Lucky Girl, How I Became a Horror Writer: A Krampus Story
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.
M. Rickert
Mary Rickert, known as M. Rickert (born 1959), is an American writer of fantasy fiction. Many of her stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her first collection, Map of Dreams, was published by Golden Gryphon Press in 2006; her second collection, Holiday, appeared in 2010 from the same publisher. She lives in Wisconsin.
Rickert's fiction has won or been nominated for several major awards. "Journey into the Kingdom" was nominated for the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and an International Horror Guild Award, and won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Map of Dreams won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection and the 2007 Crawford Award, and the collection's title story was nominated for the 2007 World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.