When we first moved into our house in Charlottesville, the nights were… noisy. Not in a modern, beeping and chinking way—more in a Civil War morgue that remembers too much kind of way.

Things went bump. Floors creaked under no feet. Nothing ever felt threatening—just present, insistent. Watching.

One night, I got up for a drink of water. I came back, crawled into bed, and as I settled into the pillows… a whisper. 

A man’s voice. Right at my ear.

I froze.

“Did you say something, honey?” I asked my husband.

“No,” he said. “But I heard it too. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

We did. But the house never did explain itself.

Because ghosts don’t ask for permission. And they don’t care where you live.

Since moving to Doha, I’ve found that silence sounds different there—more brittle than the Appalachian hush I lived with for over twenty years, but no less haunted. One hums with humidity and kudzu. The other crackles under sun and sand.

Writing Appalachian folk horror from the desert has been like speaking across worlds to a ghost that remembers your name. I miss the smells first—chimney smoke on cool mornings, honeysuckle curling through the dark, the sharp tang of rain hitting red clay. I write from the desert, but I’m dreaming in the mountains.

Night of the Moon Witch is born from that ache.

It was conjured from long drives through the Alleghenies, ghost stories passed down on porches, and the grandeur of places like The Homestead, The Jefferson, and The Greenbrier—old resort hotels that seem to hold their breath. You walk their halls and feel time stretch thin.

It was born of families who stay in one place–often one home–not for years, but epochs. They pass down stories like heirlooms–sometimes cracked, sometimes hexed.

In Night of the Moon Witch, the Bramwell bloodline is old, magical, and marked. 

Writing them has been like pulling threads from my own lineage—where war and exile shattered generations and turned kin into strangers. Heroes and villains, all wearing the same last names. And our names always sounded like spells to me–incantation or warnings, depending on who was speaking them.

This is folk horror. Poetry-driven magic. Betrayal, bloodline curses, and women too powerful for the towns that birthed them.

Night of the Moon Witch is for anyone who ever left home thinking it would break the curse—only to discover that the curse was never in the place.

It was in you.

If you’ve ever dreamed of something ancient walking in the woods…

If you’ve ever feared becoming the thing your mother warned you about…

If you’ve ever loved a monster more than you should…

This book is for you.

​Pre-order Night of the Moon Witch now. Before the next full moon.​

Pre-order your print copy at Speakeasy Editions.

When poetry professor Twila Stith arrives in the mysterious mountain town of Sibyl Springs, Virginia, she thinks she’s starting over. She couldn’t be more wrong.

Fired from her university position and desperate for a fresh start, Twila accepts a teaching job at the prestigious Valemont School for the Gifted. But from the moment she sets foot in this ancient Appalachian town, she knows something is watching her. A man plunges to his death from the historic Montague Hotel, his blood staining the grand entrance. Strange dreams blur the line between memory and vision. A ghostly girl from decades past appears with cryptic warnings. And most unsettling of all, she finds herself inexplicably drawn to Langston Martin—her enigmatic department head who seems to despise her on sight, and harbors secrets as old as the mountains themselves.

As eerie encounters escalate and the full moon approaches, Twila discovers that her lifelong fascination with lunar cycles runs deeper than mere poetry. The residents of Sibyl Springs recognize something in her that she doesn’t understand—something that makes her both powerful and dangerous. When ancient forces begin stirring in the shadowed hollows and a malevolent entity sets its sights on her, Twila must uncover the truth about her connection to this place and its supernatural inhabitants.

But in a town where everyone guards their secrets and the past refuses to stay buried, Twila will learn that some truths are more terrifying than any lie—and remembering who she really is might be the most dangerous thing of all.