Lucy Taylor

Lucy Taylor is an American horror novel writer. Her novel, The Safety of Unknown Cities was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel and the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel in 1995, and the Deathrealm Award for Best Novel in 1996. Her collection The Flesh Artist was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award (Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection) in 1994.

Taylor has been called "The Queen of Erotic Horror" by Jasmine Sailing. The online Locus Index to Science Fiction (published by Locus Magazine) has also categorized several of her works as "erotic horror". Original short fiction of hers appears in all five volumes of the international anthology series, Exotic Gothic.

She has a B.A. in philosophy. Her early writing included non-fiction travel writing.

Partial bibliography

See the ISFDB listing in external links for a more complete bibliography, including works of short fiction.

Novels

Diss

Coordinates: 52°22′52″N 1°06′28″E / 52.3812°N 1.1079°E / 52.3812; 1.1079

Diss is a market town and electoral ward in Norfolk, England close to the border with the neighbouring East Anglian county of Suffolk, with a population of 7,572. (2011)

The town lies in the valley of the River Waveney, around a mere (lake) that covers 6 acres (2.4 ha). The mere is up to 18 feet (5.5 m) deep, although there is another 51 feet (16 m) of mud. The town takes its name from dic an Anglo-Saxon word meaning either ditch or embankment.

Diss has a number of historic buildings, including the early 14th century parish church. It is home to a museum. Diss railway station lies on the Great Eastern Main Line route from London to Norwich.

History

At the time of Edward the Confessor, Diss was part of the Hartismere hundred (a hundred was an administrative subdivision) of Suffolk, and it was recorded as such in the Domesday book. It is recorded as being in the king's possession as demesne (direct ownership) of the Crown, there being at that time a church and a glebe of 24 acres. This was considered to be worth £15 per annum, which had doubled by the time of William the Conqueror, it being then estimated at £30 with the benefit of the whole hundred and half, belonging to it. It was then found to be a league long, around 3 miles (5 km) and half this distance broad, and paid 4d. in Danegeld. From this it appears that it was still relatively small, but it grew shortly afterwards when it subsumed Watlingsete Manor, a neighbouring area, which was as large as Diss, and seemingly fuller of inhabitants, according to the geld or tax that it paid. This was afterwards called Walcote, and includes part of Heywode, as appears from its joining to Burston, into which town this manor extended.

DISS

DISS (Disability Information Services) is part of the Queen Elizabeth's Foundation for Disabled People (QEF), a charitable organisation based in Leatherhead, Surrey, England. The organisation has experience in producing databases of information relevant to the needs of disabled people, their families and carers, and has been successful in this field since the late 1980s.

Founded by QEF in 1989 as Disability Information Services Surrey, DISS was at first a telephone-based information resource for people living in Surrey to contact on an as-needed basis. Soon after its establishment, it became apparent that the vast amount of paper-based information needed to respond to telephone enquiries should ideally be computerised. Moreover, ever increasing Personal Computer power coupled with reducing PC costs enabled this computerisation to take place.

With these two factors in mind, DISS developed its own database of disability information for in-house use, which was subsequently named DissBASE. Using DissBASE, DISS workers could respond more quickly, and with a greater degree of accuracy, to inbound telephone enquiries. In these early days however, the majority of enquiries came from within the Surrey county border.