Today, we have a Southern Gothic treat for you as we chat to journalist and author Elizabeth Broadbent about her upcoming novella, Blood Cypress, out April 3rd. Read on to discover the inspiration behind this story, why the south makes such an excellent horror setting, and how queerness shapes the main character.
Thank you for joining us, Elizabeth! Could you start by introducing yourself?
Thanks for having me! I’m an author who does primarily Southern Gothic and some science fiction. A displaced South Carolinian living in Richmond, I’m interested in how the past returns to haunt us—how both personal and ancestral traumas refuse to stay buried.
After I finished my MFA and quit a doctoral program, I stopped writing for a long time. My husband suggested I start again (I’m bisexual and straight-passing, married to a guy, and I have three sons), mostly for mental health reasons, and when one of my essays went viral, I landed on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” I also ended up with a job working at Scary Mommy, the largest parenting site on the web, where I wrote about the intersections between parenting, feminism, mental health, and politics to an underserved, generally ignored, and marginalized audience. I was a journalist for about a decade, and I had bylines in places like The Washington Post, ADDitude Magazine (I still work for them!), and Insider. I ended up turning to fiction again when internet journalism died, and here I am.
We would love to know more about your upcoming novel, Blood Cypress, and what inspired you to write it!
Blood Cypress happened when I was very, very sick with severe anemia. I couldn’t do much but sit on the couch and write. It went through many drafts, but I always knew I was playing with the Compson family from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. In the novel, Caddy Compson sleeps with a man, gets pregnant, and remains voiceless; her brother Quentin tries to cover her “sin” by claiming the baby is his. At the same time, their disabled little brother Benji is objectified and marginalized. I wondered what would happen if the Compson family was really adequately punished for the way they treated Benji, and what Caddy would say if she could speak. This is that story.
Making Lila Carolina bisexual was a natural choice. Growing up bisexual in a small town is terrifying, especially when you don’t really know what you’re going through—there’s so much uncertainty. God, I had no idea. You just know you’re different and you don’t know why, only that everyone will shun you if they know, too.
What drew you to the speculative and horror genres?
You can tell the truth in horror and speculative fiction without telling it straight (ha). There’s so much freedom there. As someone who grew up with a metric ton of trauma, I know it’s much easier to tell stories sideways rather than head-on. Horror lets you talk about a lot of things people would rather not face head-on.
Many of your books are set in the South. What do you love most about writing in this setting, and how does this backdrop feed into the atmospheric folk horror for you?
Pat Conroy starts my earliest favorite book, The Prince of Tides, with the words, “My wound is geography. It is also my anchorage, my port of call.” I don’t think I can say it better than that.
If I had to use my own words, I’d say, like I do in one of my novels, “Haunted houses have cobwebs, and the South has Spanish moss. Both are warnings if you know what to look for.”
There’s a story about the Dalai Lama flying over South Carolina—allegedly he looked out his window and shook his head. “So much blood on this land,” he said. Our past remains inscribed in our street names, our statues, our brickwork. You can’t escape the past.
Can you tell us a little bit about your characters?
The main character in Blood Cypress, Lila, is a bisexual girl who’s trapped in a house with her three brothers and (metaphorical) ghost of a mother. She’s been forced into the role of the perfect Southern daughter despite her yearning to break free from it. Unable to tell anyone, including her twin brother Quentin, that she likes girls, Lila feels like she can’t escape.
And she wants to get out, if only to help her youngest brother, Beau. Likely autistic, Beau rarely goes out, and the family considers him a shameful secret. Lila takes care of him. With her mother mostly absent and her father dead, Lila takes care of most things—her older brother Davis considers her and her twin brother useless, and her twin brother considers her a princess who has to be protected at all costs. If the novel is anything, it’s a lot of musing on what it means to be a woman and to be forced into expected gender roles.
And which characters do you hope your readers will connect with the most?
I think readers will connect most with Lila—at least, I hope they do. I hope they see what it means to be a woman and forced to conform to these outdated gender roles, torn between being portrayed as a virgin or a whore when you’re really neither of them.
The story also features a diverse range of representation, with bisexual/sapphic and disabled characters, plus a championing of outsiders. Why was this especially important to you?
It sort of happens in my books. I’m bisexual and neurodivergent; everyone in my family is ND. If I hate the way queer people are treated, I’m furious at how ND children are marginalized and demonized. The way Beau is treated in this novel—as a source of shame—is not far off from how we view autistic and ADHD children today. How often do we view their behavior as a bother? How often do we treat them like an embarrassment? I think we write about what we care about, about what makes us angry or makes us think. So it’s natural that this stuff leaks into my fiction.
Is there any additional representation that you’d like to see or write more of in the future, particularly within the horror genre?
I’d like to see more representation of neurodivergent characters. I think we’ve come a long way with queer representation, though of course I always want more. But we’re much shyer about discussing neurodivergence without demonizing it.
Did you come across any challenges while writing or publishing this novel? How have you overcome them?
It was actually a fairly easy road. I had a lot of waiting, but that’s not really an obstacle—it just sort of makes you nuts. I subbed it to Raw Dog Screaming Press as soon as they opened for novellas, and I waited. They eventually took it, and then I waited about a year and a half for it to get published. It’s been about two years from submission to publication, but it was worth it.
Are you a plotter or pantser, and did any additional research go into Blood Cypress?
A mix of the two. I need to know where the story is going, but I don’t know how I’m going to get there. And I wish I could say I did some research. That would probably make me sound smarter. I do research for some of my novels, but not this one.
We’d love a hint about what readers can expect from you next! What are you currently working on?
I’m currently subbing a Southern Gothic novel about a feral child who wanders from the same swamp that Beau disappears into (spoiler alert: the kid isn’t Beau—I had to carefully time the novel to happen before Blood Cypress, which is one of the reasons the novella has dates in it).
And with a couple of books already published, where would you direct readers to next? Any stories that hold a particularly special place in your heart?
Pick up a copy of Ink Vine, from Undertaker Books—it’s my first first novella, and it’s available on Kindle Unlimited. Ink Vine is a sapphic horrorromance about a bisexual girl, set in the same town as Blood Cypress.
Regarding your career in journalism, what came first for you: creative or journalistic writing? Has one fed into the other or informed your approach at all?
Creative writing came first, then I skipped to journalism and back again. But after writing about social justice for a decade, it feels urgent to keep doing it. So most of my books end up being “about” something. It’s sort of impossible for them not to be, I think.
Our podcast focuses on media we’re currently loving. Are there any books, shows, movies, or games you’re enjoying at the moment? Any recommendations for our audience? Bonus points if it includes sapphics!
Right now I’m in the middle of the second season of The Wheel of Time, which I love as mindless fantasy. And there’s so much sapphic kissing! Even better, it’s played very casually, like it’s a natural thing that just happens and no more remarkable than a straight romance. It’s very refreshing and I’m really grateful for both that and the diverse casting.
About the Author
Elizabeth Broadbent escaped the swamps of South Carolina for the Commonwealth of Virginia, where she lives with her three sons, two cats, two dogs, flock of crows, and a very patient husband. She’s the author of Ink Vine and Ninety-Eight Sabers (Undertaker Books), as well as the upcoming Blood Cypress (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2025), Tigers of Greater Antarctica (Sley House Publications, 2026), and Breaking Neverland (Sley House Publications, 2026). As a freelance journalist, her work has appeared in places such as The Washington Post, Time, Insider, and ADDitude Magazine.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/writerelizabethbroadbent,
Insta, Threads,Tiktok: @eabroadbent
Bluesky: @elizabethbroadbent.bluesky.social
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