Happily Ever After in KrampusLand

By Kari Kilgore

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

 

Thom's dream job: working at Janson Park, especially when it transforms from HalloweenLand into KrampusLand.

 

Thom's dream girlfriend: Julie, Queen of the Night for Halloween, and all year long in Thom's mind and heart.

 

Thom's worst nightmare: telling Julie how he feels.

 

Find out what happens when Love finds a way.

 

An excerpt from Happily Ever After in KramusLand:

A rising surge of crowd noise let Thom and everyone else know the parade was coming to an end.

 

The Queen of the Night in her horseless carriage could only be next. 

 

Otherwise known as Julie Howard, Thom's best friend since she'd moved here when they were both in first grade.

 

The carriage slowed to a halt, and Thom stepped up to the front without a whole lot of hassle. Several of the other guys and a few of the girls who worked the Halloween season would have been happy to help the Queen of the Night step back down into reality. 

 

Thom couldn't help but feel a flush of pride that they respected his years of friendship with Julie enough to back off.

 

He tried to ignore the flutter of hope that she might want him for more than friendship someday. 

 

That flutter had been with him more and more over the last couple of months.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Apr 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393312147

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Happily Ever After in KrampusLand

For Jason

---

Who survived the glorious madness

of the Nineties with me

Happily Ever After in KrampusLand

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

Happily Ever After in KrampusLand

November first had long been Thom Metzger’s favorite day of the year.

Sure, he was sad Halloween was over like most other folks he knew. The costumes, the candy, the parties. Childhood pleasures of trick-or-treating and sugar buzz giving way to elaborate adult costume contests and spooky cocktails bubbling away with slivers of dry ice.

The general air of everyone who felt a bit strange—a bit out of place for the rest of the year—celebrating one night when people wanted to be more like them.

The netherworldly decorations at Janson Park, the local amusement park, had been Thom’s favorite part since he was one of the little kids squealing and collecting candy. The silly, kind of tired and worn down Seventies amusement park normally featured pastel decorations and old matte paintings of landscapes that didn’t look real anymore once you turned ten.

But that all changed when summer gave way to autumn.

Jimmy Howard, the owner of Janson Park for the last fifteen years, spent much more on eerie backdrops, lighting, and employee costumes for Halloween and other holidays than on anything for the kiddies. October brought in a heck of a lot more money than the good-enough-to-get-by totals for the spring and summer seasons combined.

Especially after dark. When admission was twenty-one and older only, and guests happily paid for overpriced drinks and all the specialty chocolates in every shape, size, and variation. Some of those special designs could still bring an old-fashioned childhood blush to Thom’s face.

Only