Dead Souls
Page 33
A film of his short story, The Keeper, has been contracted by Australia’s Precision Pictures. Ken lives in two homes, one on the Main Line in Pennsylvania, and one on the beach on the South Jersey shore… so he must be doing something right.
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Lisa Kessler – Immortal Beloved and Subito Piano
Lisa Kessler’s short stories have been published in print anthologies and seen on the web in eZines like Sinisteria, Horrorfind, Twilight Times, The Writers Hood, Savage Night, The Murder Hole, Behold and Shadowkeepzine. Her story, The Third King, won second-place in Behold’s short story contest, and her story, Immortal Beloved was a finalist for a Bram Stoker award. She was also selected to be one of the authors in the 2009 Ladies of Horror anthology.
She is currently searching for a publisher for her Night Trilogy novels, and working on two additional novels. For more updates, check out her MySpace page at: http://myspace.com/Lisas_Lair.
When she’s not writing, Lisa is also a professional vocalist performing with the San Diego Opera, as well as other musical theatre companies. She lives in southern California with her husband and two teens.
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Michael Stone – The Migrant
Michael Stone was born in 1966 in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Since losing most of his eyesight to Usher Syndrome, he has retreated from your world to travel the dark corners of inner space. To put it more prosaically, he daydreams a lot.
Mike’s work has appeared in numerous publications, most recently Dunesteef, Pseudopod, Everyday Weirdness, TQR, The Fleas they Carried and The Beast Within. In 2008, Baysgarth Publications published Fourtold, a collection of his novellas with a foreword by award-winning fantasist Garry Kilworth. His vanity has a name: http://www.mylefteye.net
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Robert Hood – Sandcrawlers
Robert Hood is a card-carrying psychopath whose stories are blatantly autobiographical. He knows where you live and he’s got a bus timetable so he can get there. If you doubt the power of his mojo, check out the story collections Day-Dreaming on Company Time (1988), Immaterial: Ghost Stories (2002) and Creeping in Reptile Flesh (2008) or his novel Backstreets (2000) and his Shades series.
He’s also got a story sequence titled Remainders in the Morrígan Books’ anthology Voices (2008), edited by Mark S. Deniz and Amanda Pillar. A novel, Robot War Espresso, is coming out from Twelfth Planet Press in 2010, so make sure you look out for it… or he’ll be coming for you.
Sandcrawlers was written by invitation for the anthology Case Re-Opened, edited by Stuart Coupe and Julie Ogden (1993), for which authors were asked to fictionally solve an unsolved true-life Australian crime. Hood cheated. He was there.
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Reece Notley – Tatsu and Cover Art
Reece Notley was born and lived in Hawai’i until her late teens when her feet grew itchy, and she wandered off to see the world. After chewing through a pile of books, a lot of odd food and a stray boyfriend or two, she eventually landed in Southern California which she believes to be a very nice place but seriously needs more rain.
She has a day job herding pixels for the marketing department of a nice company with a fantastic view of the San Diego seashore from many floors up and fits in editing Three Crow Press, a sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction e-zine: http://www.threecrowpress.com in her not-so-spare time.
As of this moment, she admits to sharing the house with three cats, a black Pomeranian puffball, a bonsai Wolfhound and a ginger Cairn terrorist and is enslaved to the upkeep of a 1969 Ford Mustang Grand Coupe, a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and a Toshiba laptop.
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L.J. Hayward – Wayang Kulit
L.J. Hayward lives in southeast Queensland. Well, she works there and sometimes makes an attempt at this thing called life. She’s had stories published with Eneit Press, Aurealis and Morrígan Books and is still working toward that editor-eye-catching novel. Like Robert A. Heinlein, she feels that writing isn’t something to be ashamed of, but she does do it in private and washes her hands thoroughly afterward. You can read her idle prattle at Plot Happens http://l-j-hayward.livejournal.com.
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Rebecca Lloyd – Contaminator
Rebecca Lloyd has been writing fiction since 1999. Her short stories have been published in journals, magazines and e-zines in Canada, USA, New Zealand, and the UK. She is a group host and creative writing teacher for Writewords, an online writers’ community, and in Bristol, she teaches creative writing at the Grant Bradley Gallery and at Borders Bookshop.
In 2008, she won the Bristol Short Story Prize for a story called The River. She has recently begun writing novels for young people, the first of which will be published by Walker Books in Spring 2011. She is a member of the Society of Authors.
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Ramsey Campbell – The Dead Must Die
The Oxford Companion to English Literature describes Ramsey Campbell as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. He has been given more awards than any other writer in the field, including the Grand Master Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association and the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild.
Among his novels are The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The Count of Eleven, Silent Children, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Overnight, Secret Story, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, and Creatures of the Pool. Forthcoming is The Seven Days of Cain. His collections include Waking Nightmares, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead and Just Behind You, and his non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably. His novels, The Nameless and Pact of the Fathers, have been filmed in Spain. His regular columns appear in Prism, All Hallows, Dead Reckonings, and Video Watchdog. He is the President of the British Fantasy Society and of the Society of Fantastic Films.
Ramsey Campbell lives on Merseyside with his wife Jenny. His pleasures include classical music, good food and wine, and whatever’s in that pipe. His web site is at http://www.ramseycampbell.com.
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Stephanie Campisi – The Ringing Sound of Death on the Water Tank
Stephanie Campisi is an Australian writer of the weird and sometimes wonderful. Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her full and current bibliography can be found at http://www.stephaniecampisi.com.
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Paul Finch – June
Paul Finch is a former cop and journalist, now turned full time writer. He first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of animation. However, he is probably best known for his work in horror.
To date, he’s had ten books and nearly 300 stories and novellas published on both sides of the Atlantic. His first collection, Aftershocks, won the British Fantasy Award in 2002, while he won the award again in 2007 for his novella, Kid. Later in 2007, he won the International Horror Guild Award for his mid-length story, The Old North Road. He is currently working on the scripts for three movie adaptations of his own novellas, Cape Wrath, Charnel House, and Hunting Ground.
Paul lives in northern England with his wife, Cathy, and his children, Eleanor and Harry.
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Gary McMahon – A Shade of Yellow
Gary McMahon’s fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.K. and U.S and has been reprinted in both The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror. He is the British-Fantasy-Award-nominated author of Rough Cut, All Your Gods Are Dead, Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters, Rain Dogs, and has edited an anthology of original novelettes titled We Fade to Grey.
Forthcoming are the collections Different Skins, Pieces of Midnight and To Usher, the Dead, and his first mass market novel Hungry Hearts will be published by Abaddon Books in late 2009.
Website: http://www.garymcmahon.com
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Kaaron Warren – The Blue Stream
Kaaron Warren’s f
irst novel, Slights was launched at WorldCon in 2009 by Angry Robot Books, an imprint of Harper Collins. Two more novels, Mistification and Walking the Tree will be published over the next year.
Her short story collection The Glass Woman (The Grinding House in Australia) contained the story The Blue Stream. She still gets readers approaching her to say that the story made them angry, or that they can relate to it in some way.
Kaaron lives in Canberra with her family and the ghost of their cat, Zephyr.
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acknowledgments
‘Mercy Hathaway is a Witch’, Copyright Ken Goldman, first published in The Witching Hour, Silver Lake Publishing (print and e-zine), January 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Immortal Beloved’, Copyright Lisa Kessler, first published at HorrorFind.com in 2002
‘The Migrant’, Copyright Michael Stone, first published at TQR (www.tqrstories.com), January 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Sandcrawlers’, Copyright Robert Hood, first published in Case Re-Opened, 1993, edited by Stuart Coupe and Julie Ogden, Allen & Unwin. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Contaminator’, Copyright Rebecca Lloyd, first published (as ‘Dark Contaminator’) at Theatre of Decay, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Dead Must Die’, Copyright1992 Ramsey Campbell, First published in Narrow Houses, edited by Peter Crowther. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Ringing Sound of Death on the Water Tank’, Copyright Stephanie Campisi, first published in In Bad Dreams, Eneit Press, 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘June’, Copyright Paul Finch, first published at Sci-Fright 6, 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Blue Stream’, Copyright Kaaron Warren, first published in Aurealis Magazine #14, 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The following stories were originally submitted for an alternate Morrigan Books’ title and were selected by Skadi meic Beorh:
The Collector
Licwiglunga
Dry Places
Begin with Water
In the Name
When they Come to Murder Me
The Unbedreamed
Goldenthread
When the Cloak Falls
The Price of Peace
Your Duty to your Lord
Mercy Hathaway is a Witch
Immortal Beloved
All other stories were selected by Mark S. Deniz.
All stories in this anthology were edited by Mark S. Deniz.
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Where to find us Online
Website:http://www.morriganbooks.com
Twitter:http://twitter.com/morriganbooks
Facebook:http://facebook.com/pages/Morrigan-Books/59256739661
Table of Contents
Genesis
The Collector
Licwiglunga
The Blind Man
Dry Places
Begin With Water
In The Name
When They Come To Murder Me
Once Upon A Time
The Unbedreamed
Goldenthread
When The Cloak Falls
The Price Of Peace
Your Duty To Your Lord
The Beast Within
Mercy Hathaway Is A Witch
Immortal Beloved
Subito Piano
The Migrant
Sandcrawlers
The Beast Without
Tatsu
Wayang Kulit
Contaminator
The Dead Must Die
The Ringing Sound Of Death On The Water Tank
June
A Shade Of Yellow
Then...
The Blue Stream
Bios
Acknowledgements
genesis
the collector
licwiglunga
the blind man
dry places
begin with water
in the name
when they come to murder me
once upon a time
the unbedreamed
goldenthread
when the cloak falls
the price of peace
your duty to your lord
the beast within
mercy hathaway is a witch
immortal beloved
subito piano
the migrant
sandcrawlers
the beast without
tatsu
wayang kulit
contaminator
the dead must die
the ringing sound of death on the water tank
june
a shade of yellow
then...
the blue stream
bios
acknowledgments