Today on the site I’m delighted to reveal the cover of The Forest Bleeds by Rachel Kitch, a Sapphic Horror debut releasing October 13th from Union Square Books! Here’s the story:
Inspired by Appalachian and Southeast Asian folklore, a witch and her classmates are kidnapped by a handsome pharmaceutical billionaire and told to heal him or die, in this speculative horror debut with a sapphic romantic twist.
Saige Chambers, Arcane Bioengineering student and blood witch, is constantly anxious and chronically over-prepared. When Saige and her fellow witch doctoral candidates depart for a conference, she plans and anticipates every last detail. Except – she’s not prepared for the moment their bus turns off the highway and takes them to a remote mansion in the Appalachian Mountains, the gates sealing shut behind them.
The mansion’s owner, Arius Medea, issues a simple mandate: fix his injured, rotting leg or die. But it’s no ordinary injury – the flesh melts off the bone, emitting waves of foul magic that set Saige’s blood alight. Saige’s colleagues want to fight back and escape. Saige thinks their best chance is to fix him fast and get out. As tensions rise, Saige finds herself growing closer to Vaishnavi Sri, a poison witch and Saige’s long-term crush. But first impressions can be misleading, and as Saige’s reluctant attraction to Arius grows, she begins to wonder if there’s a better life waiting for her in the walls of this mansion.
But, as one by one, Saige’s colleagues start to disappear, Saige realizes that dying may not be the worst option – because there are far worse fates lurking in the woods.
And here’s the creeptastic cover, designed by Beth Steidle!
RACHEL KITCH is a mixed-race Thai American speculative horror author with a love of writing unsettling, creepy books that still have a spark of light. Rachel has her master’s in design from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s from West Virginia University. As a generation 1.5 immigrant, Rachel loves to blend her heritage and incorporate Thai and Appalachian folklore into her projects. When not writing, she can be found designing author brands and websites, or reading books on her Kindle that would kill a Victorian child. Keep up with her at www.rachelkitch.com or follow her on Instagram @rachkitchwrites.
Bei Lin is a Chinese Canadian writer based in Vancouver. She has lived on three continents and visited over thirty countries. Travel and food are her passions, along with giving her characters their well-deserved happily ever after. When she’s not writing, she’s daydreaming about her next trip and eating chocolate cake.
For as long as Marlena can remember, she has seen flowers growing on everyone she meets: personalized poppies and daisies and roses of every color that give away what their owners truly feel. Invisible to the rest of the world, the flowers have always felt too overwhelming, too much for Marlena to take in when they don’t always match what their owner shows. She’s long since given up convincing anyone else that they’re there.
Meet the kids in Mrs. Z’s wacky and wonderful third grade class! Sebastian Metzger is overjoyed when he checks out a brand-new book on octopodes from the school library, but everything goes awry when the book gets ruined.
Ally North (she/her) is a queer writer who has been writing fiction her entire life. During the pandemic, she began writing sapphic romance out of pure chaotic boredom and discovered an untried knack for the genre. She lives in America, but occasionally she lives in England. When she isn’t writing, Ally can be found cooking with obscene amounts of garlic, traveling someplace new, rescuing animals, and feeding Jean-Claude, the wild possum who lives under her shed.