Ellen Datlow

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Articles

Wolf Moon, Antler Moon

Jan 13, 2025 | reactormag.com | A.C. Wise |Ellen Datlow

In one small town, the delicate balance between predator and prey is threatened when five girls are murdered on prom night. Novelette | 14,080 wordsProm Night, Wolf MoonShe can’t stop seeing them—the doe-girl skins hanging from the wall, turned inside out, cut and changed so the girls could never find their way inside them again. She can’t stop hearing the things left behind. Not girls or deer anymore. Peeled, glistening raw and red under the spinning lights. Gleaming muscle and white fat.
Bright Hearts - Reactor

Oct 16, 2024 | reactormag.com | Kaaron Warren |Ellen Datlow

A florist becomes obsessed with the strange, haunting red flowers she buys from an equally strange old lady…I hadn’t seen the old lady with her pram full of flowers for months. In A Bunch of Love, we joked our takings were up; without her five-dollar bunches of flowers, people came in to us instead. My boss didn’t find it funny. “You know she steals those flowers? No outlay.”“And spends the profit on bad men,” I said. I kind of loved the resourcefulness of the old lady.
Parthenogenesis - Reactor

Oct 2, 2024 | reactormag.com | Stephen Jones |Ellen Datlow

When their rental truck breaks down, two friends moving cross-country kill time by telling stories about the strange carving in front of the motel where they’re awaiting a mechanic . . . “It’s a bear, isn’t it?” Matty asks, his voice riding a ramp up. “That’s what they look like?”He’s talking about the ten-foot-tall wooden statue in front of the one-story motel in a town in western Colorado neither he nor Jac had planned on stopping in for a whole afternoon.
Breathing Constellations

Jun 5, 2024 | reactormag.com | Rich Larson |Ellen Datlow

Misunderstanding threatens a commune whose survival is dependent on precise communication with another species…“They don’t want to talk, Vega.”Vega readjusted the waterproof screen hooked to their sonar. The pod was still circling below, graceful black-and-white behemoths rendered as drifting pixels. The babeltech transmitter was still functional, squealing a standard Patagonian greeting into the dark waves. But just like yesterday, and all the days prior, not a single orca spoke back.
The Best Horror of the Year Volume Sixteen TOC:

Apr 30, 2024 | ellendatlow.com | Ellen Datlow

The Best Horror of the Year Volume Sixteen TOC:The Importance of a Tidy Home Christopher Golden Dodger Carly Holmes Rock Hopping Adam L.G. Nevill That Maddening Heat Ray Cluley Jack O’Dander Priya Sharma The Assembled Ramsey Campbell R is For Remains Steve Rasnic Tem The Louder I Call, the Faster It Runs E.
In Datlow We Trust: How Ellen Datlow Became an Instant Buy for Many

Mar 19, 2024 | alphascourt.blog | Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow has been editing sf/f/h short fiction for over four decades. She was Fiction Editor of OMNI Magazine for seventeen years, then Editor of SCIFICTION, the fiction arm of the SCIFI Channel’s website, for six years. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com and its horror imprint, Nightfire.
Median - Reactor

Mar 13, 2024 | reactormag.com | Kelly Robson |Ellen Datlow

A professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers…When Carla’s little car broke down on the highway, she was in the fast lane, and instead of pulling over to the far side of the road, she had to stop on the median. She sat there, jiggling the wheel with one hand and fiddling the ignition with the other, a hot, low sun glaring through the hatchback’s rear glass.
Liminal Spaces

Jan 17, 2024 | tor.com | Maureen F. McHugh |Katherine Lam |Ellen Datlow

An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…When she got off the plane, Amelia was thinking about her boyfriend, Jerome. They’d been arguing about the laundry. “If you want me to do the laundry, just tell me to do it!” Jerome had said. They’d been together for six years. During the pandemic they’d bought a townhouse in South Austin and were now in huge joint debt, plus Amelia’s student loan.
Pretty Good Neighbor

May 24, 2023 | tor.com | Jeffrey Ford |Ellen Datlow

There are worse things than a local gangster’s cronies lurking in New Jersey’s wetlands…It was a June night, warm but breezy. Lynn and the kids had gone to bed, and I was sitting out next to the giant rose bush with my neighbor Phil. The back of our house faced across our small yard and garden, to the side of the Victorian his dad had left him. We were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and weed.
Jeffrey Ford

May 24, 2023 | tor.com | Jeffrey Ford |Ellen Datlow

I see a lot of reading lists offered by readers and writers around Halloween time, which is great, but three quarters of them have different variations of the same works. It’s hard to avoid Stephen King, simply because there are so many terrific short stories you might choose. On the other hand, you also get a tsunami of H. P. Lovecraft, which, for my money, is akin to a fist full of Ambien. To each his own, I suppose.