Stories Selected for Best Horror of the Year, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve received some very good news to start the year.

Firstly, two of my stories have been selected by Ellen Datlow for Best Horror of the Year 14.

‘Dancing Sober in the Dust’ was one of the original stories published in my Undertow Publications collection, To Drown in Dark Water. The story is about Weimar Era dance, and was inspired by the research I did for a Daily Grail article.

The second story Ellen chose for inclusion in the anthology is ‘Chit Chit’, published in Chilling Crime Short Stories from Flame Tree Press. Chit Chit is a rural heist story with a heavy folk horror influence.

The full Table of Contents for Best Horror of the Year 14 is below;

Redwater — Simon Bestwick

Caker’s Man — Matthew Holness

Black Leg — Glen Hirshberg

The Offering — Michael Marshall Smith

Fox Girl — Lee Murray

Shuck — G. V. Anderson

The Hunt at Rotherdam — A. C. Wise

Dancing Sober in the Dust — Steve Toase

The God Bag — Christopher Golden

The Strathantine Imps — Steve Duffy

The Quizmasters — Gerard McKeown

All Those Lost Days — Brian Evenson

“Elephant Subjected to the Predations of a Mentalist” – Dir. B.S. Stockton, 1921

And “Ol’ Will’s Birthday Bash and Dither Family Reunion” – Dir. Various, 1952.

— Jonathan Raab                                                                                

Three Sisters Bog — Eóin Murphy

The Steering Wheel Club — Kaaron Warren                                     

The King of Stones — Simon Strantzas

Stolen Property — Sarah Lamparelli

Shards — Ian Rogers

Chit Chit — Steve Toase

Poor Butcher-Bird — Gemma Files

Trap — Carly Holmes

I’ll Be Gone By Then — Eric LaRocca

Jack-in-the-Box — Robin Furth

Tiptoe — Laird Barron

Then last week I found out that Paula Guran will be reprinting ‘Beneath the Forest’s Wilting Leaves’ in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror vol. 3.

(This is the shelter that inspired Beneath the Forest’s Wilting Leaves)

Beneath the Forest’s Wilting Leaves is inspired by time spent in a local forest finishing a small shelter we found in a clearing, and was another original story from To Drown In Dark Water.

The full Table of Contents is below:

G. V. Anderson, “Shuck” (Deadlands #2)

Seán Padraic Birnie, “Hand-Me -Down” (I Would Haunt You If I Could)

J. S. Breukelaar, “Where We Will Go On Together” (The Dark #70)

Rebecca Campbell, “The Bletted Woman” (F&SF 3-4/21)

Tananarive Due, “The Wishing Pool” (Uncanny #41)

Brian Evenson, “The Sequence” (Conjunctions 77)

Christopher Golden, “The God Bag” (Beyond the Veil, ed. Morris)

Elizabeth Hand, “For Sale By Owner” (When Things Get Dark, ed. Datlow)

Alix E. Harrow, “Mr. Death (Apex #121)

Maria Dahvana Headley, “Wolfsbane” (Nightmare #100)

Glen Hirshberg, “Jetty Sara” (December Tales, ed. Horn)

Stephen Graham Jones. “Refinery Road” (When Things Get Dark, ed. Datlow)

Richard Kadrey, “Across the Dark Water” (Tor.com)

Alison Littlewood, “Jenny Greenteeth” (Mammoth Book of Folk Horror, ed. Jones)

Chimedum Ohaegbu, “And for My Next Trick, I Have Disappeared” (F&SF 7-8/21)

Suzan Palumbo, “Laughter Among the Trees” (The Dark #69)

Sarah Pinsker, “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Uncanny #39)

David J. Schow, “Caving” (Weird Doom, ed Scoleri)

Molly Tanzer, “In the Garden of Ibn-Ghazi” (F&SF 3-4/21)

Sheree Renee Thomas, “Barefoot and Midnight” (Apex #122)

Steve Toase, “Beneath the Forest’s Wilting Leaves” (To Drown in Dark Water)

Jade Wilburn, “Blood Ties”(Fiyah #18)

A.C. Wise, “The Nag Bride” (The Ghost Sequences)

I’m immensely grateful to both Ellen and Paula for choosing to include my work in their anthologies, to Flame Tree Press for publishing Chit Chit, and Undertow for all their work on To Drown in Dark Water.