Tag: Literary Fiction

Elderfly Press

Introducing Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us

Mandy Webster

Some monsters live under the bed. Others tuck you in at night.

I’m excited to announce the publication of my newest anthology, Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us, edited by me and published by Elderfly Press. This collection has been a particularly meaningful project because it explores something that can be difficult to talk about: the ways the people who raise us can also hurt us.

Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us is available for purchase today!
Get your copy now!

We tend to think of childhood as a time of safety and parents as the people who are supposed to provide that safety. But families are complicated, and not every child grows up in a home where love is unconditional or protection is guaranteed. Sometimes the people who are supposed to nurture us become the source of our deepest wounds. Sometimes those wounds follow us into adulthood. And sometimes breaking the cycle means confronting what happened and refusing to let it define what comes next.

Continue reading “Introducing Mother Monster, Father Fiend: An Anthology of the Monsters Who Raised Us” →
Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: What Will Become of Us?

Mandy Webster

Elderfly Press is seeking submissions for a new anthology of stories and poetry exploring an unsettling question: What will become of us?

Submissions for What Will We Become of Us? are open through December 15, 2026.

We are living through a period of enormous uncertainty. The world around us is changing rapidly, and the future can sometimes feel impossible to predict. The institutions we rely on are shifting. Technology is transforming how we work and communicate. Economic pressures affect where and how we live. The environment is changing. Political and social divisions seem increasingly difficult to bridge. At the same time, individuals are constantly navigating their own smaller transformations: growing older, falling in love, losing someone, starting over, becoming parents, leaving home, changing careers, discovering who they are, or realizing that the person they thought they would become is no longer who they are.

So, we want to ask the question: What will become of us?

Continue reading “Call for Submissions: What Will Become of Us?” →
Writers on Writing

Why fiction can be more powerful than nonfiction when we need to understand social issues

Mandy Webster

Facts matter. We need historians, journalists, researchers, documentaries, investigative reporting, firsthand testimony, and all the other forms of nonfiction that help us understand what actually happened in the world. Facts are essential. Without them, we cannot distinguish history from mythology, evidence from propaganda, or reality from the stories people tell themselves. But sometimes, facts aren’t enough.

Graphic: Why fiction can be more powerful than nonfiction when we need to understand social issues
Facts tell us what happened. Fiction helps us understand what it felt like.
List to this analysis on YouTube!

Sometimes we can know a fact without really understanding it. We can know that human beings were enslaved. We can know that people were displaced from their homes. We can know that women living under oppressive governments lose rights and opportunities. We can know that war changes ordinary people’s lives. We can know that trauma can be passed from one generation to another. And yet we can still struggle to understand what any of those things actually mean to the people experiencing them. That is where fiction can do something extraordinary.

Continue reading “Why fiction can be more powerful than nonfiction when we need to understand social issues” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Buzzard by Inez Ray: A dystopian future where exploitation never ends

Mandy Webster

Inez Ray’s Buzzard is a ferocious dystopian novel about reproductive control, corporate power, and the terrifying possibility that our technological future could look very different while the fundamental structures of human exploitation remain exactly the same.

Get your copy of Buzzard today!

Set in 2086, Buzzard imagines an American future in which the United States no longer exists, abortion is illegal, fertility is closely monitored, and corporations have effectively replaced government. Midwife Mae Bastet has spent seven years imprisoned in Buzzard, a private prison in the Sonoran Desert operated by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan. She was arrested for providing reproductive health care to women and separated from her two sons. Now she is trying to survive long enough to get back to them.

Continue reading “Buzzard by Inez Ray: A dystopian future where exploitation never ends” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Strangers by Naomi Alderman: Grief, strange creatures, and a world that keeps moving

Mandy Webster

Naomi Alderman’s The Strangers is an unusual and deeply thoughtful blend of memoir and speculative fiction that uses the arrival of a mysterious new species to explore grief, human nature, and the unsettling realization that the world keeps going even when your own world has changed forever.

Get your copy of The Strangers today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

A few months after the death of her mother, novelist Naomi Alderman installs a wildlife camera in the garden of her parents’ home. What it captures is something no one has seen before: a strange, badger-sized animal with a flat face and a long, trunk-like nose. Soon these creatures, called mimmoths, are appearing everywhere. They spread across the United Kingdom and then around the world, seemingly without explanation. They don’t behave like ordinary animals. They won’t take food from humans, they can’t be captured, and they seem to possess an intelligence and purpose of their own.

Continue reading “The Strangers by Naomi Alderman: Grief, strange creatures, and a world that keeps moving” →
Writers on Writing

Intentional ambiguity vs. confusion: How to use ambiguity effectively in novel writing

Mandy Webster

There is an important difference between a story that deliberately leaves some things unanswered and a story that leaves readers unsure what is happening because the narrative has not given them enough information. Both kinds of stories can be confusing, but they create very different kinds of confusion. One invites interpretation; the other makes it difficult to understand the story at all.

This distinction matters because writers are often encouraged to trust their readers. We are told not to over-explain, not to resolve every mystery, and not to tell readers exactly what a story means. That is good advice when the writer is deliberately creating ambiguity. It becomes bad advice when the writer uses “ambiguity” to excuse a story that is simply difficult to follow.

Continue reading “Intentional ambiguity vs. confusion: How to use ambiguity effectively in novel writing” →
Author Interview

Author Meg Howrey on her new novel, Body Language: Alzheimer’s, caregiving, autonomy, and family

Mandy Webster

In today’s author interview, Meg Howrey discusses Body Language, her latest novel about Alzheimer’s, caregiving, family conflict, and the difficult question of how we honor a person’s wishes when they can no longer make decisions for themselves.

When I finished Body Language, I found myself thinking about it long after I’d put the book down—not because it offers an easy answer to the difficult questions at its center, but because it refuses to. Howrey’s novel asks what it means to honor someone’s autonomy while also forcing us to consider the very real emotional, financial, and practical costs that can fall on the people left to provide care.

Meg Howrey is the author of Body Language, which released September 1, 2026.

What I especially appreciated about the novel was the way Howrey lets each of the three sisters—Sloane, Laurel, and Nanette—have a legitimate perspective. None of them is simply the voice of reason while the others are being selfish or misguided. Their feelings about their mother’s wishes are tangled up with their own histories, fears, relationships, and ideas about what they can realistically take on. And somehow, despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Body Language is also genuinely funny in places.

Continue reading “Author Meg Howrey on her new novel, Body Language: Alzheimer’s, caregiving, autonomy, and family” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

The Antique Picker’s Daughter by Melanie Dugan: Survival, exploitation, and the gray areas of morality

Mandy Webster

What happens when the person who saves you is also the person taking advantage of you? That question sits at the heart of Melanie Dugan’s The Antique Picker’s Daughter, a compelling novel about survival, exploitation, and the uncomfortable space between doing good and doing harm. Releasing September 15, 2026, the novel follows Frankie, a young woman living on the streets of Toronto, who finds an unlikely protector in Francis, an older man who teaches her how to make money buying and selling collectibles and small antiques.

Get your copy of The Antique Picker’s Daughter today!

When winter approaches, Frankie is fortunate—or perhaps simply less unfortunate than she could have been—to cross paths with Francis. He takes her off the streets and gives her food and a place to sleep. In return, she becomes part of his business, traveling with him through small towns and villages across southern Ontario as they acquire items to resell for a profit. Francis teaches Frankie the rules of the game, and she proves herself to be remarkably capable at it.

Continue reading “The Antique Picker’s Daughter by Melanie Dugan: Survival, exploitation, and the gray areas of morality” →
Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams asks where evil really comes from

Mandy Webster

What if the monster haunting you isn’t a supernatural creature at all, but the hatred of ordinary people—and what if the only way to fight it is to become one of them? That question sits at the heart of Kelly McWilliams’s American Nightmare, a haunting historical thriller inspired by the life and work of civil rights activist Walter F. White.

Get your copy of American Nightmare today!
Listen to this book review on youtube!

Releasing September 15, 2026, American Nightmare follows Clark Wendell White, a light-skinned Black man who first encounters what he calls the Nightmare as a child during the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot. As Clark and his father stand guard over their family home, a white boy named Sam Cahill tries to redirect the mob toward them. When Clark and Sam lock eyes, Clark sees something in Sam that frightens him even more than the mob itself. He sees what he believes is an evil presence, something that wasn’t there before. From that moment forward, the Nightmare becomes a presence in Clark’s life, although he is never entirely certain whether it is something supernatural or a manifestation of the trauma he experienced as a child.

Continue reading “American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams asks where evil really comes from” →
Author Interview

Author Suzanne Junered discusses motherhood, identity, and the darkness behind Goodnight Monsters

Mandy Webster

In today’s author interview, Suzanne Junered discusses Goodnight Monsters, her unsettling novel about motherhood, identity, grief, and the disturbing thoughts we don’t always admit. When I reviewed Goodnight Monsters, I was struck by the novel’s unsettling exploration of motherhood, identity, and the thoughts we’re often afraid to admit we have. Through Lia’s fascination with death and decomposition, her complicated relationship with pregnancy, and her increasingly blurred line between fantasy and reality, Junered creates a story that is as psychologically disturbing as it is thought-provoking.

Suzanne Junered is the author of Goodnight Monsters, which releases today!

In this interview, she talks about the deeply personal experiences that shaped the novel, the unexpected origins of the Body Farm setting, and her desire to challenge the idea that there is one “right” way to experience motherhood. She also shares how her own struggles with grief, anger, and loss of identity found their way onto the page—and offers a glimpse at what she’s working on next.

Continue reading “Author Suzanne Junered discusses motherhood, identity, and the darkness behind Goodnight Monsters” →