The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Neil Gaiman horror-hosted the Fox Channel’s 13 Nights of Fear during the fortnight before Halloween 2004 and got to introduce movies from inside a coffin. He thought it was cool.

His 2002 novel American Gods won science fiction’s Hugo Award and horror’s Bram Stoker Award, while Coraline, a dark fantasy for children which he had been writing for a decade, was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic and even managed to beat its predecessor in the awards stakes.

On the illustrated front, his first Sandman graphic novel in seven years, entitled Endless Nights, is published by DC Comics and illustrated by seven different artists; 1602 is a new alternate history miniseries from Marvel, and he has collaborated with artist Dave McKean on the children’s picture book The Wolves in the Walls.

As well as all the above, the New York Times bestselling author has somehow also found the time to make a short vampire film entitled A Short Film About John Bolton, and he has recently started writing a new novel, with the working title of Anansi Boys.

“ ‘Bitter Grounds’ was written for Nalo Hopkinson,” explains Gaiman, “for her anthology Mojo: Conjure Stories. I wondered if I could say anything new or interesting about zombies, and several things sort of came together at once when I wrote it. It’s set in the hotel the 1994 World Fantasy Convention was held in.

“I read a review of the story recently, which pointed out that it was trickier than it seems on the surface, which seemed like a wise observation to me.”