Still Floating: 40 Years of Pennywise contributor Lee Murray

Yes, Lee Murray is real. She was unable to attend StokerCon this year but clearly she was missed and we had to settle for a cardboard cutout and memories of Stokers past.

I met Lee many years ago when she was listening to pitches for Omnium Gatherum. I spent an endless ten minutes blathering on about my novella and making no sense. Instead of dismissing me for the incoherent lunatic I sounded like and calling Security, Lee somehow managed to distill my ramblings into something she was interested in. The story, along with another novella, became Backwater.

Fast forward to 2024 when the idea for The Rack was forming. I knew I had to have a Lee Murray story and she knocked it out of the park (and broke my heart) with her story, "The Mall".

I'm thrilled to be working with Lee again on Still Floating. Her essay, "Deconstructing Derry," is an in-depth look at Derry, and the possibility of it being Anytown, even Lee's own hometown of Hamilton in New Zealand.

Lee's bio:

Lee Murray ONZM is a writer, editor, poet and screenwriter, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, Lee holds a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Among her works are feature film Grafted (Propaganda-Fluroblack) directed by Sasha Rainbow, horror anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press) co-edited with Dave Jeffery, and Oversight: Erasure Poetry (RIZE) a collaboration with Carina Bissett. www.leemurray.info