Along a similar line, the genre and/or thematic path some writers take are chosen because a doorway opens up and, if there is success in terms of a sale, money, good feedback, and the potential for more of the same, often the writer keeps driving in that lane. I, for example, never intended or wanted to write fiction for teens. But a novella I wrote for Christopher Golden’s New Dead anthology—which was marketed exclusively to adult readers—somehow put me on the YA radar. My agent took that story out and suddenly I had a multi-book deal—the biggest of my career to that point—for post-apocalyptic zombie novels for kids. The first in that series, Rot & Ruin, is required reading in hundreds of schools and remains my biggest-selling book. And I wound up writing six sequels.

When opportunity knocks, sometimes you invite it for more than a cup of coffee. Sometimes it pulls a Gandalf and invites you along for quite a long and unexpected adventure.

And, sometimes a publisher, an editor, an agent, or a magazine becomes a kind of magnetic lighthouse, in that it shines so brightly you take notice, and it pulls you toward it.

Weird Tales was that for a lot of writers. A hell of lot of them. Some you’ve never heard of, some who were one-shot wonders, and some who not only yielded to that magnetic pull…but ran toward it like Olympic sprinters.

With the stories collected in this volume and its companion (Weird Tales: Best of the Early Years 1923-25), we get a snapshot of young writers, largely or completely unknown at the time, who went on to become key figures in genre fiction.

The careers of some key contributors are inextricably tied to Weird Tales. The two that most quickly spring to mind are Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.