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RE: https://cmrosens.com/2026/04/08/author-spotlight-paranormal-ecohorror-author-s-m-mack/

New author interview is up! Spotlighting S.M. Mack, author of DEATH VALLEY BLOOMS, a novella from Neon Hemlock Press. #writingcommunity #HorrorBooks #paranormalbooks #ecohorror

Author Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack

S.M. Mack (she/her) is a 2019 MFA recipient in popular fiction from USM Stonecoast, the 2017 first place winner of the Katherine Patterson Prize for Young Adult Writing, and a Clarion 2012 grad. Her short fiction has been published in Fireside Fiction, Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s “Best of 2015” anthology, and the Clarion class of 2012’s seven Rainbow Anthologies, among others. Her novella Death Valley Blooms is part of Neon Hemlock’s 2025 Novella Series.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: whatsmacksaid.com

Bluesky: @whatsmacksaid.bsky.social
Instagram: @what_smacksaid

Death Valley Blooms Links

Neon Hemlock Publishing
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

READ A SAMPLE: Amazon Look Inside Feature

PITCH FOR READERS/BOOK CLUBS:

Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar’s mother was called a decade ago, pulled underground to be used like a battery, and she herself has begun to feel Death Valley’s presence. Mar has an ace up her sleeve, though: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?

What was the seed for your novella, Death Valley Blooms, and how did this sprout into the novella published by Neon Hemlock?

My Clarion class put out seven charity anthologies to help raise money for attendee scholarships.

Clarion lasts for six weeks from June to August, so we challenged ourselves to write a story from scratch each year, focusing on a different color of the rainbow.

My Yellow Volume story started at the (erroneous) assumption that all dirt in the southern Californian deserts is yellow, or at least yellow-ish.

From there, I did some daydreaming about how the ground might interact with people; I went from “skinning your hands and knees when you fall down” to “what if the blood spilled from a minor injury isn’t enough? What if blood isn’t enough? What if the ground eats you whole? Why would it do that?”

By the end of the first draft I knew I had something special, but I also knew I’d never be able to tease out the subtleties hiding in there under our short timeline. So I set it aside for a few years, and picked it back up during grad school.

Within the novella are themes of consent and autonomy, but also the futility of people’s actions against a landscape that will outlast them. Where did these themes come from, and why explore them here?

One of my childhood refrains was “I can do it myself!” even when that was not objectively true. It insists on boundary-setting for both consent and autonomy—anyone who overrides one will inevitably override the other.

Death Valley Blooms’ main character, Mar, is very much a product of that mentality. She is determined to break her family’s curse, even though generations of women have succumbed to Death Valley’s call. She fights for her autonomy and nurtures a lifelong grudge against the curse for stealing her ability to consent. Because, of course, that’s what curses do: render those trapped under its power unable to protect their emotional, mental, and physical selves.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about climate change versus an individual’s effect on their environment. The physical world does not care how frightened or overwhelmed you and I are by wildfires, flash floods, or water scarcity. But if one small part of the world—Death Valley, in this case—reached out and demanded payment or help from an individual, how could we possibly say no? Even culpability and guilt aside, how could a single family of individuals possibly resist nature’s force? They can’t.

What to you was psychologically interesting about a family dealing with constant absences and returns? 

I had a lot of undiagnosed anxiety when I began writing Death Valley Blooms, and one of the things I obsessed over was my parents’ ages. I have a good relationship with both, and for a year or more I just could not see past the knowledge that I’d outlive them, and that that was somehow the best outcome.

One of the more tragic ideas I couldn’t shake was the prospect of losing time—losing years—that could be spent in one another’s company: how much better would it be to “only” lose your mother (or sister, or aunt) for twenty years, rather than forever? Furthermore, how difficult would it be to accept and move through the resulting grief, then have those feelings and growth invalidated when the missing loved one returns? What does that do to a close-knit family when it happens over and over again?

What LGBTQIA+ rep can readers expect to find in this novella, and why is this rep important to you to include?

There’s no reason not to make characters queer in one way or another—or rather, there’s no more reason to make them queer than to make them straight. A story doesn’t hinge on the gender or sexual orientation of side characters, and even “boring,” everyday representation is a good thing.

For example, Mar’s closest friend is openly bisexual; she’s divorced from a man and dating a woman. It comes up in casual conversation a few times, but that’s all.

I identify as simply queer now, but I spent many years identifying as asexual, then as aro/ace (and so on and so forth as my perception of myself changed), while living in a near-constant state of fury and frustration at how hard it was to find ace main characters at all, let along ace main characters outside romantic subplots.

I didn’t plan for Mar’s aro/ace identity to become a strength, but it’s an important part of who she is. Part of why she’s so family-oriented is that she doesn’t care about finding a romantic partner. Her family is perfect the way it is, if only she could defy Death Valley and bring everyone together again.

The other queer rep I’d like to highlight is Mar’s aunt, Lucy, who is a trans woman. She’s got her own issues going on over the course of the story, but she doesn’t stand in the spotlight, either. I wanted to create a path for her to simply exist as a regular person dealing with a family curse and an increasingly desperate niece. (“Regular” is doing a lot of work here, I know.) But I wanted to remind readers that the environment does not give a rat’s behind about human-imposed boundaries, whether those be gender strictures or geographical boundaries.

Death Valley’s curse falls on the women of Mar and Lucy’s family, and both Mar and Lucy are women.

Death Valley is a character in the novella, much like the human characters. What was it like to develop this aspect of the novella? 

As a younger writer, I participated in a workshop where one colleague had a television background, and we talked a lot about the “white room syndrome,” where a scene entirely ignores its setting. The discussion left an impression, and over time my writing evolved from dutifully including setting descriptions to centering the setting alongside the characters.

Our surroundings in real life aren’t sentient, but speculative fiction is the perfect place to look beyond that natural end place. I’ve really loved trying to get into the headspace required to embody an inhuman, unpredictable, and nearly all-powerful true-neutral character, a vast ecosystem with little to no way of communicating directly with my human characters—sometimes I think of Death Valley’s character as alien as the actual location feels when visiting. And I’m definitely going to keep doing this in future stories!

For example, I have another story I’m working on about eating disorders with a gargoyle sent to live in exile in a different California desert.

Do you have anything that you want to share with readers, anything out now, or coming soon?

I’m in the middle of a companion novella for Death Valley Blooms! It picks up slightly before the end of Death Valley Blooms and is from a different character’s point of view. I have a beautiful cover created by the incomparable Rose Mayer, who also did the original, and I’ll be releasing the companion story sometime during summer 2026. I’ll be posting updates on bsky and via my author newsletter, which readers can sign up for on my website.

Like This? Try These!

• Author Spotlight: Queer SFF Author M.T. Envy Date August 27, 2025 In relation to Author Interview
• January 2026 Media Round-Up Date February 1, 2026 In relation to media round-up
• The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre Date November 4, 2023 In relation to Book Review
• #AmReading Shout Out! Paranormal Debut SOUL’S CHOICE by Kerri Davidson (@bagoflettuce) Date October 8, 2019 In relation to Book Review
• Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Frankie Sutton Date February 28, 2025 In relation to Author Interview
• Author Spotlight: SFF Short Fiction Author Elad Haber Date July 10, 2024 In relation to Author Interview

A book about teen angst - February 25, 2026 - This is the first book in a series about a high school for paranormal teenagers. Drrrrraaaaamaaa! It's cute, and the author doesn't pull punches just because it's written for young adults, but the tone is still a bit too juvenile for my enjoyment.

Rating ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 1/4

#popsugarreadingchallenge #bookstodon #bookstodoner #fantasy #youngadultfiction #paranormalbooks

In a recent discussion with a paranormal investigation group, I found myself referencing recommending books to check out for the latest on interesting facets of the field. I decided to share this annotated list.

First, there are three books that are “Handbooks” for spontaneous cases. They put ghost-hunting gadgetry in its place and re-orient the investigator to the proper aim of investigation: define the claim, assess if anything is happening, and then solve the problem. I consider these the best modern guides. If you are intent on pretending to be a TV-type investigator, then go waste your money on the paraceleb guides.

Scientific Paranormal Investigation (2010) by Benjamin Radford.
I reviewed this book here where I recommended it as a much-needed critical and logical guide to actually solving mysteries. Get it.

Radford expanded on the 2010 book with Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits (2018) to tackle more specifics in depth including EVP evidence.

Ghostology: The Art of the Ghost Hunter (2015) by Steve Parsons. Why are you using that gadget? Why do you conduct a “sweep” of the room? Do you even know why or is it just because you saw it on television? Parsons hits every point and is clear about what you should or should not bother with. This is a true ghost hunting guide. For more details, I reviewed it here. Get it in Kindle.

It’s important to have a background on the cultural history of ghosts. The classic book on the historical context of ghosts is Ghosts: Appearances of the Dead and Cultural Transformation (1996, 2nd ed.) by R.C. Finucane. You simply can’t claim to understand the present phenomena of ghosts if you know nothing about how ghosts were depicted in the past. Get it.

Spirits of an Industrial Age: Ghost Imposture, Spring-heeled Jack and Victorian Society (2014) by Jacob Middleton . I was enamored with this book from which I learned an incredible amount of historical context for spirits and cultural ideas about haunting. The genuine stories taken from the media reports of a bygone era are fascinating. This book is highly readable, yet scholarly. Pick it up on Kindle for a steal.

The Haunted: A social history of ghosts (2007) by Owen Davies. This volume is incredibly well-researched. It can be dry at times but it is an essential volume to have as the social history of ghosts is THE history. This book is highly regarded and regularly referenced by scholars of ghost lore and literature. Get it.

The following three books are key volumes on modern examinations of ghost activity and cultural aspects.

Australian Poltergeists: The Stone-throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases (2014) by Paul Cropper and Tony Healy. Stories of stone-throwing and fire-starting troubling house ghosts are not new. Yet the same themes occur in the present day. Cropper and Healy do an excellent job of documenting these cases, many of which were researched in person. Though they can’t explain what’s going on, I can’t recall another volume of this type. I wish the same book was done for other places in the world. More in my review here. Get it on Kindle.

Paranormal Media: Audiences, Spirits and Magic in Popular Culture (2010) by Annette Hill (no relation) This book is based on research into paranormal popular media addressing both a UK and US perspective. I used this book heavily for my thesis work. It is a scholarly book so the price is a bit steep but borrow it if you have to as this is essential information to consider when evaluating ghost claims. I reviewed it here.

Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (2015) edited by Etzel Cardeña, John Palmer, David Marcusson-Clavertz. This textbook is hefty but necessary. If one is to claim that they work in the field of amateur parapsychology, then you ought to at least know the state of the science. Even a perusal of this volume will show the wide chasm between ghost hunters and academic parapsycholgy. Read more about this here in my review. It’s often available through university libraries but the Kindle edition is reasonable.

In Alan Brown’s Ghost Hunters of New England (2008) you read firsthand candid views and opinions from amateur groups who bumped up against the “top” group The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) who went on to do the Ghost Hunters TV show. The groups interviewed for this book expressed their ties or distance to or from TAPS and the Connecticut-based, self-styled demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren. I saw their comments as revealing, provide curious trackbacks to what motivates a group and how they attempt to either follow an already forged path or try to differentiate themselves from the group in the next town. Some animosity and jealousy is apparent as groups hide their data from each other and stake out territory. Brown also tackled the groups in the South in a similar book. Get it.

Finally, these two volumes are excellent at discussing the booming paranormal business of today in historical contexts. If you don’t think that’s important to understand, you are missing a huge body of understanding.

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (2016) by Colin Dickey. This book was so entertaining and enjoyable I could not put it down. After getting it from the library, I had to purchase a copy. It delves into the accurate history of places like Salem, the Lalaurie mansion, and the Winchester House. I was enlightened. And sometimes really angry at how the truth is buried for a quick buck. Absolutely grab this one.

Haunted Heritage: The Cultural Politics of Ghost Tourism, Populism, and the Past (2015) Michele Hanks. This book was an expansion of a thesis. Hanks covered a good bit of what I did as well in my book but in the UK so there are some differences. But it was critical to see how she developed the contexts for ghost researchers at their various levels of involvement. She showed how they long for experiences and ownership of their own heritage. U.S. readers will find these themes resonate in their communities as well. It will reveal a whole other level of meaning for participation in paranormal activities. Get it.

And of course, please purchase my book on paranormal researchers, Scientifical Americans. Head over to the page for more info.

I’m still reading so I may have a part 2 to this list. Please subscribe to the blog in the right sidebar.