Sapphic Romance – Write on the World

From the author of Tender Is the Flesh comes another brutal yet mesmerizing vision of humanity undone. In The Unworthy, Agustina Bazterrica imagines a world consumed by climate collapse and desperation, where one woman survives inside a secretive religious order that thrives on submission and silence. From her isolated cell, she writes her story in scraps of ink, dirt, and blood—confessing, questioning, and unraveling as the walls of her faith begin to crack.

*Get your copy of The Unworthy from my independent online bookstore today!*

This is horror not of jump scares, but of ideology and indoctrination. The convent’s rigid hierarchy—the Enlightened and the Unworthy—mirrors the broken world beyond its gates, one where water is scarce, and mercy even scarcer. When a new woman arrives and challenges what the narrator believes to be truth, the cracks widen. What emerges is a story about power, memory, and the price of obedience in a collapsing world.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Gothic horror and generational curses collide in House of Monstrous Women by Daphne Fama

October 31, 2025October 25, 2025 Mandy Webster

Daphne Fama’s House of Monstrous Women is a lush and terrifying gothic horror novel set in 1986 Philippines, where revolution outside mirrors the quiet rebellion unfolding within a house that may as well be alive. Set against the backdrop of the People Power Revolution, this novel layers political upheaval with supernatural dread in a way that feels both intimate and epic.

*Get your copy of House of Monstrous Women from my independent online bookstore today!*

Radios hum with news from Manila as protests rise and a dictator’s hold begins to crumble—but inside the labyrinthine Ranoco home, another kind of battle is taking place. The connection between the two is unmistakable: both are revolutions built on desperation and the dream of escape. The hopelessness that Alejandro feels about the People Power movement echoes Hiraya’s belief that she can never escape the legacy of her cursed family.

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Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Blood, sisterhood, and sanity: Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna van Veen #spooktober

October 29, 2025October 25, 2025 Mandy Webster

If you’re looking for a haunting, atmospheric read to carry you through the end of #spooktober, Johanna van Veen’s Blood on Her Tongue offers the perfect blend of gothic unease and creeping dread. Set in the Netherlands in 1887, this novel follows Lucy, whose twin sister Sarah has fallen into a disturbing illness that blurs the line between madness and possession. As Sarah’s behavior becomes more erratic—and more violent—Lucy must decide how far she’ll go to protect her sister, even as something monstrous seems to take hold of her.

*Get your copy of* Blood on Her Tongue from my independent online bookstore today!

The story unfolds in shadow and candlelight, in grand halls filled with whispers and secrets. Van Veen’s prose feels appropriately decadent and claustrophobic, wrapping the reader in the same feverish confusion that grips Lucy. The decaying corpse unearthed on Sarah’s husband’s estate provides more than a physical mystery—it becomes a mirror for the moral rot beneath the surface of polite society, particularly the suffocating gender expectations that hem Lucy and Sarah in.

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Author Interview

Author interview with romantasy writer E.A.M. Trofimenkoff

March 25, 2025February 20, 2025 Mandy Webster

Inspired by Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two of her all-time favorite female pirates, E. A. M. Trofimenkoff is the author of the Dark Depths duology as well as their contemporary romance, You and I Collide.

In A Kiss of the Siren’s Song, two women disguised as men board a pirate ship: one set on revenge, the other escaping land and the bounty on her head. The two of them quickly find themselves in the middle of a voyage to find the world’s most dangerous weapon: the Kraken’s Fang.

Even worse, their evil captain has a far more nefarious plot in mind. Can the two unravel the sea of secrets, and save the world? Or will their budding feelings for each other result in their downfall?

Q: What/who were your early literary influences, and how do you think their writing has shaped you as a storyteller today?
A: I think The Hunger Games was the first book to make me truly fall in love with reading. So much so that I still remember exactly where I was when I read it for the first time, and every year when it snows, it reminds me of that trip, and I have to pick up the series and re-read it. To this date, I’ve read the original trilogy over thirty times, and it remains my favourite series of all time. Now that I am writing my own stories, I am inspired to write complex characters who aren’t always loveable, who go through their challenges and come back with scars to show for them, and it’s given me the courage to explore difficult narratives that involve impossible decisions and the consequences that accompany them.

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