Horror World talks to Ellen Datlow
by Blu Gilliand

Ellen Datlow knows what scares you.

She’s spent more than two decades chronicling fear in the form of anthologies – most notably The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Best Horror of the Year, not to mention stacks of themed anthologies touching on everything from ghost stories to vampires to Edgar Allen Poe. Recently she’s been hard at work on Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, which showcases some of the best work from one of the genre’s most prolific and memorable periods. Ellen was kind enough to take a few moments with Horrorworld to discuss her love of, and approach to, her work.

HW: A common question asked of writers is “Where do you get your ideas?” Well, considering the different types of themed anthologies you’ve put before us – from Poe to Lovecraft and seemingly everything in between – where do you get your ideas?

ED: Different ideas for themed anthologies come from different places. Some anthologies are suggested by a publisher— Poe was suggested by the editors at Solaris because of the forthcoming Poe Bicentennial.

Others were ideas I came up with – like Lovecraft Unbound, which was inspired by the title I came up with on a whim. Lovecraft Unbound and my earlier vampirism anthologies Blood is not Enough and A Whisper of Blood (and The Dark) all came about because I wanted to edit anthologies that were about more than vampires, more than Lovecraftian pastiches, and a ghost story anthology that was filled with stories that were dark instead of or in addition to be moving. Doing theme anthologies with broader boundaries, is more satisfying to me than staying strictly behind those boundaries.

Sometimes a co-editor suggests the theme. My long-time collaborator on the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (Terri Windling) got the idea for our adult fairy tale series from her friend, artist Tom Canty, and that let to our first original anthology collaboration, the very successful Snow White, Blood Red. Terri also came up with the idea of a vampire anthology for teens and I came up with the title, Teeth.

After the thousands of stories you’ve read over the years, what does it take to surprise you?

I don't need to be surprised. I need to be seduced as a reader. Seduced into the narrative I'm reading—I want to get lost in the story. What might help this happen? An indefinable quality that might consist of a different authorial point of view or tone, but mostly a well-told story with characters with whom I want to spend time.

A reviewer recently mentioned that I seemed to like stories that begin with an interesting character and I can't disagree with that. I don't look for anything specific as I read, just the ability of the story to carry me along to its conclusion.

After 21 volumes of the The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, you’re now editing the series Best Horror of the Year. Aside from, presumably, the absence of fantasy fiction, how are you looking to differentiate the two?

I was never involved with the fantasy half of YBFH so there isn't any difference really. The only thing I would like to do/have that I don't is more wordage. I'd like to be able to include a novella or two.

Walk us through the selection process of a Best Of anthology.

I read short stories throughout the year and as I read I write down the titles/authors/venues of stories that impress me on some level. Those become my Honorable Mentions. Once in a while I read a story and immediately know it's going to be chosen for the book. If that's the case I contact the author and buy the story then and there and add it to be table of contents. But generally, if I really like a story on its first read but am not immediately blown away by it, I'll place an asterisk by it and ask the author or publisher for the word count and for a word file so I can reread it at my leisure. Towards the end of the year I begin rereading all the stories I've got asterisked, and from that point on it's a process of elimination. I need to get my word count for the book down to 125,000 words so some of the stories that make the cut are read by me as much as five times until I make up my mind. The stories that stay with me, that continue to have an impact on me no matter how many times I read them, are the ones that end up in the book.

Your new anthology Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, collects work from 1984 to 2005. Why that particular time period?

Initially I was thinking of going up to 2010 and covering 25 years, but I just couldn't do it for reasons of budget and scheduling of the anthology. My publisher and I liked the idea of beginning with Clive Barker, whose Books of Blood made such a huge impact on the horror field at that time.

Was it hard to represent that particular period and still get stories that haven’t been reprinted over and over already?

It depended completely on how prolific each author was during that period. I tried to not have too many stories from the same year—-that was the trickiest part of the process. For example, I took two stories each from 1984 and 1988, three from 1992, two from 1993, 1995, and 1999. I tried to balance taking my favorite stories and avoiding the stories that had been most reprinted. Of course, there's a reason those stories are often reprinted—they're damned good. So I ended up taking Clive Barker's “Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament, Peter Straub's “The Juniper Tree,” and Poppy Z. Brite's “Calcutta, Lord of Nerves.” But because Steve Rasnic Tem, Dennis Etchison, and Ramsey Campbell were so prolific during this period, choosing under-reprinted stories by them was easy.

Also, several of the writers in Darkness are not as well known for their horror as in other genres-- so I figured the audience wouldn't be familiar with such stories as Pat Cadigan's “Power and the Passion,” Lucius Shepard's “A Little Night Music,” and Neil Gaiman's “Eaten (Scenes from a Moving Picture).”

And finally, I chose lesser known stories that have always been among my favorites such as Edward Bryant's “Dancing Chickens” that was written just as he was moving from science fiction into horror and is a mixture of both genres; Dan Simmons' Two Minutes Forty-Five Seconds,” another sf/horror story that I commissioned for OMNI many years ago and is not very well-known, and George R. R. Martin's “The Pear-Shapded Man”—which although won the very first Bram Stoker Award, is likely virtually unknown by the fans of his bestselling fantasy series.

What writers do you see as the future of horror?

There are so many I can only name a few but I see excellent work being published by Laird Barron, Reggie Oliver, Nathan Ballingrud, John Langan, Gemma Files, Kaaron Warren, E. Michael Lewis, Micaela Morrissette, Miranda Siemienowicz. Glen Hirshberg, Steve Duffy, Margaret Ronald, Daniel Kaysen, Dale Bailey, Norman Prentiss, Sarah Monette, Stephen Graham Jones, Nina Allen, M. Rickert,  Margo Lanagan, Don Tumasonis, Carole Johnstone —some of these have been writing and publishing for several years and have novels out, others are just starting to enter the public consciousness. And there are dozens more.

What impact do you see digital media having on the publishing industry?

I hope that more people will read short stories on their portable devices but I don't feel I can predict how the digital revolution will influence publishing in general.

What’s coming down the road from Ellen Datlow?

That's easy. My love for the short story. I was just talking to my mom about this (we were talking about retirement and finance) and said “I'll never retire—I've no reason to. I love what I do and there's no reason I can't keep on doing it until I die.” I've been lucky to have discovered a career that I love—as long as I get paid enough to live on for doing the kinds of anthologies I enjoy editing, I'll be happy.

I don't like to talk about specific anthologies I'm working on until they're almost done as my anthologies are generally invitation only, but I'm in the middle of two original theme anthologies that are due this summer. I'm hoping to sell an original theme anthology I've been interested in editing for a long time. I've finally started to seriously write the proposal. Terri and I are in the midst of trying to sell a new YA anthology. I'm hoping that after that she can write up the proposal for another theme anthology for adults that I think would be a lot of fun.

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