I have some exciting news to share. 

Monsters Under the Magnolias: Haints, Howls, and Hospitality in a Small Southern Town has been named a semi-finalist in the 2025 CIBAs Collections and Anthologies category. 

When I started writing these stories set in Madison, Georgia, I didn't have awards in mind. I was wondering what would happen if a frightening cryptid showed up at an elderly woman's back door during freezing cold weather and thanks to her poor eyesight, she thinks it's a sphynx cat. While writing that story I fell in love with the idea of more unlikely cryptid and human friendships.

This collection is deeply personal to me. It's rooted in the red Georgia clay under a magnolia tree. It carries pieces of places I love and people I admire. People always happy to set an extra place at the supper table and those who keep going even when life has taken something from them. I wanted the stories to feel eerie and unsettling, yet warm and full of hope. Haunted, yes, but never hopeless. 

To see Monsters Under the Magnolias recognized by the CIBAs in the Collections and Anthologies category means more than I can put into words. It tells me that these quiet Southern hauntings resonated beyond small town Georgia. That readers connected with haints, howls, and hospitality. 

Thank you to everyone who has read the book, left a review, shared it with a friend, or told me that one particular story stayed with you. Independent publishing can feel like shouting into the wind some days. Moments like this remind me why I write. 

No matter what happens next in the judging process, I am proud of this book. Proud of the characters who came to life on the page, and proud of a real town I love that keeps expanding in my imagination. 

Here’s to the Southern creatures and their stories finding the best readers an author could ask for.