INTRODUCTION

Aftershock is another instance where I can answer the where-do-your-stories-come-from? question.

Early in the year Peter Crowther e-mailed me about contributing an offbeat ghost story (somewhere in the 5K-word neighborhood) for an anthology he was editing, Hauntings. I said thanks, no, up to my lower lip and all that, and put it out of my head.

A few weeks or months later I came across a newspaper article about a support group for survivors of lightning strikes. Survivors? Could there be that many? Turned out there are—most of them along Florida’s “lightning alley.” Some had been hit three, even four times.

Four times? Almost sounded as if they were trying to get hit. Whoa…now there was a hook if I ever heard one. But why would someone want to get hit by lightning? I knew a story lurked there.

And then Peter’s ghost anthology bobbed to the surface and I had my answer.

After a trip to Venice and seeing a thunderstorm sweep through the Piazza San Marco, I had a location for the framing sequence.

Aftershock tied up late (October) and at nearly three times the word count Peter could handle, so I never sent it to him. Instead, Shawna McCarthy took it for Realms of Fantasy. But it will always be Peter Crowther’s story.

It was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and—wonder of wonders—won. After many trips to the altar as a bridesmaid, I’d finally come away with a ring.

And you know…it was kind of anticlimactic. Like that old Peggy Lee song, “Is That All There Is?” I didn’t even attend the ceremony—had Peter Straub accept it for me. The cool little haunted house sits on my mantle and looks nice there, but where’s the thrill?