“Lord Dunsany’s Teapot” by Naomi Novik will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Erin Stocks interviews Novik on the story.

“He held it between his hands while the heat but not the scent faded, and sipped peace as long as it lasted.” Peace in a teapot is a lovely notion. Will you tell us a little about how you came up with the origins of “Lord Dunsany’s Teapot?”

This story was part of the wonderful anthology The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, where the challenge was to envision a mysterious artifact that might have been auctioned off after having been found in the estate of a very strange collector, and tell its story.

Trying to think of the appropriate dates, when such an artifact might have come into the collector’s hands, I had the vague sense that the death of Lord Dunsany (a wonderful pre-Tolkien author of fantasy) might have worked, and from there the idea quickly took form of a teapot that might have come into his hands, and the First World War the center of the experience.

MORE: Read the whole story here!