Prominent editor Ellen Datlow has chosen my friend Laura Blackwell's story, "Bitter Perfume," from the woman-authored, Lovecraft-inspired "She Walks In Shadows" anthology as one of her best of 2016 long-listed stories. 

The anthology is getting super reviews, Laura's an awesome writer, and this is a great, well-deserved honor. 

If you like Lovecraft, horror-fantasy, or just plain old good stories, please check it out.

-cg

After what can only be described as a sagging middle, the stories are starting to pick up steam again. 

Cthulhu of the Dead Sea: a new form of microbes are found living and thriving in the toxic salt levels of the Dead Sea.  Guess what happens when they're brought to a lab for study?

Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum: a young woman recounts her days in a mental institution after discovering something that should've remained hidden.  But some people are fully aware of what she found and want to know why she still lives.

Not bad at all.

(Originally posted on io9 by Shaenon Garrity)

H.P. Lovecraft was maybe not the most woman-friendly writer out there. His works teem oleaginously with many things, but not prominent female characters (although Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat and Mother of a Thousand Young, remains an inspiring role model for evil girls everywhere). But change is coming to the mythos: She Walks in Shadows, an upcoming anthology from Innsmouth Free Press, features an all-woman roster of 25 writers and almost a dozen artists writing and illustrating female-centric Lovecraft stories.

Some of the writers re-envision Lovecraft’s fiction from the viewpoint of his female characters, including Mother Hydra of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” Lavinia Whateley of “The Dunwich Horror,” Marceline of “Medusa’s Coil,” and even the landlady from “Cool Air.” Others feature original characters. Contributors were asked to avoid “the Asenath effect,” i.e., making every story about badass sorceress/antiheroine Asenath Waite, no matter how tempting it might be.

She Walks in Shadows is now available for preorder at $2 off the $15 cover price.