On this, the longest day of the year, as the sun reached and reached and reached for the horizon, the empty roads and secret paths called me forth to wander. Toward whimsical places, toward unforgettable faces, their whispers urged me. “Follow… follow…”

With yearning tugging at my heart, I left without hesitation. Since that day, my toes have traveled trails trod by many, by few, and by none as I explore the unknown and rediscover the abandoned. To reach and reach and reach my hand for the horizon has become my lot, my curse, my gift. I wander ever onward, ever homeward, ever hopeward.

I feel no pressure to return.

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Summer’s Latest

Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror by Texas Women

Read my eco-horror short “Well Being” in this fabulous new anthology, in which a mother follows strange impulses from tainted water to find her daughter.

From Mary Shelley to Tananarive Due and Mariana Enríquez, women have long shaped horror—often without equal recognition. Living closest to the genre’s edge, women know these fears firsthand: lost autonomy, violence, childbirth, survival.

Set in Texas, a land of haunted histories and increasingly restrictive laws, Beneath the Bluebonnets emerges from the raw intersection of terror and endurance. Written by twelve Texas women writers: R. J. Joseph, Lauren Oertel, L.H. Phillips, Kathleen Kent, Madison Estes, Jess Hagemann, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacklyn Baker, S.G. Baker and edited by Carmen Gray, this collection is urgent, unflinching, and deeply haunting—stories that refuse to look away.