“Crossroads” by Laura Anne Gilman will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Jennifer Konieczny interviews her on the story.

For me, the lone lawman facing down outlaws at noon reminded me of the western film “High Noon.” What are your favorite westerns?

I’m actually not a huge fan of Westerns; I’d get distracted watching the horses, not the actors (this happens whenever there are horses on-screen, actually). I saw Unforgiven and Silverado a bunch of times, and does Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid count as a Western? What I love is reading nonfiction about the American West and other frontiers; the sort of mentality it took to abandon everything known and to then deal with what you found past the known, especially when it didn’t match with what you had been expecting/told to believe. Every sort of personality comes out to play, when you get beyond “civilization.” And then, to see what sort of civilization they recreate, in their own image …

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“Objects In Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear” by Lisa Tuttle will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Stacey Friedberg interviews her on the story.

In your mind, does our narrator ever escape from the house?

How can anyone escape from a place that does not exist?  She’s trapped forever, I’m afraid; the price she has to pay for pursuing the impossible.

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“The Bleeding Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Molly Tanzer interviews him on the story.

Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores edited by Greg Ketter sold to Sean Wallace at Prime Books, for a September 2012 release. A trade paperback edition of the previously hardcover anthology, Shelf Life features an introduction by Neil Gaiman and stories by P.D. Cacek, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Charles de Lint, Lisa Morton, Melanie Tem, Jack Williamson, Gene Wolfe, and others.

“The Sandal-Bride” by Genevieve Valentine will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Jennifer Konieczny interviews her on the story.

Sara, the Sandal-Bride, collected stories, because “she’d needed something that was hers, to hoard against a life with some dull boy to whom she had given her word.” What stories do you return to time and again? Do you have favorites that you always recommend?

I definitely have a few books from childhood that appeal to me now as much as ever. I own half a dozen editions of Beagle’s The Last Unicorn and Sagan’s Contact—some too worn to read, but all of which I’m keeping. And every once in a while, a story will strike me just so—Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison was a recent find.

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