I don’t know what your local grocery store looks like this month, but when February rolls around, the Safeway up the street from my house nearly bursts open with pink stuffed animals, pink boxes of candy, pink accessories, and pink baked goods.

Welcome to another year celebrating horror and dark fantasy fiction! We’re excited to scare, unsettle, nauseate, amuse, and depress you—because we believe in the power of horror to do all of those things. It’s truly a genre for everyone and every palate, the perfect realm to explore all the complicated, dark facets of the human condition.

The horror genre is often defined by its use of terror, suspense, gruesomeness, and mounting dread. These are important tools in a horror writer’s toolbox, and none is more important or useful than any of the others. I didn’t set out to celebrate dread in this issue . . .

November inspires me to bring out the fuzzy blankets and all my favorite comfort reads, like the fantasy novels that inspired me to get into writing in the first place (Pamela Dean and Charles L. Grant, I am looking at you). Which is why I’m extremely glad that way, way back in the spring, I decided to make November our first-ever all dark fantasy issue.

These stories are beautiful, well-written pieces that shout about the way our society has simply stopped caring about certain populations of people. As allegories both delightful and painful to read, they do the kind of work that only speculative fiction can do, and I am honored to present them to you.

I don’t need to dig into Lovecraft’s backstory. If you don’t know that he’s a deeply racist person who let his problematic ideas bleed cruelty all over the horror genre, you’ve either been asleep for a few decades or you just started reading this stuff.

Of all the classic urban legends, the story of the babysitter sharing a building with a murderous caller has always been my favorite. That punchline at the end is the perfect descriptor for an endless array of horrors, because a house can stand in for so many other things.

Those early years of my life have given me a deep appreciation for a genre of fiction you might call “Financial Horror.” Stories in this genre start with bills in the mail or a leaking roof and end with big, grim consequences, especially when financial difficulties slam up against supernatural disasters. Our two full-length short stories this issue land squarely on the “Financial Horror” side of the ledger.

One of the things I love best about my life is that I get to be a part of the amazing, weird, and wonderful horror community. The horror community is a place for fans of all kinds—from folks who enjoy watching the occasional Netflix release all the way through people who obsessively collect and comment on special issues of whatever medium or merch calls their name. Every horror creator I’ve met has been a fan of the genre in some way, shape, or form.

When I was a freshman in college, eager to knock out all those pesky general education requirements before I dug in and got serious about my major, I signed up for Phil. 207: Early Modern Philosophy, 1500-1750. Philosophy, as I understood it from shelving books as a library volunteer, had something to do with world religions, alien abduction, and/or hallucinogenic drugs. I didn’t know they were into all of that in 1500, but I expected I was in for a fun time.