Blog Archives
Coming Alive
Coming Alive is a vibrant and inspiring memoir that follows the author’s spiritual journey, an Italian-American with a deep passion for religion and spirituality. The book is diverse and authentic and details how the author comes to terms with who she is, her sexuality, and how society can be, at most times, closed-minded.
Ierardi’s tone is calm and positive, with clear values and goals. She spends her life looking for the best way to achieve her purpose. The author is determined to never give up, as she conquers many obstacles and difficult situations along her journey. When faced with challenges, Ierardi lets humanity guide her down the right path.
As the author takes the reader through various experiences and situations, she covers many aspects of religion, spirituality, art, astrology, family life, and sexuality. Ierardi delicately but directly discusses how sexual orientation and identity can present a setback where there is a lack of acceptance. However, the author never lets obstacles stand in her way and instead lives valiantly during a time when coming out risks being ostracized by family and community.
I enjoyed the author’s determination and strong spirit, as she presents a clear picture of how she navigates through her family, community, and experiences in life. It’s an immersive story that gives you the holistic view of everything Ierardi goes through and how her journey includes different reactions and experiences as a part of the LGBTQ and feminist communities and movements. Ierardi does an exceptional job of weaving the modern history of social justice and equal rights while searching for a more authentic life.
Coming Alive by Anne Ierardi is an excellent book for anyone from any religion or sexuality. It’s a great read highlighting the personal reward of coming alive while challenging the reader to find their true self and follow an authentic path.
Pages: 241 | ASIN: B09TRZL91W
Sparks in the Dark
Sparks in the Dark paints a fascinating futuristic world where space travel and alien interactions are the reality. It’s a story inspired by classic science fiction series such as Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who. You’ll find many twists in the plot development, including the unlikely pairing of two characters, their respective challenges, and a relationship that is rife with sexual tension and dual points of view, shifting back and forth with a seamless transition and excellent narration. The author handles the complex nature of these characters expertly, engaging the reader from the start.
Cutter and Buzz are complex main characters with strong personalities and intense chemistry. Their on-and-off intensity between intimate and not-so-intimate moments will reel you into some intriguing and captivating dialogue. While the description paints vivid visuals, it is never overdone, and you feel as though you are a voyeur, watching each scene as it unfolds. The reader is guided through the story, learning more exciting developments and diving further with anticipation without feeling overwhelmed with too much information or confusion.
The build-up towards the story’s ending does not disappoint, and readers will find the crescendo of excitement build as they progress through each chapter with bated breath. It’s a cleverly written book with a few sharp twists, including how the plot shifts suddenly, moving in a very different direction. Siewert’s incredible world continues to hold up throughout the story, filling the reader with amazement from beginning to end.
Sparks in the Dark by James Siewert is a creative, science-fiction tale. It is an excellent addition to the genre with an LGBTQ twist. The characters were not only complex and personable, but I found them entertaining throughout the book. I highly recommend giving this excellent story a try, as it is an exciting read that brings new enjoyment to the world of science fiction.
Pages: 251 | ASIN: B0B8DWC41S
Literary Titan Gold Book Award September 2022
The Literary Titan Book Awards are awarded to books that have astounded and amazed us with unique writing styles, vivid worlds, complex characters, and original ideas. These books deserve extraordinary praise and we are proud to acknowledge the hard work, dedication, and writing talent of these brilliant authors.
Gold Award Recipients
INFINITY: Book of Matthew II by Catalina DuBois
Visit the Literary Titan Book Awards page to see award information.
Loves Knows No Gender
Grayality follows two friends who set off to try and restart their life in a small town, only to be faced with hate and judgment while trying to find love. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I transitioned in a tiny rural town in Montana. I haven’t faced anything as direct as Pate and Oakley encounter, but I have experienced subtle issues. For the few other transgender people I know here, they have encountered pretty nasty prejudices. Personally, I have found it hard to be open with who I am since there is little support here. I also feel lucky, however, because as someone who transitioned later in life, I have more financial resources and independence than many college students undergoing these changes. I wanted to share both the internal and external struggles that sometimes exist. A great deal of my own personal challenges is portrayed through Pate, but as I reread it now, I know that I have grown. I embrace myself a lot more.
My husband inspired Oakley. He married me when I presented as a woman with neither of us knowing at the time that I was transgender. I know that sounds strange, but I had assumed that I had to live my life presenting as a woman for a long time. He adamantly believed that he could not be romantically or sexually involved with a man. However, he came to realize that it’s the person that counts. I will proudly say that his attraction for me has not faltered. I wanted to convey his internal struggles with sexuality that stopped him from supporting me for nearly three years. However, in the end, he showed me that love knows no gender.
Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?
My inspiration for this entire book comes directly from my life, but I will add some more to the first question in this regard. I struggle with social anxiety and have experienced some bad bouts of depression. As a mental health counselor, it is important to me to share these experiences without shame. I did reveal a lot of them through Pate. Sometimes it is difficult for me to even read those parts of the book, but they are a part of my journey. Also, it is hard for me as a transgender person to share my own internalized transphobias that were present when I first transitioned, which is also portrayed through Pate. I am in a better place now with my identity and even see it as a gift rather than a tragedy. I wasn’t always there, so I am happy with my progress.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
This novel has some very heavy themes to it. Identity is a major theme in several ways. Foremost, Pate is coming into his identity as a man while Oakley is discovering his bisexuality. However, both characters are young and are still figuring out what direction they want to take in life, making this a coming-of-age novel.
I would also say that prejudice is a theme. While there is obvious prejudice against LGBTQIA people, readers could also say that Pate and Oakley show some prejudices against rural communities. Stormy was created as a character who shatters these preconceived notions about ranchers. Lastly, I would say acceptance is a theme. The characters learn to accept themselves while also discovering that others will accept them, too.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
My next novel is Acing the Game, which is getting published through Extasy Books and will hopefully get released either later this year or the beginning of 2023. This novel is a contemporary LGBTQIA+ romance about two married bisexual men – a popular small-town chef (trans and ace) and a shy and reserved high school principal (cis and allo) — who are thrown for a loop when the latter finds himself yearning for more sexual discovery. Through a surprising dive into polyamory, they explore every side of their compatibility. . . and just might learn how strong their romantic bond can be.
Shep Lee thought he had it all. A successful restaurant, a loving husband who understood his asexuality and, most of all, the ability to be himself, a popular chef in the small town of Cloverleaf, Montana. That is, until his husband Elmer Eshler began pushing Shep more on sex. Elmer doesn’t understand why he can’t turn his partner on – aren’t they perfect for each other? And Shep loves him, right? Shep, meanwhile (while confident with his body) is and always will be sex indifferent. Why has Elmer suddenly changed his tune? But he doesn’t want to lose the man he loves so much. What can they do?
Shep convinces Elmer to try a polyamorous relationship. Elmer gets to have Shep and the sex life he has always wanted. Shep gets a cooking buddy and a chance to experience a relationship, and even try sex, with a woman, as his authentic gender. Shep isn’t sure at first but finds himself coming around – this feels safer than opening up the relationship. All three of them will be romantically involved, so that should ease any jealousy, right? But when Willow Saint, a free-spirited, boisterous and saucy young woman, comes into their lives, neither are prepared for the emotional and sexual rollercoaster that follows. Enthralled by Willow’s charm and kindness, Elmer and Shep struggle to understand what this means for their own bond.
Can they become one happy family? Or will this ruin everything?
Acing the Game is a novel about loving others, loving oneself and the intricate nuances of asexuality, sexual insecurity, polyamory and relationships. Starring three memorable characters who find each other in completely different but wholly satisfying and sexy ways, (and with plenty of emotionally erotic scenes and a lot of heart), Acing the Game shows that there are many dimensions and paths to satisfaction and love.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook | Website
Love knows no gender.
Pate Boone, a twenty-six-year-old transgender man, embarks on a new adventure when his childhood best friend, and yes, ex-lover, Oakley Ogden, convinces him to escape their hometown in hopes for something new.
They land in Cloverleaf, a tiny rural town in Montana, so that Oakley can care for his granny who is battling breast cancer. She pressures the two young men to enroll in a nearby college. Pate immediately becomes enthralled with Maybelle, a young, vivacious freshman to whom he fears revealing his transgender identity. Still, he finds it impossible to resist Maybelle, even after he meets her ex, Bullet, a large, violent man determined to keep Pate away from “his girl.”
But there are others who accept Pate immediately, like Stormy. An outdoorsy, rugged freshman, Stormy warns Pate away from Maybelle and Bullet, but Pate’s too infatuated to heed these warnings.
Oakley tries to support his friend’s new love but finds himself entangled in his own emotional calamity when he unintentionally falls for Jody, a gay and ostentatiously confident drag queen. This new relationship awakens deep internal conflicts in Oakley as he struggles to accept his bisexuality, lashing out at Pate and causing friction between him and Jody.
Oakley must decide if he can overcome his insecurities so he doesn’t lose the love of his life. And Pate must discover if the love between him and Maybelle is strong enough for her to accept him as a transgender man, or if she will break his heart.
Give Us Strength Or Tear Us Apart
First Born Sons follows five different groups of people in the LGBTQ+ community whose lives end up intertwined due to a series of events. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
All the major characters in First Born Sons have come from three of my previously published novels, Four Calling Burds, Tio Jorge, and Deluge. Though I’ve never written sequels, several of my fans expressed an interest in knowing what happened with these characters. At the end of the respective books, all of them would have been living contemporaneously and in the same geographical area. I had the idea of not only continuing their stories, but having them interact and in one case fall in love. The background to the events is the Covid pandemic, but it’s not really about the pandemic. The personal issues the characters are dealing with are complicated by the health crisis though it’s only one of many crises that take place in 2019-20. Others include wildfires, Black Lives Matter protests, divisive politics, and general racism and homophobia.
What were the morals you were trying to capture while creating your characters?
In general the characters confront the notion that families, both alternative and traditional, can give us strength or tear us apart depending on how one handles the issues. Simple love doesn’t alone conquer all. It takes perseverance and being true to oneself.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
One narrative tackles gender identity and how transition causes upheaval not only for the person changing but the loved ones around them. Another story revolves around extremist politics causing disastrous consequences for a family. Still another examines an older gay man finding love when he no longer believed it could happen. And one of the main themes is two gay men trying to protect their mixed-race son as he deals with the complications of becoming a teenager in a society that still struggles with racism.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Since I’ve gotten over my hesitancy to write sequels with this novel, I have embarked on a new project, which follows the story of the coming-of-age character in my novel The Mayor of Oak Street. It’s 45 years later and he is dealing with growing old after a life of love and loss. My intention is to make it more of a romance, but we’ll see how things develop.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook
First Born Sons is populated by a cast of LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies who struggle to find love, comfort, and fulfillment. As the novel progresses, characters interact across the separate narratives and are brought together for a birthday and a disastrous Black Lives Matter demonstration. A man returning to the horrors that made him leave Mississippi, a blind gay man flirting with love, an FTM transgender starting hormone therapy, a woman struggling to protect her sons from her ex-husband’s surge to right-wing politics, and a teenager with two gay dads searching for his Black surrogate mom paint a disturbing tableau of modern-day America.
Praise for First Born Sons:
“Vincent Meis’s First Born Sons is at once a sprawling epic with a global scope and an intimate mosaic of stories, touching on important issues like race, gender, pandemics, and prejudice — but never forgetting the humanity at their core. These are characters you’ll want to know, and this is truly a novel for our times.”
– Eric Peterson, author of Loyalty, Love & Vermouth
“Meis once again proves to be an assured chronicler of our times. Never one to shy away from humanity’s darker impulses, this spellbinding story of love and immigration, civil unrest, and political polarity amidst lush, tropical locales is the perfect book for summer. A rip roaring ride!”
– David Jackson Ambrose, author of Unlawful DISorder, A Blind Eye, and State of the Nation
“I raced through the pages of First Born Sons, unable to put it down. Meis explores the traumatic events of 2020 through an engaging group of characters, whose personal lives are upended by events far away and close to home. This is an exciting work that deftly captures the tensions, anxieties, and hopes of our turbulent times.”
-Gar McVey-Russell, author of Sin Against the Race
That’s Where The Story Begins
Ulan follows a woman that after being turned away from her community goes in search of discovering more about her gift and how to control it. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
Because Ulan is a major character in the PATCH MAN series, I needed to know more about her. I needed to know why she became an assassin and how she could change from that role to become a leader in the rebellion. In order to understand her better, I needed her background and that’s where the story begins.
What was the inspiration for the relationship that develops between the characters?
Ulan never had a father figure in her life, so I needed to create someone to fill that role, but I also needed him to be conflicted so that their relationship helped Bas to find a kind of solace and purpose. Tara’s relationship with Ulan was a natural development of their intimacy. Tara provided Ulan with a role model in the Lore facility, but she also provided her with a love she had never experienced before and that love helped Ulan understand deeper emotions that would help her in the future.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Redemption is probably a major theme, but at the heart of everything love becomes the primary motivation for most of the characters. I also wanted to explore how a good person could be persuaded to do bad things. What drove Ulan to become who she will eventually be in the PATCH MAN series?
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Book four of the PATCH MAN series, The Doppelganger Effect, has already been written and will soon be going through the editing process with my publisher, Crimson Cloak. This book takes the characters, Ten, Ulan, Meesha, and Riata into a parallel domain, but where their twins are mirror images. It should be out in another six months or so.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook
Bas travels with Ulan to Sum-Est, home of the Lore Master, Ja, in hopes the young woman will benefit from the mystical training to become a Lore Mistress. But the Red Ward from Clan Hemite has vowed to fulfill the blood reckoning and follows Ulan’s trail to Sum-Est. Ulan undertakes the rigorous Lore training so she will be strong enough when she again meets the Imperial Panthers, but becomes sidetracked by the beautiful novice, Tara.
A Widespread Horrendous Crime
Human Collateral follows a P.I. who is tasked with finding a girl that’s gone missing at the hands of a loan shark who uses organs as collateral. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
Human trafficking is and has been historically a widespread horrendous crime. I wanted to shed light on it but using a form not often talked about. Because it is also a little more sophisticated crime, requiring a multi-tiered syndicate, it offered a lot of out of the ordinary investigating.
Miles Darien is an intriguing and well developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
Since he is a forensic scientist not merely a traditional “gum-shoe”, it allows him to be more analytical in his approach to crime solving. I also liked the idea of portraying a gay character in a positive light. The New Yorker transplanted into a small Wisconsin town added another layer to who he had become.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Human trafficking as I’ve said. Friendship, both old and newly acquired. And, of course, good versus evil. Oh, and the power of observation, and science in crime solving.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I’m about 25% into my third book, and it should be out sometime next year.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
Private Detective, Miles Darien, is hired by Cora Sims to find her missing daughter Olivia, who has been living alone in Chicago.
Miles enlists his best friend, investigative journalist, Ryan Duffy to assist in the search. Mrs. Sims has no idea where her daughter works or how she makes a living. First, they must uncover the clues which will lead them to her workplace, hoping to connect with someone who can take them to Olivia.
They eventually succeed in uncovering her workplace and who she is staying with. When they find Olivia, she’s barely alive as a result of an infection after having a kidney surgically removed. Turns out the kidney was payment for an illegal loan given by criminals who prey on people in dire financial trouble by forcing them to use their bodies as collateral.
Olivia can’t seek medical care or go to the police because the criminals have threatened to kill her if she does. Miles and Ryan must bring down the criminals to keep them from silencing Olivia.
They join forces with the FBI to look for the syndicate behind these loans. The syndicate is also hunting them down to erase any trail that would lead back to them. Who will erase who first?
I Died In The Early 1990s
God of Nothing follows the daughter of God and Satan who after being murdered awakens and discovers the truth about herself and her family. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I died in the early 1990s and for sure, God is a woman…female anyway. Not human. That is when I started to consider what if everything we believe is wrong? Then the story took on a life of it’s own.
Aja is murdered at the age of 17 and now is faced with understanding who she really is. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
I wanted Aja to be a regular kind of teenager but considering her parentage, and who she really is, that regular life is not for her. Still, she has good values, morals, work ethic, and will do whatever she has to. Sometimes, because of her age and power, the things she does are not nice. It doesn’t make her evil or even bad, it makes her a teenager who sometimes makes poor choices.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
What difference does it matter what a person looks like on the outside…the gift is on the inside. This came about when my wife and I were watching Deep Space Nine and I told her, I thought some of the Cardassian women were kind of hot. After she got done laughing she said, “I can imagine how people on Earth would react to you dating a Cardassian.” She is right, most humans would freak out. I don’t under that. Why is it okay to love this person, but not that one. If there is a thinking, intelligent, adult mind in two radically different bodies, and they love each other, be it Titan, Dragon, Bool, Vampire, or Demon…I don’t have any issue or problems with those relationships. I don’t think it is any of my business to tell anyone who they can love and who they can’t. If someone was dating a rock person they’d be welcome in my house. Everyone in my book either already has, or will find their one person to love forever. These relationships are almost always with people radically different from each other…Dragon & Bool, Dragon and Demon, God and Devil, Human and alien (Ebezz). I see nothing wrong with any of that.
I also wanted loyalty…not the kind demanded by tyrants and dictators, the type of loyalty that comes only from forging a close, trusting relationship with another person.
And I wanted to provide answers to all the various immortal races and how they might have come about along.
I also wanted to portray alien cultures different from Earth. If we ever do get to space and find other cultures, I feel certain they won’t be anything like us. Even if they look like us, everything about them will be different.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I finished and published a 2 hour novella titled, FAITH last Feb. I am currently working on the second book in the series, God of Everything. I’d like it done and published around Feb 2023 but it is coming along slow. Difficulty in marketing, sales, and getting reviews drains my motivation to keep writing. Writing is hard hard work for me. I’d like to keep writing but so far, I have found no real benefit or reward to help motivate me to keep writing books.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook
God of Nothing is a stunning, epic fantasy. This imaginative coming-of-age series follows four generations of Gods, Devils, Dragons, Titans, Demons, Werewolves, Vampires, and Angels.
Mortals and Immortals collide in never-ending battles of love and hate across uncountable years and dozens of worlds.
God of Nothing starts the adventure. Murdered at seventeen by the Titan, Silver, God of Death, Aja wakes with her Dragon. Thrust into a bizarre world where enemies are friends, and friends are enemies, she learns the truth about her parents and herself.
Her mother is God, and her father is the Devil. Aja is the first person born, not created.
Enraged that Aja survived, Silver, God of Death, forces her to make choices to protect those she loves. Will Aja save the All or destroy it? If she survives, will she hate herself for what she’s done?
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God of Nothing has no graphic sex, but there are sexual situations, including some LGBTQ+. It also has instances of vulgar language, smoking, drugs, violence, and mentions rape. It is intended for people eighteen years or older.
