Content warning: food mention

From between close-growing tree trunks, I thrust my fist out into the path in front of your face, making you stop short. In my clawed grip dangled folds of fabric.

You took the fabric. Unfolding it revealed a long skirt in your size. At least, I hoped it would fit.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Hemmed with salt. A protective circle, to keep you safe.”

We both knew I meant from me.

Expression complicated, you slipped the skirt on. Then you waved a hand, indicating I should join you.

I stepped cautiously from the shadows. Now we could walk together.

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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.