Exotic Gothic 4: Postscripts 28/29

     This bumper Postscripts anthology features new stories from twenty five of today's finest speculative fiction writers. Following Danel Olson's "On Dark Gifting" comes Margo Lanagan's "Blooding the Bride," Adam L.G. Nevill's "Pig Thing," Kaaron Warren's "The Lighthouse Keepers Club," Reggie Oliver's "The Look," Lucy Taylor's "Nikishi," Simon Kurt Unsworth's "The Fourth Horse," Stephen Dedman's "The Fall," Tunku Halim's "In the Village of Setang," David Punter's "Carving," Genni Gunn's "Water Lover," Robert Hood's "Escena de un Asesinato," Steve Rasnic Tem's "The Old Man Beset by Demons," David Wellington's "Atacama," Isobelle Carmody's "Metro Winds," Terry Dowling's "Mariners' Round," Paul Finch's "Oschaert," Ekaterina Sedia's "Helena," Anna Taborska's "Rusalka," Nick Antosca's "Candy," Joseph Bruchac's "Down in the Valley," Cherie Dimaline's "Wanishin," Brian Evenson's "Grottor," E. Michael Lewis' "Such a Man I Would Have Become," Scott Thomas' "The Unfinished Book," and Stephen Volk's "Celebrity Frankenstein."

     Commentary on the Exotic Gothic series: In 2006, Editor Olson floated a concept he created called Exotic Gothic to over seventy publishers around the world. It was an experiment in growing neo-Gothic stories: to keep one or more traditional tropes of the old genre in each new story, but add much that was culturally different, and set them all outside of their original birthlands of the UK, Germany, and France. _Exotic Gothic 2_ was a Shirley Jackson Award Finalist, and _Exotic Gothic 3_ a Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award Finalist. Many of the series harrowing and sensual tales now reappear the following year in Best Of and themed collections. The final installment to the series came when PS Publishing presented an all-new 2-volume, signed set _Exotic Gothic 5_ in 2013.