Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's
Year's Best Horror and Fantasy
(1999)
Editor: Mercedes Lackey
Published in "Flights of Fantasy" -- 1999
| excerpt: I had fallen asleep last night without making a fire, and the stone walls now stood with cold permanence in the overcast morning light. The sound of the ocean echoed inside the hollow of my room. Odors of salt and seaweed hung in the air like new ghosts. Damp fog thickened the sky outside my arched window, and waves rolled in the distance, steel-colored swells capped with streaks of white foam that broke relentlessly against the rocky beach. I cleared my lungs with a deep breath, remembering the chore that awaited me.
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On Writing "A Gathering of Bones"
This was supposed to be Laura Resnick's story. Laura and I spoke briefly at San Antonio's Worldcon, and she was complaining about having accepted an assignment to write a short story with birds in it, and with all the exotic travel and books she had on her plate she just couldn't seem to get up enugh energy to get excited about a short story. I listened to her politely, then mentioned something about how terrible it must be to have too much work.
"You want to write it with me?" she immediately said, sensing fresh meat.
I waited a fashionable hundredth of a second, and said "Sure."
A short while later, I started cooking up a scheme to write with Carol Resnick. I figured I had already done something with Mike. Now I would write with Laura. All I needed was Carol to do the Resnick hat trick. So, I schemed.
So, I wrote the first draft, and sent it along.
"It's too good for me to do much," Laura wrote back. "So I'm sending a note to the assistant editor, askiing if it's all right if I just let your story stand. It think it'll be fine."
It was, and the rest is history.
So, I'm still scheming for the Resnick hat trick.