This is dedicated to

Joss Whedon,

who may never read it,

and his enthusiastic fans known as the

Buffybuds, who will.

We thank Marty and John at Tekno Books for their inspiration, encouragement, and full-service smoothing of the way; our agents, Joshua Bilmes (Charlaine) and Joan Brandt (Toni); and finally, Ginjer Buchanan at Ace, who agreed this might be a good idea. We also want to thank the authors who contributed their stories to this anthology though they knew their editors were novices. That’s trust for you.

When we were approached about editing this anthology, we were like two kids with a new toy. We had some wonderful planning sessions about the theme. We decided to pick two apparently unrelated concepts—vampires (the dead) and birthdays (celebrations of life)—and see what different ways some very talented writers could combine the two.

After the great fun of drawing up a dream list of contributors and receiving their stories, we had to buckle down to the actual work of editing. We imagined the work would be tedious, or nerve-wracking, or possibly (horrors) boring. But it wasn’t. Every day a new story arrived was like—well, like a birthday.

It’s amazing what creative minds can do with the same theme. None of these stories are the same. Some of them are funny, and some of them are tragic, but all of them are fascinating. Read and enjoy.

CHARLAINE HARRIS

TONI L. P. KELNER

Charlaine Harris, New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, also writes books about Harper Connelly, a lightning-struck corpse locator. Charlaine has won the Anthony, the Sapphire, and two Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice awards. She lives in a small town in Arkansas with her husband, a duck, three dogs, and three children. Her website is simply www.charlaineharris.com, and she tries real hard to keep it up-to-date.