UNWELL... Cody Goodfellow wants to introduce you to a goddess who offers unsurpassed pleasure at an unspeakable price. UNWISE... Gemma Files wants you to see what happens when you look too closely into places and things better left unknown. UNQUIET... Mort Castle wants to play some unfamiliar music for you... the tunes of the lost and the damned. UNDONE... Gary A. Braunbeck wants to take you to the edge of madness and perversity... and push you over. From the agony of unrelenting grief to the desperation of spontaneously-combusting convicts, from the grim battle between a human monster and his otherworldy competition to the salacious secret life of Ro-Man(!). All this and more in strange worlds vividly painted by four supremely talented authors worlds that are twisted, cruel and mighty unclean.
Cody Goodfellow has written three and a half novels:
Radiant Dawn, Ravenous Dusk and
Perfect Union, and
Jake's Wake with John Skipp. His award-shunning short fiction has appeared in
Cemetery Dance, Black Static, Dark Discoveries and (with Skipp) in
Whispers V and
Hellboy: Oddest Jobs. He lives in Los Angeles.
Born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada, Gemma Files has been a film critic, teacher and screenwriter, and is currently a wife and mother. She won the 1999 International Horror Guild Best Short Fiction award for her story The Emperor's Old Bones , and the 2006 ChiZine/Leisure Books Short Story Contest for her story Spectral Evidence . Her fiction has been published in two collections (Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart, both from Prime Books), and five of her stories were adapted into episodes of The Hunger, an anthology TV show produced by Ridley and Tony Scott's Scot Free Productions. She has also published two chapbooks of poetry. In 2009, her short story Marya Nox will appear in Lovecraft Unbound, a new Lovecraft-themed anthology edited by Ellen Datlow, while her story "each thing I show you is a piece of my death" will appear in Clockwork Phoenix 2, from Norilana Books.
Mort Castle has over 600 publications to his credit: You'll find his work in classic men s cheesecake mags like Cavalier and Mr. to literary publications like Riverside Quarterly and Bombay Gin, from the confessions magazines True Secrets and Intimate Romances to agricultural publications such as Hog Farm Management, from ... Eclectic, okay? You get the idea. He's published seven novels, with Cursed Be the Child having sales of near 100,000 and The Strangers optioned for film. His third short story collection New Moon on the Water, Full Moon Press, will be released later this year. Castle's been nominated for a number of awards, including the Bram Stoker (six times), the Pushcart Prize (four times) and the International Horror Guild award (only once). Cited as one of 21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago's Southland by the Sun-Times Newspaper Group, Castle is finding new success in Poland (You like me, Mr. Walesa, you really ...) where two of his books were among the Best of 2008 according to Newsweek magazine. Writer-in-residence for Chicago Heights (IL) High School District 206 and a teacher in the fiction writing department of Columbia College Chicago, Castle has 12 feet of book shelf filled with the published work of his students and former students. Married to Jane for 38 years, Castle lives in Crete, Illinois, plays acoustic guitar like an un-reconstructed (if balding) folky, and has no plans to buy any digital book device until, like a real book, it can be dropped in the bathtub and easily if wavily set right with a microwave or clothes dryer.
Gary A. Braunbeck is the author of 10 novels and 10 short story collections, as well as nearly 200 published short stories in the fantasy, horror, science fiction, western, romance, mainstream, and mystery fields. A ravenous reader since childhood, he rarely ventures outside except when forced to at gunpoint (we exaggerate for effect...but not too much). His novels include the critically-acclaimed Coffin County and Far Dark Fields (both set in his fictional town of Cedar Hill, Ohio), and among his short-story collections are Things Left Behind and the award-winning Destinations Unknown. His work has garnered 5 Bram Stoker Awards and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Columbus, Ohio with his wife, author Lucy A. Snyder, and 5 cats who hold him prisoner every day until they are fed.
