Paula Guran's latest Year's Best roundup is now available, including "Vampire Lake" by yours truly. Bonus: This antho's also got a tale from my bride, Tia V. Travis ("Still"), so there's plenty of good reading from our casa contained between the covers.
While I'm at it, here's a chunk of an interview I did on the Prime Books website about the genesis of "Vampire Lake:"
PRIME: The mythology behind Vampire Lake is fantastic -- almost Lovecraftian -- as it constantly hints at something bigger and much worse, even though we never learn explicitly what that might be. How did you come up with this hellish setting and its inhabitants?
PARTRIDGE: The initial inspiration was a song of the same title by The Builders and the Butchers. It lit a fire under me. Of course, songs and stories are very different animals. Apart from the weird western aspect, "Vampire Lake" is at heart the tale of a quest. One of the great things about writing a quest story is designing the (in this case literal) hell through which your characters journey. I had fun riffing off legends of the Old West -- lost Conquistadors and hidden gold, etc. I tossed in an underground lake, albino gators, dead men made of shadows, and a vampire queen. Since I was writing about a cave, there was plenty of room down there and I did my best to fill it up...
To read the full interview, click here.
And to check out an interview with Tia about the genesis of "Still," click here.
