“The perfect sinister tale for a cold winter’s night.”—A. C. Wise
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Lucky Girl, How I Became A Horror Writer: A Krampus Story, written by World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson-winning author M. Rickert. A story of loneliness, grief, and ever-present monsters, Lucky Girl is, per the words of Steve Rasnic Tem, “a fabulous paean to the horror story [and] an elaborate and creepy metafictional meal,” forthcoming on September 13th from Tordotcom Publishing.
Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the local diner—all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is—she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. One that’s seasonally appropriate.
But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas tale—or one’s past—can never be tamed once unleashed.
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Lucky Girl
Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, M. Rickert worked as a kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and personnel assistant in Sequoia National Park. She has published three short story collections: Map of Dreams, Holiday, and You Have Never Been Here. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, was published in 2014, and won the Locus award. Her second novel, The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie was published in 2021. She is the winner of the Crawford Award, World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award. She has also lost several awards for which she was nominated, including the Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award. She currently lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
