Survival Stories – Write on the World

This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum: A twisty thriller about love, loyalty, and coercive control

March 6, 2026February 21, 2026 Mandy Webster

What happens when your best friend—the person who helped build your life and career—vanishes, and you’re the one everyone thinks killed her? In This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum, releasing March 10, 2026, a wildly popular podcast duo built on survival stories faces a mystery they might not survive themselves.

Get your copy of This Story Might Save Your Life from my independent online bookstore today!

Best friends Benny Abbott and Joy Moore have made a career out of telling “against all odds” survival stories on their beloved podcast. From Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy to countless near-death tales told with irreverent humor, they’ve turned trauma into connection—and connection into a carefully managed empire, thanks largely to Joy’s husband, Xander.

Then Joy disappears.

Continue reading →

Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward: A brutal, brilliant thriller about survival in the ashes

February 25, 2026February 14, 2026 Mandy Webster

A lot of thrillers pretend to be gritty—Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward actually earns it, dragging readers into the Colorado Rockies and refusing to let them look away. Releasing February 24, 2026, Nowhere Burning is a harrowing, genre-blurring novel that folds the dark myth of Peter Pan and the feral desperation of Lord of the Flies into something uniquely Ward: unsettling, intimate, and psychologically razor-sharp.

Get your copy of Nowhere Burning from my independent online bookstore today!

Riley and her younger brother Oliver flee their troubled home in the middle of the night, chasing rumors of Nowhere—an abandoned ranch once owned by a reclusive movie star and now whispered about as a refuge for runaways. What they find is a scorched sanctuary with its own rules, its own hierarchy, and its own buried horrors. It promises freedom. It demands a price.

Continue reading →

Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Mother Monster/Father Fiend

November 16, 2025November 22, 2025 Mandy Webster

Elderfly Press is now accepting submissions for Mother Monster/Father Fiend, a new anthology exploring the shadowed edges of parenthood. We’re looking for short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and black-and-white artwork that reveal the monstrous, misunderstood, or mythic aspects of motherhood and fatherhood.

This anthology invites you to challenge the cultural scripts of what a “good” parent looks like. Sometimes the monster is real—a parent whose choices hurt, haunt, or unravel the lives of those in their care. Other times, the monster is only a mask placed by society:

Continue reading →

Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions: Be My Weird/Wyrd Valentine

October 26, 2025October 22, 2025 Mandy Webster

Love has always had a dark side—and we want to see yours. Elderfly Press is now accepting submissions for Be My Weird/Wyrd Valentine (working title), an anthology exploring the uncanny, unsettling, and sometimes downright horrifying side of romantic relationships.

We’re looking for stories, poems, essays, and black-and-white art that dive into the strange corners of love and desire—where passion turns perilous, intimacy hums with unease, and devotion blurs the line between beauty and terror. Whether it’s romance that defies reality, affection tinged with dread, or longing that transforms into something unrecognizable, we want work that lingers in the mind and twists the heart. Let the strange, the eerie, and the passionate collide—show us the love that frightens, bewilders, and enthralls.

Continue reading →

Call for Submissions

Now accepting book-length submissions

October 25, 2025October 22, 2025 Mandy Webster

At Elderfly Press, we are committed to publishing bold, literary works that unsettle, provoke, and linger long after the final page. We seek book-length fiction and creative nonfiction that confronts the hidden violence of the world—psychological, social, or supernatural—and gives voice to stories that challenge the patriarchal status quo.

We are especially drawn to:

Literary thrillers and suspense novels with a sharp edge.
Horror fiction that unsettles through atmosphere, voice, or psychological depth.
Creative nonfiction—including memoirs—that could be read with the intensity of a thriller or horror novel.
Works that expose the dark underbelly of the patriarchy, pulling back the veil on power, violence, and survival.

Continue reading →

Book Reviews, Find Your Next Read

All The Water in the World: The literary climate change thriller that made me question everything

March 14, 2025February 20, 2025 Mandy Webster

As I read All the Water in the World, my television showed footage of extreme flooding in Kentucky, while outside my own window in central Illinois, the world was frozen solid.

Cover of the novel, All the Water in the World. — Get your copy of All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall from my online bookstore today!

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall is one of those rare novels that doesn’t read like a debut. The writing is gorgeous—so much so that it made me question my own ability as a writer. Can I ever be that good? And yet, for all its literary beauty, the novel never loses itself in its own prose. It’s not one of those books that exists just to showcase an author’s talent; it has a story to tell, one that is both gripping and deeply human.

Continue reading →