Ellen Datlow has been editing “best of the year” books for longer than almost anybody, and those books—first as half of THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR & FANTASY, now as THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR—have become the standards for those curious where the genre is at each year. I’m happy, therefore, to have my story, “Stemming the Tide”, appear within the pages of now-available THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, VOL. 6 (Night Shade Books, 2014). I wrote about the origins of this story previously, and I am pleased Ellen enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. My thanks to Silvia Moreno-Garcia, too, for first publishing it in DEAD NORTH.

This isn’t my first “best of the year” book, of course. I’ve been fortunate enough to have my fiction picked a number of times for the various competing volumes, but this is the first year something has been selected by Ms. Datlow for inclusion in her series, and also marks the first time one of my stories has been selected for two separate “best of” series at the same time (the other is due later in the year). I’m very pleased with these turn of events, and even more so knowing it was this story that proved so popular. I enjoy this tale every time I have to re-read it, and based on future plans it’s on track to becoming my most reprinted story. Not bad for an idea that erupted in a white heat over the course of only a few days.