A Sick Gray Laugh - Paperback

Nicole Cushing was born in June, 1973 - the youngest of four children. She was raised in rural Cecil County, Maryland, where she attended public schools. Her hometown was within driving distance to various historical sites related to Edgar Allan Poe. She counts her childhood visits to these sites as formative experiences that threw fuel on her already-morbid imagination. She attended St. Mary's College of Maryland (the state's public honors college), graduating magna cum laude with a degree in psychology. It was there that she undertook her first studies of psychopathology (a subject which frequently appears in her writing). Following college, she worked at a public mental health facility while simultaneously going to the University of Maryland - Baltimore to earn her Master of Social Work degree. This extended education (and later personal and family crises) delayed the start of her writing career. In 2003, she relocated to Louisville, Kentucky. Shortly thereafter she moved to nearby southern Indiana. She is married and presently childless. Although she had occasionally sold short stories in her twenties, it was not until the fall of 2008 that she pursued a writing career in earnest. Since that time, she has gone on to sell dozens of short stories, two stand-alone novellas, and a forthcoming novel (Mr. Suicide, due out in July from Word Horde). She received a nomination for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for her debut novella, Children of No One. She is currently working on her second novel and building her career as a nonfiction contributor to Nameless digest and the UK-based horror film magazine Scream.