In a bit less than a month, Love is Hell, an anthology edited by Farrin Jacobs for Harper Collins will be out. It contains stories by me and Melissa Marr, Laurie Faria Stolarz, Scott Westerfeld and Gabrielle Zevin. I’ve only read Scott’s story, which is one of my favourites of his, and I heartily recommend it, but I’m sure the others are just as fab.

My story is called “Thinner Than Water” and is the longest short story I’ve ever published. In fact, I think it secretly wants to be a novel. It’s also one of the few I’m happy (ish) with. So I decided to share a teaser with you.1 Enjoy!

I’ve been working on this story on and off for well over a decade. It’s based on various Demon Lover ballads and, I realised just today, stories, too. Like this one by Elizabeth Bowen, which I read many, many times as a teenager. And various ones by Shirley Jackson collected in The Lottery and Other Stories, which I didn’t read till well into my twenties.

But those stories stuck, oh, how they stuck.

I think upon reading “Thinner Than Water” you too will see the influence.

Don’t you love how stories beget stories? I sure do.

1. Though be aware this is the pre-copy editing version. [↩]