M. Rickert

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 the short story collections Map of Dreams, Holiday, and You Have Never Been Here. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, won the Locus award. Her second novel was The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie. 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.

Rickert's new novella is Lucky Girl.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I kept going back and forth between the subtitles, A Krampus Story and A Christmas Story. I worried that if I landed on Christmas, readers might expect something along the lines of an inspirational memoir whereas using Krampus in the title immediately clarifies that it is fiction. Some readers are disappointed that the Krampus are not more present than they are. There's a similar issue with my use of the word, "horror" as a descriptor. Some readers expect that word to come with blood, but the kind of horror I write is always more shadows than blood. Still, I can't imagine what else I would have called it.

What's in a name?

The main character, Roanoke, is named after the Virginia settlement that became a sort of historical mystery. This is meant as an indication of her parent's personalities, but also hopefully lends an air of dislocation to the character, herself. She goes by the name, Ro, however, which is a tougher sound, and reflects the way she has sought to build her own identity after her family's tragedy.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Teenage me would be thrilled to look up from writing her strange stories about teachers who murder (sent in to a local newspaper for a writing contest for which they got several complaints) and the girl whose cute imaginary friend followed her into high school before revealing a very dark side, to find a copy of this novella, a token from the future and an incentive to not give up on her dreams of being a writer. In fact, since these sort of things usually arrive with an erasure of the memory, let's assume that's exactly what did happen.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I don't usually get ideas for stories but, rather, feelings or the sense of a voice which often arrives with a first line or paragraph. The first line of Lucky Girl, particularly "I have to tell you I stole it" was something I heard years ago at a Christmas gift exchange, and knew right away that it would be part of a story. The ending always has a lot of work to do, and I suppose I find more difficult. I have this theory that my muse offers me fool's gold first to see if I fall for it. That would be an ending that technically works but lands kind of flat. It can be a bit of a struggle to recognize when that is happening and then abandon it in search for something better. I like an ending that lands with some resolve as well as some sense of an opening, something that lingers like smoke after the last word.

Learn more about Lucky Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue