Pitched as Westworld meets The Handmaid’s Tale, we’re excited to have a chat with author, Charlotte Nicole Davis, about her recently published debut, The Good Luck Girls! Read further to find out more about the inspiration behind this thrilling story, discussion over the heavy issues, and the bold heroines that leads you through the vicious land of Arketta!
Hi, Charlotte! Thank you for chatting with us today! First of all, congratulations on your debut release, The Good Luck Girls! Can you tell us what inspired you to write this adventurous heroine story in the first place? Is it Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale, just like how it pitched on the blurb?
Thank you so much! And thank you so much for having me here to talk about the book! I grew up in Kansas City, which used to be the heart of the Old West, so I think I was just really interested in writing a fantasy set in my corner of the world. The Western is also a genre that’s never felt particularly welcoming to me before, as a queer woman of color, so I wanted to write a Western about people who looked like me. It was important that I give Black and brown girls the chance to enjoy some of these tropes—bank robberies, and bounty hunters and campfires on the trail. We cite THE HANDMAID’S TALE as a comp title because both books tackle complex issues of feminism and liberation, but I also want to reassure readers that THE GOOD LUCK GIRLS is very much meant to be a fun book, too. It’s not as dark, tonally, as THE HANDMAID’S TALE. It’s more of a revenge or escape fantasy.
We can’t deny the charm in the title that you chose for your debut! Can you share with us about the origin story of this title?
My editors actually came up with the title! We’ve had it since the beginning. I love the alliteration.
The Good Luck Girls featured many heavy issues, such as gender inequality, human trafficking, the practice of prostitution at a very young age, and differences in social class. While the book itself pitched as a YA, how did you manage to present all of these sensitive matters to younger readers?
This was probably the biggest challenge in writing this story. On one hand, I didn’t want to make light of these characters’ trauma, but on the other, I didn’t want to exploit them for the sake of shock value. In the end, we decided to focus less on showing the trauma itself and more on the girls’ reaction to that trauma, and how it’s affected their characters and their relationships. It’s not that young readers need to be coddled—they certainly don’t—but, so often, Black kids, and especially Black girls, only get to see narratives about their own suffering. This is a story more about taking back control.
As a debut author, is The Good Luck Girls the book that you always wanted to be your first published book?
No, I’ve been writing novels since middle school, and this is my seventh. But I wouldn’t have wanted any of the others to be my first published book—it takes time to find your voice.
The five main girls that featured in your debut were bold, strong, and basically badass. Had you always planned them to be that way or were there any changes that you made during the writing process? For example, was Aster always meant to be the big sister of the group or was Violet always meant to be incredibly good at doing manipulation and tricks?
Well, I’ve always wanted to write an ensemble, found-family type of book where each character has a “thing.” So I knew, for a Western like this, we’d need someone who knew how to shoot and someone who knew how to build a fire and someone who knew how to dress a wound, and so on. But matching up the characters with their roles was something that happened more organically. I had to figure out how, exactly, these girls picked up these skills despite growing up in a welcome house. So thinking about that helped me flesh out their backstories, which in turn helped me better understand the part they’d play in the group.
Which part of the The Good Luck Girls challenged you the most during the process of writing it? And how did you overcome these struggles?
There’s a bank robbery that just, logistically, took months to figure out. I needed it to be both fun and frightening at the same time. Whether or not I pulled it off is something I’ll let readers decide, but if I did, I owe a lot to my critique partners and editors for listening to me whine about it and helping me work it out.
If The Good Luck Girls were to be adapted into a movie, which actor/actress that you imagine will be part of the cast?
Honestly, I’d just be beyond excited that a movie was being made at all. It’d be fantastic to see any dark-skinned Black girl headlining a Western.
What can we expect in the sequel of The Good Luck Girls?
We see more of Arketta in book two. The conflict is on a much larger scale. But to say too much more would be spoiling!
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?
I just finished GIDEON THE NINTH, by fellow Tor author Tamsyn Muir, and it’s just excellent. It’s about lesbian necromancers in space, which is all I needed to know.
