Just revealed by editor Stephen Jones is the cover for The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, due out next Halloween from Skyhorse in the US.
The really good news is my story “A Man Totally Alone” will be included in the book, as part of a Table of Contents jam-packed with top-tier writers of horror and weird fiction:
“Introduction: When Churchyards Yawn”
“October in the Chair” – Neil Gaiman
“Reflections in Black” – Steve Rasnic Tem
“The Halloween Monster” – Alison Littlewood
“The Phénakisticope of Decay” – James Ebersole
“Memories of Día de los Muertos” – Nancy Kilpatrick
“Fragile Masks” – Richard Gavin
“Bone Fire” – Storm Constantine
“Queen of the Hunt” – Adrian Cole
“The October Widow” – Angela Slatter
“Before the Parade Passes By” – Marie O’Regan
“Her Face” – Ramsey Campbell
“A Man Totally Alone” – Robert Hood
“Bleed” – Richard Christian Matheson
“The Ultimate Halloween Party App” – Lisa Morton
“The Folding Man” – Joe R. Lansdale
“I Wait for You” – Eygló Karlsdóttir
“Dust Upon a Paper Eye” – Cate Gardner
“Not Our Brother” – Robert Silverberg
“The Scariest Thing in the World” – Michael Marshall Smith
“The Nature of the Beast” – Sharon Gosling
“The Beautiful Feast of the Valley” – Stephen Gallagher
“In the Year of Omens” – Helen Marshall
“The Millennial’s Guide to Death” – Scott Bradfield
“White Mare” – Thana Niveau
“Pumpkin Kids” – Robert Shearman
“Lantern Jack” – Christopher Fowler
“Halloween Treats” – Jane Yolen
The title “A Man Totally Alone” derives from the Nordic saga Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks konungs and a passage translated by Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum as:
Foolish he seems to me, who goes there,
a man totally alone, through dark night…
The story is set in the Australian outback, where there is a distinct lack of snow as October/November is summer-time and temperatures run high, and where Halloween lacks most of the familiar iconography common to seasonal tales set in Europe and the US. Even so, it seems the dead are just as restless.