Synopsis

“Waxing Off is a fresh, engaging new take on the werewolf mythos, expertly probing themes about gender and loneliness while still making sure the reader enjoys a satisfying, bloody romp. Fans of Gretchen Felker-Martin and Chuck Tingle will find a lot to love here. E.E.W Christman is an exciting new voice in the queer horror space whose future work I’m definitely looking forward to!”

-Liz Kerin, author of the Night’s Edge Duology and The Phantom Forest

Welcome to Cat’s Cove

A struggling Pacific Northwest fishing town teeming with transphobes and werewolves…

but not the ones you are thinking of.

Drew is a non-binary werewolf, but hardly by choice. Having made a home for themself working in a fish fry joint and trying to hide their secret, their heightened sense of smell leads them to Gab – a female werewolf who is about to change their life in more ways than one. Coming from a family that did nothing to make Drew feel comfortable in their own skin, their immediate connection with Gab is intimate and unexpected.

But a collective of TERFs lurks nearby, and an attack makes it clear that they would prefer it if Gab fell in line, and Drew simply ceased to exist. Little do they know what is coming for them.

Filled with ferocity, carnage, and the enduring power of queer love and acceptance, Waxing Off is a werewolf horror story with heart, and a testament to what it means to fight back, fight for yourself, and fight to exist.

The paperback features inside cover artwork by Nick Dunkenstein. The hardback has a black and white version of Nick’s artwork on the front page.

Waxing Off focuses heavily on werewolves in such an opportune setting! Have you always been a fan of werewolves in horror or werewolf lore in general?

I love monsters of just about all shapes and sizes! I grew up watching movies like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. I have monster compendiums and bestiaries full of myths and lore from around the world. What I like about werewolves in particular is that, while monsters are so often a depiction of moral corruption/destruction of humanity, they are a release of the primal natures we hide within ourselves. Not to mention how they are so transmasc-coded.

Apart from its ferocity, Waxing Off is a novella largely filled with found family and love. Did you put any of your lived experience into this aspect of the novella?

Most definitely. I too came out west looking for a home and learning the hard lesson that it is not where you build your house but who you fill it with that matters. You can’t just move thousands of miles and suddenly feel at peace; you have to work and build and communicate.

Drew and Gab are such dynamic main characters, who are loveable and rough around the edges in all of the best ways. Do you connect with or relate more to Drew or Gab?

Like a lot of my characters, Drew and Gab have a lot of me poured into them. I grew up as the smalltown queer, both shunned and fetishized. Those experiences went into Gab. I’m a transmasc loser with out-of-control body hair. That’s Drew.

Highlighting TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) is something that is beyond needed right now - more than ever - and you did so in such an elegant (but visceral) way. What can you tell readers about TERFs who may have never heard of them?

TERFs are bigots who love to pretend to be champions (as well as gatekeepers) of womanhood who in reality only hate cis women slightly less than they hate trans people. TERFs build their entire personalities around hatred.

Queer horror is such a special niche, because it can and does highlight classic horror elements - such as werewolves - but also a lot of the atrocities that our queer community faces. However, it is a sub-genre notorious for showing characters fighting back against these true to life horrors, and that is why I am so passionate about it. Was writing Waxing Off cathartic for you in any way?

Oh yes. That’s why the first thing that happens is that a rapist shits himself and dies, and the last thing that happens is a TERF gets kicked off a mountain. I am personally exhausted by horror that is also hopeless. I want to dream of horrors that can be pushed back.

Do you have any plans for continuing Drew and Gab’s story?

Right now, I don’t have plans to write anything else about Gab and Drew. When I was working on Waxing Off, something that was really important to me was that they got a happy ending. I wanted the queers to get to ride off into the sunset together. I feel like writing more about them would mean robbing them of their happily ever after because the cornerstone of a good story is conflict. Gab and Drew are both embodiments of younger versions of myself; all I want for them is to be cherished.

BUY BOOK

About the Author

E.E.W. Christman is a queer nonbinary writer and editor living in the Pacific Northwest. Their previous publications include The NoSleep Podcast, Tales to Terrify, Riot Diet: A Fatterpunk Anthology, Cursed Cooking, Two Hour Transport, Dark Village, Listen: The Sound of Fear, Sledgehammer Lit, Lavender Bones, Limeoncello Magazine, Divergent Terror, Interstellar Flight Press, Exploits, PULP Magazine, The Bronzeville Bee, Unwinnable Magazine.

CONNECT WITH E.E.W. CHRISTMAN

The Mean Ones by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is a novel that is at once premium pink horror with a “good for her” vibe. It was by far one of my favorite books of 2025, and it touched me on such a personal level.

Tatiana provided such deep insight to my questions in our interview below, and I think that it will help you to get to know her and her work better! She is becoming a must read author for me.

Synopsis

So what if Sadie hears talking dead animals and a strange, comforting male voice in her head? The therapist insists these are just symptoms of PTSD. It makes sense considering that she hid under the bed and watched as her best friends were slaughtered.

But the murders were seventeen years ago, back when her name was Sabrina. Now, she’s Sadie: a perfectly normal 29-year-old. She works as a physical therapist assistant and lifts weights with her boyfriend, Lucas, who’s the sweetest, most considerate man—as long as he’s not angry. But when Lucas spontaneously agrees to join a couples trip to a cabin in the woods, the visions get worse, a strange figure stalks her during the night, and that male voice in Sadie’s head keeps calling, asking her to do things she’s never fathomed.

Sadie’s not sure if it’s her paranoia or something else entirely . . . But she is sure of one thing—this time, she’s not going to sit idly by as everything starts to unravel.

READ MY REVIEW

BUY BOOK

Interview

Sage Moon: Tatiana, after reading your first book, Such Lovely Skin, and now The Mean Ones, I love how you incorporate such important factors like grief and trauma into your writing. Do you think that pairing real horrors with the inexplicable is important as the genre evolves?

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: Yes! Real life horror—grief, insecurity, backstabbing friends—absolutely elevates supernatural horror. With my novels, I’m always thinking about how I can take something grounded in the real world. Like Vivian’s obsession with her social media popularity in Such Lovely Skin or Sadie’s people pleasing in The Mean Ones, and amplify it with a horror element. With every story, I strive to make my antagonists tailor-made for my protagonists. In SLS, the doppelganger is going after Vivian’s reputation online because she cares so much about what others think of her in a superficial way. So, of course, the doppelganger is going to get her canceled.

With The Mean Ones, I thought it would be particularly horrifying if I had a protagonist who couldn’t say “no” and have all these external pressures that she could save herself from (the controlling boyfriend, the camping trip), if she just says no. But that’s the power she has to learn throughout the story. I was also interested in telling a story about a weak, quiet girl rising. I’m a fan of the brutally honest, gritty places that horror (and literature in general) can go. So when I was playing around with the concept for The Mean Ones, I was thinking about public reactions to tragedies. Everyone’s always saying, “They lit up the room, they were an angel etc.” But I bet there’s someone in the background thinking, “That kid got what they had coming!” I wanted to write that person’s story. That’s how Sabrina emerged.

SM: The Mean Ones was an incredibly complex, tragic, and ultimately rewarding read. Much like Sabrina, your main character, I had similar traumatic experiences with supposed friends growing up. The book literally had me in tears at various points. What do you hope readers who have been through similar experiences will get out of Sabrina’s story?

TSB: Writing The Mean Ones was like sitting down with an old friend and saying, “Remember when…[insert trauma]” and cry-laughing about it. I want readers to feel that; I also want them to feel seen and empowered by the story. The middle school bullying trauma, the body hair / body insecurity, the toxic boyfriend—those elements are pulled directly from my real life. It was cathartic to write and I hope it’s cathartic to read.

SM: Folk horror is my favorite horror sub-genre! The way that you reinvented it to pair it with pink horror and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is revolutionary and something that I hope we see more of as horror continues to expand and diversify. What drew you to folk-horror when writing The Mean Ones?

TSB: Honestly, I didn’t realize I was writing folk horror when I was drafting this book. Sure, there’s a cult, an entity in the woods, sacrifices—but I wasn’t thinking about how those elements fit into the folk horror sub-genre. In my mind, the story was too “modern” to fit neatly into folk horror. My focus was on Sadie’s story of survival and developing inner strength. While I thought I was using some folk horror elements to tell this story, I didn’t think it was that folk horror-y. Then some of my writer friends read an early draft and were like, “Wow, you wrote folk horror!” and I was like, “Wait, really?”In hindsight, it’s obvious now that The Mean Ones is folk horror when it’s directly inspired from Midsommar and The Ritual. With those stories, I kept thinking about how the viewer/reader watches the cult activities happen as the character experiences the events for the first time. I was very interested in the story of “after.” What’s life like years after the cult sacrifice happened? What if one of the side characters not directly involved in the sacrifice is still haunted by this whole thing decades later? I was tinkering with the idea of a horror novel about a powerlifter who’s strong on the outside but weak inside. Making her the survivor of a cult sacrifice from seventeen years ago felt perfect for combining all these elements. Plus, I kept reading Reddit posts about creepy encounters with deer with chronic wasting disease, and that’s how The Mean Ones was born.

SM: I relate to the feeling of deep despair Sabrina experiences from not being believed on an incredibly personal level. Having one’s experiences invalidated, which is incredibly common with women and those assigned female at birth, infuriates me to the point of no return. Questioning one’s reality is something that has been present in horror for quite some time, but the way you portrayed it is realistic and painful. What would you say to readers who have been through things that other people refuse to believe?

TSB: You don’t owe “proof” to anyone. It’s enough that you know you went through it. As someone who loves throwing a good “I told you so” around, I’ve found that the lengths to obtain said “I told you so” often aren’t worth the emotional effort, and the satisfaction is fleeting. I was gaslit by my father my whole life and after years of wallowing, I’ve come around to accepting that his reality is completely different from mine. You know that Keanu Reeves meme that’s like “you want to believe 2+2 is 5? You’re right. Have fun.” I’m reaching that level of inner peace and feel much happier. Life is too short.

But for writing a horror protagonist? Having a character who’s obsessing over what may or may not be real is prime material, especially for Sadie whose support system and inner strength is non-existent. When I was first drafting The Mean Ones, I kept accidentally making Sadie too much like my current self and starting her at this point in life where she doesn’t care what others think. I had to keep regressing her character to where she’s constantly under threat of others’ opinion (“protagonist who can’t say no learns to say no!” was literally pinned at the top of my writing notes.) It makes her pretty frustrating to read about in the first half of the book (she was frustrating to write!) but I knew that discovering inner strength and accepting her own reality even when it denies what’s “normal” was what she had to learn, so I started her as far away as possible from that.

SM: The Mean Ones is layered with complex themes – both real world horrors and more traditional folk horror themes. I am passionate about the healing powers of horror and think that a lot of what you incorporated into the story can be healing for the reader. But I also wonder: did combining both of these help you as a writer through any of your personal experiences?

TSB: It was really fun and satisfying to make a composite of the popular girl bullies from my middle school days into Allie and Blakely and kill them off. It was also oddly satisfying combing through all the mid-2000s pop culture and trends, like the way being obsessed with thinness was normal and encouraged—I’d almost forgotten about that, or perhaps blocked it out, but when writing this book, I was like “Oh yeah, I went through that. I survived that (lol.)”

While writing this book, I also ended up reflecting a lot on my relationship with exercise since powerlifting is a huge part of Sadie’s life. I was not athletic growing up, never played sports, and found exercise like running, using machines, etc. dreadfully boring and unenjoyable. Then I found powerlifting and olympic weightlifting in college and understanding these lifts: how to activate my muscles and breathe and get the timing right to pull myself under a barbell was fascinating. Weightlifting gave me confidence in my body and my abilities that I desperately needed, and it was a huge mental distraction from my familial trauma I was wallowing over at the time. When I saw my dad again for the first time after I started lifting, I was significantly less afraid of him. That sort of empowerment Sadie feels from lifting in TMO was probably the easiest part of the book for me to write – because it’s mine.

About Tatiana Schlote-Bonne

Tatiana is the author of the horror novels Such Lovely Skin, The Mean Ones, and What Feeds Below (Fall 2026.) She has an MFA from The Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. When she’s not writing, she’s either gaming, lifting weights, or teaching people how to lift weights. She is of Japanese, Mexican, and European descent, and lives in Iowa.

CONNECT WITH TATIANA SCHLOTE-BONNE

Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen is an inventive take on the vampire mythos with a femgore edge and reflections on sisterhood. It is one of my favorite reads of the year, and I am so honored to have been able to interview Johanna! We dove deep into queer horror, the concept of “the other,” and the “unlikeable woman” trope. I hope you enjoy our discussion, and that it inspires you to pick up the book if you haven’t!

Synopsis

“I’m in your blood, and you are in mine…”

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy’s twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband’s grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister’s condition, but it’s clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah’s behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.

READ MY REVIEW

BUY BOOK

Interview

Sage Moon: Johanna, I have always been a big fan of gothic horror, but Blood on Her Tongue took the subgenre to an entirely new level! I know that you are a triplet, and that provided some inspiration for your novel. What were some of your other inspirations?

Johanna van Veen: Both Dracula and Carmilla are obvious sources of inspiration, but I was also inspired by the concept of the ‘mercy kill’. In horror, particularly in works with zombies, the ‘mercy kill’ is the idea that it is better for someone to die than to be transformed into ‘the other’. There are usually two reasons for this: 1) the infected will undergo such a change in character that they can no longer be considered the same person as before the infection, and 2) the infected will become an active danger to their loved ones. Indeed, zombies are usually mindless and thus without personality, and their hunger for brains means that they are dangerous to be around.

In Dracula, too, we encounter the concept of the mercy kill: Mina begs her husband to kill her, should she transform into a vampire. But is that the right thing to do? Unlike the aforementioned zombies, vampires are certainly still intelligent. They are dangerous, of course, but they don’t bite people willy-nilly. Where, then, do you draw the line between a genuine mercy kill and killing ‘the other’ because they frighten you? In Blood on Her Tongue, I wanted to explore this concept in more detail. What makes a person a person? To what extent can you change and still be considered the same person? It is noteworthy that Mina’s husband Jonathan decides he would rather become a vampire alongside Mina than kill her.

There are some other obvious sources of inspiration, but for the sake of spoilers I shan’t divulge them here!

SM: I always love when authors say that writing a book took them many years to write, rather than writing one quickly. I could tell how finetuned Blood on Her Tongue was based on how you let it evolve over multiple manuscripts. Do you feel that some novels require authors to grow and incorporate new insights and experiences to be most impactful?

JVV: Absolutely! The simple truth is that writing is a skill. The more you intentionally practise it, the better you’ll get at it. But that does mean that the first few projects you write probably aren’t that good, or at the very least not as good as you could make them once you have a few years of experience under your belt. That’s why a common bit of advice given to aspiring writers is to not start out with their passion project, but to write some other fun things instead. Blood on Her Tongue certainly required me to grow, both as an author and as a human.

SM: The feminist themes you incorporated with Lucy and Sarah within the time period was groundbreaking. I love how both women were headstrong, and the men didn’t hold all of the power. Do you think that incorporating characters like Lucy and Sarah with feminist themes in historical settings is important?

I found this question difficult to answer because I didn’t set out to consciously incorporate feminist themes into my historical fiction. I think that, as soon as you choose to write in a certain historical setting, your work automatically touches upon those themes, especially if you choose women as your main characters.

That being said, I do think it is important to incorporate characters like Lucy and Sarah in historical settings. They are both deeply flawed human beings, and some of the decisions they make are questionable at best. Male characters are allowed to be like that, but you don’t see a lot of female characters, probably because people often criticise them for being unlikeable or crazy (or both!). With the current rise in ‘female rage’ and ‘femgore’ books, we are seeing an increase in such female characters, which I applaud. Feminism is all about equality, so why shouldn’t I have complicated female characters? I support women’s rights, but I also support women’s wrongs.

SM: Blood on Her Tongue included quite a bit of body horror involving eyes! What made you choose to focus on eyes for a lot of the gore?

JVV: It’s something I personally find scary and upsetting. When I got COVID in 2021, I was very sick with all the usual symptoms (headaches, nausea, coughing, difficulty breathing, an utter lack of taste and smell), but I also had one less-common symptom: an extreme sensitivity to light. For weeks, I had to sit inside with the curtains drawn and wear my sunglasses, because if I didn’t, I would get this stabbing pain in my eyeballs. My right eye, especially, felt tender all the time. I’d never experienced that before, and I luckily haven’t experienced it since, but it was on my mind when writing.

SM: Do you think that incorporating queerness in historical horror versus contemporary horror brings something different to the horror genre? If so, how?

JVV: It’s important to note that horror has always been queer, just as people have always been queer; in that sense, incorporating queerness in historical horror in and of itself is neither groundbreaking nor unrealistic. As for whether it brings something different to the horror genre when incorporated into historical horror compared to contemporary horror: I think it depends. It’s easy to make queerness part of the horror in historical horror because being queer was illegal for so long in so many places, but then again, it’s not as if queerness is now universally accepted. There’s a reason that plenty of contemporary horror is also queer; Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle is all about the horror of conversion therapy, for instance. All I can say is that I generally do think adding queerness brings something a little extra to a book, whether it is horror or not!

About Johanna van Veen

Johanna Van Veen grew up in the Netherlands with her twin sisters; they are triplets and although not identical, they share a strong bond. She earned both an MA in English Literature and Digital Media from Leiden University. Johanna is the author of My Darling Dreadful Thing (2024) and Blood on Her Tongue (2025), as well as the upcoming middle-grade novel The Witch of Hagstone Hill (2025), the first installment of The Triplets Grim trilogy. When not writing, she enjoys spending time with her wife, her sisters, and her dog, though not necessarily all at the same time.

CONNECT WITH JOHANNA

Salt Bones by Jennifer Givhan is one of the few books that I demand everyone read – especially now. I hope that reading through my interview with Jenn will give you insight into how powerful this story is.

Synopsis

Three women in one twisted family race for answers in this striking mystery set in the Mexicali borderlands that “breathes new life into the myth of Persephone and Demeter” (Ana Reyes, author of The House in the Pines).

At the edge of the Salton Sea, in the blistering borderlands, something is out hunting…

Malamar Veracruz has never left the dust-choked town of El Valle. Here, Mal has done her best to build a good life: She’s raised two children, worked hard, and tried to forget the painful, unexplained disappearance of her sister, Elena. When another local girl goes missing, Mal plunges into a fresh yet familiar nightmare. As a desperate Mal hunts for answers, her search becomes increasingly tangled with inscrutable visions of a horse-headed woman, a local legend who Mal feels compelled to follow. Mal’s perspective is joined by the voices of her two daughters, all three of whom must work to uncover the truth about the missing girls in their community before it’s too late.

Combining elements of Latina and Indigenous culture, family drama, mystery, horror, and magical realism in a spellbinding mix, Salt Bones lays bare the realities of environmental catastrophe, family secrets, and the unrelenting bond between mothers and daughters.

READ MY REVIEW

BUY BOOK

Interview

Jenn, your book, Salt Bones, broke my heart and made my soul ache in all of the best ways. The added folklore element of La Siguanaba (the horse headed woman) brought such a unique theme to this genre bending novel. While I have seen La Llorona incorporated into many horror works, I had never heard of La Siguanaba before reading your book. What made you choose her for this story?

A fellow writer and I were once laughing about how people ask if we write fantasy, horror or magical realism. All of that might be true, but for us, we are also just writing about our childhoods as he grew up in the Caribbean and I was born and raised on the Southwestern border. Most of my books focus on La Llorona, and you’d think that with the Salton Sea being a prominent feature of this newest book Salt Bones that she would have appeared again. But I do feel like she’s in the subtext and heart of everything I write, and it was time for another monstrous mama to make herself known.

Enter La Siguanaba.

I don’t want to give too much away about this monstrous mama and how she haunts this story. But I will say that my daughter fell in love with horses and we’ve spent a lot of time together at the horse pens, arenas, and trail rides along the Rio Grande. So I honestly became as haunted as Mal in terms of horses. As with many of my novels, the characters in their landscapes come to me and ask me to tell their story. The myth of La Siguanaba grew inside of me as Mal’s story unfolded along the Salton Sea, along with El Cucuy and los chupacabras and many of the other so-called monsters that roam through the Mexicali borderlands where I grew up.

I’m especially interested in how cultural stories evolve and migrate, how they get retold and reshaped to reflect new dangers, new hauntings, new hopes. The Salton Sea, as it dried and the fish began to die en masse, became covered in bones—millions of them—which locals call “hash.” They look disturbingly like human teeth. I remember visiting, walking along the shore, hearing that awful crunch under my boots. I’d wear a mask because the air was toxic. And in those moments, the image of a skulled, faceless, horse-headed woman began to haunt me.

I’d heard stories that she went after bad men, drunkards and womanizers out in the dead of night doing things they shouldn’t have been doing; but I’d also heard that she went after children – specifically girls. This caught my attention and made me wonder.

So that’s where I dug in.

When I came to your author talk recently, you discussed the Salton Sea and its history – which is an important element in your novel. Can you provide some of that insight for readers?

In the 90s, I grew up near the ancient saline basin once called Lake Cahuilla, which has filled and emptied over millennia in the Southern California desert. In the early 1900s, it was unintentionally remade into the Salton Sea after two floods and a broken dam channeled irrigation water from the Colorado River. By the time I was a kid, ninety years later, my mama warned us it was poison. We could smell for ourselves the fish die-offs, the weeks-long stink of toxic algal blooms.

After I left for college, got married, and had kids, I returned to my hometown to visit my comadre, my bestie. She told me that the Salton Sea was drying up and releasing toxic chemicals like arsenic from decades of pesticide runoff, which had sunk into the lakebed, aerosolized, and wafted into the lungs of everyone still breathing throughout the community. The whole Valley could become a ghost town, she said. If nothing was done.

I started researching, and over the next decade, I became increasingly concerned about the fate of the place that raised me. It has been featured in shows like Abandoned America, although the mostly Mexican community is still thriving, even as the farm-owning elite bring in billions in agricultural revenue each year. All while the so-called accidental lake poisons the air. When activists went up to Sacramento to ask for help, for instance, legislators had been overheard justifying their apathy with remarks like, “No one lives down there anyway.”

But we do!

I knew I had to tell this story. My soapbox may have been slippery, but people tend to love murder mysteries. So I wrapped my heart in one.

Salt Bones focuses a lot on generational trauma, motherhood, racism, and the experiences of indigenous women. Reading this novel from the perspective of Mal, a mother deeply impacted by her own mother’s abuse, provided such an important perspective. Do you have insight into the difficulties women face as mothers when they still hold trauma from their own mothers?

I’ve been obsessed with this story for years, probably in many ways because it represents my greatest fear – being separated from my children – whether through what happens in Salt Bones or through death. Another aspect of my writing has been to work through fear alongside mental health issues, past traumas, and grief – holding space for my own healing as I offer the truths I’ve dug deep into the underbelly to find, shaped as gifts for others who need them.

So as my motherhood poetics of healing intergenerational trauma evolved through my poetry and novels, I needed to delve deep into the underworld and boiling sopa pot of my mother’s stories, my community’s histories, my daughterhood, and my lived experience as a mother – including the powerful truths that my own children have taught me.

That descent became part of the work, and I found a certain line of poetry kept returning to me on this journey so it became the preface of Salt Bones. It’s from Eavan Boland’s “Pomegranate:”

“The only legend I have ever loved is / the story of a daughter lost in hell. / And found and rescued there.”

El Valle became both the hellscape and the place of restoration, rescue, and rebirth, through Mal’s motherwork.

Realizing the sick roots at the heart of the story hurt like hell, but it was a painful truth I couldn’t turn away from. I had to stay strong, like Mal, for her girls. “Don’t look away,” I’d remind myself while writing.

So, Mal’s journey enlightened and healed me in many ways, as she’s a strong and flawed badass mama who protects her daughters and herself even after she’s messed up, and a lot of what she deals with as a mother stem directly from her own girlhood and how she was parented. Healing is not linear, but cyclical. We mamas can delve back into the underbelly, defying physics with our motherlove, and heal both past and present – making choices rooted in the refusal to look away.

Mal embodies my entire motherhood poetics, which sees the mother as capable of delving into the underbelly to heal her own trauma as a girl in order to heal and protect her daughters. The hellscape I drew from my childhood near the Salton Sea, along with its current state of wreckage, mirrors the mental health battles I fought throughout mothering my children, which I realized at some point paralleled my own mother’s, and hers, and hers… and so on.

There was this crystalline moment while I was asking my Ancestors for help weaving this story, one morning between dreamworld and waking, when I realized that I am the first daughter of a first daughter of a first daughter. There was a tremendous sense of responsibility to tell our stories and undo the trauma, but also a gift of strength and empowerment. I realized that while we absolutely do carry trauma embedded in our genes, wounds handed down through the womb, we also carry such perseverance, tenacity, and hope.

The work of decolonization and undoing trauma our families handed down to us from the trauma heaped upon them can sometimes become so soul-heavy, it feels unbearable. That’s when I know it’s time to rest and return to my family, go inward to my altar, or come back to writing, depending on where I am in the cycle. I remind myself that our stories have always been circular. We return to where we began, but with a new perspective.

The Western patriarchal messaging I’ve internalized, even unintentionally, can sometimes make me feel worthless or hopeless—a rat on a wheel, perpetually spinning. But then I remember that I’m a strong, powerful chingona on a spirit-led, heart-filled mission. My gift is motherwriting, mothering and writing inextricably linked.

Our mothers were fed the same poison they accidentally fed us. I have to remember that as I undo the conditioning of my girlhood and theirs, as I find myself making the same cyclical choices that came from the wound in my own mothering and then work toward repairing that and making new choices next time.

In part, I believe I’m called to write to show how things can be. While I know I’ve done the work of revealing the problems, part of me now wants to write toward the future and open new possibilities, tuning out the patriarchal messaging that tried, but failed, to brainwash or numb me.

Although my children are now teenagers (my son just graduated from high school, and my daughter just celebrated her quinceañera) there’s still time.

There’s still hope.

We can keep planting new seeds and tending the good we’ve already grown.

Both of my children write, for instance. My son has written several screenplays, and my daughter and I write middle-grade novels together, another example of how I center family in my writing, and how we’ve created a sustainable practice together.

So, as I stop beating myself up and return to the wisdom of my Ancestors and Spirit, I can find joy in the writing and continue helping my children do the same.

We need joy. More than ever.

We fight hate and intolerance with love and acceptance.

We model the way things can be through our art, stories, and songs.

We imagine these spaces of love and hope and acceptance, we create them first in the mind and heart, then on the page or screen or canvas or stage, and those offer blueprints for how to live them and reshape societies around them.

That’s my fervent hope and what sustains me.

Your background is rooted in poetry – and that shined through Salt Bones with your lyrical prose. What was your process with incorporating poetic language into the traditional novel format?

I’m a poet at heart, and I have often discussed elsewhere how taken I am with Julia Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic, prelinguistic chora space of humming and crying and guttural noises and communicating beyond “meaning making” as a child/mother through the womb or in the newborn stages. I tap into this realm in my poetics. The same is true for the process of creating my poems, and as a woman with chronic illness, I often find myself in a state of exhaustion or brain fog (fibro fog).

Perhaps because I’m a poet at heart and partly because I’ve dedicated my life to studying the craft of poetry, creating the poems never feels like work, but freedom. Release, play, heartwork in its purest form. This is not to suggest I don’t craft and sculpt and revise a hundred times in a hundred iterations. I do. But it’s the kind of soul work that revitalizes and strengthens and buoys me so that I can return to other work – the novels and the rest of my life.

When I’m not writing poetry I don’t beat myself up, because I know that, like any true love, poetry will never leave me, and I will never leave it.

The heart of my novels is like poetry. The deeper themes and resonances, the humanity buzzing and humming in the characters and their relationships and desires and fears and resulting choices for better or worse, the beating heart at the center. But puzzling it all together, creating believable dialogue that moves the story forward and keeps the pacing clipped and the reader turning pages—all of this I’ve had to teach myself again and again. It does not always come naturally to me, and I’ve found I’ve had to forgive myself and be patient with myself. An analogy that’s helped me lately is that the writing process can be akin to a child happily at play building with blocks, stacking one atop the other, contentedly. One block at a time.

Poetry lives in my bones, and from that skeleton I start with voice, image, and rhythm, writing toward what hurts. Every novel feels like a long sonnet with a turn, that knife twist. Poetry has taught me to listen for silence and shape it into a story, while horror and mystery and magical realism live side by side in my psyche, the underbelly, especially for us marginalized folks. I have a craft essay in Writer’s Digest about how I wrestle with the duende and go deep into the chora space of the underbelly to dig up truths and craft not the hero’s journey but the mother’s.

I could go on and on about this topic but suffice it to say that my work in one genre feeds the other.

I am chomping at the bit for more of your work, and I know you have another novel coming out next summer. Can you speak a bit about that novel and what readers can expect?

I’ve just finished the draft of a new novel called The Sleeping Sisters that loosely recalls the serial killings of eleven girls and women here in Albuquerque where I live with my family on the Boca Negra mesa. It’s border noir meets gothic bones; a genre-bleeding fever dream inspired not only by reclaiming the lives of the girls and women here – whom I still see in the desert fields surrounding my house – but also by my first poetry collection Landscape with Headless Mama. She begged me to reweave her into prose, demanding more space and breath to sing her story. Since I have a deep penchant for so-called monstrous mamas, I’m bursting at the seams to share this newest novel with you all; it’s unsettling, breakneck, and as feral as a mother. It’s also my most unhinged storytelling yet!

Look for it Summer 2026 from Mulholland/Little, Brown!

About Jennifer Givhan

(she/her/ella/la bruja)

I am a Mexican-American and Indigenous poet and novelist (Salt Bones is available for preorder now), who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. My family comes from the Indigenous peoples of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico including Ysleta del Sur, the Tigua Indian peoples of the Ysleta region of El Paso, and the Huichol of Nayarit.

I earned my Master’s degree in Fine Arts in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and my Master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at California State University Fullerton, where I was the recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship.

My honors include a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, The Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, a 2020 Southwest Book Award, an Honorable Mention for 2021 The Rudolfo Anaya Best Latino Focused Fiction Book Award category from the International Latino Book Awards Foundation, The 2019 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize chosen by Tyehimba Jess, Cutthroat Journal’s 2018 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize chosen by Patricia Spears Jones, The 2017 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize chosen by Monica Youn, The 2015 Lascaux Review Editors’ Choice Poetry Prize, and The Pinch Poetry Prize chosen by Ada Limón.

My poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, AGNI, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, POETRY, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Salon, The Rumpus, and Prairie Schooner, among many others.

Here’s my poem “I Am Dark / I Am Forest” in POETRY.

My work tends toward magical realism and dark psychological motherhood that reflects back on an often darker sociopolitical landscape, but the shadow work exists to reveal the light, and that’s always my goal–to shine that hopeful light amidst the darkness.

Among my influences are Toni Morison and Ana Castillo, and some of my recent faves are Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and Victor Lavalle’s The Changeling.

I write, mentor and empower writers, and raise my two children in Albuquerque, New Mexico (the Land of Enchantment) and often channel the magickal desert in my writing. *Note that I’m currently living in San Diego with my family (near the border and Imperial Valley where I grew up) as I research and write my next novel.

Rachel Harrison’s novel, Play Nice, came out on September 9, 2025 - and I was honored to receive an advance copy. It was easily one of my favorite reads of the year! Even though I hadn’t been able to read many books in 2025, I felt like each one hit me on such a deep level. It honestly felt like Play Nice was written for me based on how much I related to the main character.

Synopsis

A woman must confront the demons of her past when she attempts to fix up her childhood home in this devilishly clever take on the haunted house novel from the USA Today bestselling author.

Clio Louise Barnes leads a picture-perfect life as a stylist and influencer, but beneath the glossy veneer she harbors a not-so glamorous secret: she grew up in a haunted house. Well, not haunted. Possessed. After Clio’s parent’s messy divorce, her mother, Alex, moved Clio and her sisters into a house occupied by a demon. Or so Alex claimed. That’s not what Clio’s sisters remember or what the courts determined when they stripped Alex of custody after she went off the deep end. But Alex was insistent; she even wrote a book about her experience in the house.

After Alex’s sudden death, the supposedly possessed house passes to Clio and her sisters. Where her sisters see childhood trauma, Clio sees an opportunity for house flipping content. Only, as the home makeover process begins, Clio discovers there might be some truth to her mother’s claims. As memories resurface and Clio finally reads her mother’s book, the presence in the house becomes more real, and more sinister, revealing ugly truths that threaten to shake Clio’s beautiful life to its very foundation.

BUY BOOK

Interview

Rachel, you have such a gift when it comes to feminist horror and highlighting women in such a realistic way that pushes stereotypes! Your main character in Play Nice, Clio, could easily be labeled an “unlikeable female character,” and she completely owns it. What is your take on the offensive “unlikeable female character” label, and what is your take on women and female characters historically needing to be “likeable”?

Clio’s personality is very intentional. I wanted her to have traits that our society typically finds unacceptable in women. She’s conceited, she’s selfish, she’s brutally honest, she’s unapologetically herself, she’s a brat, she’s promiscuous. She’s savvy, borderline manipulative. None of these traits are inherently bad or evil, but they’re treated as such. She is the way she is because of how she grew up, and the hard lessons she learned young. She’s also the way she is because when we meet her in the novel, she’s thrust into emotional turmoil. I wanted to challenge readers to find empathy for a character with traits we’ve been conditioned to find unacceptable. I wanted to challenge readers to ask themselves why are these traits unacceptable, why do we bristle at a woman who isn’t sweet and generous and selfless? Why are we so hard on women? All my novels get responses about the characters being unlikable or flawed, and I always want to swap that word out with “human.” All humans are flawed, we’re all unlikable to someone. If you don’t connect with a character, I think that’s totally fair! I just worry about the level of judgment reserved for women—in fiction and in real life. Empathy matters. Understanding matters. I want to challenge myself and others to deconstruct any internalized misogyny. Clio is part of that, and I love her for it.

In Play Nice, you brought up so many familial issues that were extremely relatable (my copy is heavily tabbed!) The way the mother is perceived was influenced by the father’s narrative, which I feel is all too common. This elevated the horror and the frustration Clio experiences about not knowing the full truth. Do you think that altered perceptions and lost memories are vital when it comes to realistic horror involving families?

Families are so complicated! In beautiful ways and in horrific ways. Memory is fickle, the past is slippery. We all have different versions of the same events, because we all have different perspectives, different vantage points. Sometimes that can cause rifts, or resentment. When there’s a rift in a family, I think perception becomes really vital and really dangerous. Who do we believe and why? Can we trust ourselves, our own version of events, our own memories? It’s messy. I always come back to that Tolstoy quote… “Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I think it’s generally true, but there are a lot of common threads.

There were so many terrifying scenes throughout the book involving the house, exorcisms, and the like. Your use of simple descriptions were remarkable in that they allowed the reader to create their own mental images of the scenes (I had to put the book down a few times and step away!) Do you feel that quiet horror is more impactful than focusing on shock factors?

It depends on the reader, I think! What scares me might not scare someone else, and vice versa. Fear is so subjective. I try to focus on the characters, setting a scene, the emotional resonance and tension. I think if the goal is to scare everyone, you’re fighting a losing battle. There’s always someone who’s going to say, “that didn’t scare me.” I’m not trying to scare. I’m trying to tell a story. I’m trying to make the reader feel. If they feel any emotion intensely while reading, that’s a victory to me.

When it came to Clio’s sex life in the book, I loved how you made her unapologetic about her hookups and experiences with sex. So often, women are shamed for having active sex lives with different partners, when it is not the same way for men. Do you think that we need more of this representation in books and across other media?

For sure! This ties back to my answer to your first question. I wasn’t like “Mwahaha how can I scandalize readers?” I was thinking about Clio’s personality, and how she was raised. She saw her mother heartbroken and destroyed by her marriage. It made sense to me that Clio wouldn’t be interested in a monogamous relationship. But she’s young and attractive and likes to have fun and feel good. Of course she’d be out there hooking up no strings attached. And that trait aligned with me intentionally challenging readers to examine why Clio’s sexuality might make them uncomfortable. It’d be nice to get to a point where people just chill out about sex. Other people’s sex lives don’t affect us. If a woman wants to get hers, and that’s not what you (you being a random person not you reading this) would do, then you go make a different choice. Our society wastes all this time and energy clutching pearls and passing judgment, when we could just love and accept everyone and spend that now free time eating snacks and enjoying our lives. Clearly, I have strong feelings about this!

The way you incorporated your wit with dark humor gave an edge to Play Nice that paired well with the intense horror. It helped to create such a well rounded and atmospheric novel! As someone with complex PTSD, I often struggle with memories and my sense of self due to lost/foggy memories. It made me relate to Clio on many levels. What are you hoping that readers will take away from the novel beyond the horror scenes in regard to Clio’s insecurity about her past and demanding the truth?

It’s okay to ask for what we need. It’s okay to ask questions. It’s okay to take time to mourn and process the past, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to get stuck there forever. We can’t control our past, but we can control our future.

It’s easy for people to call us crazy when they want to deflect, when they don’t like what we have to say. Trust your intuition. Trust yourself.

About Rachel Harrison

Rachel Harrison is the USA Today Bestselling author of SO THIRSTY, BLACK SHEEP, SUCH SHARP TEETH, CACKLE, PLAY NICE, and THE RETURN, which was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, as an Audible Original, and in her debut story collection BAD DOLLS.

CONNECT WITH RACHEL HARRISON

I had the pleasure of interviewing author K.L. Cerra recently, who wrote the sapphic Southern Gothic thriller/horror novel, Such Pretty Flowers! This novel is a treat for fans of botanical horror (although if you have trypophobia like me, be forewarned that it plays a part in this novel!)

Kim is a mental health professional, such as myself, and I could see a lot of mental health pieces within her novel that I loved. I hope you enjoy her interview as much as I enjoyed talking with her!

Synopsis

A woman investigating her brother’s apparent suicide finds herself falling for her prime suspect—his darkly mysterious girlfriend—in this “creepy, compelling, and utterly original” (Karen Dionne) thriller.

“Get it out of me.”

It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in the lavish Savannah townhouse of his girlfriend, Maura. Police ruled his death a suicide sparked by psychosis, but Holly can’t shake the idea that something else must have happened—something involving another message he sent earlier that night about a “game” Maura wanted to play.

Determined to discover the truth, Holly begins to stalk Maura, a magnetic, black-eyed florist with a penchant for carnivorous plants. But what begins as an investigation quickly veers into a fixation that lures Holly into the depths of Maura’s world: Savannah high society, eerie black roses, and a whisper of something more sinister. Soon Holly is feeling a dark attraction to the one woman she shouldn’t trust. As Holly falls deeper for Maura and her secrets, she’s left with only one choice: find out what happened to Dane or meet the same fate.

BUY BOOK

Hi, Kim! I loved Such Pretty Flowers and its southern gothic vibes. What made you want to incorporate southern gothic in this specific novel?

Hi, Sage! Thanks so much for interviewing me, and for the kind words. I was inspired to write Such Pretty Flowers after a trip to Savannah, Georgia. The city utterly enchanted me – all the old architecture, the squares, the rich history and ghost lore. One visit is all it took to convince me to set a story there!

I find genre-bending novels to be so compelling. The way that you incorporated horror, thriller, and mystery within this novel created such a well-rounded and atmospheric read. Do you like to incorporate various genres in all of your work, or are there times when you want to stick to one genre?

Hmm, I don’t think this was something I consciously did, actually! When I was brainstorming for my next project (that ended up being Such Pretty Flowers), I jotted down a bunch of ideas that interested me. Then I wrote them on notecards and mixed and matched them in an attempt to spark inspiration. If memory serves, some of these seeds of ideas included “florist,” “mystery illness,” and “Savannah.” I guess my projects tend to be an amalgamation of things that interest me, rather than adhering to a strict genre.

Maura is such an engrossing and eerie character. I loved her fixation on carnivorous plants! Botanical horror has taken off recently, and I love (while being terrified of!) this sub-genre. Did you intend to incorporate botanical horror when creating Maura’s character?

Thank you! Yes, I’d been playing around with the idea of incorporating some kind of spooky florist into a story for a while, but I don’t think I realized that botanical horror was a “thing”! I had such a good time crafting Maura’s character—and researching all her creepy plants along the way. Fortunately, my mom is a landscape architect, so I was able to do some “consulting” there.

LGBTQIA+ representation is so important, especially in horror. You recently blurbed one of our novellas through my queer horror publisher, Pride with a Bite (thank you again!) and I loved how you incorporated this important representation in Such Pretty Flowers. Is incorporating queer characters important to you in your writing?

Absolutely! Holly’s grappling with her sexuality was a central piece of Such Pretty Flowers and I tried to be really thoughtful about the way I portrayed that. And thank you for giving me the opportunity to blurb Waxing Off! I thought the way the author explored sexuality, identity, and transphobia through the lens of werewolf lore was so creative and impactful.

When it comes to horror novels, and those that genre-bend but incorporate horror themes, I’ve found that readers are so passionate and varied in their responses. Horror is so personal. What would you say to horror writers (aspiring and published) who are struggling with reviews and criticism?

Oh boy, this is a tough one. I’d echo what you said—that there is so much subjectivity in this genre in particular. Opinions can be…intense. I’ve learned to no longer look at my reviews because it wasn’t doing my mental health any favors, but I realize this is easier said than done. For us writers, we have to rest assured that we put our best possible product out there. Such Pretty Flowers went through so many rounds of revisions with seasoned professionals, and I often needed to remind myself to trust the process. Our work isn’t going to appeal to everyone, and if it’s eliciting strong reactions (even if not all positive), that’s ultimately a sign that we’ve done something right.

CONNECT WITH K.L. CERRA

Erika T. Wurth is a Native author of the new book, The Haunting of Room 904 – a book I devoured not once but twice, and I am not usually a re-reader.

Her novel, White Horse, was my introduction to her work, and I immediately loved the gritty and graceful voice she brings to the horror & thriller genres. She is a local author to me, and having grown up in Colorado, I admire how she incorporates landmarks that are so iconic to Denver. This book highlights a tragedy that occurred here, referred to as “the massacre.” Erika incorporated this historical event with paranormal themes in such a searing, yet delicate, way.

I enjoyed reviewing an early copy of The Haunting of Room 904 last year, and interviewing Erika for its release. I hope that it inspires you to pick up not only her books, but to actively read more works by Native authors.

Synopsis

“You’ll want to follow Erika and her Olivia into any dark, creaky room.” —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie

From the author of White Horse (“Twisty and electric.” —The New York Times Book Review) comes a terrifying and resonant novel about a woman who uses her unique gift to learn the truth about her sister’s death.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits.

A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel. The owner can’t explain it, but every few years, a girl is found dead in room 904, no matter what room she checked into the night before. As Olivia tries to understand these disturbing deaths, the past and the present collide as Olivia’s investigation forces her to confront a mysterious and possibly dangerous cult, a vindictive journalist, betrayal by her friends, and shocking revelations about her sister’s secret life.

The Haunting of Room 904 is a paranormal thriller that is as edgy as it is heartfelt and simmers with intensity and longing. Erika T. Wurth lives up to her reputation as “a gritty new punkish outsider voice in American horror.”

BUY BOOK

It has been a long time since I found a novel so enthralling that I read it in a single evening, and your novel The Haunting of Room 904 did just that. Can you tell me what inspired you to write such a heartfelt yet heartbreaking and essential novel?

I’m so glad you found it so engaging! The plot in particular, was a bear for me with this one. As to inspiration, a lot of things were going on for me. I like to think I write for joy, primarily, but in many ways, the central themes in this novel revolve around grief and trauma. Historical trauma, regarding the massacre, and intense professional trauma—I feel that at a time in which Natives are gaining ground, there’s also a tremendous amount of violence and lateral violence when it comes to our work. I wish non-natives would check their sources, when it comes to what they’re seeing about us. I was also going through a difficult family trauma at the time, and I think that’s clear with the theme of differences and deep similarities between siblings and how that can affect one’s fundamental identity. However, I also wanted to write a novel about how ceremony can be contemporary and magical and can help us move forward in our lives.

Learning about the massacre made me so angry, first because of how horrific it was, and second because I had never heard of it before. What made you want to incorporate this specific history into your novel?

I grew up not far from where this massacre occurred (right outside of Denver)— so in many ways, it’s always on my mind. Additionally, I have a cousin whose ancestors lost relatives at that massacre. However, if folks want to read a novel that also addresses Sand Creek by someone who is Cheyenne/Arapahoe, they should read WANDERING STARS by Tommy Orange. But it felt necessary to address, and in fact disrespectful not to address something that happened so close to where I grew up and affected someone I love so much.

Being from Colorado myself, I love how you incorporated such important landmarks and chose to highlight the Brown Palace in this novel. Is there a reason you chose this landmark as the focal point of your story?

In many ways, I chose it because it’s cool. And also because I grew up not far from the Brown Palace, and have gone there for various reasons over the years. But mainly because it’s reputed to be haunted. Room 904 is supposed to be haunted by someone I very much based the character off of, a fascinating historical figure when it comes to the city of Denver—though I took much in terms of poetic license. It’s said that when there wasn’t a phone in the room, and the Brown was doing major renovations, they kept getting calls from that room. Additionally, it’s just a great Denver landmark.

By incorporating grief, trauma, and Native history that is so often ignored, your novel is an incredible tool for spreading awareness and increasing empathy. What do you hope that readers will take away from your novel?

I have to admit, I hope that people read works by Indigenous authors for more than education— for fun and joy and because the art of the thing is equal to the art of any book by any person. Because one can always read an essay about subject matter. And I don’t think I’m any different, for example, from a southern writer (of any ethnic background) who incorporates aspects of southern history into their work, which also has a deep history of grief and trauma. That said, though I very much enjoyed incorporating things like haunted mirrors, demons, and other ghostly stuff, of course Native history, specifically as relates to my ancestral line, and to Colorado, matters to me very much.

About Erika T. Wurth

Erika T. Wurth’s novel WHITE HORSE is a New York Times editors pick, a Good Morning America buzz pick, and an Indie Next, Target book of the Month, and BOTM Pick. She is both a Kenyon and Sewanee fellow, has published in The Kenyon Review, Buzzfeed, and The Writer’s Chronicle, and is a narrative artist for the Meow Wolf Denver installation. She is an urban Native of Apache/Chickasaw/Cherokee descent. She is represented by Rebecca Friedman for books, and Dana Spector for film. She lives in Denver with her partner, step-kids and two incredibly fluffy dogs.

Please Read: https://erikatwurth.com/statement-on-identity-and-harassment/

Synopsis

The instant USA Today bestseller from CJ Leede, author of Maeve Fly—a scorching and sweeping new novel about the end of the world as we know it.

“A blistering, feverish ride through a uniquely American apocalypse."—Chuck Wendig, New York Times bestselling author

Named one of the Best Horror Books of 2024 (Esquire, Vulture, Paste, ScreenRant, and Literary Hub) • A GoodReads and Publishers Weekly Editors' Pick • An Indie Next Pick • A Splatterpunk Award Finalist!

A virus is spreading across America, transforming the infected and making them feral with lust.

Sophie, a good Catholic girl, must traverse the hellscape of the midwest to try to find her family while the world around her burns. Along the way she discovers there are far worse fates than dying a virgin…

The end times are coming.

BUY BOOK

As someone who was raised Catholic and experienced a lot of abuse within the faith, I found your novel, American Rapture, to be so cathartic. Do you have any specific experiences with the faith that led to the conception of this novel?

I’m so sorry to hear that, and I hope you’re okay. I was really so lucky in that I personally never experienced abuse in the church, but of course I know people who did, though I didn’t know that until I was older. For me growing up, I just struggled a lot with the ideas we were taught there, and they never really stopped hounding me for many years. It’s hard to pinpoint a moment because there were so many–my entire childhood in church and CCD and choir, and I was the kind of kid who listened to everything and took it all in, and the stories really are so frightening when you listen. But I do remember a Sunday school teacher specifically telling us that little girls were born into more sin than little boys, and that moment just stuck with me so much for so long because I kept thinking, that can’t be right, can it? Sometimes a little thought like that is all it takes.

I was moved to tears by your letter to the reader in the back of the book, and I am so sorry for the loss of your sweet soul-dog. I lost my soul-cat a year ago, a loss that was also more extreme than any I have experienced before, and I still wonder how I am going to survive. How do you think readers experiencing any form of grief can find comfort, or at least exploration, in the horror genre?

Thank you, and I’m so sorry for your loss. I truly think it’s one of the worst things a person can live through, and it’s just one of the cruellest facts of our reality that our animals’ lifespans aren’t as long as ours. I feel in general that horror is a safe and important space to explore the worst things we live with in order to at least know that there is shared experience in those things. It’s a space to also show by contrast all that is beautiful and kind and gentle in this world, and I hope in my books (potentially Maeve being a bit of an outlier in this way) to always show both, to always reaffirm that life holds beauty and love too. And that even if we’re going to lose the ones we love one day, or they’ll lose us, we got the time together, and that’s really what matters.

You are such a master at creating strong female characters within the horror genre, first with Maeve Fly, and now with Sophie. Why do you think that it is important to create horror stories that surround such strong (if not wonderfully unhinged) women?

Thank you! I mean to me (and I’m sure many), it’s just so obvious– there are so many strong women in this world, so why wouldn’t they be in our books? I also feel that as a writer you have to love your characters for the reader to love them, and I personally tend to really love and respect characters who are curious and don’t take no for an answer and who are uniquely and imperfectly themselves, so I always try to give those attributes to my main characters especially.

Are there any religion-based horror novels or stories that inspired you with American Rapture?

I really didn’t read many when I was working on this actually. It was largely inspired by the Divine Comedy, and then of course biblical stories I learned growing up. I think probably on a slant it was inspired by Anne Rice because I am just so generally obsessed with all her work, but I wasn’t totally aware of it if so. But since I finished the book, I’ve read a lot more religious horror, and it’s been a fascinating education! There’s so much out there, and so much to learn from other authors and all the incredible work they’re producing.

Lastly, do you have any projects on the horizon that we can look forward to?

Yes! I’ve been working on a Colorado book for a while about ghosts, cannibals, and what lies beyond. I’m really so excited about it, and right now it’s tentatively set to come out Spring 2026. I got to explore two very distinct sides of myself with Sophie and Maeve, and the two main characters of this third book hold a lot more of the side of me that I haven’t gotten to write about yet– the outdoors-loving, quiet-seeking road hound and wanderer, and I’m very excited to live in that space while finishing it. In many ways, this third book is the truest to who I am now, and it feels very special to me for that reason. I’m hoping readers will feel the same when it gets in their hands and becomes theirs!

Synopsis

18 illustrated horror stories follow one Cherokee family through the atrocities -- supernatural and manmade -- each generation encounters

Imagine a chilling horror collection that weaves classic monsters like werewolves and vampires with the true horrors of colonialism, domestic violence, and displacement. Andrea Rogers delivers.

Follow a Cherokee family across centuries, from their ancestral lands in 1830s Georgia to the battlefields of World War I and Vietnam, and beyond. Each story offers a chilling glimpse into a different era, revealing how history’s monsters intertwine with the supernatural.

Man Made Monsters is a powerful exploration of identity and the enduring legacy of colonization. Rogers masterfully blends Cherokee legends with chilling horror, creating unforgettable characters and monsters.

Each story is accompanied by haunting illustrations from Cherokee artist Jeff Edwards, incorporating the Cherokee syllabary for a truly immersive experience.

Don’t miss out on this masterpiece! Man Made Monsters will stay with you long after the last page.

BUY HARDCOVER

BUY PAPERBACK

What made you want to venture into writing horror for young readers?

I loved horror when I was a kid, but when my own children were growing up I didn’t see anything for them with people who looked like my family or weren’t stereotypes or misappropriation of Native beliefs corrupted for scares. And, unfortunately, the history of our peoples is horrific, so it is a hard story to tell because it is built for horror. So how do you not?

It took a long time before I felt ready to write horror that existed in what I considered an authentic space, that used Western horror tropes and characters in a way that Native people could enjoy and not feel like they had read trauma porn. Yes, we have been targeted for extinction and we have to respond to that, but we aren’t defined by it.

I didn’t see a lot of stories like the ones I wanted to write out there and I knew kids wanted them, I wanted them. So, I wrote them.

How do you feel young adult horror differs from horror for adults?

Ideally, I feel like a young adult author centers the reader and tries to do no harm.

Why do you think it is important that young readers read horror?

Horror is in conversation with the world. It gives you a place where you can be scared but then close the book. You can’t do that with the world, or at least it’s very hard. Horror helps you come up with survival strategies. Native people have had to do that for a long time. Those lessons in our stories, that’s how we remember, honor, and adapt.

How has your identity as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation impacted your horror writing?

I think the loss of language is horrific. It’s terrifying. I try to get that across in my work and remind readers we have to learn to speak now. There is no future without a present that privileges our culture through the language.

What do you hope readers will take away from Man Made Monsters?

I want brown girls to know their survival is what matters. The world is better off with you. I also believe Indigenous ways of interacting with the world are better for the planet and people, so I hope people will consider that in whatever way works for them and their families. I want people to know that we, Indigenous people, are still here.