Content warning: implied threat to children

Dusk comes earlier and earlier these days. Used to, the kids could play outside until almost 1 PM, but now they start trooping indoors at around 12:30. Another sixteen hours until daylight returns.

Dusk comes earlier and earlier, with no sign of slowing down.

From beneath the trees where I watch the children play in the waning sunlight, I grin. My sharp teeth glitter in the gloom.

Soon, night will envelop the world forever.

Soon, the humans will huddle within their houses and cower behind their flashlights when they have to venture outside.

Soon, we will feed whenever we want.

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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.

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In Writing the Mother Road, the Texas High Plains Writers invite you to travel America’s most iconic stretch of pavement through a rich collection of short works inspired by the sights, stories, and spirit of Route 66. Inside these pages, you’ll find essays, memoirs, historical reflections, whimsical adventures, and imaginative tales ranging from science fiction to fantasy—all tied together by the culture and charm of the Mother Road.

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