The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Inna Effress is a former speechwriter who emigrated from Ukraine as a child. Her fiction appears in the Santa Monica Review, The Wrong, and the Nightscript anthology. She writes in LA.

“Liquid Air” was originally published in Nightscript III edited by C. M. Muller.

Marc E. Fitch is the author of the novels Paradise Burns, Dirty Water, and Old Boone Blood. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nightscript, Whispers from the Abyss 2, and The Big Click.

Fitch is also the author of Paranormal Nation: Why America Needs Ghosts, UFOs and Bigfoot. Marc lives and works in Connecticut with his wife, four children, and three goats. For more information visit www.marcfitch.com, and he can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

“The Starry Crown” was originally published in Horror Library Volume 6 edited by Eric J. Guignard.

Philip Fracassi, an author and screenwriter, lives in Los Angeles and works full-time in the film industry and on his writing. He is the author of the novellas Fragile Dreams, Sacculina, and Shiloh. His short horror fiction is collected in Behold the Void. His feature film, Girl Missing, is currently available on demand via iTunes and Amazon.

His stories have been printed in numerous magazines and anthologies. You can visit his website at pfracassi.com for more information. You can also find him via social media on Facebook, Instagram (pfracassi), and Twitter (@philipfracassi).

“Fail-Safe” was originally published in his collection, Behold the Void.

Stephen Gallagher is a Stoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, and is the author of fifteen novels including Valley of Lights, Down River, Rain, and Nightmare, With Angel. He’s the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James.

“Shepherds’ Business” was originally published in New Fears, edited by Mark Morris.

Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, amateur film scholar, and monster expert who was born on the night before Halloween. His stories of monsters, ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts of monsters have appeared in dozens of anthologies, and have been collected into Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts. He is also the author of various licensed work and Monsters from the Vault, a collection of his essays on vintage horror cinema.

“The Granfalloon” was originally published in Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell selected and edited by Scott David Aniolowski and Joseph S. Pulver Sr.

Brian Hodge is one of those people who always has to be making something. So far, he’s made thirteen novels, around 130 shorter works, and five full-length collections.

He’ll have three new books out in 2018 and early 2019: The Immaculate Void, a novel of cosmic horror; A Song of Eagles, a grimdark fantasy; and Skidding Into Oblivion, his next collection.

He lives in Colorado, where he also likes to make music and photographs and trains in Krav Maga and kickboxing.

Connect through his web site (www.brianhodge.net), Twitter (@BHodgeAuthor), or Facebook (www.facebook.com/brianhodgewriter).

“West of Matamoros, North of Hell” was originally published in Dark Screams Volume Seven, edited by Brian James Freeman.

Carole Johnstone is a British Fantasy Award winning Scottish writer, currently enjoying splendid isolation on the Atlantic coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Her short fiction has been published widely, and has been reprinted in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year and Salt Publishing’s Best British Fantasy series.

Her debut short story collection, The Bright Day is Done, and her novella, Cold Turkey, were both shortlisted for a 2015 British Fantasy Award.

“Better You Believe” was originally published in Horror Library Volume 6, edited by Eric G. Guignard.

John Langan is the author of two novels: The Fisherman and House of Windows, and three collections: The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, and Sefira and Other Betrayals.

With Paul Tremblay, he co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. One of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, he serves on its Advisory Board. Currently, he reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and younger son.

“Lost in the Dark” was originally published in Haunted Nights, edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton.

Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in the south of Spain, and now lives in Ottawa, Canada. Since he began writing in 2011, he’s sold over a hundred stories, the majority of them speculative fiction published in magazines like Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Omni, and Tor.com.

His work also appears in numerous Year’s Best anthologies and has been translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish, Czech, French, and Italian. His debut novel, Annex, was recently published, and his debut collection, Tomorrow Factory, is forthcoming in October 2018. Find more at richwlarson. tumblr.com and support him via patreon.com/richlarson.

“Dark Warm Heart” was originally published on Tor.com, April 12, 2017.

Rebecca Lloyd is from the south of England. Her short stories have been collected in Mercy and Other Stories, which was nominated for the 2014 World Fantasy Award, and Seven Strange Stories, The View from Endless Street, Whelp and Other Stories which was a finalist for the 2014 Paul Bowles Short Fiction Award, and Ragman and Other Family Curses.

Her story “The Ringers” was short-listed in the Aestas Short Story Prize 2016, and her novel Oothangbart was published by Pillar International Publishing. She is also the author of the novellas Woolfy and Scrapo and Jack Werrett, the Flood Man.

She recently finished The Child Cephalina, a Gothic horror novel set in 1851.

“Where’s the Harm?” was originally published in her collection Seven Strange Stories.

Carman Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kirkus Prize, LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Crawford Award. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Tin House, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Michener-Copernicus Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the CINTAS Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

“There and Back Again” war originally published in Mixed Up: Cocktail Recipes (and Flash Fiction) For the Discerning Drinker (and Reader) edited by Nick Mamatas and Molly Tanzer.

Tim Major is co-editor of the British Fantasy Society’s fiction journal, BFS Horizons. His novels and novellas include You Don’t Belong Here, Blighters, and Carus & Mitch. In 2018, ChiZine will publish his first YA novel, Machineries of Mercy, Luna Press will publish his first short story collection, And The House Lights Dim, and Electric Dreamhouse Press will publish his non-fiction book about the silent crime film, Les Vampires.

Tim’s short stories have appeared in Interzone, Not One of Us, The Literary Hatchet, and numerous anthologies. Find out more at cosycatastrophes. wordpress.com.

“Eqalussuaq” was originally published in Not One of Us #58 October.

Seanan McGuire lives, works, and occasionally falls into swamps in the Pacific Northwest, where she is coming to an understanding with the local frogs. She has written a ridiculous number of novels and even more short stories. Keep up with her at seananmcguire.com. On moonlit nights, when the stars are right, you just might find her falling into a swamp near you.

“You Can Stay All Day” was originally published (under the name Mira Grant) in Nights of the Living Dead edited by Jonathan Maberry and George A. Romero.

S. P. Miskowski is a three-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Her stories have been published in Supernatural Tales, Black Static, Identity Theory, Strange Aeons, and Eyedolon magazine, as well as in the anthologies Haunted Nights, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Autumn Cthulhu, Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, Tales from a Talking Board, and Looming Low. Her books are available from Omnium Gatherum and JournalStone/Trepidatio.

“Alligator Point” was originally published in Looming Low Volume 1 edited by Justin Steele and Sam Cowan.

Mark Morris has written over twenty-five novels, among which are Toady, Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge, and four Doctor Who books. His short stories are collected in Close to the Bone, Long Shadows, Nightmare Light, and Wrapped In Skin. His fiction, articles, and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and magazines, and he is editor of Cinema Macabre, for which he won the 2007 British Fantasy Award, its follow-up Cinema Futura, two volumes of The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, and New Fears. He has also written audio dramas.

His recently published work includes the official movie tie-in novelizations of Noah and The Great Wall, the novellas It Sustains and Albion Fay, and his Obsidian Heart trilogy.

Forthcoming in 2018 is New Fears 2, a new audio adaptation of the classic British folk-horror movie Blood on Satan’s Claw, and the first publication of Mark’s first ever, previously unpublished novel The Winter Tree.

“Holiday Romance” was originally published in Black Static #58, May/ June.

David Erik Nelson has become increasingly aware that he’s an “unsavory character” in other people’s anecdotes. His stories have appeared in Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Pseudopod, and elsewhere.

In addition to writing stories about time travel, non-Euclidean houses, and carnivorous lights, he also writes nonfiction about synthesizers, guns, cyborg cockroaches, and Miss America. More of his writing can be found online—as can he—at davideriknelson.com or twitter.com/squidaveo.

“Whatever Comes After Calcutta” was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November/December.

Sarah Read is a dark fiction writer in the frozen north of Wisconsin, where she works in a library in a castle on an island. Her short stories can be found in Gamut, Black Static, Lamplight, and BEHOLD! Oddities Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, among other places. She also writes numerous articles about crocheting and fountain pens. She is the editor-in-chief at Pantheon magazine and an active member of the Horror Writer’s Association. When she’s not staring into the abyss, she knits. To learn more about Sarah, you can visit her website at inkwellmonster.wordpress.com.

“Endoskeletal” was originally published in Black Static #59, July/August.

Kelly Robson’s book Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach was recently brought out by Tor.com Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and multiple year’s best anthologies.

She was a finalist for the 2017 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her novella “Waters of Versailles” won the 2016 Aurora Award and was a finalist for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. “A Human Stain” was nominated for the Nebula Award.

Kelly lives in Toronto with her wife, fellow SF writer A. M. Dellamonica.

“A Human Stain” was originally published on Tor.com, January 4, 2017.

Kaaron Warren is a Shirley Jackson Award Winner who published her first short story in 1993, and has had stories in print every year since. She has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, and Fiji. She has published four novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, and The Grief Hole, which won all three Australian genre awards) and six short story collections, including the multi-award winning Through Splintered Walls. Her next short story collection is A Primer to Kaaron Warren from Dark Moon Books.

You can find her at kaaronwarren.wordpress.com, and she Tweets @KaaronWarren.

“Furtherest” was originally published in Dark Screams Volume Seven, edited by Brian James Freeman.

A. C. Wise was born and raised in the Montreal area, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. In addition to short fiction appearing in publications such as Clarkesworld, Tor.com, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2017, she has two collections published with Lethe Press, and a novella, Catfish Lullaby, published by Broken Eye Books. Her work has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and won the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She contributes a monthly short fiction review column to Apex magazine, and her Women to Read and Non-Binary Authors to Read columns appear monthly at The Book Smugglers. Find her online at acwise.net.

“The Stories We Tell about Ghosts” was originally published in Looming Low Volume 1 edited by Justin Steele and Sam Cowan.

“Harvest Song, Gathering Song” was originally published in For Mortal Things Unsung edited by Alex Hofelich.