The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Nina Allan was born in Whitechapel, London, grew up in the Midlands and West Sussex, and wrote her first short story at the age of six. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including The Best Horror of the Year Volume Two, The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction 2012 and 2013. Nina’s most recent books include the novella Spin and Stardust: The Ruby Castle Stories. Her first novel, The Race, set in an alternate near-future version of southeast England, will be published in summer 2014. She lives and works in Hastings, East Sussex.

“The Tiger” was originally published in Terror Tales of London, edited by Paul Finch.

Stephen Bacon’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Static, Cemetery Dance, Shadows & Tall Trees, Crimewave, and many other anthologies, and has been reprinted in Best Horror of the Year Volume Five. His debut collection, Peel Back the Sky, was published by Gray Friar Press in 2012. He lives in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, with his wife and two sons.

“Apports” was originally published in Black Static, edited by Andy Cox.

Dale Bailey lives in North Carolina with his family, and he has published three novels, The Fallen, House of Bones, and Sleeping Policemen (with Jack Slay Jr.). His short fiction, collected in The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories, has won the International Horror Guild Award and has been twice nominated for the Nebula Award.

His website is: www.dalebailey.com.

“Mr. Splitfoot” was originally published in Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Nathan Ballingrud is the award-winning author of the short story collection North American Lake Monsters, from Small Beer Press. He lives with his daughter in Asheville, North Carolina, where he is at work on his first novel.

“The Good Husband” was originally published in North American Lake Monsters.

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including The Croning, Occultation, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. His work has also appeared in many magazines and anthologies including The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lovecraft Unbound, and Haunted Legends. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in Upstate New York.

“Jaws of Saturn” was originally published in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.

Tim Casson’s short fiction has been published in various anthologies and magazines including regular appearances in Black Static. He has just completed the dystopian YA novel Underclass and is working on putting together his first collection. He lives by the sea in south Wales.

“The Withering” was originally published in Black Static, edited by Andy Cox

Simon Clark lives in Doncaster, England, with his family. When his first novel, Nailed by the Heart, made it through the slush pile in 1994, he banked the advance and embarked upon his dream of becoming a full-time writer. Since then, he’s written the cult zombie classic Blood Crazy. Other titles include Darkness Demands, Vampyrrhic, On Deadly Ground, and The Night of the Triffids, which continues the story of John Wyndham’s classic The Day of the Triffids.

Simon’s next novel is Inspector Abberline & the Gods of Rome, a crime thriller featuring the real-life detective who led the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

“The Tin House” was originally published in Shadow Masters, edited by Jeani Rector.

Ray Cluley’s stories have been published in the magazines Black Static, Interzone, Crimewave, and Shadows & Tall Trees, and a variety of anthologies, including Wilde Stories 2013: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction and in French translation for Ténèbres 2011.

His story “Shark! Shark!” recently won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow, a limited edition novelette, will appear later this year as a chapbook from Spectral Press, while his debut collection, Probably Monsters, is due from ChiZine Press in 2015. This is Ray Cluley’s second appearance in Best Horror of the Year.

You can find out more at probablymonsters.wordpress.com

“Bones of Crow” was originally published in Black Static, edited by Andy Cox.

Jeannine Hall Gailey recently served as the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and is the author of three books of poetry: Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, and Unexplained Fevers. Her work has been featured on NPR’S Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her web site is www.webbish6.com.

“Introduction to the Body in Fairy Tales” was originally published in Phantom Drift, edited by David Memmott, Martha Bayliss, Leslie What, and Matt Schumacher.

Neil Gaiman is the Newbery Medal — winning author of The Graveyard Book and a New York Times bestselling author. Several of his books, including Coraline, have been made into major motion pictures. He is also famous for writing the Sandman graphic novel series and numerous other books and comics for adult, young adult, and younger readers. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and World Fantasy awards, among others. He is also the author of powerful short stories and poems.

For more information: www.neilgaiman.com/

“Down to a Sunless Sea” was originally published at www.guardian.com

Brian Hodge is the award-winning author of eleven novels spanning horror, crime, and historical. He’s also written around 110 short stories, novelettes, and novellas, and five full-length collections. His first collection, The Convulsion Factory, was ranked by critic Stanley Wiater among the 113 best books of modern horror. Recent or forthcoming books include Whom the Gods Would Destroy and The Weight of the Dead, both standalone novellas; No Law Left Unbroken, a collection of crime fiction; a newly revised hardcover edition of Dark Advent, his early post-apocalyptic epic; Worlds of Hurt, an omnibus edition of the first four works of his Misbegotten mythos; and Leaves of Sherwood.

Hodge lives in Colorado, where more of everything is in the works. He also dabbles in music, sound design, and photography; loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels; and trains in Krav Maga, grappling, and kickboxing, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.

Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net) or on Facebook (.www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter).

“The Same Deep Waters as You” was originally published in Weirder Shadows over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones.

Jane Jakeman is a British author who has published crime and ghost stories in Supernatural Tales, Ghosts and Scholars, and All Hallows, some of which were reprinted in the collection A Bracelet of Bright Hair. She has travelled widely in the Middle East and lives in Oxford, United Kingdom, with her Egyptologist husband and two small black cats.

“Majorlena” was originally published in Supernatural Tales, edited by David Longhorn.

KJ Kabza’s short stories have appeared in Nature, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Buzzy Mag, Flash Fiction Online, New Myths, and many others.

He currently lives in sunny Tucson, but he sort of misses the Gothic atmosphere of late autumn in New England, if he’s being honest. For updates on forthcoming releases and links to free fiction, you can follow him on Twitter @KJKabza and peruse www.kjkabza.com.

“The Soul in the Bell Jar” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

Derek Künsken has built genetically-engineered viruses; worked with street children in Latin America; served five years as a Canadian diplomat; and, most importantly, teaches his nine-year-old son about superheroes, skiing, and science. He writes science fiction, fantasy, and sometimes horror in Ottawa, and can be found at www.derekkunsken.com.

His fiction has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, and he recently received the 2012 Asimov’s Readers’ Award for his novelette The Way of the Needle. “The Dog’s Paw” had been kicking around in his head for a while, but came out of his pen in Port-au-Prince in the weeks after the earthquake of 2010.

“The Dog’s Paw” was originally published in Chilling Tales: In Words, Alas, Drown I, edited by Michael Kelly.

Linda Nagata is the author of multiple novels and short stories including The Bohr Maker, winner of the Locus Award for best first novel, and the novella Goddesses, the first online publication to receive a Nebula award. Her story “Nahiku West” was a finalist for the 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Her newest novel is the near-future military thriller The Red: First Light. Linda has spent most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, a programmer of database-driven websites, and lately an independent publisher. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui. Find her online at: MythicIsland.com

“Halfway Home” was originally published in Nightmare Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams.

Kim Newman was born in Brixton (London), grew up in the West Country, went to University near Brighton, and now lives in Islington (London).

His most recent fiction books include Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the d’Urbervilles, Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard, and An English Ghost Stories. His nonfiction books include Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books (both with Stephen Jones), and a host of books on film. He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines and has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, scripting radio documentaries and TV programs. He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Critics Award, the British Science Fiction Award, and the British Fantasy Award. His official website, “Dr Shade’s Laboratory,” can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com.

“The Only Ending We Have” was originally published in Psycho-Mania, edited by Stephen Jones.

Lynda E. Rucker is an American writer currently living in Dublin, Ireland. Her fiction has appeared in such places as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Black Static, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Postscripts, Shadows & Tall Trees, and Supernatural Tales. She is a regular columnist for Black Static, and her first collection, The Moon Will Look Strange, was published in 2013.

She blogs very occasionally at lyndaerucker.wordpress.com and tweets more frequently as @lyndaerucker.

“The House on Cobb Street” was originally published in Nightmare Magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams.

Priya Sharma went to medical school when anatomy was taught by dissection of cadavers and inappropriate mnemonics. “The Anatomist’s Mnemonic” started life as a love story but Priya soon got a grip of herself and made it into something darker. However, long before she learned where the scaphoid bone is located, she was taught about heart, head, and life lines.

Her work has appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One, and Alt Hist, as well as on Tor.com and has been reprinted in previous editions of The Best Horror of Year, edited by Ellen Datlow, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, edited by Paula Guran.

More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com

“The Anatomist’s Mnemonic” was originally published in Black Static, edited by Andy Cox.

Robert Shearman has published four short story collections, and between them they have won the World Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edge Hill Readers Prize, and three British Fantasy Awards. The most recent, Remember Why You Fear Me, was published in 2012. He writes regularly in the United Kingdom for theatre and BBC Radio, winning the Sunday Times Playwriting Award and the Guinness Award in association with the Royal National Theatre. He’s probably best known for reintroducing the Daleks to the twenty-first century revival of Doctor Who in an episode that was a finalist for the Hugo Award.

“That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love” was originally published in Psycho-Mania, edited by Stephen Jones.

Simon Strantzas is the author of four short story collections, including most recently Burnt Black Suns. His fiction has appeared in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and has been nominated for the British Fantasy Award.

He resides in Toronto, Canada.

“Stemming the Tide” was originally published in Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Steve Rasnic Tem’s latest novel is Blood Kin from Solaris, his second novel for them after 2012’s Deadfall Hotel. His two most recent collections are Celestial Inventories and Here with the Shadows. Upcoming are a novella, In the Lovecraft Museum, and a massive 225K collection of uncollected horror—Out of the Dark, A Storybook of Horrors.

“The Monster Makers” was originally published in Black Static, edited by Andy Cox.

Lee Thomas is the Lambda Literary Award and Bram Stoker Award — winning author of The Dust of Wonderland, The German, Torn, Like Light for Flies, and Butcher’s Road. You can find him online at www.leethomasauthor.com.

“Fine in the Fire” was originally published in Like Light for Flies.

Steve Toase lives in North Yorkshire, England, and occasionally Munich, Germany.

His work has been published in Scheherezade’s Bequest, Liquid Imagination, Jabberwocky Magazine, Sein und Werden, Cafe Irreal, streetcake magazine, Weaponizer and nthPosition amongst others. He is currently working on his first novel. His website can be found online at: www.stevetoase.co.uk

“Call Out” was first published in Innsmouth Magazine #12, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles.

Conrad Williams is the author of seven novels, four novellas and more than one hundred short stories, some of which are collected in Use Once, then Destroy and Born with Teeth. In addition to his International Horror Guild Award for his novel The Unblemished, he is a three-time recipient of the British Fantasy Award, including Best Novel for One. He’s also editor of the acclaimed anthology Gutshot.

He is currently teaching creative writing at Edge Hill University and working on a new anthology for Titan Books as well as a sequel to his 2010 novel Blonde on a Stick.

“The Fox” was originally published as a chapbook by This is Horror.