Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (45 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

O
ur deepest gratitude goes to Ray Bradbury for his support and enthusiasm for this book. Thanks also to Ray’s daughter, Alexandra, for her assistance along the way. We are, of course, indebted to our all-star cast of writers, who interpreted Bradbury’s inspiration in myriad, imaginative ways.

Thanks to our dream team of editors at HarperCollins, most notably, our great partner Jennifer Brehl, along with her assistant, Emily Krump. Gratitude, also, to production editor Andrea Molitor and copyeditor Margaret Wimberger. We were so fortunate to have these folks to work with. A tip of the hat to Tom Gauld for his classic cover art (have you been to Ray Bradbury’s basement?!).

To our literary agent, Judith Ehrlich, with us every step of the way.

To the inspiring memory of Danny Squires and the inspiring friendship of Robert Weinberg.

Thanks, also, to our families, Jane, Jan, Mai-Linh, Le-Anh, and Gia-Binh. Live Forever!

CONTRIBUTORS

Neil Gaiman
was the first author to win the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal for the same book with
The Graveyard Book
(2008). He wrote
The Sandman
, now available in collected graphic novel form, and such books as the Hugo- and Nebula-winning
American Gods
. He dedicated his last short-story collection,
Fragile Things
, to Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. He has three children and two dogs, and his wife has a ukulele.

Margaret Atwood
is a poet and novelist (
The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood
); her latest book is
In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
(Doubleday, 2011).

Jay Bonansinga’s
debut novel,
The Black Mariah
, was a finalist for a Bram Stoker Award, and film rights sold to George Romero. The
Chicago Tribune
calls Bonansinga “one of the most imaginative writers of thrillers.” His novels include
Perfect Victim
,
Shattered
,
Twisted
, and
Frozen.
His nonfiction
Sinking of the Eastland
was a
Chicago Reader
“Critics Choice Book” as well as the recipient of a Superior Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society. The
New York Times
bestseller
The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor
(St. Martin’s), coauthored with
The
Walking Dead
TV and comics creator Robert Kirkman, is his latest novel.

Sam Weller
is the authorized biographer of Ray Bradbury and the author of the bestselling
Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury
and
Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews
. He is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist. Weller has written for the
Paris Review
, National Public Radio’s
All Things Considered
, and many other publications. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Sam__Weller.

David Morrell
is the award-winning author of
First Blood
, the novel in which Rambo was created. His many
New York Times
bestsellers include the classic espionage novel
The Brotherhood of the Rose
, which was adapted into an NBC miniseries that premiered after a Super Bowl. An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, Morrell is a three-time recipient of the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Award and was named a ThrillerMaster by International Thriller Writers. His fiction has been translated into twenty-six languages.

Thomas F. Monteleone
has published more than ninety short stories and twenty novels, including the
New York Times
bestseller
Blood of the Lamb
, which was also a
New York Times
Notable Book, and the bestselling
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Novel Writing
. Monteleone’s TV credits include
Tales from the Darkside
and PBS Television’s
American Playhouse
. He is the founder of the twice-annual Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp for novelists and short-story writers.

Lee Martin
is the author of the novels
The Bright Forever
, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in fiction;
Break the Skin
,
River of Heaven
, and
Quakertown
. He has also published two memoirs,
From Our House
and
Turning Bones
, and a short-story collection,
The Least You Need to Know
. He teaches in the MFA program at Ohio State University.

Joe Hill
is the author of two
New York Times
bestselling novels,
Heart-Shaped Box
and
Horns
, and a prizewinning collection of stories,
20th Century Ghosts
. He also scripts the Eisner Award–winning ongoing comic
Locke & Key
. Once upon a time, he earned a fellowship in Ray Bradbury’s name. You can follow him on Twitter @joe_hill.

Dan Chaon
is the author of
Fitting Ends
and
Among the Missing
, a finalist for the National Book Award, which was also listed as one of the Ten Best Books of the year by the American Library Association, the
Chicago Tribune
, the
Boston Globe
, and
Entertainment Weekly
, and cited as a
New York Times
Notable Book. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and won both Pushcart and O. Henry awards. His short story “The Bees” appears in
All American Horror of the 21st Century: The First Decade.
Stay Awake
(Ballantine) is his newest collection. Chaon teaches at Oberlin College.

John McNally
is the author of three novels:
After the Workshop
,
The Book of Ralph
, and
America’s Report Card
, and two story collections,
Troublemakers
(winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and the Nebraska Book Award) and
Ghosts of Chicago.
He is also the author of two nonfiction books:
The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist
and the forthcoming
Vivid and Continuous: Essays and Exercises for Fiction Writing,
both published by the University of Iowa Press. McNally is an associate professor of English at Wake Forest University.

Joe Meno
is a fiction writer and playwright who lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and a Pushcart Prize and a finalist for the Story Prize, he is the bestselling author of five novels and two short-story collections including
The Great Perhaps
,
The Boy Detective Fails
, and
Hairstyles of the Damned
. He is a professor in the fiction writing department at Columbia College Chicago. His nonfiction has appeared in the
New York Times
and
Chicago
magazine.

Robert McCammon
is the award-winning author of seventeen novels, including
Boy’s Life
,
Swan Song
, and
Mister Slaughter
. He has been a lifelong fan of Ray Bradbury’s work.

Ramsey Campbell
is “Britain’s most respected living horror writer” (
Oxford Companion to English Literature
). His novels, including
The Doll Who Ate His Mother
,
Incarnate
,
The Hungry Moon
, and
The House on Nazareth Hill
, and short stories have earned him more awards—World Fantasy Awards, British Fantasy Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, and the International Horror Society’s Living Legend and Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award—than any other writer in the genre.

Mort Castle
published his first novel in 1967; since then, there have been more than five hundred publications of short stories, articles, comic books, poems, et cetera, and fifteen books with his name as writer or editor, including the “bible for aspiring horror writers”
On Writing Horror
(Writer’s Digest Books) and
The Strangers
, a novel that, in translation, made the Polish edition of
Newsweek’
s Top Ten Horror-Thriller Books of 2008 list. He is a seven-time Bram Stoker Award nominee and a two-time winner of the Black Quill Award (for editing). Castle and Jane, his wife of forty-one years, live in Crete, Illinois, a town noted for its bubbling fountain and the bandstand in the park. Castle is ranked as the best five-string banjo player in his height, weight, and age group.

Alice Hoffman
is the author of many bestselling novels including
Practical Magic
,
The Red Garden
, and
The Dovekeepers
. She is currently a visiting scholar at Brandeis University.

John Maclay
is the author of more than one hundred published horror and fantasy short stories, many of which have appeared in mass-market anthologies alongside stories by Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Clive Barker, and Stephen King. His most recent collections are
A Little Red Book of Vampire Stories
,
Dreadful Delineations
, and
Divagations
. At Maclay & Associates, 1984–1995, he was publisher of the Masques anthology series and other books in the fantasy and horror field.

Jacquelyn Mitchard
, longtime journalist and essayist, is the author of twenty-one books of fiction, including five
New York Times
bestsellers. Nearly five million copies of her books are in print, in twenty-six languages. Her first novel,
The Deep End of the Ocean
, was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club. She served on the 2004 fiction jury for the National Book Award and is the first Faculty Fellow at Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and nine children.

Gary A. Braunbeck’s
work has garnered six Bram Stoker Awards, an International Horror Guild Award, and a World Fantasy Award nomination. And, he says, that is the “end of anything remotely interesting about him.”

Bonnie Jo Campbell
is the author of
Once Upon a River
,
Q Road
,
Women & Other Animals
, and
American Salvage
, and a finalist for both the 2009 National Book Award finalist and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and her donkeys, Jack and Don Quixote.

Audrey Niffenegger
is the author of
The Time Traveler’s Wife, New York Times
bestseller, British Book Award winner, and basis for a film, as well as
Her Fearful Symmetry, The Night Bookmobile,
and numerous hand-printed and hand-bound books. She is at work on a new novel,
The Chinchilla Girl in Exile
.

Charles Yu
was named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” for his debut short-story collection,
Third Class Superhero
. His first novel,
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
, was a
New York Times
Notable Book and named a Best Book of the Year by
Time
magazine. Yu’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including
Harvard Review
, the
Gettysburg Review
, the
Mid-American Review,
the
New York Times
,
Playboy
, and the
Oxford American
. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Michelle, and their two children.

Julia Keller,
winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of the young adult novel
Back Home
and the nonfiction book
Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It
. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has taught at Princeton University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago. Her mystery novel,
A Killing in the Hills
, will be published by St. Martin’s in 2012.

Dave Eggers
is the author of many novels and works of nonfiction, including
Zeitoun
and
What Is the What
. He is the editor of
McSweeney’s
.

Bayo Ojikutu
is an award-winning novelist—
47th Street Black
and
Free Burning
—and Pushcart Prize–nominated short-story writer. His work has appeared in various magazines and journals. Ojikutu, his wife, and his son currently reside in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Kelly Link
is the author of three short-story collections. With her husband, Gavin J. Grant, she runs Small Beer Press and edits the occasional anthology as well as the zine
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
They live with their daughter, Ursula, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Harlan Ellison®
has been called “one of the great living American short story writers” by the
Washington Post
; the
Los Angeles Times
said, “It’s long past time for Harlan Ellison to be awarded the title: ‘20th Century Lewis Carroll.’ ” In a career spanning more than forty years, he has written seventy-five books and more than seventeen hundred stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns, two dozen teleplays, and a dozen motion pictures. He has won more awards than “any other living fantasist,” including the Hugo eight times, the Nebula three times, the Bram Stoker six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès fantasy film award twice, two Audie Awards (for the best in audio recordings), and the Silver Pen for Journalism, the latter awarded by PEN, the international writers’ union. A documentary on Ellison,
Dreams with Sharp Teeth
, was released on DVD in 2009.