Kissing Carrion (26 page)

Born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada,
GEMMA FILES
has been a film critic, teacher, and screenwriter. She won the 1999 International Horror Guild short fiction award for her story “The Emperor's Old Bones,” which appears in her collection
The Worm in Every Heart.
Both it and her earlier collection,
Kissing Carrion
, feature stories that were adapted into episodes of
The Hunger
, an anthology TV show produced by Ridley and Tony Scott's Scot Free Productions. She has also published two chapbooks of poetry. Her first novel,
A Book of Tongues: Volume One of the Hexslinger Series
(ChiZine Publications, 2010), was a Stoker first novel finalist and won a
DarkScribe Magazine
Black Quill award for “Best Small Press Chill” in both the Editor's and Readers' Choice categories.
A Rope of Thorns
(2011) and
A Tree of Bones
(2012) complete the trilogy. An Omnibus Edition including three new Hexverse short stories (“Hexmas,” “Like A Bowl of Fire” and “In Scarlet Town (Today)”) was released in December, 2013.
We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven
, a story-cycle of linked short fiction, was released in August, 2014. Her latest novel,
Experimental Film
, will be released in November, 2015. You can find out more about Gemma Files at
http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com
.

“Introduction,” copyright © 2003 by Caitlin R. Kiernan.

“Kissing Carrion,” copyright © 2003 by Gemma Files, originally published here for the first time.

“Keepsake,” copyright © 1995 by Gemma Files, first published in
Palace Corbie #7
.

“Rose-Sick,” copyright © 1996 by Gemma Files, first published in
Seductive Spectres
.

“Blood Makes Noise,” copyright © 1998 by Gemma Files, first published in
Transversions #11
.

“Skeleton Bitch,” copyright © 1994 by Gemma Files, first published in
Palace Corbie #5
.

“Folly,” copyright © 2001 by Gemma Files, first published on the
World Fantasy Convention 2001 CD-Rom
.

“Mouthful Of Pins,” copyright © 1994 by Gemma Files, first published in
Northern Frights 2
.

“Pretend That We're Dead,” copyright © 2000 by Gemma Files, first published in the ezine
Three-Lobed Burning Eye #7
.

“No Darkness But Ours,” copyright © 2001 by Gemma Files, first published in the ezine
Twilight Showcase
.

“Job 37,” copyright © 2002 by Gemma Files, first published in
Dark Terrors 6
.

“Bear-Shirt,” copyright © 2000 by Gemma Files, first published in
Queer Fear
.

“Hidebound,” copyright © 1997 by Gemma Files, first published in
Transversions #5
.

“Skin City,” copyright © 1995 by Gemma Files, first published in
A Kind of Crimson Evil
, a chapbook from
Obelesk Press
.

“Seen,” copyright © 2001 by Gemma Files, first published in
The Narrow World,
a chapbook from
Quantum Theology Publications
.

“Torch Song,” copyright © 1998 by Gemma Files, first published in
Transversions #8/9, Spring/Summer issue
.

“The Diarist,” copyright © 1997 by Gemma Files, first published in
Transversions #7
.

“Dead Bodies Possessed By Furious Motion,” copyright © 2001 by Gemma Files, first published in
The Narrow World
, a chapbook from
Quantum Theology Publications
.

“Afterword,” copyright © 2003 by Gemma Files.