Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2018

 

Paula Guran has announced the table of contents for Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018.

I am absolutely delighted to be included with “The Crow Palace”, which originally appeared in “Black Feathers” (edited by Ellen Datlow).

 

ToC

“Sunflower Junction,” Simon Avery (Black Static #57)
“Swift to Chase,” Laird Barron (Adam’s Ladder: An Anthology of Dark Science Fiction)
“Fallow,” Ashley Blooms (Shimmer #37)
“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” Aliette de Bodard (Exclusive for The House of Binding Thorns preorders/Uncanny #17)
“On Highway 18,” Rebecca Campbell (F&SF 9-10/17)
“Witch Hazel,” Jeffrey Ford (Haunted Nights, eds. Ellen Datlow & Lisa Morton)
“The Bride in Sea-Green Velvet,” Robin Furth (F&SF 7-8/17)
“Little Digs,” Lisa L. Hannett (The Dark #20)
“The Thule Stowaway,” Maria Dahvana Headley (Uncanny #14)
“The Eyes Are White and Quiet,” Carole Johnstone (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)
Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com)
“Don’t Turn on the Lights,” Cassandra Khaw (Nightmare #61)
“The Dinosaur Tourist,” Caitlín R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #139)
“Survival Strategies,” Helen Marshall (Black Static #60)
“Red Bark and Ambergris,” Kate Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies #232)
“Skins Smooth as Plantain, Hearts Soft as Mango,” Ian Muneshwar (The Dark #27)
“Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying,” M. Rickert (Shadows & Tall Trees, ed. Michael Kelly)
“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™,” Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex #99)
“Graverobbing Negress Seeks Employment,” Eden Royce (Fiyah #2)
“Moon Blood-Red, Tide Turning,” Mark Samuels (Terror Tales of Cornwall, ed. Paul Finch)
“The Crow Palace,” Priya Sharma (Black Feathers, ed. Ellen Datlow)
“The Swimming Pool Party,” Robert Shearman (Shadows & Tall Trees 7, ed. Michael Kelly)
“The Little Mermaid, in Passing,” Angela Slatter (Review of Australian Fiction, Vol.22, #1)
“Secret Keeper,” Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Nightmare #61)
“The Long Fade into Evening Steve,” Steve Rasnic Tem (Darker Companions, eds. Scott David Aniolowski & Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.)
“Moon and Memory and Muchness,” Katherine Vaz (Mad Hatters and March Hares, ed. Ellen Datlow)
“Exceeding Bitter,” Kaaron Warren (Evil Is a Matter of Perspective, eds Adrian Collins & Mike Myers)
“Succulents,” Conrad Williams (New Fears, ed. Mark Morris)
“The Lamentation of Their Women,” Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com 8.24.17)

The Dark Issue 37

Thanks to Sean Wallace for including me in Issue 37 of The Dark with a reprint of “The Crow Palace”.

This story originally appeared in “Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales”, edited by Ellen Datlow.

“Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints.”

 

Contents:

• “In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same” by A.C. Wise
• “Beehive Heart” by Angela Rega  (Reprint)
• The Hurrah (aka Corpse Scene) by Orrin Grey
• “The Crow Palace” by Priya Sharma  (Reprint)

Read online

Purchase a copy Amazon US,  Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Weightless Books

 

 

 

Black Feathers Edited by Ellen Datlow

“Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales” is now out in paperback and is available from Amazon UK (currently £10.99), Amazon US (currently $15.95) and Barnes & Noble.

With stories by Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire, Pat Cadigan, Richard Bowes, Paul Tremblay, A. C. Wise, Usman T. Malik, Jeffrey Ford, Sandra Kasturi, Mike O’Driscoll, Priya Sharma, Alison Littlewood, M. John Harrison, Nicholas Royle, Livia Llewellyn, and Stephen Graham Jones.

 

 

 

This is Horror Awards 2017

This is Horror Awards 2017 is open for public voting. More information is here.

Voting closes at 12:01am GMT on Monday 26 February 2018.

Novel of the Year

1. Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
2. I Wish I Was Like You by S.P. Miskowski
3. In the Valley of the Sun by Andy Davidson
4. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
5. The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn

Novella of the Year

1. Agents of Dreamland by Caitlin R. Kiernan
2. In the River by Jeremy Robert Johnson
3. Mapping The Interior by Stephen Graham Jones
4. Quiet Places by Jasper Bark
5. The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

Short Story Collection of the Year

1. Behold the Void by Philip Fracassi
2. Everything That’s Underneath by Kristi DeMeester
3. Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado
4. She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin
5. 13 Views of the Suicide Woods by Bracken MacLeod

Anthology of the Year

1. Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, edited by Doug Murano
2. Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology, edited by Ellen Datlow
3. Looming Low Volume I, edited by Justin Steele and Sam Cowan
4. New Fears, edited by Mark Morris
5. The Beauty of Death 2 —Death By Water, edited by Alessandro Manzetti & Jodi Renée Lester

Fiction Magazine of the Year

1. Apex Magazine
2. Black Static
3. Gamut
4. Nightmare Magazine
5. The Dark Magazine

Publisher of the Year

1. ChiZine Publications
2. Crystal Lake Publishing 
3. Journalstone
4. Tor.com Publishing 
5. Word Horde

Fiction Podcast of the Year

1. Nightmare Magazine Podcast 
2. Pseudopod
3. Tales to Terrify
4. The NoSleep Podcast
5. The Other Stories by Hawk & Cleaver

Nonfiction Podcast of the Year

1. Last Podcast on the Left
2. Lore Podcast
3. Lovecraft eZine Podcast
4. Post Mortem with Mick Garris
5. The Horror Show with Brian Keene

Locus Recommended Reading List 2017

Locus’ annual Recommended Reading List in now out for 2017.

The list contains stalwarts like Caitlín R. Kiernan, Charles Stross, M. John Harrison, Angela Slatter, Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Nina Allan, Adam Nevill, Joe Hill, Sarah Pinsborough, Philip Pullman, Jeff VanderMeer and Elizabeth Bear.

It’s terrific to see work on there by Kelly Robson, JY Yang, Victor LaValle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Usman T. Malik and Carole Johnstone. (As an aside, check out Issue 60 of Black Static, which contains her novella “Skyshine”- I will be disappointed if it doesn’t make shortlists next year).

I love that the  Locus list also includes Sarah Hall’s “Madame Zero”- one on my favourites of last year. Jeffrey Alan Love is also on the list for his illustrations of “Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor, and Loki” by Kevin Crossley Holland. I think he’s a terrific talent.

I am very grateful to have two stories in the list. “Mercury” (my story from “Mad Hatters and March Hares”) and “The Crow Palace” from “Black Feathers”- an anthology of avian-themed horror edited by Ellen Datlow, which also made the Original Anthology category.

Review of “Black Feathers” edited by Ellen Datlow

Birds may be the theme for the excellent Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, but it is human interaction with our feathered friends (and enemies) that provides the darkness as well as the diversity in these 15 stories (13 original, two republished) and one poem. Not surprisingly, corvidae—traditional birds of ill omen and intermediaries between life and death—tend to turn up more than other phyla, but that does nothing to diminish the variety of the tales.

It is difficult to single out the best stories. All are well written and imaginative; favorites may depend, at least in part, on personal preference…Priya Sharma closes the volume with one of the strongest stories, “The Crow Palace.” After her father’s death, Julie returns home to handle the usual post-mortem consequences plus deciding the future care of her twin sister, Pippa, who has cerebral palsy. Julie, who found her mother’s suicided body at a young age, is cold and emotionless, although she loves her sister. Birds play a supernaturally sinister role in this cinematic and truly terrifying tale.  Paula Guran for Locus

As its title suggests, the stories in Black Feathers:  Dark Avian Tales, Ellen Datlow’s strong new anthology, take place at the darker end of the literary spectrum.  In these stories, birds are both symbols and plot devices, figures for the characters’ interior states, and mechanisms by which those states are realized.  These birds are the literary descendants of those who fly through Daphne du Maurier’s, familiar creatures rendered strange and terrible.  The result is a flock of stories among the year’s most memorable and disturbing. John Langan for Locus

Black Feathers is out now from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Black Feathers giveaway on Goodreads

Goodreads are giving away 10 copies of Black Feathers. Enter here by 6th March 2017.

At the end, eerie is the word that best describes the sensation of reading Black Feathers. Eerie people, eerie situations, eerie landscapes, and most of all eerie birds to haunt imaginations and trouble dreams.
Highly recommended.

-Michael R.Collings for Hellnotes (full review)

 

 

Black Feathers edited by Ellen Datlow

Black Feathers is a masterful presentation of dark avian-themed shorts. From the jarring, owl-like turn of a head, to the blood-flecked beaks, to the sinister gifts left by all-seeing pigeons, to the replacement eggs hatched… Eddie Generous for Unnerving Magazine (Full review)

Black Feathers is out now from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

 

Review of Black Feathers Edited by Ellen Datlow

 

Horror stories are oftentimes crime stories exaggerated to grotesque proportions, with the supernatural and uncanny occasionally standing in for the unsolvable; as a genre, it’s a literary detour past thriller and a dive over the boundary into terror. Black Feathers is no different, with a collection of tales of murder and abductions and madness—with birds, helpful or sinister or often both, as its central theme—from authors as renowned for their non-horror writings as Joyce Carol Oates and Pat Cadigan. It is however a lesser-known author who has written what is easily my favorite story from the collection. In “The Crow Palace,” Priya Sharma writes a cold-blooded tale of family and terrible secret bargains…Other short story standouts for me included Seanan McGuire’s “The Mathematical Inevitability of Corvids,” about a young girl who counts birds as a way of preserving her fragile days, and Jeffrey Ford’s “The Murmurations of Vienna Von Drome”, one of the few stories set in a fantastic world. Relatable enough to crime fans, this latter story follows a police investigator on the trail of a serial killer. I also enjoyed the fresh narrative voice of the teenaged first-person narrator in Stephen Graham Jones’s “Pigeon from Hell.” Doreen Sheridan for Criminal Element (Full Review)

Storyville: 10 Highly Anticipated Books for 2017

In Storyville, his regular column for Litreactor, Richard Thomas features his ten highly anticipated books for 2017.

I’ve already bought number one on his list (“Behind Her Eyes” by Sarah Pinborough) and am delighted that “Black Feathers” is on there too-

Do I really have to sell you on anything edited by Ellen Datlow? With work by Stephen Graham Jones, Priya Sharma, Livia Llewellyn, Usman T. Malik, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Tremblay, and Seanan McGuire this is sure to be a big hit.

Out 7th Feb in the USA and 7th March in the UK

Review:

“Black Feathers” is another triumph for this talented editor and highly recommended for its diverse and skilled contributors. It will definitely cause you to think twice the next time you see a flock of birds soaring through the sky or hear their songs outside your window. Alan Cranis for Bookgasm. (Full review)