Well, if I am sharing space in an anthology with just a bunch of second-rate nobodies, ho hah, I'll have nothing to worry about! Lemme see. Who else is going to write somfink for Ol' Gardner. Hmm. Hm.

• Robert Silverberg. Uh. Didn't he write my favorite eerie little short story of all time NIGHTWINGS? And have a huge career spanning decades, during which he has never turned out any bad material? So I am in a little trouble.
  
• Dowling? Don't know if I've read him. Who else?
  
• Glen Cook. Oh. The author of The Dread Empire series, which I thought was absolutely top-notch. So I am in big trouble.
  
• Tanith Lee, author of maybe some of the best fantasy that has ever existed since pen was first put to page. Eerrk. Not just big trouble. Pull out your H.P. Lovecraft dictionary for appropriate words. My trouble is vast, impious, unspeakable, cyclopean.
  
• Kage Baker! Maybe if I put out my eyes like Oedipus, the fates will spare me.
  
• Elizabeth Moon, author of the Deed of Paksenarion, the world's first kick-ass hard military fantasy. Azathoth, come eat my brains now.
  
• Oh, Neil Gaiman. NO NEED TO FEEL INTIMIDATED THERE!! I AM SURE YOU CAN WRITE AS WELL AS GOOD OLD NEIL! Where are you, Azathoth? I have sharpened my brain-spoon for you, dread lord of the screaming abyss.
  
• Dan Simmons! Well, his Hyperion Cantos are, what would you say? The best and most imaginative books, best written, best character development, more perfect use of words, in, hey, fifty years? A hundred? A thousand? Let's be safe and call him the best writer to grasp the pen of the muses since the oceans drank Atlantis, and the pre-human kings ruled in the sacred valleys of what would one day be Egypt. Nope. I can match him! That is not too high a target to shoot at, is it?
• Mike Resnick! Yaarrrgh!
  
• Phyllis Eisenstein, who wrote a simply wonderful book Sorceror's Son, which I read and reread with great pleasure, and would recommend to anyone. Ach! Garn! It burns, my precious! My precioussss! The sunlight burns us, yesss, We hates it. Who else?
  
• Tad Williams, one of the best authors anywhere? Yeah, sure, I am HIS equal. Let me just finish the Greater Dread Ritual of the Pnakotic Manuscript. I think I can open the Multinonangular Door far enough, using the Voorish Sign, to stick my head into the thousand-dimensional non-spatial gap, and by wagging my tongue energetically, I can attract the attention of the blind, dim, mindless and tenebrous Other Gods, who lumber and dance in sickening and blasphemous contortions to the piping of a cursed flute held in the paws of the unnamed antiarchangel-slave of the Daemon-Sultan of the Great Outer Ones. Maybe one of them will eat my brain.
  
• Oh, Water Jon Williams, author of Aristoi, another personal favorite of mine, not to mention the eerie Metropolitan and his ground-breaking Hardwired.
  

Sure. I am up for this. I can write as well as any of them! Who says I cannot! Why-- why are my hands shaking?  Why is my pen writing like a snake in my grip? As soon as I get the sweat caused by panic out of my eyes-- or, no, I think I am sweating blood, a phenomenon physicians call hematidrosis-- it is not that unusual in those who are about to die a horrific yet supernaturally malignant death such as, for example to be BURNED TO A CRISP LIKE SEMELE FOR DARING TO APPEAR IN THE SAME BOOK WITH THE BEST FANTASY AUTHORS EVER --- oh, wait. Azathoth is here! Thank God. I mean, sorry. Thank Nyarlathotep!! That was just a slip.

He says (hard to tell with his million screaming mouths, none of them fully in this dimension) that I should buck up, and get some spine, gird up my loins like a man, and declare, if I have any understanding. Wow. I had no idea Cthuloid gods talked this way. What was the question?

AZATHOTH, HIDEOUS MULTIDIMENSIONAL FORMLESS ENTITY: You say you are intimidated by these other authors, right?

ME (Quivering): Indeed, devourer of universes.

AZATHOTH, HE WHOSE NAME NONE DARE SPEAK ALOUD: Come on. You are just being modest. You have written some good stuff. Wasn't one of your books up for an award?

ME (Quaking): Yes, great and uncouth lord! The Nebula. It was for Orphans of Chaos.

AZATHOTH, DAEMON-SULTAN OF THE OUTER ABYSS THAT BUBBLES AND BLASPHEMES AT THE CORE OF TIME: Hey, Chaos! I like that. Was that the book with the naughty schoolgirl spanking scene? Or maybe I am thinking of a John Norman book.

ME (embarrassed): Um. Yes, dread lord. That was the one.

AZATHOTH, ULTRACOSMIC AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE ARCHON OF NONHUMAN MADNESS: So, look. Just snap out of it, OK? These guys are good, but you are not bad. You can write passable and professional work. Right? Besides, you still have your soul, whereas Neil Gaiman sold his to me a while back. So it is all good. There is nothing to worry about.

ME (whimperin): N-nothing? You actually think I can write a good story?

AZATHOTH, ARCHSATANIC OVERLORD OF A BILLION LIFELESS DIMENSIONS OF NAMELESS HORROR: Sure, why not? Set it in your background for you Chaos books or something.

ME (cringing): Dread one, ah! This is a theme anthology. The stories are set in another author's background.

AZATHOTH, FORMLESS TERROR: Hah, ha! Well, no problemo, just as long as it is not the background of someone like Jack Vance, the best fricking fantasy author in the entire sidereal universe, he whose shoes you are not fit to clean with your tongue, you will be fine, just fine.

ME: Um. Actually. It, ah, is a Jack Vance anthology.

AZATHOTH: Oh.

ME: But your words fill me with confidence. great one! I am sure I can write something that will fit the bill. Ho, ho! Who is afraid of Robert Silverberg?!

AZATHOTH: Ah. Not so fast.

ME: What is it, Supreme One? What word escapes the portcullis of your teeth?

AZATHOTH: Those aren't teeth. It was just that... uh.... Jack Vance, you say?

ME: Yes, lord.

AZATHOTH: The Jack Vance? Dying Earth Jack Vance? Cugel the Clever, that guy? Lyonesse, The Green Pearl, and so on?

ME: The very same, dread lord.

AZATHOTH: There is not some other guy just happened to be named Jack Vance?

ME: No, sir.

AZATHOTH: You are going to match your, um, let us call them "writing skills" up against the standard of Jack Vance? You are trying to write a Vance-style story? A story which readers will inevitably compare to Jack Vance's writing?

ME: Yes, Lord.

AZATHOTH: Whoa. That's....

ME: Have you no words of encouragement, Dread Lord?

AZATHOTH: Hand me the brain spoon. Did you sharpen it?