Many thanks to Ellen Datlow for including Jack O’Dander in her annual horror anthology. It’s a stunning line-up, so I am delighted to be in there.
This story appeared on Reactor last year, with Ellen as the aquiring editor.
Table of Contents:
The Importance of a Tidy Home Christopher Golden / Dodger Carly Holmes / Rock Hopping Adam L.G. Nevill / That Maddening Heat Ray Cluley / Jack O’Dander Priya Sharma / The Assembled Ramsey Campbell / R is For Remains Steve Rasnic Tem / The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs E. Catherine Tobler / Return to Bear Creek Lodge Tananarive Due / The Enfilade Andrew Hook / Lover’s Lane Stephen Graham Jones / Hare Moon H.V. Patterson / Build Your Houses With Their Backs to the Sea Caitlín R. Kiernan / The Scare Groom Patrick Barb / The Teeth Brian Evenson / Nábrók Helen Grant / The Salted Bones Neil Williamson / Tell Me When I Disappear Glen Hirshberg / The Motley Charlie Hughes
Anthologist Paula Guran has announced the contents of Volume 5 of The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror.
Paula Guran has edited more than fifty science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies and more than fifty novels and collections featuring the same. She’s reviewed and written articles for dozens of publications.
Table of Contents
“The Crease”, Simon Avery (Black Static 82/83)
“Miz Boudreaux’s Last Ride”, Christopher Caldwell (Uncanny #50)
“All the Things I Know About Ghosts, By Ofelia, Age 10”, Isabel Cañas (The Deadlands #30)
“Resurrection Highway”, A. R. Capetta (The Sunday Morning Transport 9/3/2023)
“Return to Bear Creek Lodge”, Tananarive Due (Christmas and Other Horrors: An Anthology of Solstice Horror, ed. E. Datlow)
“The Demon Lord of Broken Concrete”, Alex Irvine (Bourbon Penn #30)
“The Witch Is Not the Monster”, Alaya Dawn Johnson (The Book of Witches, ed. J. Strahan)
Whiskey and the Weird is a podcast by Damien Smith, Jessica Berg, and Ryan Whitley, in which they explore The Tales of the Weird series published by the British Library.
They’ve made an exception for their Halloween special, featuring my story “The Ghost a Flea”, which was included in Ellen Datlow’s anthology Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous.
The story is based on William Blake’s wonderful painting The Ghost of a Flea.
The nominees for the 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards are:
NOVEL
Beulah by Christi Nogle (Cemetery Gates Media)
The Dead Friends Society by Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall (Encyclopocalypse Publications)
The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books)
Jackal by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai (Jaded Ibis Press)
Where I End by Sophie White (Tramp Press)
NOVELLA
The Bone Lantern by Angela Slatter (PS Publishing)
Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu (Cemetery Gates Media)
Catastrophe by Deirdre Danklin (Texas Review Press)
Lure by Tim McGregor (Tenebrous Press)
Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (PS Publishing)
The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu (Amazon Original Stories)
NOVELETTE
Azeman or, the Testament of Quincey Morris by Lisa Moore (Black Shuck Books)
“Challawa” by Usman T. Malik (Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror)
“Sweetbaby” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, October 2022)
“This Place is Best Shunned” by David Erik Nelson (Tor.com)
What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (Amazon Original Stories)
SHORT FICTION
“Brother Maternitas” by Viktor Athelstan (Your Body is Not Your Body)
“The Church of Divine Electricity” by Emily Mitchell (The Southern Review)
“Dick Pig” by Ian Muneshwar (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 112)
“Halogen Sky” by Wendy N. Wagner (VASTARIEN: A Literary Journal, vol. 5, issue 1)
“Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” by Kim Fu (Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century)
SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION
And At My Back I Always Hear by Scott Nicolay (Word Horde)
Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)
Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted by RJ Joseph (The Seventh Terrace)
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House)
Splendid Anatomies by Allison Wyss (Veliz Books)
We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe (Nictitating Books)
EDITED ANTHOLOGY
Chiral Mad 5, edited by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)
The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, edited by Doug Murano (Bad Hand Books)
Other Terrors, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason (William Morrow)
Screams From the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)
Your Body is Not Your Body, edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone (Tenebrous Press)
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The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented in-person on Saturday, July 15 at 8pm at Readercon 32, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts.
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I am thrilled to be on this list with “Pomegranates”. My thanks to PS Publishing and editor Marie O’Regan.
Congratulations and thanks also to Ellen Datlow, editor of “Screams From The Dark”, who including one of my stories (“The Ghost of a Flea”).
Ellen Datlow’s anthology of monsters and the monstrous is now out in paperback.
It’s available for the next 2 days at 25% off on pre-orders from Barnes & Noble.
Contributors include: Ian Rogers, Fran Wilde, Gemma Files, Daryl Gregory, Brian Hodge, Joyce Carol Oates, Indrapramit Das, Siobhan Carroll, Richard Kadrey, Norman Partridge, Garry Kilworth, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Chikodili Emelumadu, Glen Hirshberg, A. C. Wise, Stephen Graham Jones, Kaaron Warren, Livia Llewellyn, Carole Johnstone, Margo Lanagan, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, Cassandra Khaw, Laird Barron, Kristi DeMeester, Jeffrey Ford, and John Langan.
I’m delighted to be included in the collection with “The Ghost of a Flea”, my short story about William Blake.
I have made the Flea my business since that first night with John Varley.
I searched out Robert Hooke’s Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Enquiries. Micrographia. Small drawings.
Hooke’s work is an exquisite endeavour but his rendering of the flea is larger than any other creature therein. So much so that the page folds out as if Hooke is trying to communicate something. Why else would he elevate the flea so?
Hooke made his study in 1665. One hundred and fifty-three years ago. He writes with obscene interest of the flea’s curiously polish’d suit of sable Armour, neatly jointed, and beset with multitudes of sharp pinns, shap’d almost like Porcupine’s Quills, or bright conical Steel-bodkins; the head is on either side beautify’d with a quick and round black eye, behind each of which also appears a small cavity, in which he seems to move to and fro a certain thin film beset with many small transparent hairs, which probably may be his ears; in the forepart of his head, between the two fore-leggs, he has two small long jointed feelers, or rather smellers…
That we could be terrorised by something so minute is both woeful and laughable. Unlike Hooke I see nothing to admire in this parasite. I’ve seen the Flea’s ghost and he doesn’t look like Hooke’s drawing. No, not at all.
The Ghost of a Flea by Priya Sharma
The flea from Hooke’s Micrographia
This story has been in my head for years, ever since I attended a series of talks called “Dreams and Nightmares” at Liverpool University as part of their Continuing Education Classes. William Blake’s “The Ghost of a Flea” stayed with me and I have finally exorcised it via a story for Ellen Datlow’s anthology Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous.
I love a good monster story, so am thrilled to be in Ellen Datlow’s new anthology with a story called “The Ghost of a Flea”.
Contributers list: Ian Rogers, Fran Wilde, Gemma Files, Daryl Gregory, Priya Sharma, Brian Hodge, Joyce Carol Oates, Indrapramit Das, Siobhan Carroll, Richard Kadrey, Norman Partridge, Garry Kilworth, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Chikodili Emelumadu, Glen Hirshberg, A. C. Wise, Stephen Graham Jones, Kaaron Warren, Livia Llewellyn, Carole Johnstone, Margo Lanagan, Joe R. Lansdale, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, Cassandra Khaw, Laird Barron, Kristi DeMeester, Jeffrey Ford, and John Langan.
Thanks to Charlotte Bond, Lucy Hounsom (who writes as Times Bestseller author Lucy Holland), and Megan Leigh, the team at Breaking the Glass Slipper for having me on their show. We talked about families in horror fiction and my new story (“The Ghost of a Flea”) which appears in Screams from the Dark: 29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Ellen Datlow, out from Tor Nightfire on June 7th.
priya sharma fiction 