Welcome to issue twenty-three of Nightmare!

The Shirley Jackson Awards were presented at Readercon in mid-July. As you may recall, Nightmare’s “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides” by Sam J. Miller was nominated, as was Maria Dahvana Headley’s “The Traditional,” from our sister-magazine, Lightspeed. We’re thrilled to report that Sam’s story won, and thus “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides” becomes Nightmare’s first award-winning story! Congrats to Sam, and to all of the other winners and nominees, of which you can see the full list at shirleyjacksonawards.org/award-winners. If you missed Sam’s story when it was first published, you’ll find it in our December 2013 issue and at nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/57-reasons-for-the-slate-quarry-suicides.

In other awards news, the 2014 World Fantasy Award nominations have been announced. No Nightmare or Lightspeed stories made the ballot (nor anything from my anthologies), but yours truly was once again nominated in the “Special Award, Professional” category for my work editing anthologies and magazines. That marks the sixth time I’ve been nominated for the World Fantasy Award (three times each in this category and the anthology category). I’m honored to again be nominated, but of course I also wish to congratulate the other nominees. You can see all of this year’s finalists at worldfantasy.org/awards.

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In case you missed it last month, my latest anthology, HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects came out. It’s an anthology of science fiction/fantasy stories told in the form of fictional crowdfunding project pitches, using the components (and restrictions) of the format to tell the story. This includes but is not limited to: Project Goals, Rewards, User Comments, Project Updates, FAQs, and more. The idea is to replicate the feel of reading a crowdfunding pitch, so that even though the projects may be preposterous in the real world, they will feel like authentic crowdfunding projects as much as possible.

Although it’s mostly SF/fantasy, there’s some stuff in there for horror fans as well, such as Kat Howard’s story “Locally Grown, Organic,” which is about a chef seeking to open a restaurant whose exclusive source of protein on the menu is the flesh of human babies. So, you know, that’s pretty dark! In any case, the anthology is on sale now. To learn more, visit johnjosephadams.com/robot-army.

In other anthology news, the next installment of The Apocalypse Triptych—the apocalyptic anthology series I’m co-editing with Hugh Howey—comes out next month. The new volume, The End is Now, focuses on life during the apocalypse. The first volume, The End is Nigh—about life before the apocalypse—is on sale now. Pop over to johnjosephadams.com/apocalypse-triptych for more information.

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With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

We have original fiction from Desirina Boskovich (“Dear Owner of This 1972 Ford Crew Cab Pickup”) and Ben Peek (“Upon the Body”), along with reprints by Tia V. Travis (“The Kiss”) and Simon Strantzas (“Out of Touch”).

We also have the latest installment of our column on horror, “The H Word,” written this month by Lucy A. Snyder, plus author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview. And for our ebook readers, we’ve got an excerpt from the novel Proud Parents, by Kristopher Rufty.

That’s about all I have for you this month. Thanks for reading!