Aftertaste

by Kevin J. Anderson

  NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won a Stoker award, and her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula Award in 2009. Her middle-school novel, Thresholds, was published by Viking in August 2010, and its sequel, Meeting, was published in August 2011. Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats and many strange toys and imaginary friends.

  In the past two years, New York Times bestselling author SHERRILYN KENYON has claimed the #1 spot twelve times. This extraordinary bestseller continues to top every genre she writes, with more than 23 million copies of her books in print in over thirty countries. Her current series include: The Dark-Hunters, The League, Lords of Avalon, BAD Agency, and the Chronicles of Nick. Since 2004, she has placed over fifty novels on the New York Times list. The preeminent voice in paranormal fiction, with more than twenty years of publishing credits, Kenyon helped not only to pioneer but to define the current paranormal trend that has captivated the world.

  KEN LILLIE-PAETZ is best known for his rambling theories on “How to Avoid the Apocalypse by Attacking Heaven and Hell First” and “Why Lemurs and Monkeys Just Can’t Get Along.” These musings can be found in his comic book properties Elsinore and Monkey in a Wagon vs. Lemur on a Big Wheel. It is believed that Ken resides in the frozen wilderness of Northern Ontario, Canada, where sightings of him are rare and any photographic evidence has been too blurry to substantiate these accounts of his existence. For a more complete story of this strange creature, see www.monkeypharmacy.com.

  ADRIAN LUDENS lives and works in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Magazine appearances include Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (two-time winner of the “Mysterious Photograph” story contest) and Morpheus Tales, among others. Recent anthology appearances include The Mothman Files (edited by Michael Knost, Woodland Press), D.O.A. (edited by David C. Hayes and Jack Burton, Blood Bound Books), and Zombie Kong (edited by James Roy Daley, Books of the Dead Press). Look for Adrian’s short story collection, Bedtime Stories for Carrion Beetles, available soon. Adrian would like to thank his wife, Crissy, and his fellow HWA members for their support. Visit him at curioditiesadrianludens.blogspot.com.

  WILL LUDWIGSEN writes horror and fantasy for magazines like Weird Tales, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and others from a leaning and vine-covered shanty in Jacksonville, Florida. He recently earned an MFA from the Stonecoast popular fiction program at the University of Southern Maine, enabling him to reach the apotheosis of his craft in “Acknowledgments.” He blogs regularly at http://www.will-ludwigsen.com, including weekly installments of his One-Hour Stories—short tales written in one hour.

  E. S. MAGILL has been influenced by two movies, Night of the Living Dead and The Last Man on Earth. “My life’s goal is to have those metal roll-down security shutters on my windows, for when the zombie apocalypse hits,” she states. Even though she has an MA in English (her area of expertise being the postmodern gothic), she insists on teaching middle school English by day. She is the former reviews editor for Dark Wisdom magazine. Southern California is home to her and her husband, Greg, and their menagerie of cats and Corvettes.

  LISA MORTON’s short fiction has appeared in such anthologies as Dark Delicacies, The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse, The Museum of Horrors, The Mammoth Book of Dracula, and dozens of others. Her screenplay credits include the cult favorite Meet the Hollowheads. She is also a renowned expert on Halloween, having authored The Halloween Encyclopedia, and has appeared on The History Channel. She lives in North Hollywood, California, where her life is absolutely ruled by her cat. Find out more at www.lisamorton.com.

  As a child, MARK ONSPAUGH sat too close to the TV, and now needs glasses. His young brain was irradiated with monster movies, sci-fi, and Looney Tunes. DC Comics took care of the rest. Today, he is the writer of the film Kill Katie Malone, a co-writer of the cult fave Flight of the Living Dead, and has several scripts in development. He has sold numerous short stories and essays. He tells people he was raised by wolves, but his parents were nice people who only eviscerated the occasional wayward traveler. You can visit him at www.markonspaugh.com and on Facebook.

  NORMAN PRENTISS won the 2009 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for “In the Porches of My Ears,” in Postscripts 18. His first book, Invisible Fences, was published in May 2010 by Cemetery Dance and received a Bram Stoker Award in the Long Fiction category. His fiction has also appeared in Black Static, Commutability, Tales from the Gorezone, Damned Nation, Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, and in three editions of the Shivers anthology series. His poetry has appeared in Writer Online, Southern Poetry Review, Baltimore’s City Paper, and A Sea of Alone: Poems for Alfred Hitchcock. His essays on gothic and sensation literature have appeared in Victorian Poetry, Colby Quarterly, and The Thomas Hardy Review.

  DANIEL PYLE is the author of several novels and novellas, including Dismember, Freeze, and Down the Drain. He lives in Springfield, Missouri, with his wife and two daughters. He’d tell you where he got the idea for “Short Term,” but he can’t remember. To stalk him online, slink on over to www.danielpyle.com.

  MIKE RESNICK is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He has won five Hugos, a Nebula, and other major awards in the USA, France, Poland, Spain, Croatia, and Japan. He’s the author of sixty-plus novels, two-hundred-fifty-plus stories, and two screenplays, and is the editor of forty anthologies. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.

  LEZLI ROBYN is an Australian author who has made numerous professional science fiction and fantasy short story sales—sometimes in collaboration with Mike Resnick—since her fictional debut in November 2008, to markets such as Asimov’s and Analog. In 2010 she was nominated for an Aurealis Award (for best SF story) and the Campbell Award (for best new writer), and she has sold her first short story collection to Australian publisher Ticonderoga. Her latest publication, “Anne-droid of Green Gables,” has just been selected for inclusion in the annual Australian Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror anthology.

  Stop! Stop! Just stop it! I’ll talk! My name . . . my name is JEFF RYAN. I’ve got a wife and two daughters. I live in New Jersey. I wrote a biography about Super Mario . . . stop laughing, I’m serious, I did! What else do you want to know? What’s so precious that you would threaten my darling collection of Guardians of the Galaxy comic books? Take an acetylene torch to Charlie-27 and Major Vance Astro? I don’t KNOW anything . . . !

  DAVID SAKMYSTER is an award-winning author and screenwriter who discovers his ideas by throwing a bowl full of half-slumbered musings against a wall and seeing what manages to cling out of self-preservation. His short stories have appeared in The Writers of the Future Anthology, ChiZine, Horrorworld, Black Static, Talebones, Abyss & Apex, and others. The Pharos Objective and The Mongol Objective are the first two novels in a series about psychic archaeologists. And he’s also quite proud of his horror novel Crescent Lake and the historical fiction epic Silver and Gold. You can step into his mind at www.sakmyster.com.

  D. L. SNELL invites you to shoot him in the head at his blog, dlsnell.com, where you will find a Flash game in which he’s a zombie and you’re a bosomy vampire with a gun. Snell’s e-short “Dick, and Larry Too,” a sequel to his story in Blood Lite: Overbite, can be found in Amazon’s Kindle Store. Seriously, visit his blog. Snell interviews editors about what kind of stories they want for their anthologies and zines, and he has interviewed authors such as Joe McKinney and Kevin J. Anderson.

  LUCIEN SOULBAN lives in beautiful Montreal as a narrative designer and scriptwriter for Ubisoft and Triple-A videogame titles like Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Rain
bow Six: Vegas, and Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. He’s also written for Nintendo DS games like The Golden Compass, Kung-Fu Panda, and Kim Possible. On the fiction side of things, he’s written five novels, including Dragonlance’s Renegade Wizard and Warhammer 40K: Desert Raiders. His proudest accomplishments, however, have been his numerous contributions to anthologies like Horrors Beyond 2, Dark Faith, and to all three HWA comedy-horror anthologies, Blood Lite I, II, and III. Be sure to visit his website at www.luciensoulban.com.

  A three-time Blood Lite offender, ERIC JAMES STONE has also been published in Year’s Best SF, Analog, and other venues. Eric is a Nebula Award winner, a Hugo Award nominee, Writers of the Future winner, Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp graduate, and assistant editor at Intergalactic Medicine Show. Although he received a law degree, he has since repented and does not practice law—which he hopes will save him when the hyper-intelligent zombie apocalypse reaches Utah. You can find more of Eric’s fiction at www.ericjamesstone.com.

  JEFF STRAND has been in all three Blood Lite anthologies, a feat that few have dared to attempt and even fewer have accomplished. He’s also written a bunch of books, like Fangboy, Wolf Hunt, Pressure, Dweller, and Single White Psychopath Seeks Same. If you are reading this, you are morally obligated to visit his website www.JeffStrand.com within the next fifteen minutes.

  JOEL A. SUTHERLAND makes his living as a librarian, surrounded by books both at work and at home. His short fiction has appeared in many publications (including Cemetery Dance Magazine and Blood Lite II: Overbite), and his first novel, Frozen Blood, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. He is also the author of Be a Writing Superstar, a creative writing book for kids published by Scholastic, is the founder of the DarkLit Fest, and appeared on the first season of Wipeout Canada as the Barbarian Librarian. He’s happiest when he’s hanging out with his wife, Colleen, their son, Charles, and their goldendoodle, Murphy. They live near Toronto. Sutherland can be reached through his website, www.joelasutherland.com.

  JOHN ALFRED TAYLOR writes poetry, horror, and science fiction, and now that he’s a Professor Emeritus (translation: geezer) can focus on his writing full-time. Over the years he’s had stories in Galaxy, Galileo, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Twilight Zone, Oceans of the Mind, and Grue. Notice these are all dead magazines—he hopes his presence didn’t kill them. Probably not, because Asimov’s published his stories and survived. A collection of his horror stories, Hell Is Murky, is currently available from Ash-Tree Press.

  Editor KEVIN J. ANDERSON’s first novel, Resurrection, Inc., was nominated for the Stoker Award. Of his hundred or so published novels, some have been horror, particularly his international bestselling X-Files novels, and his new humorous series featuring Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., which begins with Death Warmed Over. He is best known for his epic science fiction and fantasy (Dune novels with Brian Herbert, his own Saga of Seven Suns science fiction epic, and his Terra Incognita fantasy trilogy). Anderson is the editor of eight anthologies, including the three bestselling science fiction anthologies of all time. His cats, however, are not particularly impressed.

  1. Square footage as of last count. Oddly, the number fluctuates based on which Realtor takes the measurements and when; some even claim that they’ve counted more rooms than are currently listed. How that can be possible is less due to our incompetence than to the intriguing characteristics of this house, which will become evident upon a visit.

  2. Caverns (and surrounding acreage) cannot be sold separately, nor any piece later partitioned, excluded or otherwise redistributed to unrelated third parties. Realtor absolves itself of any knowledge of criminal misdeeds, or evidence thereof, discovered in such tunnels, or indeed anywhere upon this property.

  3. Although to be fair, apparently the former neighbors spent quite a lot of their free time in the wine cellar, so anything they may have said should be discounted accordingly.

  4. Whether these walls were damaged during some sort of neighborhood uprising (complete with pitchforks and torches) or just the result of time and disuse, it cannot be said for certain, but given the scorch marks and the heavy preponderance of bones fused into the rubble, one can only imagine epic battles of yore.

  5. And death? Well, that just depends on who and what you are.

  6. Trapdoor functionality subject to optional (but inadvisable) engineering inspection.

  7. Assuming you cast one.

  8. We, of course, continue to plague them with property updates, price drops and threatening e-mails. So act fast before they give in!

  9. On this subject, various rumors abound. Perhaps the most interesting, entertainment-wise at least, is the unfounded notion that a minor fourteenth-century Romanian duke acquired a device of blackest power from the caverns beneath his castle; it offered immortality—at the cost of blood sacrifice, consumption of human flesh and other unseemly acts. Escaping persecution, this duke moved to the New World, where it is surmised that this nobleman’s downfall came not from the valiant effort of God-fearing villagers who opposed his bloodthirsty deeds, but rather from retaliation by said orb’s vindictive previous owners. But make of such tall tales what you will.

  10. Incidental Realtor fees and sacrificial insurance taxes apply. See also appendix 3, “Detailed Costs,” and appendix 4, “Seller’s Rights in the Event of Buyer’s Early Termination or Premature Demise.”

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Pocket Books eBook.

  Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Pocket Books and Simon & Schuster.

  or visit us online to sign up at

  eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com