“A Tangle of Green Men” by Charles de Lint will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. T.J. McIntyre interviews him on the story.

When writing in a shared world like Bordertown, how do you keep your stories your own? The setting is already laid out, so how do you make it your own without sacrificing consistency with others’ visions?

You’ve probably heard the old saying that if you give ten writers the same plot you’ll get ten very different stories–if the writers are any good, of course. The same applies to a shared setting such as this. We might use characters and places from each other’s stories but when we do, they’re filtered through our own voices so they can’t help but be individual. I think the magic of the Bordertown books is how the characters we create can travel through the various stories and still remain themselves (or maybe that’s the magic of a good editor’s touch).

But the point is, I’ve never worried about my stories not being my own in Bordertown. Maybe that’s because I was there in the beginning when a handful of us got to flesh out Terri Windling’s original vision so I feel a bit of proprietorship. But mostly I think it’s because the books are a bit like a musical jam and our individual stories only get better when they bang up against what the others are writing. The characters become more real when one can see their footprints beyond the confines of what we’ve asked them to do in our own stories.

MORE: Read the rest of the interview here!

“Woman Leaves Room” by Robert Reed will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Stacey Friedberg interviews him on the story.

Many of the characters in this story have been abandoned by their creators. In fact, the narrator spends most of this story being “lost,” with others unable to locate him or his origins. What do you think this says about humanity, that we let such important things slide away?

I don’t believe people let things slide away. It’s the nature of the universe that everything dissolves into oblivion and by every route possible, but human beings invest a lot of cleverness trying to cling to past events, real or imagined. And because we can’t succeed, we get angry and frustrated and feel guilty. Except the Buddhists, who say, “Fuck that,” and go on inside the moment.

MORE: Read the rest of the interview here!

“Vampire Lake” by Norman Partridge will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Stacey Friedberg interviews him on the story.

“Sun Falls” by Angela Slatter will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Molly Tanzer interviews her on the story.

Rival vampire-gangs fighting it out on the streets of Sydney sounds pretty rough, and yet apparently most “Warm” folks don’t know about the danger they pose. Can you tell us more about Terry’s world? Just how bad have things gotten? 

I think people are often willfully blind even in the face of things being very obviously not right. I see Terry’s world as one where most folk don’t ‘venture out at night, and have probably reverted to a kind fireside culture where they tell their kids stories about things they go bump in the night. So in effect going back to using fairy tales as warnings and guides to survival.

How bad have things gotten? I think the world’s at a tipping point and things will probably slip nasty-wards fairly soon.

MORE: Read the rest of the interview here! 

“The Silver Wind” by Nina Allan will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Erin Stocks interviews her on the story.

Many of your short stories are set in London. What does London hold that makes it such a fruitful setting for you?

I was born in London, and I feel an enormous emotional attachment to that city. People often talk about the lonely anonymity of the big city, but for me London has always been a warm place, a place of sanctuary, the place where I feel most at home. I am inspired by London because of its variousness, its creativity, its independent spirit. London presents an infinity of ideas, of histories, of stories. It has room for everybody, and everything. I find it impossible to walk around London without wanting to write about it, and whenever I do that I come back to the feeling that it’s a place where anything could happen. I never grow tired of it.