SD: Your last novel (that we know of) -- The Shaft -- was published in 1990. Since then most of your fiction has been short story length? Do you prefer writing in the short form? Does it serve the style of fiction you write better than novel length?

DJS: True. Yes. Yes, definitely. And yes.

SD: Has the relative lack of professional markets for short horror fiction had an impact on your writing? It seems there are very few professional magazines, and a shrinking number of anthologies receptive to the type of fiction you write.

DJS: If that was true, I'd have an ever-growing inventory of unpublished stories. I don't. It's hard enough keeping something technically "unpublished" just to retain a brand-new tidbit or two for the next collection. What is true is that a magazine market for horror stories is nonexistent in a practical sense -- by that, I mean for any sort of mainstream audience -- and the anthology market is extremely narrow. On the other hand, internet markets have matured, and gotten legit enough to begin paying real money for stories. Everything I write remains spoken-for relatively quickly, and 75% of the stories go to reprint markets, as well. It's true that Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine is gone, and Larry Flynt's Rage only lasted one year and two months, exactly. On the other hand, specialty press publishers are more able to pay serious money for new stories than they were a decade ago, plus certain small presses can "boutique" authors in a way mainstream publishers would find unthinkable.  Small presses in general are also becoming adept at inventing really bizarre anthologies to fill the gap left by the lack of those by the so-called mainstream.
What keeps this market banging away, year after year, if anthologies are as dead as two or three nitwits in New York have been claiming all their lives? Could it be, perhaps, because such people are know-nothings whose sole corporate purpose is to stay nose-to-butt, on the sniff for a blockbuster they can use to perpetuate their flatulent jobs? If the industry is completely subjugated to the best-seller mentality, isn't it in the best interests of such worker bees to sabotage anthologies at every turn? Don't get me started.
The first horror books I ever bought were anthologies, or collections (most people don't distinguish between the two) and I'm willing to bet that's true for a lot of people who have a taste for scary stories. I'd rather crack an anthology any day, and sample assorted stories, and risk a turkey or two, than plow my way grimly through a stack of novels, most of which will inevitably prove to be short story ideas bloated way beyond their weight limit.

SD: Some of the theme anthologies published in the last few years have been so specific, or shared-worldish, that contributions by the individual authors don't hold up well when read outside of the anthology's context. Has this posed any problems for you've extracted stories you wrote for theme anthologies for your own single-author collections?

DJS: I think the answer is no; I've either been blessed, or had the foresight not to get immured in any anthology whose theme was just too stupid to live. Here's a weird example: John Betancourt asked me, during a convention, if I'd be willing to write a story for one of three books he was editing at the time for Byron Preiss -- The Ultimate Frankenstein, The Ultimate Dracula, The Ultimate Werewolf. My immediate response was, "that idea is too stupid to live; no thanks." I mean, a whole book of Frankenstein stories? Eep! Most of them were damned to be lame pastiches, and the whole enterprise sounded as artless as could be imagined. There was no way to twist this to fit me.
Inevitably, by the next morning I had an idea. Being a smartass, I thought I'd write a story including the Frankenstein Monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man -- the primary theory being that if the subsequent books were sabotaged by their own limitations, my story could be printed in all three. The result was "Last Call for the Sons of Shock," which I think passes the test of a decent story because it stands on its own without the theme anthology to prop it up. It was bought, many times, for reprint, sort of validating the notion that it could fit in many places. And not coincidentally, it became the middle story of a triptych about Hollywood monsters -- "Monster Movies" (1990), "Last Call ..." (1993) and "(Melodrama)" (1996). I suppose "Gills" is an adjunct to the triptych.
 What usually happens is the reverse of what you posit -- editors do theme anthologies and ask for stories; I have stories possessing some aspect that happens to fit the theme, or can be interpreted, without too much arm-twisting, to at least be not-hostile to the theme. What usually happens is that Ellen Datlow and Stephen Jones and others are quite forgiving where themes are concerned, and I hope it's because I try not to disappoint them in return for that consideration.

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