The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2017 Edited by Paula Guran

Paula Guran has annouced the table of contents for her annual anthology The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2017.

Thanks to Paula and to the Albedo One team, who originally published “Grave Goods” in issue 46.

THE YEAR’S BEST DARK FANTASY & HORROR: 2017 ToC

“Lullaby for a Lost World,” Aliette de Bodard (Tor.com 06/16)
“Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies,” Brooke Bolander (Uncanny #13)
“Wish You Were Here,” Nadia Bulkin (Nightmare # 49)
“A Dying of the Light,” Rachel Caine (The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft)
“Season of Glass and Iron,” Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales)
“Grave Goods,” Gemma Files (Autumn Cthulhu)
“The Blameless,”Jeffrey Ford (The Natural History of Hell)
“As Cymbals Clash,” Cate Gardner (The Dark #19)
“The Iron Man,” Max Gladstone (Grimm Future)
“Surfacing,” Lisa L. Hannett (Postscripts 36/37: The Dragons of the Night)
“Mommy’s Little Man,” Brian Hodge (DarkFuse, October)
“The Sound of Salt and Sea,” Kat Howard (Uncanny #10)
“Red Dirt Witch,” N. K. Jemisin (Fantasy #60)
“Birdfather,” Stephen Graham Jones (Black Static #51)
“The Games We Play,” Cassandra Khaw (Clockwork Phoenix 5)
“The Line Between the Devil’s Teeth (Murder Ballad No. Ten),” Caitlin Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #130)
“Postcards from Natalie,” Carrie Laben (The Dark #14)
“The Finest, Fullest Flowering,” Marc Laidlaw (Nightmare #45)
The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Tor.com)
“Meet Me at the Frost Fair,” Alison Littlewood (A Midwinter Entertainment)
“Bright Crown of Joy,” Livia Llewellyn (Children of Lovecraft)
“The Jaws That Bite, The Claws That Catch,” Seanan McGuire (Lightspeed #72)
“My Body, Herself,” Carmen Maria Machado (Uncanny #12)
“Spinning Silver,” Naomi Novik (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales)
“Whose Drowned Face Sleeps,” An Owomoyela & Rachael Swirsky (Nightmare # 46/What the #@&% Is That?)
“Grave Goods,” Priya Sharma (Albedo One #46)
“The Rime of the Cosmic Mariner,” John Shirley (Lovecraft Alive!)
“The Red Forest,” Angela Slatter (Winter Children and Other Chilling Tales)
“Photograph,” Steve Rasnic Tem (Out of the Dark)
“The Future is Blue,” Catherynne M. Valente (Drowned Worlds)
‘‘October Film Haunt: Under the House’’, Michael Wehunt (Greener Pastures)
“Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left,” Fran Wilde (Shimmer 13)
“When the Stitches Come Undone,” A.C. Wise (Children of Lovecraft)
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers,” Alyssa Wong (Tor.com 03/16)
“An Ocean the Color of Bruises,” Isabel Yap (Uncanny #11)
“Fairy Tales are for White People,” Melissa Yuan-Innes (Fireside Magazine Issue 30)
“Braid of Days and Nights,” E. Lily Yu (F&SF, Jan-Feb)

Magazine giveaway

I have three copies of Issue 46 of Albedo One to give away.

It contains fiction by Liz Williams, Bruce McCallister, Claude Lalumiere, Eika Victor, Gary Every, Tim W. Jackson and myself. There are fantasy reviews by Juliet E. Mckenna, SF reviews by George Anderson and interviews with Will McIntosh and Jeffrey Thomas.

The cover art is by Richard Wagner.

Just leave me a message in the comments section if you’re interested and I’ll arrange posting you a copy, even if you’re outside the UK.

 

Grave Goods

Issue 46 of Albedo One is now available. It contains fiction by Liz Williams, Bruce McAllistair, Erika Viktor, Gary Every and Tom W. Jackson. I am proud to be included with my short story, “Grave Goods.”

It also features an interviews with Hugo Award-winning hard science fiction author Will McIntosh and  horror author Jeffrey Thomas, as well as review columns by Juliet E. McKenna and George Anderson.

Cover art by Richard Wagner.

It’s available in pdf and will shortly be available in ebook (.mobi and .epub versions) and print.

***

Father had left grave goods to help Child. Her bow and arrows. A votive offering of his flint knife. Not the carved ceremonial one but the one he used everyday. His labour was in the edge that he ground and polished to keep it sharp.
Child got up. The burial chamber was spacious enough to accommodate a large gathering. Side chambers contained her ancestors’ bones, their flesh in various states of decay. Father said they’d help her.
The whole tribe would file into the tomb on the Solstice, down the long corridor that channelled the sun. They would commune with their history, bringing the remains into the central chamber. Child thought that she’d be greeted by bones that were full of light and song but was disappointed to see that, like Mother, they were empty shells.
Child traced out the patterns on the walls that the tribe had pecked out. There were the stories of the wind and rain. Of stars and sun. She knew which marks were her father’s.
You are the best of us, Father had said when he told them what they needed to do. His lips were grey as he spoke. You are my first and only child. You are our finest.
It was getting brighter inside the chamber. Child thought it was moonlight coming down the passageway. She was wrong. The light was already inside. The gods were here.

-Grave Goods.

***

I owe a thank you to writer and archaeologist, Steve Toase, who directed me to some very useful text books on the neolithic period.

Steve’s fiction has appeared in Cabinet de Fees’ Scheherezade’s Bequest, Pantheon Magazine, Innsmouth Magazine, Jabberwocky Magazine, to name a few. He’s also been reprinted in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year Volume 6.

He does a flash fiction challenge at the end of each year- writing a piece each day for a month. If you want a treat, head over here, where he published them each week running up until the end of Dec 2015.

Story acceptance

My thanks to the team at Albedo One, who have accepted my short story, Grave Goods. Albedo One is Ireland’s longest-running and foremost magazine of the Fantastic, publishing both Irish and international authors.

In the past they have published two other stories of mine-

The Nature of Bees: Honorable Mention in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 3 , Locus’ 2010 Recommended Reading List

Fishskins: Honorable Mention Longlist in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year 5