The Monster’s Corner: Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

THE AUTHORS

KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than a hundred books, including his Terra Incognita and Saga of Seven Suns original epics, as well as Dune novels with Brian Herbert, and novels for Star Wars and X-Files. He collaborated with Dean Koontz on Frankenstein: Prodigal Son. He is also the editor of the three Blood Lite anthologies for Pocket.

KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the author of the Women of the Otherworld paranormal suspense series, the Darkest Powers YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she has now escaped her corporate cubicle and hopes never to return.

GARY A. BRAUNBECK lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife, author Lucy A. Snyder, and five cats that will not hesitate to draw blood if he fails to feed them on time. He has published ten novels and ten short-story collections, as well as nearly two hundred short stories in a variety of genres. His work has garnered five Bram Stoker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. He is the creator of the acclaimed Cedar Hill Cycle of novels, novellas, and stories, which has been compared to Ray Bradbury’s Green Town, Illinois, tales, as well as the Castle Rock stories of Stephen King.

CHELSEA CAIN is the author of the New York Times bestselling thrillers Evil at Heart, Sweetheart, Heartsick, and The Night Season. All take place in Portland, Oregon, and focus on Detective Archie Sheridan, rainbow-haired journalist Susan Ward, and Sheridan’s lovely nemesis, the serial killer Gretchen Lowell. Chelsea’s books have been published in over twenty languages, recommended on The Today Show, appeared in episodes of HBO’s True Blood and ABC’s Castle, and named among Stephen King’s top ten favorite books of the year. NPR included her book Heartsick in its list of the top one hundred thrillers ever written. Chelsea lives in Portland with her husband and remarkably well-adjusted five-year-old daughter.

TANANARIVE DUE — pronounced tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo — is an NAACP Image Award winner and American Book Award winner, the author of books ranging from mysteries to supernatural thrillers to a civil rights memoir. Her upcoming novel My Soul to Take (Fall 2011) is the long-awaited sequel to Blood Colony, The Living Blood, and My Soul to Keep. Due also writes the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series, in collaboration with her husband, Steven Barnes, and actor Blair Underwood. In the Night of the Heat won the 2009 NAACP Image Award. Due also brought history to life in Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which she coauthored with her mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. Freedom in the Family was named 2003’s Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review. Due and Barnes are raising their young son, Jason. Her blogs are www.tananarivedue.blogspot.com and www.tananarivedue.wordpress.com.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM is the child of Scottish and Irish immigrants who met and married in Chicago and moved to South Florida, where she has spent her life. She majored in theater arts at the University of South Florida. After a stint of several years in dinner theater, backup vocals, and bartending, she stayed home following the birth of her third child and began to write. Her first book was with Dell, and since then she has written over one hundred and fifty novels and novellas, including suspense, historical romance, vampire fiction, time travel, occult, horror, and Christmas family fare. She is founder of the Slushpile Band and Players, providing something like entertainment at many functions, with proceeds going to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and various charities in the Gulf region and New Orleans. Phantom Evil (Mira Books, April 2011) will be followed by a trilogy, Heart of Evil, Sacred Evil, and The Evil Inside, in July, August, and September 2011.

SIMON R. GREEN has written over forty books, his best-known series being the Deathstalker books (space opera), the Nightside books (private eye who operates in the Twilight Zone, solving cases of the weird and uncanny), the Secret Histories books, (featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent), and, most recently, the Ghost Finders books (traditional hauntings in modern-day settings). He rides motorbikes, acts in open-air Shakespeare productions, believes in ghosts because he’s seen one, and believes in near-death experiences because he had one.

LAUREN GROFF is the author of a novel, The Monsters of Templeton, which was short-listed for the Orange Prize for New Writers and was a New York Times bestseller and Editors’ Choice. Her story collection, Delicate Edible Birds: And Other Stories, included stories that had first appeared in the Atlantic, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses, and the 2007 and 2010 editions of Best American Short Stories. Her second novel, Arcadia, will appear in March 2012. She lives in Gainesville, Florida. More at www.laurengroff.com.

NATE KENYON’S first novel, Bloodstone (2006), was a Bram Stoker Award finalist and won the P&E Horror Novel of the Year. Bloodstone was followed by The Reach (2008), The Bone Factory (2009), and Sparrow Rock (2010). The Reach, also a Stoker Award finalist, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was optioned for film. Kenyon’s latest novel, StarCraft Ghost: Spectres, based on Blizzard’s bestselling video game franchise, will be released in the fall of 2011. He has recently signed on to write a novel based on the video game Diablo, again for Blizzard.

DAVID LISS is the author of seven novels, most recently The Twelfth Enchantment. His six previous bestselling novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and several of them, as well as a short story, are in development as film projects. Liss also writes the monthly series Black Panther: The Man Without Fear for Marvel Comics.

JONATHAN MABERRY is a New York Times bestseller, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and Marvel Comics writer. He is the author of many novels and nonfiction books and over twelve hundred magazine articles, as well as short stories, poetry, and plays. Jonathan’s books include the popular Joe Ledger thrillers (The King of Plagues, Patient Zero, The Dragon Factory), horror novels (Dead of Night, Ghost Road Blues, The Wolfman), and teen dystopian adventures (Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay). Nonfiction works include Wanted Undead or Alive, Zombie CSU, and The Cryptopedia. His work for Marvel includes Captain America: Hail Hydra and Marvel Universe vs. Wolverine. He is the cofounder of the Liars Club, which hosts the Writers Coffeehouse every month. Jonathan is a frequent keynote speaker at SF, horror, and writers conventions. Visit his Web site/blog at www.jonathanmaberry.com.

SHARYN McCRUMB is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her Appalachian Ballad novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Ballad of Frankie Silver and She Walks These Hills, and for St. Dale, winner of a Library of Virginia Award and featured at the National Festival of the Book. Her current novel, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (Thomas Dunne, 2010), deals with the regional stereotyping of rural areas by national journalists. In 2008 Sharyn McCrumb was named a Virginia Woman of History for Achievement in Literature. She lives and writes in the Virginia Blue Ridge.

JOHN McILVEEN has five daughters. He lives in Massachusetts and works at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. John is, or has been, an electrician, a pipe fitter, a carpenter, a bookseller, a writer, an editor, a publisher, a facility engineer, an electrical engineer, a process engineer, an electrical and mechanical designer, a father, a son, a winner, a loser, a student, a teacher, a husband, an ex-husband, a beginner, a pro, on bottom, and on top. Someday he’ll figure it all out, but he likes being a father the most.

DAVID MOODY was born in 1970 and grew up in Birmingham, England, on a diet of trashy horror and pulp science fiction books and movies. He worked as a bank manager and as operations manager for a number of financial institutions before giving up the day job to write about the end of the world for a living. He has written a number of horror novels, including Autumn, which has been downloaded more than half a million times since its publication in 2001 and has spawned a series of sequels and a movie starring Dexter Fletcher and David Carradine. Film rights to Hater have been bought by Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth) and Mark Johnson (producer of the Chronicles of Narnia films). Moody lives outside Birmingham with his wife and a houseful of daughters and stepdaughters, which may explain his preoccupation with Armageddon.

TOM PICCIRILLI is the author of twenty novels, including Shadow Season, The Cold Spot, The Coldest Mile, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s won two International Thriller Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards, as well as having been nominated for the Edgar, the World Fantasy Award, the Macavity, and Le Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. Learn more at www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com.

SARAH PINBOROUGH is the author of six horror novels. Her first thriller, A Matter of Blood, was released by Gollancz in March 2010 and is the first of the Dog-Faced Gods trilogy, which has now been optioned for a television series. Her first YA novel, The Double-Edged Sword, was released under the name Sarah Silverwood from Gollancz in September 2010 and is the first of the Nowhere Chronicles. 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, was short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award and won the 2010 British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH is a novelist and screenwriter. Under this name he has published over seventy short stories and three novels — Only Forward, Spares, and One of Us — winning the Philip K. Dick, International Horror Guild, and August Derleth Awards and the Prix Bob Morane in France. He has won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction four times, more than any other author. Writing as Michael Marshall, he has published five internationally bestselling thrillers, including The Straw Men, The Intruders, and Bad Things, and 2009 saw the publication of The Servants, under the name M. M. Smith. His new Michael Marshall novel, Killer Move, will be published in 2011. He lives in North London with his wife, their son, and two cats. His Web site is www.michaelmarshallsmith.com.

DANA STABENOWwas born in Anchorage and raised on a 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and found it in writing. Her first science fiction novel, Second Star, sank without a trace; her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar Award; her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list; and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel, Restless in the Grave, comes out in February 2012.

JEFF STRAND’Snovels include Pressure, Dweller, Benjamin’s Parasite, Single White Psychopath Seeks Same, and Fangboy. He’s a two-time finalist and two-time nonwinner of the Bram Stoker Award. You can visit his Gleefully Macabre Web site at www.jeffstrand.com.