Many moons ago the awesome John Klima emailed and asked if I had any fairy tale retellings since he was putting together an anthology of such things. I sent him Black Feather (my Interfictions story), he accepted, I made a happy face. Life is good. Yesterday, for the first time, I saw who else is also in this anthology from a post on SFSignal. People, I had No Idea. I sporfled so hard on the subway train New Yorkers gave me the side eye.

Just look here and sporfle with me, won’t you?

1. “The Seven Stage a Comeback” by Gregory Maguire
2. “And In Their Glad Rags” by Genevieve Valentine
3. “The Sawing Boys” by Howard Waldrop
4. “Bear It Away” by Michael Cadnum
5. “Mr. Simonelli or the Fairy Widower” by Susanna Clarke
6. “The Black Fairy’s Curse” by Karen Joy Fowler
7. “My Life As A Bird” by Charles de Lint
8. “The Night Market” by Holly Black
9. “The Rose in Twelve Petals” by Theodora Goss
10. “The Red Path” by Jim C. Hines
11. “Blood and Water” by Alethea Kontis
12. “Hansel’s Eyes” by Garth Nix
13. “He Died That Day, In Thirty Years” by Wil McCarthy
14. “Snow In Summer” by Jane Yolen
15. “The Rose Garden” by Michelle West
16. “The Little Magic Shop” by Bruce Sterling
17. “Black Feather” by K. Tempest Bradford
18. “Fifi’s Tail” by Alan Rodgers
19. “The Faery Handbag” by Kelly Link
20. “Ashputtle” by Peter Straub
21. “The Emperor’s New (And Improved) Clothes” by Leslie What
22. “Pinocchio’s Diary” by Robert J. Howe
23. “Little Red” by Wendy Wheeler
24. “The Troll Bridge” by Neil Gaiman
25. “The Price” by Patricia Briggs
26. “Ailoura” by Paul Di Filippo
27. “The Farmer’s Cat” by Jeff VanderMeer
28. “The Root of The Matter” by Gregory Frost
29. “Like a Red, Red Rose” by Susan Wade
30. “Chasing America” by Josh Rountree
31. “Stalking Beans” by Nancy Kress
32. “Big Hair” by Esther Friesner
33. “The Return of the Dark Children” by Robert Coover

Susanna Clarke, Kelly Link, Jeff Vandermeer, Genevieve Valentine, Holly Black, Neil Gaiman, the list of awesome just keeps getting longer and longer! Nancy Kress was my first Clarion West instructor and now I am in an anthology with her. What.

But the most exciting bit is this. No anthology of this kind would be complete without Theodora Goss, that goes without saying. But the story in here, “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” is one of my favorite stories of All Time¹. One of the first that ever moved me to track down an author’s website and email her². That one of my stories gets to be in the same book as that is a most excellent way to begin my next year of life.

The book is out in June, and you can pre-order it from Nightshade or Amazon or Barnes & Noble or likely your local bookshop.

P.S. I would also like to point out that, once again, I’m in a book with a gorgeous cover.

Footnotes

1. I just came across this blog post where Dora talks about how the story came to be. She mentions that it was her first story ever published — a surprise to myself — and that it’s been 10 years now. That… makes me feel old. [⇧]
2. the other was “The Run of the Fiery Horse,” which I talked about in the PodCastle introduction. [⇧]