Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

Contributors

Edward Bryant began writing professionally in 1968 and has published more than a dozen books, including Among the Dead, Cinnabar, Phoenix Without Ashes (with Harlan Ellison), Wyoming Sun, Particle Theory, Fetish (a novella chapbook), and The Baku: Tales of the Nuclear Age. He first focused on science fiction and won two Nebula awards for short stories in 1978 and 1979. While he still occasionally dabbles in science fiction (such as his 1994 story “The Fire That Scours”), he gradually strayed into horror. Most of his work is now in the horror genre, as with his series of sharply etched stories about Angie Black, a contemporary witch, the zombie story “A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned,” and other marvelous tales.

Most of his horror fiction will be reprinted in an upcoming retrospective.

Storm Constantine is the author of more than thirty books, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as numerous short stories. Her fiction titles include the bestselling Wraeththu trilogies, the Grigori trilogy, and stand-alone novels Hermetech and Thin Air. Her esoteric nonfiction works include Sekhem Heka and Grimoire Dehara: Kaimana. Constantine lives in the Midlands, England, with her husband and four cats.

Doris Egan wrote the Ivory series: The Gate of Ivory, Two-Bit Heroes, and Guilt-Edged Ivory. As Jane Emerson, she wrote City of Diamond. She’s been a writer and producer on several television shows, including House, Torchwood, Smallville, Tru Calling, and The Agency. She currently lives in Los Angeles and is working on Black Sails, a show about eighteenth-century pirates.

Kelley Eskridge is a writer and screenwriter, author of the novel Solitaire and the short story collection Dangerous Space. Solitaire was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Nebula, Gaylactic Spectrum, and Endeavour awards, and is currently in film development with Eskridge as screenwriter. The works gathered in Dangerous Space include an Astraea Prize winner, two Nebula finalists, three James Tiptree, Jr. Honor List stories, a story collected in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (1995), and a story adapted for SyFy.

Eskridge edits and coaches writers as co-owner of Sterling Editing. She is a board member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She is currently working on a screenplay about dangerous women and pondering new fiction. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her partner, novelist Nicola Griffith, where she loves to talk, drink, laugh, dance, and write.

Wendy Froud is a doll- and model-maker, writer, and teacher.

She was born in Detroit, Michigan, and has lived for the past thirty-two years with her husband, Brian Froud, in Devon, England. She worked on the films Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and The Empire Strikes Back, and has illustrated, written, or otherwise contributed to more than a dozen published books.

Neil Gaiman has been writing professionally for almost thirty years. He won the Newbery Medal, the Carnegie Medal, and the Hugo Award for The Graveyard Book. He won no awards of any kind for A Walking Tour of the Shambles, his little book with Gene Wolfe, but is ridiculously proud of it anyway. He has three children, two dogs, and about half a million bees.

In addition to teaching British Literature at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia, and helping raise a family, Bruce Glassco’s biggest claim to fame is designing the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, winner of the 2004 Origins Gamers Choice award.

John Kaiine is a writer, artist, photographer — and former London gravedigger. He is the author of the critically acclaimed metaphysical thriller Fossil Circus.

He lives on the Sussex Weald, England, with his wife, Tanith Lee, and their two cats.

Garry Kilworth has now written a book for every year of his life. Some are science fiction, many are fantasy, and several are historical novels. He winters in the Spanish Sierra Nevadas and summers in Suffolk, England. He is currently writing his autobiography, On My Way to Samarkand, which he finds infinitely interesting, but suspects others will probably find less so. Warner Brothers recently exercised its contracted option to film his young adult fantasy Attica; Kilworth is anxious to see this adaptation on the silver screen before the end of the world, which a man with a placard told him is nigh.

Ellen Kushner’s first novel, Swordspoint, introduced readers to the city to which she has since returned in The Privilege of the Sword (Locus Award winner and Nebula award nominee), The Fall of the Kings (written with Delia Sherman), and a handful of related short stories, most recently “The Duke of Riverside” in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City.

Kushner and Holly Black co-edited Welcome to Bordertown, a revival of the original urban fantasy shared-world series created by Terri Windling. Kushner’s second novel, Thomas the Rhymer, won the Mythopoeic and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing at the Clarion and Odyssey workshops, and is a co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation. Kushner is also the longtime host of the public radio show Sound & Spirit. Neil Gaiman Presents/Audiobook Creation Exchange recently released her own recording of the audiobook of Swordspoint. Kushner lives in New York City with author and editor Delia Sherman, but no cats whatsoever. It is all made clear at www.EllenKushner.com.

Tanith Lee has written nearly one hundred books and over two hundred and ninety short stories, besides radio plays and television scripts. Her work spans fantasy, science fiction, horror, young adult, historical, detective, and contemporary fiction, plus combinations of them all. Her latest publications include the Lionwolf Trilogy (Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, and No Flame but Mine) and the three Piratica young adult novels. All of the Flat Earth series is being reprinted, with two new volumes to follow, and a series of contemporary’ strange novels will be published as well.

She has also recently contributed short stories and novellas to publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, The Ghost Quartet, and Wizards.

In 2009, Lee was named Grand Master by the World Horror Convention.

She lives on the Sussex Weald, England, with her husband, writer/artist John Kaiine, and two omnipresent cats. More information can be found at www.TanithLee.com.

Pat Murphy has won many awards for her thoughtful, literary science fiction, including the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Christopher Award. Her favorite color is ultraviolet. Her favorite book is the one she is working on right now. Visit her online at www.brazenhussies.net/murphy.

Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most prolific and respected writers in the United States today. Oates has written fiction in almost every genre and medium. Her keen interest in gothic and psychological horror has spurred her to write dark suspense novels under the name Rosamond Smith. She has written enough stories in the genre to have published five collections of dark fiction — the most recent being The Museum of Dr. Moses: Tales of Mystery and Suspense and The Corn Maiden—and to edit American Gothic Tales. Oates’s has won two Bram Stoker awards, for her short novel Zombie and her short story collection The Corn Maiden, and she has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association.

Oates’s most recent novels are The Gravedigger’s Daughter, My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike, and Little Bird of Heaven.

She teaches creative writing at Princeton University. With her late husband, Raymond J. Smith, she ran a small press and literary magazine, The Ontario Review, for many years.

Melissa Shaw’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and Analog Science Fiction and Fact, as well as several anthologies. Shaw is a Clarion West Writers Workshop graduate and a Writers of the Future contest winner. She is currently working in the video game industry.

Delia Sherman’s most recent short stories have appeared in the young adult anthologies Steampunk! and Teeth, as well as in Ellen Datlow’s urban fantasy anthology Naked City. Sherman’s adult novels include Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, and The Fall of the Kings (with Ellen Kushner). Novels for younger readers include the New York Between novels Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Her newest novel, The Freedom Maze, time-travel historical about antebellum Louisiana. It was nominated for the Andre Norton Award.

When she’s not writing, Sherman is teaching, editing, knitting, and traveling. She lives in New York City with Ellen Kushner, piles of books, some nice Arts and Crafts wallpaper, and a very Victorian rock collection.

Dave Smeds is the author of novels such as The Sorcery Within and Piper in the Night. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy, and anthologies such as In the Field of Fire, Full Spectrum 4, Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, Best New Horror 7, The Shimmering Door, and a dozen volumes of the Sword and Sorceress series. Known primarily for writing high fantasy, his work also includes hard science fiction, contemporary fantasy, horror, and erotica. Some of the latter was collected in Earthly Pleasures under the pseudonym Reed Manning. His latest book is the high-fantasy collection Raiding the Hoard of Enchantment.

Brian Stableford’s recent fiction includes a series of novels and novellas featuring Edgar Allan Poe’s proto-detective Auguste Dupin, which includes The Quintessence of August, The Cthulhu Encryption, and Journey to the Core of Creation. He is also translating numerous French scientific romances and other exotica from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recent works in the series include Louise Michel’s anarchist thriller The Human Microbes and Félicien Champsaur’s Ouha, King of the Apes, about the missing link between Tarzan and King Kong.

Ellen Steiber has written many books for young readers, as well as a number of essays on mythology, gemstones, and jewelry. A Rumor of Gems is her latest novel, and she is currently working on the sequel. Some of her most recent essays have appeared in Demigods and Monsters, The World of the Golden Compass, and Nyx in the House of Night: Mythology, Folklore and Religion in the P.C. and Kristin Cast Vampyre Series.

“In the Season of Rains” grew out of the author’s realization that her own writing seemed to draw on many mythic traditions other than her own. There is only one mention of Lilith in the five books of Moses, but references to her have been found on stone tablets dating back to 2000 B.C. The lines of poetry that Lilith quotes are from the King James translation of “The Song of Songs.” The story was also inspired by the Sonoran desert, where Steiber shares a home with her husband and a mischievous young cat. The garden behind her house bears a passing resemblance to Enrique’s garden in the story. Please visit her website at www.ellensteiber.com.

Michael Swanwick lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Marianne Porter. Swanwick’s latest novel is Dancing with Bears (2011), a post-utopian adventure featuring confidence artists Darger and Surplus, currently available in paperback. Swanwick is at work on two new novels.

Mark W. Tiedemann began publishing science fiction stories professionally after attending the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1988. He has subsequently published more than fifty short stories, numerous reviews and essays, and ten novels. Compass Reach was shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award in 2002 and Remains was shortlisted for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award in 2005.

He served on the board of the Missouri Center for the Book for nine years, five as president, during which time he oversaw the creation of the Missouri State Poet Laureate post. He is a lifelong resident of St. Louis, Missouri.

Elizabeth Wein lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She is the author of The Winter Prince and the Mark of Solomon duology, consisting of The Lion Hunter and The Empty Kingdom. The Lion Hunter was shortlisted for the Andre Norton Award in 2008.

Wein’s most recent novel, Code Name Verity, is a Boston Globe/Horn Book Award Honor book. The author describes it as “a World War II spies ’n’ pilots thriller.” Wein is the holder of a private pilot’s license and an increasing collection of random wartime ephemera.

Conrad Williams is the award-winning author of seven novels, four novellas, and more than one hundred short stories, some of which have been collected in Use Once Then Destroy and Born with Teeth. He has also edited an anthology of weird cowboy fiction, Gutshot. He lives in Manchester, England, with his wife and three sons. His latest novel is Loss of Separation (2011).

Jane Yolen, often called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” is the author of more than three hundred books, most (but not all) for children. Her books and stories have won two Nebula awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, three Golden Kite awards, three Mythopoeic awards, two Christopher Medals, a Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among others. She is also the winner (for body of work) of the Kerlan Award, the World Fantasy Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master award, the Skylark Award from the New England Science Fiction Association, the Catholic Library’s Regina Medal, and the 2012 de Grummond Medal. Six colleges and universities have given her honorary doctorates. For more information, visit her website at: www.janeyolen.com.