The Lord of the Looking Glass and Other Stories

The Lord of the Looking Glass is the first collection of stories by Fiona McGavin and showcases her extraordinary talent for taking genre tropes and turning them around into something completely new. What if the magic mirror owned by the Witch Queen in Snow White could tell its own story? Perhaps there is more than one view to the tale and the spirit trapped in the looking-glass is not always honest.Throughout this collection, Fiona plays deftly with topsy-turvy relationships between supernatural creatures and people of the real world. 'Post Garden Centre Blues' reveals an unusual relationship between taker and taken in a twist of the changeling myth. 'A Tale from the End of the World' and 'He May Grow Roots' take the reader into Fiona's developing mythos of a post-apocalyptic world, which is bizarre, Gothic and steampunk all at once. Magpie features a girl scavenging from the dead on a battlefield, whose callous greed invokes a dire curse. Following in the tradition of exemplary short story writers like Tanith Lee, Liz Williams and Lisa Tuttle, Fiona has a wonderful imagination and a vivid style of writing that brings intriguing new visions to fantasy, horror and science fiction.

About the Author

Fiona McGavin was born and brought up in the Scottish Highlands but now lives just outside Milton Keynes. She has a degree in history from Stirling University and is currently studying (very slowly) for an MA in Creative writing with the Open University. As a child her parents surrounded her with books and encouraged her to read and write voraciously. Early influences include Tolkien, Richard Adams and Mary Stewart as well as medieval Scottish history. When she discovered Tad Williams, Stephen King, Storm Constantine and Elizabeth Hand in her early twenties, the nature of her writing took a darker turn. She has always been interested in folklore, magic and anything spooky or odd and is particularly interested in how folklore and mythologies reinvent themselves to remain relevant in through the ages. She works in an office, enjoys trips to the garden centre and lives with an elderly black and white rescue cat called Sophie-Bananas.

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