Charles Stross is a British SF writer, born in Leeds, England, and living in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has worked as a tech writer, a programmer, a journalist, and a pharmacist; he holds degrees in Pharmacy and in Computer Science. He has won two Hugo Awards for his short fiction. Among Stross’s more recent novels are The Revolution Business and The Trade of Queens (in his Merchant Princes series), The Apocalypse Codex (part of the Laundry series of novels and stories), Rule 34, The Rapture of the Nerds (with Cory Doctorow), and, published earlier this year, The Rhesus Chart.
Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award and was nominated for the Nebula. Her second novel, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, a 1920s retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, was published by Atria earlier this year. Persona, a near-future political thriller, will be published by SAGA Press in March 2015. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Lightspeed, and other periodicals, as well as anthologies Federations, The Living Dead 2, After, Teeth, and others. Her story “Light on the Water” was a 2009 World Fantasy Award nominee, and “Things to Know About Being Dead” was nominated for a 2012 Shirley Jackson Award. She is a coauthor of pop-culture book Geek Wisdom (Quirk Books).
Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the most recent installment of which is Kitty in the Underworld. The next, Low Midnight, will be published later this year. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of seventy short stories. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at carrievaughn.com.
Don Webb has been published in every major SF/F/H magazine in the English-speaking world from Analog to Weird Tales. He teaches “Writing the Science Fiction Novel” at UCLA extension. He lives with has a beautiful wife and two tuxedo cats in Austin, Texas, where he has been a guest at the four local SF conventions for over twenty years.
Jay Wilburn lives with his wife and two sons in the swamps of coastal South Carolina. He left teaching after sixteen years to care for the health needs of his younger son and to pursue writing full-time. He has published Loose Ends: A Zombie Novel with Hazardous Press and Time Eaters with Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. Follow his many dark thoughts at JayWilburn.com and @AmongTheZombies on Twitter.
About the Editor
Paula Guran is senior editor for Prime Books. She edited the Juno fantasy imprint from its small press inception through its incarnation as an imprint of Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books. Guran edits the annual Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror series as well as a growing number of other anthologies. In an earlier life she produced the weekly email newsletter DarkEcho (winning two Stokers, an IHG Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination), edited print magazine Horror Garage—an eccentric mix of original dark fiction and garage/punk/indie music—earning another IHG Award and a second World Fantasy nomination—and has contributed reviews, interviews, and articles to numerous professional publications. (See paulaguran.com for more information.) She lives in Akron, Ohio, and is the mother of four, mother-in-law of two, and grand-mère to one.
Embraces
Best New Paranormal Romance
Best New Romantic Fantasy
Zombies: The Recent Dead
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2010
Vampires: The Recent Undead
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2011
Halloween
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
Brave New Love
Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful
Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012
Extreme Zombies
Ghosts: Recent Hauntings
Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy
Season of Wonder
Future Games
Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations
The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons
After the End: Recent Apocalypses
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2013
Halloween: Mystery, Magic & the Macabre
Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales
Magic City: Recent Spells
Acknowledgments
“Trail of the Dead” © 2007 Joanne Anderton. First Publication: Zombies, ed. Robert N. Stephenson (Altair Australia Books).
“Rigormarole” © 2005 Michael A. Arnzen. First publication: Rigormarole: Zombie Poems (Naked Snake Press, 2005).
“What Still Abides” © 2013 Marie Brennan. First Publication: Clockwork Phoenix 4, ed. Mike Allen (Mythic Delirium Press).
“Iphigenia in Aulis” by Mike Carey © 2012 Mike Carey. First publication: An Apple for the Creature, eds. Charlaine Harris & Toni L.P. Kelner (Ace Books).
“Those Beneath the Bog” © 2013 Jacques L. Condor. First Publication: Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction, ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Exile Editions Ltd.)
“The Day the Saucers Came” © 2006 Neil Gaiman. First publication: Fragile Things (Headline Review; William Morrow/Harper Collins).
“There Is No ‘E’ in Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You or We” © 2010 Roxane Gay. First publication: Guernica, 1 October 2010.
“I Waltzed With a Zombie” © 2009 Ron Goulart. First publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2009.
“The Harrowers” © 2011 Eric Gregory. First Publication: Lightspeed, May 2011.
“The Death and Life of Bob” © 2013 William Jablonsky. First publication: Shimmer #16, Winter 2013.