Money. Gobs of it. In the blink of an eye - or the drop of a ball-- it's all yours.
Everyone dreams about striking it rich by winning a lottery. We all feverishly line up to purchase our tickets, and watch TV or scan the newspapers to see if we have won, even though the odds are better that we will be struck by lightning. Still, we perservere, because no matter what else happens this week, you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will win the big one.
Lotteries are an unparalleled popular phenomenon. But what happens after the winners are revealed, and the checks have been issued? How does winning a lottery change one's life?
Luck of the Draw profiles past winners of big lotteries, and how their windfall impacted their lives, mostly for the better, but interestingly sometimes for the worse, such was the case of a Florida widow who won $5 million in 1984; three years later, she lost her mansion and fancy cars, and owed the IRS $500,000 for back taxes. Eventually she was arrested for trying to hire a contract killer to take out her daughter-in-law, whom she blamed for her lottery misfortune. The book also depicts the past, present and future of lotteries in North America and the world over, and includes a special chapter on the revived phenomenon of big-time TV game show winners. Who wants to be a millionaire? Seemingly, everyone.
In a country where eighty percent of adults have played a lottery, creating a multi-billion dollar industry, Luck of the Draw is an insightful inside look at lotteries, its winners, and its losers.

Ever since his first piece of fiction was published 25 years ago in the small literary magazine Thrust, Chris Gudgeon has been honing his literary craft. Although his influences range from Will Self and Tibour Smith to fifteenth-century Japanese pornography, Chris Gudgeon has written, in this instance, a collection of stories with subtle echoes of Kurt Vonnegut. In addition to The Naked Truth, Chris Gudgeon's works of non-fiction include An Unfinished Conversation: The Life and Music of Stan Rogers and The Luck of the Draw: True Life Tales of Lottery Winners and Losers, both national bestsellers, and Out of This World, a controversial biography of the poet Milton Acorn. A resident of Victoria, Chris Gudgeon writes regularly for radio, television, film, and print publications as diverse as Mad, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Wildlife, and Playboy.

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Barbara Stewart is the author of a book on women's hockey as well as Blood Lines (Arsenal), quotations on vampires; she also co-authored Luck of the Draw, about lottery winners, with her husband, writer Chris Gudgeon. They have three sons and live in Victoria, BC Canada.

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