Read Unpublished Books for Free
Get early, free access to Hallwryte’s unpublished Psycho‑Gothic fiction.
Beta readers read the books first, offer feedback, and become part of the creative process.
Currently Available Books (2)
Join Hallwryte’s Substack for more opportunities
Hello Lily, love.
How do you hold onto someone who is slipping away, and what happens to your own mind when you try?
Hello Lily, love. is an intimate, character-driven narrative told entirely through a series of messages. It is a quiet, claustrophobic exploration of grief, loss, and the boundaries of human endurance.
Title: Hello Lily, love.
Genre: Literary Fiction / Psycho‑Gothic / Epistolary
Word Count: ~30,000
Trigger Warnings: Terminal illness, profound bereavement, postnatal depression, psychological addiction
Stripped of traditional prose, the narrative moves at lightning speed across decades. It is a single-sitting read designed to pull you through a relentless barrage of emotions, hidden secrets, and devastating twists.
What begins as a chronicle of terminal illness and bereavement becomes something far more unsettling: a portrait of psychological dependence, buried truths, and the slow unravelling of the mind.
- Twists and Secrets: Do the reveals land effectively within this format, and does the psychological decline feel earned and believable?
- Emotional Resonance: Do the themes of grief and psychological distress feel authentic and respectfully handled at this pace?
- Pacing and Format: Does the message‑by‑message structure maintain momentum and clarity without traditional prose?
The Damask Room
As dementia steals Sybil Harwood’s memory, the locked room refuses to let her forget what she spent a lifetime hiding.
A claustrophobic work of literary horror that pulls you deep into an unravelling mind, forcing you to question everything you experience.
Title: The Damask Room
Genre: Literary Horror / Psycho‑Gothic / Upmarket
Word Count: ~9,000
Trigger Warnings: Dementia and memory loss, maternal abuse, forced medical trauma, severe psychological distress, loss of bodily autonomy
Autumn 1948. Sybil Harwood, once the formidable matriarch of High Cleeve, a decaying Surrey estate, wakes each day in a room she does not belong. With her dementia advancing, it strips away her memory piece by piece.
But the room refuses to let her forget, filling it with manifestations of buried trauma, and reveals the secrets she has been trying so hard to forget.
- Prose proficiency: Written in the first person as an Edwardian aristocrat, the language and prose are meant to carry the weight of classical texts but yet be accessible for a modern reader. Is this achieved?
- Symbology: There is a lot of unspoken symbology to be interpreted. What were your interpretations of all the objects and manifestations?
- Upmarket reading: The story demands a literary read and discussion. But it still should read perfectly well and be enjoyable, even if a reader is only picking up the surface meanings. Was the read enjoyable?