I’ll have a story in it!! My story Like Furies will appear in The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 17, edited by Ellen Datlow!

Every year I look forward to this volume. It’s more than an anthology—it’s a State of the Genre address. I hoped someday to get a mention in it. I am honored to the core to be part of the actual table of contents!

Ellen’s approach to compiling this book is a demonstration of the strength of this horror community. It’d be easy to fill the anthology entirely with known names—and there are plenty of them, including authors from whom I have multiple books on my shelves—but that’s not what Ellen does. She routinely selects several authors she hasn’t published previously (like me). This willingness to find and support authors and artists not already established in the horror world is one of the reasons the entire horror genre is currently experiencing a Golden Age. It’s not a closed club. It truly is a community open to new voices as well as supporting the leaders of the genre and honoring its founders.

Thank you, Jeani Rector, for first publishing this story in The Horror Zine—and not just for publishing it but also for taking the time to work with me to make it better. You know it’s a good edit when you see the suggestion and think “Why didn’t I notice that?” Her advice and know-how made this story so much stronger!

Thank you JG Faherty, my Horror Writers Association mentor. I signed up for the mentorship program with three goals: qualitative, quantitative and aspirational. JG helped me reach all three—and he continues to mentor me. He also read and commented on Like Furies and, as always, his suggestions were spot-on. After the first draft, before I let anyone else read it, I went through it and thought to myself, What will JG say about this?” And I made some deep changes to the story right there. That was part of meeting goal 1: helping me learn to edit and analyze specifically my horror writing with confidence.

Goal 2, quantitative: I made a professional sale to James Aquilone with a story appearing in the Stoker-nominated anthology Shakespeare Unleashed.

This was my aspirational goal—to write something Ellen Datlow wanted to see.

I’ll be pre-ordering 10 copies… or more… I hope you’ll get one too! Tell your bookstore to stock it when it’s available. And don’t worry, I’ll remind you!