Death by Water

by Alessandro Manzetti

  Daniele Bonfanti – A science fiction and horror author from Italy, his English debut, the novelette Game—honorable mention in Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year—was published in the 2016 Stoker-nominated anthology The Beauty of Death, followed by a story in Flame Tree’s deluxe hardcover Supernatural Horror Short Stories. His Italian publications include the novels Melodia and Quintessenza, several short stories, and scores of articles in the popular print magazine Hera.

  He also translates from English: works include novels by Ramsey Campbell, Brian Keene, Clive Barker, Brian Evenson, and Richard Laymon; long and short fiction by Jack Ketchum, Peter Straub, and Poppy Z. Brite. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association.

  An adventure enthusiast—mountaineer, kayaker, trail runner—and beekeeper, he lives on the slopes of Mount Resegone with wife and daughters, in an ancient house in the woods.

  Website: www.danielebonfanti.com

  Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks, including the dystopian sf novel The Guardener’s Tale and the psychedelic coming-of-age-novel Stained Glass Rain. His poems and stories have appeared in hundreds of publications, most visibly in Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov’s SF, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, the Nebula Awards Anthology, and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Gothic Readers Choice Award, and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the SFPA. His fiction has received a Pushcart Prize and twice been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (novel, short story). His latest collection, Visions of the Mutant Rain Forest, is a fiction and poetry collaboration with fellow SFPA Grandmaster Robert Frazier. www.bruceboston.com

  Daniel Braum is the author of the acclaimed short story collections The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (from Cemetery Dance & Grey Matter Press, 2016 ) and The Wish Mechanics Stories of the Strange and Fantastic (from Independent Legions, 2017). His short story “How to Make Love and Not Turn to Stone” from the Beauty of Death volume 1 received an honorable mention in Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year. His fiction has appeared numerous times in Cemetery Dance Magazine. His short story “Palankar” which is also about “death by water” can be found in the book Nightscript volume 3 (Cthlonic Press, 2017). He is the host of the Night Time Logic reading series. More about him can be found at: www.bloodandstardust.wordpress.com

  Jonah Buck wanted to learn eldritch knowledge and commune with pale creatures that flit across the sunless landscape to terrorize the living, so he became an attorney in Oregon. His interests include history, professional stage magic, paleontology, and exotic poultry. He has written a few dozen short stories, and his novels, including Substratum and Carrion Safari, are available from Grinning Skull Press and Severed Press. Special thanks to Maureen Walsh.

  Ramsey Campbell – 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, the Living Legend Award of the International Horror Guild, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.

  Paolo Di Orazio (Rome, 1966), author of books and comic books since 1987 across Italy. HWA active member since 2015, in English he has published comics for Heavy Metal and short stories for the books Dark Gates (with Stoker Award®-winner Alessandro Manzetti; Kipple, 2014), My Early Crimes (Raven’s Headpress, 2015), and The Monster, the Bad and the Ugly (with Stoker Award®-winner Alessandro Manzetti; Kipple, 2016). His short stories have also appeared in The Beauty of Death (Independent Legions Publishing, 2016) and Year’s Best Hardcore Horror volume 2 (Comet Press, 2017). His short story “Hell” is in The Best Horror of the Year list by Ellen Datlow (2015).

  Dennis Etchison is a three-time winner of both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards. His collections include The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, The Death Artist, Talking in the Dark, Fine Cuts, Got To Kill Them All & Other Stories, A Little Black Book of Horror Tales and It Only Comes Out At Night & Other Stories. He is also the author of the novels Darkside, Shadowman, California Gothic, Double Edge, The Fog, Halloween II & III and Videodrome, the editor of Cutting Edge, Masters of Darkness I-III, MetaHorror, The Museum of Horrors and (with Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann) Gathering the Bones. Etchison has written extensively for film, television and radio, including 150+ scripts for The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas. He served as President of the HWA from 1992 to 1994 and is the recipient of the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. His ebooks are published by Crossroad Press, and definitive new print editions of his first four collections are available from Shadowridge Press.

  Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses and the novella The Warren. The Warren and two previous books, Windeye and Immobility, were finalists for a Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Japanese, Persian, Turkish, and Slovenian. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.

  Dona Fox is a horror/dark fiction author and poet. She has published stories and poems in Cemetery Dance, Eldritch Tales, Haunts, The Nightmare Express, Terror Time Again, Thin Ice, Beyond, and New Blood magazines and has appeared in numerous anthologies. She released a first single author collection of short stories, Dark Tales from the Den, in 2015 and a second collection, Darker Tales from the Den, in 2016. Dona is a member of Horror Writers Association and lives in Northern California. Website: www.donafox.com

  Stephen Gregory – After teaching for twelve years in England and Algeria and Sudan, escaped to Wales to write his first book, The Cormorant.

  The Cormorant won the Somerset Maugham Award and was made into a movie starring Ralph Fiennes. The Woodwitch and The Blood of Angels completed his Snowdonian trilogy.

  The Perils & Dangers of This Night, The Waking that Kills, and Wakening the Crow have also shown his love of the countryside, the seasons, and the stars, and particularly his interest in birds. His latest novel Plague of Gulls is set entirely within and around the medieval walls of Caernarfon, where he used to work as a tour-guide (clambering up and down the towers of the 13th century castle more than 2000 times). He also enjoyed a year as a screenwriter in Hollywood, writing for William Friedkin (notorious for The Exorcist and an Oscar-winner for The French Connection).

  More recently Stephen has been teaching French to cheeky, cheerful Malay/Chinese girls in Brunei Darussalam in South-East Asia. He now lives with his wife Christine in a cottage beside the river Vienne in Charente, France (with dog Poppy and cats Gudrun and Smokey, all rescued and brought back from Borneo), while working slowly and steadily to restore their 400-year-old fortified farmhouse.

  Eric J. Guignard is a writer, editor, and publisher of dark and speculative fiction, operating from the shadowy outskirts of Los Angeles. He’s won the Bram Stoker Award, been a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award, and a multi-nominee of the Pushcart Prize. Outside the glamorous and jet-setting world of indie fiction, Eric’s a technical writer and college professor, and he stumbles home each day to a wife, children, cats, and a terrarium filled with mischievous beetles. Visit Eric at: www.ericjguignard.com, his blog: ericjguignard.blogspot.com, Twitter: @ericjguignard, or the small press he runs: www.darkmoonbooks.com.

  Michael H. Hanson created the ongoi
ng Sha’Daa shared-world anthology series currently consisting of Sha’Daa: Tales of the Apocalypse, Sha’Daa: Last Call, Sha’Daa: Pawns, Sha’Daa: Facets, Sha’Daa: Inked, and the soon-to-be-released Sha’Daa: Toys, all published by Moondream Press (an imprint of Copper Dog Publishing).

  In 2017, Michael’s short story “C.H.A.D.” will be appearing in the Eric S. Brown-edited anthology C.H.U.D. Lives! and his short story “Rock and Road” appears in the just-published Roger Zelazny tribute anthology Shadows and Reflections.

  Michael also has stories in Janet Morris’s Heroes in Hell (HIH) anthology volumes Lawyers in Hell, Rogues in Hell, Dreamers in Hell, Poets in Hell, Doctors in Hell, and the recently published Pirates in Hell.

  Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is an Irish-born American author of science fiction and dark fantasy works, including ten novels, many comic books, and more than two hundred and fifty published short stories, novellas, and vignettes. She is also the author of scientific papers in the field of paleontology. Kiernan is a two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards, and four-time recipient of the International Horror Guild Award. Among her fiction works, the novels: Silk (1998), Threshold (2001), The Five of Cups (2003), Low Red Moon (2003), Murder of Angels (2004), Daughter of Hounds (2007), Beowulf (2007, novelisation), The Red Tree (2009), The Drowning Girl (2012). To date, her work has been translated into German, Italian, French, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Czech, Polish, Russian, Korean, and Japanese. In May 1996, Kiernan was approached by Neil Gaiman and editors at DC/Vertigo Comics to begin writing for The Dreaming, a spin-off from Gaiman’s The Sandman. Kiernan wrote for the title from 1996 until its conclusion in 2001. She lives in Providence.

  Website: www.caitlinrkiernan.com

  John Langan is the author of two novels, The Fisherman (2016) and House of Windows (2009/2017), and two collections of stories, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (2013) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (2008). With Paul Tremblay, he has co-edited Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters. One of the founders of the Shirley Jackson Awards, he served as a juror for its first three years. Currently, he reviews horror and dark fantasy for Locus magazine. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his wife and younger son.

  Frazer Lee’s debut novel The Lamplighters was a Bram Stoker Award® finalist for Best First Novel and a Book Pipeline finalist. His other published works include the Amazon #1 horror/thriller Panic Button: The Official Movie Novelization, novels The Jack in the Green and The Skintaker, and the Daniel Gates Adventures series of novellas.

  His screenwriting credits include the acclaimed horror/thriller feature film Panic Button, and award-winning short films Simone and The Stay. His film and television directing credits include multiple award-winning films On Edge and Red Lines (starring Doug “Pinhead from Hellraiser” Bradley) and the promo campaign for Discovery Channel’s True Horror with Anthony Head. His script doctor and story consultant engagements include commissions from The Asylum, Mediente Films International, Movie Mogul, and others.

  Frazer is Head of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers. His guest-speaking engagements have included StokerCon, World Horror Con, London Screenwriters Festival, and the Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass. He lives with his family in Buckinghamshire, England, just across the cemetery from the actual Hammer House of Horror.

  Nicola Lombardi is a horror writer, editor, and translator. Among his publications in Italian: I racconti della Piccola Bottega degli Orrori, La fiera della paura, Striges, I ragni zingari, La notte chiama (with Luigi Boccia), Madre Nera, La Cisterna, Pallide streghe d’autunno. In addition, he has published two novelizations from Dario Argento’s movies Profondo Rosso and Suspiria. Among his publications in English: the novel The Tank and the short stories “Tests of Courage” (in Disturbed Digest #10), “Sand Castle” (in Play Things & Past Times), “Hungry Shadows” (in Disturbed Digest #9), and “Professor Aligi’s Puppets” (in The Beauty of Deathvolume 1). His short stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies. He translated into Italian the H.P. Lovecraft biography Dreamer on the Nightside by F.B. Long and, for Independent Legions, the collection Dread in the Beast by Charlee Jacob and the novel Mister Suicide by Nicole Cushing. He’s a Horror Writers Association active member and lives in Ferrara, Italy.

  Website: www.nicolalombardi.com

  Lisa Mannetti’s debut novel, The Gentling Box, garnered a Bram Stoker Award and she has since been nominated five times for the prominent award in both the short and long fiction categories. Her story, “Everybody Wins,” was made into a short film and her novella, “Dissolution,” will soon be a feature-length film directed by Paul Leyden. Recent short stories include “Apocalypse Then” in Never Fear: The Apocalypse; and “Arbeit Macht Frei” in Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories.

  Her novella about Houdini, The Box Jumper, was not only nominated for both the Bram Stoker Award and the prestigious Shirley Jackson Award, it won the Novella of the Year award from This Is Horror in the UK.

  She has also authored The New Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, two companion novellas in her collection, Deathwatch, a macabre gag book, 51 Fiendish Ways to Leave Your Lover, as well as non-fiction books, and numerous articles and short stories in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies.

  Lisa lives in New York in the spooky 100-year-old house she originally grew up in with two wily (mostly black) twin cats named Harry and Theo Houdini.

  Visit her author website: www.lisamannetti.com

  Visit her virtual haunted house: www.thechanceryhouse.com

  Jeremy Megargee has always loved dark fiction. He cut his teeth on R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series as a child and a fascination with Stephen King’s work followed later in life. Jeremy weaves his tales of personal horror from Martinsburg, West Virginia, with his cat Lazarus acting as his muse/familiar.

  Adam Millard is the author of twenty-six novels, twelve novellas, and more than two hundred short stories, which can be found in various collections, magazines, and anthologies. Probably best known for his post-apocalyptic and comedy-horror fiction, Adam also writes fantasy/horror for children, as well as bizarro fiction for several publishers. His work has recently been translated for the German market.

  Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, Bram Stoker Award®-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She has published four novels, over a hundred short stories, and three books on the history of Halloween. Her most recent releases include the anthology (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) Haunted Nights, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly; the collection The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats; and the acclaimed study Ghosts: A Haunted History. She lives in the San Fernando Valley, and can be found online at www.lisamorton.com.

  Adam Nevill – Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors. In ghastly harmony with the nightmarish visions of the award-winning writer’s novels, these stories blend a lifelong appreciation of horror culture with the grotesque fascinations and childlike terrors that are the author’s own. Adam L.G. Nevill’s best early horror stories are collected here for the first time. Published October 31st, 2016. www.adamlgnevill.com

  Gregory L. Norris is a full-time professional writer, with work appearing in numerous short story anthologies, national magazines, novels, the occasional TV episode, and, so far, one produced feature film (Brutal Colors, which debuted on Amazon Prime January 2016). A former feature writer and columnist at Sci Fi, the official magazine of the Sci Fi Channel (before all those ridiculous Y’s invaded), he once worked as a screenwriter on two episodes of Paramount’s modern classic Star Trek: Voyager. Two of his paranormal novels (written under his nom-de-plume Jo Atkinson) were published by Home Shopping Network as part of their Escape With Romance line—the first ti
me HSN has offered novels to their global customer base. He judged the 2012 Lambda Awards in the SF/F/H category. Three times now, his stories have notched honorable mentions in Ellen Datlow’s Best-of books. In May 2016, he traveled to Hollywood to accept HM in the Roswell Awards in Short SF Writing. Follow his literary adventures at www.gregorylnorris.blogspot.com.

  Gene O’Neill has seen over 175 of his stories and novellas published, several reprinted in France, Spain, and Russia. Some of these stories have been collected in Ghost Spirits, Computers & World Machines, The Grand Struggle, In Dark Corners, Dance of the Blue Lady, The Hitchhiking Effect, and Lethal Birds. He has seen six novels published. Gene has been a Stoker finalist twelve times. In 2010 Taste of Tenderloin won the haunted house for collection; in 2012 “The Blue Heron” won for Long Fiction. Upcoming before the end of 2017 are the four trade paperbacks in the Cal Wild Chronicles from Written Backwards Press, a number of short stories, and a novelette. A long novel The White Plague Chronicles is a work in progress, with parts sent to an interested publisher.

  Gene lives in the Napa Valley with his wife, Kay. He has two grown children, Gavin, who lives in Oakland, and Kaydee, who lives in Carlsbad and rides herd on his two g-kids, Fiona and TJ. When he isn’t writing or visiting g-kids, Gene likes to read good fiction or watch sports—all of them, especially boxing.