regarded as nonthreatening, good-natured… sometimes even (shudder) “sweet.” All that changed when I was asked to edit the MWA anthology that had been designated supernatural.

I sent out an e-mail to some of my favorite writers, all MWA members, to let them know the good news: I was offering them a slot in Crimes by Moonlight.

You would think I had offered to ship them a rattlesnake.

Instead of greeting this golden opportunity with cries of glee, I got a batch of awkward e-mails that began, “Gee, I don’t know… I’ve never written woo-woo.” (That’s a highly technical industry term.) “I don’t know about trying to do a supernatural,” they moaned. I had to practically poke some of my fellow writers with a sharp stick to get them in line.

I must admit there were a few who did react as I’d expected. Some mystery writers were simply waiting for the chance to cross over to the dark side. I’m keeping my eye on them.

In the end, my call for stories got some amazing responses.

This volume consists of entries by writers you’ve read and loved for years, and writers who aren’t well-known yet. What all these writers have in common is their membership in MWA and their willingness to tackle an offbeat story element.

Half the stories were ones I requested. The rest of the stories were submitted without any identifiers to a stellar panel of volunteer judges: noted writers Daniel J. Hale, Dana Cameron, Doug Allyn, Jane Cleland, and Heather Graham. The number of blind submissions came to more than three hundred, so my hat is off to these stalwarts, who may never volunteer for anything again in their lives. Barry Zeman oversaw the whole process from start to finish and was a great help, and John Helfers at Tekno Books was willing to let me wail in his ear when the process got to be overwhelming.

After all the work of writing, editing, selecting, reediting, and literally hundreds of e-mails, here’s the final result. Our work is done. Now all that remains is for readers to enjoy the result.

We’re counting on it.

– Charlaine Harris