Welcome to issue #161 of Nightmare Magazine! This one marks my fifth anniversary as editor-in-chief here at Nightmare, a number which feels both impossible—where did the time go?!!—and delightful. I’ve had so much fun at the magazine over the past five years, and I feel like our work has really been resonating with folks. We’ve had two Nebula Award nominees, three Stoker Award nominations for fiction, one Stoker nomination for nonfiction, a World Fantasy nominee, a Eugie Award winner, two Locus nominations for fiction, five Shirley Jackson nominations (one of which took home the award), and I’ve been nominated for the Locus award for Best Editor two times. Wow! That recognition feels really good.
But that stuff isn’t the reason why I’m so excited about this job. What’s great is knowing that over the course of sixty issues, I’ve gotten to work with amazing human beings who love dark fiction and horror scholarship. From our fantastic volunteers to our brilliant writers, every person behind an issue of Nightmare is absolutely thrilled to make something for you, our readers. We’re so grateful for you and the time you share with us.
Making a horror magazine is a real labor of love, and February is the season where we celebrate all things loving and relation-full. This issue really dives into the language of the heart. Everdeen Mason’s story “The Ghost in Apartment 5K” is about a relationship between a ghost and her new—living—housemate. In “Twelve Facts About the Dermestid Beetle,” Marisca Pichette writes about one woman’s care and love for a creature whose habits resonate with her more deeply than her connections to human beings. Pedro Iniguez returns to our pages with a flash story “Rest Stop” (do not model your relationships on the ones in this story) and Matthew Wollin has an unsettling poem (“when i die”) about one person’s relationship with death.
Our nonfiction spins away from love and relationships a bit, but it’s all focused on a topic that I adore: writing and writers. When Elizabeth Broadbent reached out to me about writing an essay investigating the love Southern Gothic writers have for their imagined towns, I didn’t know it would be scheduled for our February issue, but it made the perfect installment in our H Word column this month. Scholar Mike Thorn has created a new Plumbing the Depths reader’s guide for horror works about writers. And of course, our interview team sat down with our short fiction writers to learn more about their writing process and inspirations.
It’s another terrific issue of Nightmare Magazine, and I’m so happy to share it with you. Here’s looking forward to another year exploring in the dark!
