The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 by Stephen Jones

Author:Stephen Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror, Genre Fiction, Ghosts, Literature & Fiction
Publisher: Robinson
Published: 2011-07-04T06:00:00+00:00

CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

Houses Under the Sea

CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN IS A FOUR-TIME recipient of the International Horror Guild Award and a World Fantasy Award finalist.

Her novels include Silk, Threshold, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels and Daughter of Hounds, and her short fiction has been collected in Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, Alabaster and To Charles Fort With Love. She is currently working on her next novel, Joey LaFaye, and a collection of science-fiction stories, both of which will be released in 2008. The author lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her partner, doll-maker Kathyrn Pollnac.

“ ‘Houses Under the Sea’ was written in February and March 2004, and was only my third attempt to write a short story as a first-person narrative,” Kiernan reveals. “For many years, I’d avoided fp, for a number of reasons, some perfectly valid and some admittedly questionable. But beginning with ‘Riding the White Bull’ and The Dry Salvages in 2003, I finally became intrigued enough with its possibilities that I began to experiment.

“When I finished ‘Houses Under the Sea’ on March 5th, I was still somewhat sceptical, though, as evidenced by this comment from my online journal entry from March 6th regarding the difficulty I was having finding a title for the piece: ‘If I had my druthers, it would have no title at all. In most cases, giving titles to first-person narratives only compounds the problems of disbelief. Not only am I to believe that Character X sat down and wrote this story for me to read, I’m to believe that she gave it a title.

“ ‘And if she didn’t, then who did? The author? No, Character X is the “author”; to believe otherwise defeats the illusion.’ Finally, I took a line from T. S. Eliot’s ‘East Coker’ for the title, as it seemed appropriate and the poem had served as one of the story’s central inspirations.”

I

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