Twenty of today's favorite writers explore the intersections between the living, dead, and undead. Their vampire tales range from romantic to chilling to gleeful—and touch on nearly every emotion in between.
Neil Gaiman's vampire-poet in "Bloody Sunrise" is brooding, remorseful, and lonely. Melissa Marr's vampires make a high-stakes game of possession and seduction in "Transition." And in "Why Light?" Tanith Lee's lovelorn vampires yearn most of all for the one thing they cannot have—daylight. Drawn from folk traditions around the world, popular culture, and original interpretations, the vampires in this collection are enticingly diverse.
But reader beware: The one thing they have in common is their desire for blood. . . .
Ellen Datlow was editor of Sci Fiction, the multi award- winning fiction area of scifi.com, for almost six years. Previously, she was fiction editor of Omni for over seventeen years. She has won the World Fantasy Award seven times, two Bram Stoker Awards, the International Horror Guild Award, the 2002 and 2005 Hugo Award, and the 2005 Locus Award, for her work as an editor. Sci Fiction won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Website. Datlow and Windling are the co-editors of over eleven original anthologies and of seventeen volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.
Terri Windling is an editor, writer, painter, and passionate advocate of mythic arts. She has won the World Fantasy Award seven times, as well as the Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Wood Wife. During the last two decades she's edited over twenty-five anthologies with Ellen Datlow, as well as several other anthologies, including one called Faery. Her paintings, which are based on folklore and feminist themes, have been exhibited at museums and galleries in the United States, England, and France.
Neil Gaiman is the celebrated author of books, graphic novels, short stories, films, and television for readers of all ages. Some of his most notable titles include the highly lauded #1 New York Times bestseller Norse Mythology; the groundbreaking and award-winning Sandman comic series; The Graveyard Book (the first book ever to win both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals); American Gods, winner of many awards and recently adapted into the Emmy-nominated Starz TV series (the second season slated to air in 2019); The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was the UK’s National Book Award 2013 Book of the Year. Good Omens, which he wrote with Terry Pratchett a very long time ago (but not quite as long ago as Don’t Panic) and for which Gaiman wrote the screenplay, will air on Amazon and the BBC in 2019. Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan
Melissa Marr is the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked Lovely series. The series has sold in 24 languages to date, appeared on bestseller lists abroad, and is in development with Universal Studios for a major motion picture. She is also the co-author (with Kelley Armstrong) of the upcoming Blackwell Pages and co-editor (with Armstrong) of the forthcoming YA anthologies, Enthralled (2011) and Entrapped (2013). Tim Pratt is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy author whose works have been nominated for most of the major genre awards. His stories have been reprinted in numerous Year's Best anthologies, including the Best American Short Stories. He is a senior editor at Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, and edited the 2010 anthology Sympathy for the Devil.