I received an email on Monday evening from the multi award-winning editor Ellen Datlow, to say that she was taking my story NONE SO BLIND for inclusion in her annual reprint anthology BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR 5.
I was absolutely floored by this news. I own every single edition of the 21 Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror anthologies that she’s edited, together with the first 4 Best Horror of the Year editions that have been published so far by Night Shade Books, and I regard them as the byword in quality fiction. It has long been one of my writing goals to nab a spot within its pages, so it was unbelievably thrilling to hear I was going to be sharing space with such a wonderful collection of writers. The full table of contents has been released –
Nikishi by Lucy Taylor
Little America by Dan Chaon
A Natural History of Autumn by Jeffrey Ford
Mantis Wives by Kij Johnson
Tender as Teeth by Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski
The Callers by Ramsey Campbell
Two poems for Hill House by Kevin McCann
Mariner’s Round by Terry Dowling
Nanny Grey by Gemma Files
The Magician’s Apprentice by Tamsyn Muir
Kill All Monsters by Gary McMahon
The House on Ashley Avenue by Ian Rogers
Dead Song by Jay Wilburn
Sleeping, I Was Beauty by Sandi Leibowitz
Bajazzle by Margo Lanagan
The Pike by Conrad Williams
The Crying Child by Bruce McAllister
This Circus the World by Amber Sparks
Some Pictures in An Album by Gary McMahon
Wild Acre by Nathan Ballingrud
Final Exam by Megan Arkenberg
None So Blind by Stephen Bacon
The Ballad of Boomtown by Priya Sharma
Pig Thing by Adam Nevill
The Word-Made Flesh by Richard Gavin
Into the Penny Arcade by Claire Massey
Magdala Amygdala by Lucy Snyder
Frontier Death Song by Laird Barron
The book is scheduled to be published in June. The artwork at the top of this may not be the finished version, but suffice to say I’ll be looking forward to getting my hands on it however it looks.
Congratulations to you, Stephen, and well deserved – it’s a great story.