Amy Lukavics

Lukavics was raised in Northern Arizona.[1]

Lukavics says that she has always been intrigued by books and horror movies starting from a young age, but never considered becoming a writer because it seemed impossible to her.[2] She especially loved the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series by Alvin Schwartz and the 1974 novel Carrie by Stephen King.[3]

During middle school, she contemplated becoming an editor or a journalist for two months, but never tried to get the scholarships she would've needed in order to pursue a career path like that.[2][4] She attended Prescott High School and graduated in 2006.[5] After graduation, she worked as a dental assistant and as a front office medical assistant.[4]

When she was 19, after she got let go from her medical assistant job, she first developed the idea of wanting to become a writer when sitting in a library.[2][4] She started writing her first novel the next day.[2] Lukavics never attended college, saying that she didn't feel passionately enough about any field to justify spending money on studying it.[4]

She lives in Prescott, Arizona, with her husband and two children.[6]

The first three books she wrote were dark contemporary novels that ended up never getting published.[7] Lukavics didn't start writing horror until her fourth novel.[7]

Daughters Unto Devils

Prior to publishing her first novel, Lukavics was offered to rewrite the fourth novel she ever wrote with an editor from a "big publishing house."[2] Along the way, she realized that their creative visions differed, but went ahead with the revisions anyway, only to create a novel that wasn't up to either of their standards and ultimately was declined for publication.[2] That same novel would later be rewritten and went on to sell to another publishing house, Harlequin Teen, which published it as Daughters Unto Devils in September 2015.[2] It stars Amanda, a teen who finds herself pregnant during pioneer times while her family is searching for a new home in the prairie and settles on cursed land.[8]

Lukavics says that the novel is "sort of Little House on the Prairie meets The Exorcist inspired."[7] She originally wrote the Daughters Unto Devils with the intention of writing something set in the past, finding the idea of a pioneer horror story particularly intriguing, inspired by Stephen King's novella 1922, included in the Full Dark, No Stars novella collection.[3][9]

The Women in the Walls

Her second novel, The Women in the Walls, follows Lucy, a teen who suspects something strange is going on in her mansion home with her family.[10] It was published by Harlequin Teen in October 2016.[10]

The Ravenous

The Ravenous is about four sisters and their youngest sister, who dies in a car accident and gets resurrected by her mother, only to have developed cannibalistic tendencies.[11] It was published by Harlequin Teen in September 2017.[11] Lukavics describes The Ravenous as The Virgin Suicides meets Pet Sematary.[4] It was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Young Adult Novel in 2018.[12]

Nightingale

Her fourth young adult novel, Nightingale, is set in an asylum in 1951, telling the story of June, who finds herself held there against her will.[13] It was published by Harlequin Teen in September 2018.[13]

Other works

She also wrote a horror short story called "The Feeding", about a monster creeping in the woods of a small town, available for free on Wattpad.[7] Another one of her short stories was featured in issue six of Unnverving Magazine.[7]