A genderqueer hillbilly and a haunted woman must break a generational curse that has entwined their lives in the abandoned coal-stripped mountains of the Pennsylvania Wilds. *** Desperate to flee a dark past, Finley drives off a cliff and prays to the ancient hemlocks below to catch her fall. But in the abandoned hollows of the Pennsylvania Wilds, everything comes at a price. Tasked by an undead Not-Deer, Finley must find the three talismans that mark the mountain's boundaries in order to break a century old curse, one that has not only haunted the women in her family for generations, but has also bound the supernatural beings to the mountain, including the dead. Fortunately, the handsome genderqueer hillbilly up the road, River Hawthorne, is just as eager [maybe too eager] to break the curse. Together, they navigate the woods where hungry trees walk and other demonic haunts roam, growing closer every moment. But breaking the curse also comes at a price and Finley must decide what freedom is worth when her past comes crawling back through the woods to haunt her. HEARTWOOD blends gothic folk horror with cabincore sapphic romance. Rated Mature for violence, gore, sex, language Content Warnings: body horror, alcohol/drug use, transphobic attack, animal death/hunting, DV/abusive relationships, generational trauma, mentions of suicide & infant death Rankings: 1 in #appalachia 1 in #folkhorror 1 in #transmasc 5 in #gothicromance 8 in #sapphic

2022 Watty Winner || At the age of ten, Sanford Crow discovers the worst secret of all--his father is a serial killer. It was the year 1969. Sanford's dream was to grow up to be a detective. Putting his intuitions to the test, he conducts an investigation into his father. The discovery he makes brings his whole world crashing down, and to the culmination of one terrible Christmas morning. Twenty five years later, it's 1994. Sanford is a divorced and a recovering alcoholic, with an eight-year-old daughter named Sadie. His dreams of becoming a detective never came to fruition. Instead, he lives vicariously through his job of being a crime scene cleaner. As therapy begins to open up doors to his past that he'd rather keep shut, the same string of murders that his father committed when he was a child are happening again all around him. Sanford starts questioning his grip on reality. The answers he finds brings his past rushing back, and has him doubting everything he thought he knew about himself, his past, and his own sanity.

Ainsley is a dragonblood princess, powerful but constantly restrained by her duties and her oppressive father, the king of Ellay. When a pirate crew makes a shaky truce with the king and asks for a guarantee of their safe travels around his country, he offers up Ainsley as an unwilling hostage and a show of good faith on his part. Ainsley suddenly finds herself powerless and trapped on a pirate ship, but the crew is nothing like what she expects, and neither is the lady captain, Gael, who defies every expectation and leaves Ainsley curious and unsure of where her loyalties lie. She tries her best to hate Gael and the pirates, but slowly, they're winning her over, and she must face the awful truth: to follow her heart will bring about catastrophic consequences, and she will need to be prepared to fight fire with fire.