Blog Archives
Brighter Than The Sun
Brighter Than the Sun by Kit Erikson is a steamy, big-hearted MM romance about Blake Larsen, a performer with a lifelong dream of being seen as more than a body, and Ethan, a business student and diner server who’s still figuring out how to trust his own wants. Blake’s childhood declaration, “I’m going to be a star!” sets the emotional tone for the book. This is a story about ambition, sex work, queer community, and the messy process of building something real with someone who scares you in all the right ways.
Blake is the book’s brightest presence, but he’s written with enough insecurity and weariness to keep him from feeling untouchable. He dances, cams, takes adult work seriously, sews costumes, cares for his friends, and dreams of opening a club where performance can be art, celebration, and livelihood all at once. His dyslexia is also woven into the story with care, especially in how it shapes his relationship with reading, texting, and business ownership without making it his whole personality.
Ethan brings a different kind of tension to the romance. He’s drawn to Blake from the start, but his comfort zone is much smaller than Blake’s world. Watching him move from curiosity to desire to fear to something steadier gives the relationship a satisfying push and pull. The book doesn’t rush past the discomfort that comes from shame, family expectations, and assumptions about sex work. Instead, it lets Ethan stumble, learn, and choose Blake with more honesty each time.
The club storyline gives the romance a strong backbone. The transformation from The Firehouse into Siren makes the book feel like it’s about a whole community, not just one couple. Friends, dancers, performers, bartenders, and chosen family all help create the sense that Blake’s dream is bigger than one spotlight. By the time the group cheers “Siren!” together, the word feels earned, like a promise they’ve all decided to keep.
This is an explicit, affectionate romance with plenty of heat, humor, and backstage chaos, but what lingers most is its belief in being seen clearly. Blake wants applause for his talent, Ethan wants a life that actually fits him, and together they build a space where desire and dignity can exist in the same room. Brighter Than the Sun is tender and full of people trying their best to become braver than they were yesterday.
Pages: 402 | ASIN: B0GXYNK3C7
QUANT: Russell Quant Mystery #9
In this Russell Quant mystery, a grieving son returns to his mother’s Saskatchewan farmhouse while trying to face the painful realities of her dementia, only to be pulled into a case involving a suspicious death, a poisoned greenhouse, and a small town whose secrets travel faster than dust on a prairie road. What begins as CeeCee Toth’s desperate insistence that her husband Clem did not die by suicide grows into a sharp, winding investigation that reaches from Howell to Turks and Caicos and back again, tying land development, greed, loyalty, and family grief into one satisfyingly tangled knot.
I was immediately taken by the novel’s voice. Russell is funny without feeling polished to a synthetic shine; his wit has elbows. The narration can swing from a joke about lawn tractors or old Ukrainian food habits into an ache about aging parents, and that tonal dexterity gives the book its best texture. The mystery is engaging, but the emotional ballast comes from Kay Quant, her cooking, her stubbornness, her slipping memory, and the fierce maternal spark that still flashes when it matters most.
What I liked most was how the book lets comedy and sorrow occupy the same room without either one apologizing. The prairie setting feels lived-in rather than decorative, full of small-town rhythms, grudges, gossip, and that peculiar intimacy where everyone knows your truck before they know your sins. The middle section’s travel detour adds a breezy, caper-like expansion, but the heart of the story remains at home: a son learning that love sometimes means making decisions no one wants, and a detective realizing that the past is never as neatly boxed up as old photographs in a farmhouse cupboard.
This book is ideal for readers who enjoy cozy mystery, private investigator fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, and character-driven crime novels with humor and heart. Fans of Louise Penny’s community-rich mysteries may enjoy the way this novel blends murder with emotional weather, though Russell Quant brings a saucier, more irreverent sensibility than Armand Gamache. Beneath its humor and homicide, this novel understands that family secrets don’t stay buried, they grow.
Pages: 277 | ASIN : B0GX32RJ22
Of Teeth & Claws
Of Teeth & Claws is a queer Southern horror novel about Alex Burkhart, who returns to Jasper Mill, Tennessee, after being outed and estranged, only to find his hometown stalked by a brutal creature tied to old secrets, witchcraft, and the boy he once loved: David Stone, now a young officer caught in the monster’s path. Around Alex gathers one of the book’s best inventions: Belle, Justine, and Grace, a grandmotherly trio with wine, weed, bite, and real occult weight. The result is part werewolf story, part small-town mystery, part second-chance romance, with blood on the porch boards and tenderness in the underbrush.
The book can be grisly, campy, foul-mouthed, romantic, and sincerely wounded within a few pages, and that volatility gives it a live-wire charm. The opening murder is nasty and theatrical, but the book’s deeper hook is not gore; it is the way shame travels through families, towns, courtrooms, pulp true-crime books, and queer childhoods. Alex’s voice has a sharp, self-protective humor that keeps the story from sinking into misery, even when the pain underneath is unmistakable.
I liked the chosen-family warmth. Belle, Justine, and Grace could easily have become comic-relief eccentrics, but they feel loved into being: funny, meddlesome, occult, occasionally ridiculous, and fiercely protective. The romance between Alex and David also gives the monster plot a pulse beyond survival. The book is not always subtle, but that bluntness fits its appetite. It’s a novel of big feelings, old wounds, and supernatural retribution, and I respected its refusal to be decorous.
This is perfect for readers looking for LGBTQ+ horror, queer romance, paranormal fiction, Southern gothic, and small-town supernatural mystery. Fans of Grady Hendrix’s blend of horror, humor, and regional texture may find familiar pleasures here, though A.J. Grea leans more openly into queer longing and occult melodrama. Of Teeth & Claws is bloody, funny, wounded, and oddly sweet.
Pages: 304 | ASIN : B0GJ8L2B1T
TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME
In Tell Me That You Love Me, Connie Roberts narrates a restless, decade-tinged search for tenderness that keeps slipping into sex, friendship, and misread need, moving between New York City, Charleston, Fire Island, and Key West as the story escalates from raw erotic entanglements to genuine catastrophe. What begins as Connie’s attempt to reinvent herself and be chosen becomes a harsher education in how people use each other, how shame masks longing, and how “love” can be mistaken for the simple relief of being wanted.
This book doesn’t flirt with discomfort, it really commits. The eroticism is frequently charged, sometimes tender, and sometimes poisoned by power games and crossed boundaries; there’s an argument over “who did what to whom” that lands with a sour aftertaste because it’s played like banter while still naming rape outright. That tonal whiplash, sensuality set beside psychic bruising, feels deliberate, a reminder that harm often arrives in familiar voices, even in rooms that look safe.
And then the plot turns viciously public. On Fire Island, the story’s social sparkle (tea dances, beaches, the magnetic churn of summer bodies) is split by sudden violence: Connie learns that her friend Darin has been shot and is dead, rumors detonating faster than facts, police looming at the edges of the party. The murder isn’t used as a gimmick; it changes the temperature of everything, exposing how quickly a chosen family can become a crime scene, how fear rearranges loyalties, how the self tries to sprint away from grief. By the time the book reaches its late stretch, it’s no longer asking “Will she be loved?” so much as “What kind of love can survive the world she’s already lived?”
Readers who want erotic romance, dark romance, and emotional romantic suspense, especially stories that braid sex with queer-adjacent nightlife, messy friendship, and genuinely disturbing turns, are the best fit here (with a clear content-warning mindset for sexual violence and murder). If you’ve enjoyed the big-feelings sweep and relationship labyrinths of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this delivers a grittier, less polished cousin: more bruises, fewer soft-focus edges. The last pages in Key West widen into something like grace: a sail into the sunset, a rare “green flash” called a lucky omen, and Connie, finally, naming her love as improbable but real, choosing to believe she and Bill were “destined to be together.” Tell Me That You Love Me is a jagged, sensual novel that earns its ending by refusing to pretend the dark parts didn’t happen.
Pages: 411 | ASIN : B0FBY5KNSH
Compassion and Vulnerability
Dark District Primer: Duology on the Lore and Lure of the Dark District combines two novellas, Sojourn and Take Me Now, weaving personal identity with fantasy, Filipino folklore with urban life, and spiritual questions with surreal encounters. What was the inspiration for these stories?
For Sojourn, I wrote it in a time of grief when my father passed away. And so most of the things that I wanted to say and wanted to do were all poured into that novella as well as the emotions involved in such a given circumstance. Writing it was both an affirmation for me in being the son that I am and the son that he wanted. He was the first one to acknowledge my writing growing up. Perhaps he already knew something even before I knew who I was.
For Take Me Now, I wanted to incorporate the world that I have established and expound on it and give it more spice and relationship-driven. While Sojourn was written first, it was Take Me Now that was first published and I had to go back and tweak Sojourn in order that it would mirror the world that I wanted to establish.
What are some things that you find interesting about the human condition that you think make for great fiction?
I love it when we show our humanity both through compassion and vulnerability. Compassion when we are able to put ourselves in the shoes of others to either feel their weakness in order to give them a little bit of our strength so that we help sustain them and what they need to do and vulnerability when it is our time to be on the receiving end of the help and empathy we give to others.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
As my father’s passing was the catalyst for me to be more introspective and re-examine my writing, it was both my feelings of grief, honesty and self-identity that I wanted to explore more in Sojourn while framing it within a created universe that has touchpoints in Philippine Folklore. In any relationship, being true and comfortable with oneself is one of the pillars in making it work. Lose that or postpone that form of self-affirmation then the foundation to establishing a relationship with another falls apart.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
My next book is the next installment of the Tales from the Dark District series, entitled Take My Heart, and is being targeted for a FALL 2026 release. Along with that I shall also resume work on my New Adult series, which will also be set within the Dark District Universe.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Instagram | Facebook | Website
By C.J. Edmunds
Welcome to the Dark District. A place where magic hides in plain sight, and desire leads you deeper into the unknown.
In this atmospheric duology by C.J. Edmunds, two queer protagonists are drawn into the same hidden world—but under very different circumstances.
🌀 In Sojourn, David Lansing, a half-Filipino call center trainer, suddenly begins seeing visions and a mysterious spirit guide. Haunted by creatures from Philippine folklore—Tikbalang, Aswang, and the White Lady of Balete Drive—he embarks on a magical and existential journey that becomes one of purpose, ancestry, and an invitation to a place where people like him finally belong.
✅ Recommended for ages 16+ due to complex parental and identity themes and supernatural tension.
🔥 In Take Me Now, Alvin is tired of the wrong men, wrong choices, and wrong timing. Until the Dark District opens its doors and gives him more than he bargained for. Steamy encounters, eerie magic, and dark truths collide in this sensual tale of love and self-worth.
⚠️ Recommended for ages 17+ for sensual scenes and mature emotional content.
Whether you crave introspection or intensity, Dark District Primer invites you to step through the veil—and explore what’s waiting on the other side.
This lush and haunting collection explores:
Filipino urban legends reimagined
Queer identity and transformation
Steamy encounters and emotional awakenings
A universe where fantasy, myth, and reality blur
Welcome to the Dark District. You might not want to leave.
Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Philippine mythology, and magical realism with queer narratives.
📘 Includes the complete novellas “Sojourn” and “Take Me Now.”
Kamp Kromwell: A Novel
The novel follows Joey Carpenter, a teenage boy caught between the ordinary trials of growing up and the monstrous legacy of Kamp Kromwell, a summer camp haunted by tragedy, folklore, and something darker that won’t stay buried. It weaves Joey’s personal journey of survival, identity, and trauma with the eerie history of Jasper Mill and the cursed land it sits on. The story blends horror, coming-of-age, and queer self-discovery into a narrative that feels both chilling and raw, moving from gothic lore about the crooked oak tree to Joey’s painful memories of abuse and his attempts to reclaim his life.
Reading this book stirred up a whole mess of feelings in me. The writing is sharp and biting, like it wants to cut the reader open just to show what bleeds underneath. Other times it lingers in the shadows, letting dread seep in slowly. I was unsettled more than once, not just by the supernatural elements but by the human ones. The portrayal of Sam Barnes made my skin crawl, and the way the author shows Joey’s shame and survival felt almost too close for comfort. But that’s what hooked me. It’s horror that doesn’t rely only on monsters in the woods, but on the monsters we know too well.
The story moves from ghost stories to camp drama to deeply personal confessions, and yet that unevenness feels true to life. Memories don’t line up neatly, trauma doesn’t follow a straight path, and the narrative mirrors that jagged rhythm. Grea’s style veers between gritty and tender, and I loved the shifts. There were moments of humor that broke through the darkness, and they mattered because they reminded me that life is never just one thing. I also admired how unapologetic the book is about queerness. It doesn’t smooth over the rough parts or wrap them up in platitudes. It leaves the edges sharp, and that honesty made the story feel alive.
Kamp Kromwell reminded me of a strange marriage between Stephen King’s It and Boy Erased by Garrard Conley. Like King’s work, it builds its terror through folklore, small-town legends, and the slow creep of something monstrous hiding in the shadows, yet it also grounds itself in the personal anguish of a boy dealing with abuse and identity. Where Conley’s memoir is brutally honest about the shame and secrecy of growing up gay in a hostile environment, Grea filters that same raw vulnerability through a horror lens, giving the trauma both a literal and supernatural shape.
Pages: 294 | ASIN : B0FHC149LJ
The Dark District Primer: Duology on the Lore and Lure of the Dark District
C.J. Edmunds’ Dark District Primer is a strange, soulful, and genre-bending exploration of myth, memory, and magic rooted in the Philippines. It combines two novellas, Sojourn and Take Me Now, weaving personal identity with fantasy, Filipino folklore with urban life, and spiritual questions with surreal encounters. The main narrator, David Lansing, acts as our curious guide, relaying his disorienting journey through magical encounters, visions of cultural archetypes, and confrontations with hidden truths. These experiences are framed through a personal, at times confessional, lens as he is summoned by a supernatural Council to explain his strange awakening in the Dark District.
Reading this felt like peeling through layers of memory, myth, and grief. The writing style is introspective and poetic at times, with bursts of long, flowing paragraphs that spill over with emotion and insight. Edmunds has a real knack for setting scenes that feel alive. The haunting streets of Manila, the hidden halls of the Council, even the surreal blankness of the otherworldly realms. At its heart, though, what struck me most was how much Dark District Primer is about identity, especially queer identity, cultural identity, and spiritual reckoning. I could feel the author writing through pain and purpose, and while some parts meandered or repeated themselves, the raw honesty kept me hooked. The lore is fascinating, especially the blending of Filipino myths like the Tikbalang and Manananggal with modern, urban queer life.
The ending of Take Me Now leaves just enough unanswered that I found myself eager to dive into the next chapter of the story. That brings me to Take My Hand, the upcoming installment teased at the end of the book. The preview promises bigger stakes and deeper dives into the lore. Take My Hand promises to have more world-building and capitalize on the lore in the introspective tone that I enjoyed.
There were times when whole pages spiraled into inner monologue, and the pacing slowed in the second half of Sojourn, where narrative momentum gave way to philosophical reflection. Edmunds isn’t just telling a story, he’s sharing something personal and vulnerable. You can feel the care and love he has for the lore, the community, and the craft.
I’d recommend this book to readers who want something different. If you like urban fantasy with depth, or if you’re curious about queer stories grounded in Southeast Asian myth, this will hit home. It’s not a quick read, but it rewards with a haunting and heartfelt experience. Especially for queer readers, Filipino readers, or anyone feeling caught between two worlds.
Pages: 298 | ASIN : B0FDGS86JT
The Universal Search For Love
Better Than Sex follows a self-proclaimed sex god on a mission to check off his sex bucket list who decides to turn a shy virgin into the next sex god; what he doesn’t expect to develop feelings. Are there any emotions or memories from your own life that you put into your characters’ lives?
When I was young and coming out of the closet, I felt out of step with the gay community. I’m a private, introverted person, and the gay scene can be very overwhelming to people who aren’t naturally extroverted. I channeled some of those feelings of being an outsider when I wrote the character of Mickey, the shy virgin who Spencer offers to make over.
Spencer’s best friend Xander uses sarcasm and snark to cover up some of his deeper insecurities. When I was in college, I had a similar defense mechanism, though I can’t say I did it with as much flair as Xander. (Thankfully I’ve outgrown this, and now I’m a delight to be around LOL.)
Pepper, the rescue dog that Mickey eventually adopts, is drawn from my memories of the black lab my family had when I was a child. His name was Fritz, and he was a loyal and loving companion.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Themes of friendship and found family run through most of my work, and those themes are front and center in Better Than Sex.
The main theme I explored was the universal search for love and acceptance. Too often, we seek external validation, hoping that attention and positive regard from others will fill the gaps within ourselves. But external validation can feel hollow. Deeper validation of our worth requires vulnerability, allowing someone to see us – not as an idealized version of ourselves, but as we truly are.
When will book two be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
The second book in the series, set for a Fall 2025 release, delves into the love story between Spencer’s sexy, charismatic friend Blake and a sweet, studious man named Ethan. The story takes the reader behind the scenes of the adult entertainment industry, as Blake chases his dream of becoming a star.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Instagram | Bluesky
Spencer’s thirtieth birthday is right around the corner, and he wants to say goodbye to his twenties with a bang. Literally.
As a self-proclaimed sex god, Spencer has sworn off love and dedicated himself to finishing his F***-it List – a collection of wild fantasies he’s checked off one by one. Now, only one fantasy remains: rock a virgin’s world with a night of unforgettable sex.
Shy, sweet Mickey seems like the perfect candidate, but he’ll need a major confidence boost before he’s ready to go all the way. Hoping for a chance to be Mickey’s first, Spencer makes him an offer he can’t refuse – he’ll transform Mickey into San Francisco’s next sex god.
Mickey, who’s always felt out of step with the gay scene, jumps at the chance to reinvent himself. It isn’t long, though, before styling tips and flirting lessons give way to stolen glances and heart-to-heart conversations, and what started as a playful makeover begins to look a lot like falling in love.
For Spencer, feelings were never part of the plan. But as Mickey blossoms into a self-assured man and their connection deepens, Spencer is forced to ask himself: is Mickey just another checkmark on his list, or could he be the man who finally makes Spencer believe in love?
Better Than Sex is a steamy, slow burn, opposites-attract romance. Loaded with humor and heart, Kit Erikson’s award-winning debut novel explores friendship, found family, and the messy, wonderful lengths we go to for love and acceptance.
