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FOREWORD

Ever since I was a child, people have been either telling my mother, or telling me directly, that I was something of a “dark” person—not physically (I’m about as white-bread as a human can get: light hair, light eyes, beyond pale skin), but emotionally. I’ve never been the happy-go-lucky sunny type, and this has often caused those around me to fret and cluck and tsk-tsk about my gloomy outlook on life...as if my way of being somehow affects their ability to enjoy life.

Personally, I simply go with my own somewhat stagnant interior flow—as a certain spinach-eating cartoon character so aptly put it, “I yam what I yam.” But my unique way of seeing the world often affects my work; while I have created some softer, more positive works, the bulk of my fictional output is...dark. Some works more so than others.

The stories here are among (but certainly not all) my darkest creations; some are sexually disturbing, others visceral and graphically violent, while others are (here I go with that word again!) just plain dark in nature. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call them erotic, a few do have elements of the erotic in them. But I doubt most folks would get off on them!

I’ve also included three of my vampire stories—literally the first one I wrote, followed by what has been undoubtedly the most successful one (both financially and in terms of it being named as one of the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror stories in that long-running anthology series), and concluding with a previously unpublished story which just happens to be the last vampire story I’ve decided to write—in order to show my personal evolution in that sub-genre. As you’ll see, I don’t do dreamy romantic vampires, and they certainly aren’t suitable for nine-to-twelve-year-olds and up...not that I think that the cleaner, “vegan” vampires, aren’t just as worthwhile or as literary as what I’ve done with the sub-genre. I give all those writers my greatest respect—make it any way you can, and give the people what they want, just as long as people are picking up a book or a Kindle® or a whatnot and actually reading.... I do feel pretty certain that what I consider a vampire story wouldn’t appeal to the fans of the “nice” vampires, but I’m not offended by that—literature needs to appeal to varied tastes; if all works of fiction appealed to everyone equally, I think we’d be in trouble as a species!

Now that I’m done with my personal rant, on to the stories....

A. R. Morlan

2012