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Sparks erupted from eye sockets as you set my bones ablaze. A pile of ribs and spine and femurs to fuel your bonfire. A sachet of herbs laid within my mouth sent a sweet scent rising into the darkening evening alongside the building flames. A call to crawl forth from among the bones of the earth.

At my side, you pointed first at one grave. Then another.

All around, finger bones tore through dirt. Just like the first time you called me to follow.

But I would make the journey with you no longer. I would only light your way.

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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.