Best New Horror reviewed

Editor Stephen Jones sent me a link to a nice review of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 20.  The blogger actually reviewed the book in a seven-part series of posts and covered every story.  I haven’t read all seven parts yet because I haven’t finished making my way through the anthology myself, but apparently it is pretty glowing throughout. I do want to point out one passage at the end of part seven, though:

If you know anyone that doesn’t like horror give them a copy of this book.  There is so much variety, so much quality on display here that I cannot believe for one minute that there will not be something in here that every reader, no matter how biased, will enjoy.

This is much too involved a tangent to pursue at length right now, but a number of times people have said to me, “Oh, I can’t stand horror” but read one of my stories because they knew me, and came back saying, “Oh, I don’t like horror, but I like that kind of story.  You don’t write horror!”  It’s a shame: the genre has been so degraded in the popular imagination (for a myriad of reasons) that its illustrious literary heritage has been forgotten.  (Yet another tangent, of course, is balancing that literary heritage with the understanding that horror is neither respectable nor is it in good taste.  If it were, it wouldn’t be horrible, would it?)

Go here to read nice things about my story, “These Things We Have Always Known” (and nice things about stories by Peter Crowther and Simon Stranzas).

Here are the links to the other six parts.

Part Two.  Part Three.  Part Four.  Part Five.  Part Six.  Part Seven.