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| A Publishers Weekly Top Ten SF, Fantasy, and Horror Pick for the Fall. Pub date: September 6 |
The ghost story has a great tradition that twines together the literary and the speculative, those often-battling or sneering-at-each-other genres. No matter what sort of writer one is, the job of taking a hoary old device like the ghost and making it work the current day is a challenge. And whether you have a love for Henry James or M. R. James or some other ghost-conjurer, there are grand tales to be read.
Thanks to Jack Dann and Nick Gevers for soliciting a story from me for their soon-to-be-launched anthology. And I suspect that if you like Hawthorne, you'll like my story, "The Grave Reflection."
INTERESTING COMPANY
1."The Iron Shroud" by James Morrow
2."Music, When Soft Voices Die" by Peter S. Beagle
3."The Shaddowwes Box" by Terry Dowling
4."The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike" by Garth Nix
5."Why I Was Hanged" by Gene Wolfe
6."The Proving of Smollett Standforth" by Margo Lanagan
7."The Jade Woman of the Luminous Star" by Sean Williams
8."Smithers and the Ghosts of the Thar" by Robert Silverberg
9."The Unbearable Proximity of Mr. Dunn's Balloons" by John Langan
10."Face to Face" by John Harwood
11."Bad Thoughts and the Mechanism" by Richard Harland
12."The Grave Reflection" by Marly Youmans
13."Christopher Raven" by Theodora Goss
14."Rose Street Attractors" by Lucius Shepard
15."Blackwood's Baby" by Laird Barron
16."Mysteries of the Old Quarter" by Paul Park
17."The Summer Palace" by Jeffrey Ford
HARPER-COLLINS FLAP COPY:
Edited by Jack Dann, World Fantasy Award-winning co-editor of Dreaming Down Under) and Nick Gevers (acclaimed editor and book reviewer), Ghosts by Gaslight is a showcase collection of all-new stories of steampunk and supernatural suspense by modern masters of horror, fantasy, sf, and the paranormal. An absolutely mind-boggling gathering of some of today’s very best dark storytellers—including Peter Beagle, James Morrow, Sean Williams, Gene Wolfe, Garth Nix, Marly Youmans, Jeffery Ford, and Robert Silverberg—Ghosts by Gaslight offers chilling gothic and spectral tales in a delightfully twisted Victorian and Edwardian vein. Think Henry James’s Turn of the Screw and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a decidedly steampunk edge, and you’re ready to confront Ghosts by Gaslight.
Marly,
ReplyDeleteI love to read (and teach) ghost stories! I would love to read yours. Perhaps I can get the library to order it.
Yay :) Can't wait to read yours...
ReplyDeleteRobbi,
ReplyDeleteYes, libraries everywhere will need a copy, right?
Robin,
Thanks! Ghost stories are good. Lucius Shephard told me he has almost finished the e-copy and that all so far are good. That's pretty unusual.
Oops, take the "h" out of that Shep(h)ard.
ReplyDeleteGhosts stories are the most psychological of fiction, it seems to me, and when they are good, can reveal all the strengths behind a really first-rate imagination. Think of Henry James. He was born to write ghost stories because the subject matter of all his work is sometimes so subtle as to be barely there at all.
ReplyDeleteGhost writing, eh?
ReplyDeleteI need to be sure I know who wrote what!
One to look for come the fall then!
Robbi,
ReplyDeleteFunny. That Henry James... in fact, that family...
I do have another ghost story--"Rain Flower Pebbles," which was in "Postscripts."
Paul,
Might've been a bit of the ghost of Hawthorne involved.
Congratulations again on getting your work into another anthology!
ReplyDeleteThanks, marja-leena--
ReplyDeleteI like this sort of commissioned anthology because I try things I never would otherwise.
that looks great!
ReplyDeleteOh I do like a good ghost story!
ReplyDelete