The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (88 page)

Tia V. Travis
was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award. Her fiction has been reprinted in two volumes of
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
and
Poe’s Children: The New Horror.
A native Canadian, she now lives in Northern California with her husband, author Norman Partridge, and two-year-old daughter, Neve Rose.

Lisa Tuttle
was born in the United States, but has lived in Britain for the past thirty years. She began writing while still at school, sold her first stories at university, and won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer of the Year in 1974. Her first novel,
Windhaven,
was a collaboration with George R. R. Martin published in 1981; her most recent is the contemporary fantasy
The Silver Bough,
and she has published around a hundred short stories, as well as books for children and non-fiction works.

Catherynne M. Valente
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including
Palimpsest,
the Orphan’s Tales series,
Deathless,
and the crowdfunded phenomenon
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making.
She is the winner of the Andre Norton Award, the Tiptree Award, the Mythopoeic Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Million Writers Award. She has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Spectrum Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2007 and 2009. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner, two dogs, and an enormous cat.

Kaaron Warren
’s short story collection
The Grinding House
(CSFG Publishing) won the ACT Writers’ and Publishers’ Fiction Award and two Ditmar Awards. Her second collection,
Dead Sea Fruit,
published by Ticonderoga Books, won the ACT Writers’ and Publishers’ Fiction Award. Her critically acclaimed novel
Slights
(Angry Robot Books) won the Australian Shadows Award, the Ditmar Award, and the Canberra Critics’ Award for Fiction. Angry Robot Books also published her novels
Walking the Tree
(shortlisted for a Ditmar Award) and
Mistification,
which was released in 2011. Her stories have appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy as well as the Australian Years Best Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies. She has recently been named Special Guest for the Australian National Science Fiction Convention in 2013, and has appeared at Readercon in the USA as an invited guest. Kaaron lives in Canberra, Australia, with her husband and children. Her website is kaaronwarren.wordpress.com and she tweets @KaaronWarren.

Gene Wolfe
worked as an engineer before becoming editor of trade journal
Plant Engineering.
He retired to write full-time in 1984. Long considered to be a premier fantasy author, he is the recipient of the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as Nebula, World Fantasy, Campbell, Locus, British Fantasy, and British SF Awards. Wolfe has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. His short fiction has been collected over a dozen times, most recently in
The Best of Gene Wolfe
(2009). The most recent of Wolfe’s numerous novels is
Home Fires
(2011). His novel
Peace
will be published in December 2012.

Acknowledgments

“Hair” by Joan Aiken © 2011 by Joan Aiken Estate (John Sebastian Brown and Elizabeth Delano Charlaff). Used by permission. All rights reserved. First publication:
The Monkey’s Wedding & Other Stories
(Small Beer Press) /
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
July/August, 2011.

“Rakshasi” by Kelley Armstrong © 2011 by KLA Fricke Inc. First publication:
The Monster’s Corner: Through Inhuman Eyes,
edited by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Griffin).

“Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin” by Adam Callaway © 2011 by Adam Callaway. First publication:
Beneath Ceaseless Skies,
Issue #73, July 14, 2011.

“The Lake” by Tananarive Due © 2011 by Tananarive Due. First publication:
The Monster’s Corner: Through Inhuman Eyes,
edited by Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011).

“Tell Me I’ll See You Again” by Dennis Etchison © 2011 by Dennis Etchison. First publication:
A Book of Horrors,
edited by Stephen Jones (Quercus).

“King Death” by Paul Finch © 2011 by Paul Finch. First publication:
King Death
(Spectral Press,).

“The Last Triangle” by Jeffrey Ford © 2011 by Jeffrey Ford. First publication:
Supernatural Noir,
edited by Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse).

“Crossroads” by Laura Anne Gilman © 2011 by Laura Anne Gilman. First publication:
Fantasy,
August 2011.

“Near Zennor” by Elizabeth Hand © 2011 by Elizabeth Hand. First publication:
A Book of Horrors,
edited by Stephen Jones (Quercus).

“After-Words” by Glen Hirshberg © 2011 by Glen Hirshberg. First publication:
The Janus Tree and Other Stories
(Subterranean Press).

“Rocket Man” by Stephen Graham Jones © 2011 by Stephen Graham Jones. First publication:
Stymie,
Vol. 4. Issue 1, Spring & Summer 2011.

“The Maltese Unicorn” by Caitlín R. Kiernan © 2011 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. First publication:
Supernatural Noir,
edited by Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse).

“The Dune” by Stephen King © 2011 by Stephen King. First publication:
Granta 117,
Autumn 2011.

“Catastrophic Disruption of the Head” by Margo Lanagan © 2011 by Margo Lanagan. First publication:
The Wilful Eye: Tales from the Tower, Vol. 1
(Allen & Unwin).

“The Bleeding Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale © 2011 by Joe R. Lansdale. First publication:
Down These Strange Streets,
edited by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (Ace Books).

“Why Light?” © 2011 by Tanith Lee. First publication:
Teeth,
edited by Ellen Datlow & Teri Windling (HarperCollins).

“Conservation of Shadows” © 2011 by Yoon Ha Lee. First publication:
Clarkesworld,
August 2011.

“A Tangle of Green Men” by Charles de Lint. © 2011 by Charles de Lint. First publication:
Welcome to Bordertown,
edited by Holly Black & Ellen Kushner (Random House Books for Young Readers).

“After the Apocalypse” © 2011 by Maureen F. McHugh. First publication:
After the Apocalypse
(Small Beer Press).

“Why Do You Linger?” © 2011 by Sarah Monette. First publication:
Subterranean #8.

“Lord Dunsany’s Teapot” by Naomi Novik © 2011 by Temeraire LLC. First publication:
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities,
edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer (HarperVoyager).

“Mysteries of the Old Quarter” by Paul Park © 2011 by Paul Park. First publication:
Ghosts by Gaslight
:
Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense,
edited by Jack Dann & Nick Gever (HarperVoyager).

“Vampire Lake” by Norman Partridge © 2011 by Norman Partridge. First publication:
Subterranean Tales of Dark Fantasy 2,
edited by William K. Schafer (Subterranean Press).

“A Journey of Only Two Paces” by Tim Powers © 2011 by Tim Powers. First publication:
The Bible Repairman and Other Stories
(Tachyon Press). [A shorter version of this story appeared in 2009 in
LX Eastercon: Souvenir Book,
edited by Steve Cooper (Bradford, UK).]

“Four Legs in the Morning” by Norman Prentiss © 2011 by Norman Prentiss. First publication:
Four Legs in the Morning
(Cemetery Dance).

“The Fox Maiden” by Priya Sharma © 2011 by Priya Sharma. First publication:
On Spec,
Summer 2011.

“Time and Tide” by Alan Peter Ryan © 2011 by Alan Peter Ryan. First publication:
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
September/October, 2011.

“Sun Falls” by Angela Slatter © 2011 by Angela Slatter. First publication:
Dead Red Heart,
edited by Russell B. Farr (Ticonderoga Press).

“Still” by Tia V. Travis © 2011 by Tia V. Travis. First publication:
Portents,
edited by Al Sarrantonio (Flying Fox).

“Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear” by Lisa Tuttle © 2011 by Lisa Tuttle. First publication:
House of Fear,
edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris).

“The Bread We Eat in Dreams” by Catherynne M. Valente © 2011 by Catherynne M. Valente. First publication:
Apex Magazine,
Issue 30, November 2011.

“All You Can Do Is Breathe” by Kaaron Warren © 2011 by Kaaron Warren. First publication:
Blood & Other Cravings,
edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor).

“Josh” by Gene Wolfe © 2011 by Gene Wolfe. First publication:
Portents,
edited by Al Sarrantonio (Flying Fox).