Announcing Sister, Maiden, Monster, a New Novel from Lucy A. Snyder

Announcing Sister, Maiden, Monster, a New Novel from Lucy A. Snyder

Lucy A. Snyder’s Sister, Maiden, Monster, a visceral story set in the aftermath of the planet’s disastrous transformation and told through the eyes of three women whose lives were upended by a virus that radically alters its victims, will be published by Nightfire in Fall 2022, with another novel to follow!

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Here’s what Lucy A. Snyder has to say:

“Sister, Maiden, Monster is a novel that I initially wasn’t convinced I’d ever write. It’s an expansion of my Bram Stoker Award-winning story ‘Magdala Amygdala,’ which has become my most frequently anthologized, podcast, and translated piece of fiction. Annie Neugebauer of LitReactor describes the story as, ‘the very best kind of ‘what the fuck.’ Weird and daring and so memorable that I still remember it some six years after reading it.’

‘Magdala Amygdala’ is a soft apocalypse story: humanity has been irrevocably changed by a virus that radically alters its victims… and yet life goes on. I used it to explore the natures of self-identity and memory along with the fears of disease and loss of self. I also employ an unreliable narrator to provide the reader with a story that can be interpreted in a variety of different ways.

I wrote the story after a stint working the weekend graveyard shift in a computer data center. The night shift can do horrible things to your brain after a while, because often you just don’t get the right kind of sleep (if you can sleep at all during the day; I never got the hang of it), and it kills your social life dead. I felt disconnected and zombified, and my short-term memory was starting to slip.

My tale came out of that experience, specifically my wondering what if I’d been put on that awful shift precisely because I was some kind of monster who couldn’t be allowed around normal people.

After the story was published, a good number of people asked me if I planned to expand it into a novel… and I just wasn’t sure. At the end of the story, the fate of both the narrator and the world seems pretty clear-cut… assuming you believe that her perceptions are complete, and completely reality-based. But later I started thinking: what if her perceptions and beliefs at that stage aren’t delusions or wrong, but simply incomplete? What if there’s much more happening than she realizes?

Sister, Maiden, Monster explores the planet’s disastrous transformation through the eyes of three women: Erin (the protagonist of ‘Magdala Amygdala’), Savannah (a legal sex worker working during the pandemic), and Mareva (a sufferer of chronic teratomas whose life and body are drastically changed by the virus).”

And from Kelly Lonesome, senior editor at Nightfire:

“I vividly remember the first time I read ‘Magdala Amygdala,’ and being able to bring a story as unique and explosive as Sister, Maiden, Monster to Nightfire is a delicious nightmare come true! Speaking of delicious – when you enter Lucy’s world, you will be faced with many dark hungers: for blood, for brains (and brain honey!), or for murder. If you think you know the apocalypse, you will be delighted to find there are still original, dark corners of it yet to be discovered. In this book, we follow three very different women trying to survive – and let me tell you, there is no team I would rather have by my side when the apocalypse comes than Erin, Savannah, and Mareva. Start prepping now – the journey begins next fall!”

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Sister, Maiden, Monster will hit shelves in Winter 2023!

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