Hi, thanks for visiting. My name is Elizabeth, and I’m an author in Tempe, Arizona. I have two novels, one an adult gothic suspense called The House on Linden Way, and the other a young adult novel steeped in magical realism called The Fourth Wall. My latest book is a collection of stories called What Was Never There.
I enjoy writing short stories and creative nonfiction. My work has been published in Brevity Magazine, Superstition Review, Reservoir Road, Fractured Lit, Literary Mama, Hospital Drive, The Portland Review, and a few other places. My stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Essay, and Best of the Net, and my short story “Windows” was selected for Best Microfiction 2023.
I love hearing from readers and other writers, so please get in touch! You can email me directly anytime at elizabethmnaranjo(at)gmail(dot)com.
From the opening pages of The Fourth Wall, the author’s powerful use of imagery drew me in. —Renee Roberson
The dream sequences in The Fourth Wall are skillfully told; some are beautiful, some are terrifying–all are intriguing. —Rebecca Lloyd, award-winning author of The View from Endless Street
It’s quite a gift to write fantasy so well it wraps itself around reality. —Crystal Casavant-Otto
I guarantee that once you start reading it you won’t want to put it down. —Martha Morin.
Book Description
When Marin was little and monsters chased her through nightmares, she learned to weave her own dreams. Her mother called the lucid dreaming a gift, and when an accident takes her mother and leaves her baby brother an empty shell, Marin uses this gift to spin a new reality for herself. One without time or sorrow. A world without memory.
But just when Marin thinks she’s safe in her make-believe fantasy world, the monsters come back and her dream turns to a nightmare. Something in the dream doesn’t want Marin to wake up. In order to heal herself and her family, Marin must face the truth she’s forgotten and conquer what lies behind the fourth wall.
A fast paced, haunting story that is hard to put down. —Bobbi Jo Wagner
There are subtle moments of horror as the author leads you from the past to the future. —Tam Sesto
The story is lost into the past and is lost in the memories of the present. —Kayak Jay
This book was like experiencing a nightmare. —Amie McCracken
Book Description
While passing through her hometown a decade after she left, Amber Blake impulsively revisits her old house on Linden Way. She only means to stay a moment, to show her three-year-old daughter Bee the place where she grew up. But when the kindly new owners invite them inside, Amber cannot resist.
Soon Bee is missing, the owners have disappeared, and Amber finds herself in a houseful of ghosts. Time takes on new meaning as she loses herself in living memories and a past that does not wish to be forgotten.
As Amber fights the powerful lure of a childhood she’d long left behind, her tenuous hold on the real world slips further from her grasp. Is it merely nostalgia she’s battling, or something far more menacing? Who haunts the house on Linden Way, and where are they hiding her child?
Reading this collection of short stories is like having one of those dreams where you think you’ve woken up only to discover that you’re still dreaming. —Carrie Ann Lahain
Book Description
A mother and daughter lost in the woods must overcome their worst fears to find their way back. A father going through a divorce witnesses a seemingly impossible motorcycle accident, which forces him to question the truth of his own perceptions. A little boy with a terrible secret routinely steals away at night to meet a girl beneath a willow tree—only to discover she has a secret of her own.
What Was Never There is a collection of short stories with the common theme of memory, or rather, the way memory haunts us.
Includes Pushcart Prize nominated stories “We Never Get to Talk Anymore” and “The Dinosaur Graveyard” and the award-winning “Windows,” selected for Best Microfiction 2023.
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