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Trials of a Legal Junkie
Rich Merritt’s Trials of a Legal Junkie is an ambitious, deeply personal novel about addiction in its many disguises. Rob Marion, a lawyer, author, former Marine, and recovering addict, begins the story riding the publicity rush surrounding his explosive memoir. He believes he’s finally gaining control of his own narrative, especially the painful history he shares with a fundamentalist Christian institution that taught him to fear his sexuality. But attention becomes another intoxicant, and Rob’s hunger for vindication, fame, sex, money, and professional status starts pulling him toward the same destruction he thought he’d escaped. Adapted from real experiences, the novel has the intimate immediacy of a memoir while giving Merritt room to shape a broad, eventful story about a man whose greatest talent is also his most dangerous habit: turning every part of life into a trial he has to win.
Rob is difficult, funny, perceptive, infuriating, and painfully recognizable. His intelligence lets him expose hypocrisy with precision, but it also gives him an endless supply of arguments for ignoring the people trying to help him. Merritt doesn’t flatten that contradiction. He lets Rob be generous one moment and ruthlessly self-involved the next, capable of defending society’s discarded people while treating those closest to him as supporting characters in his personal drama. The result is a protagonist whose gradual collapse feels convincing because it happens through dozens of choices that seem manageable in isolation. Rob’s sharp, frequently profane narration keeps the book conversational even as it moves through grief, relapse, homelessness, criminal courts, rehabilitation, spirituality, and the failures of powerful institutions.
The novel’s large cast gives the story much of its warmth. Friends, sponsors, lawyers, clients, fellow residents, family members, and beloved dogs repeatedly offer Rob forms of connection he’s too restless or wounded to accept. The late Gary, Rob’s Marine friend, becomes a particularly affecting presence, appearing in memory and imagined conversation as both conscience and companion. The legal storyline also grows richer as Rob begins using his training on behalf of people the system has decided are expendable. Courtroom maneuvering, appellate research, recovery meetings, service work, and meditation might seem like separate threads, but Merritt steadily binds them together through the idea of surrender. For Rob, surrender comes to mean neither defeat nor passivity. It means giving up the fantasy that brilliance, outrage, or relentless achievement can substitute for community.
Trials of a Legal Junkie has the generous, unruly scope of a life being reconsidered in full. Its length allows recovery to emerge as an uneven practice rather than a tidy transformation, built through daily work, painful amends, unexpected responsibility, and the willingness to keep loving what can’t be kept forever. Merritt writes candidly about sexuality, religious trauma, substance use, ambition, grief, and justice, but the book’s deepest concern is service: what we owe one another after our defenses have failed and our carefully constructed identities have fallen apart. By the final pages, Rob’s trials have become less about proving his worth than learning how to use his life, his losses, and even his contradictions for someone else. Raw, searching, and fiercely humane, Trials of a Legal Junkie shows that redemption begins when winning matters less than refusing to throw anyone away.
A World Of Possibilities
6060 Vision is centered around a biomechanical Golem who was built soley to observe, record, adapt, and learn, but begins to form connections. What first inspired the idea for 6060 Vision and its far-future Earth?
6060 Vision began with a single idea, playing with the word warehouse during a road trip from Salt Lake City to Anchorage. With so much time to daydream, warehouse became “werehouse,” akin to “werewolf.” The notion spiraled into a living conscious plant structure, that is, Anther’s Root in the story. 6060 felt like a fitting year for such a being to exist, given some imagination, sci-fi potential, and larger plans for the series. A world of possibilities unfolded, where the development of life was accelerated and less bound by time. I created our protagonist, Sam, to explore this land and meet its New People.
The Baast, Sen, Sagoin, Kalak, Mimicats, and Slik all feel distinct. Which species was the most enjoyable to create?
Of all the species and People I created, I absolutely love the Kalak. They’re based off of South America’s Maned Wolves, the real creatures are without peers and they look like they are full of secrets. I actually created the Slik first, the scene with them is one of the first I wrote, but imagining them was far from pleasant.
How did you decide when Sam would stop simply recording events and begin actively shaping them?
I’m not sure I ever knew when Sam would start actively shaping the events around them; my macro plans for the story are distinct and rigid, but, in micro, the writing process itself is haphazard and organic. One could argue that observation is interaction- much of Sam’s journey is similar to a field anthropologist losing objectivity. I knew I wanted Sam to mature, similar to a coming-of-age narrative, so their presence becomes less passive and their actions more decisive with each conflict. I love hearing from readers when they think the pivotal moment is.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
6060 Vision is the first novel in a nine book series, a trilogy of trilogies! 6070 Vision is already in the works, set ten years after the first novel, with plans to publish in the Spring of 2027. I have the whole series and each character arc mapped out on a large paper graph. I’m very excited to share more.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram
Only To Be Completely Consumed
Freedom Boulevard follows two people looking for reinvention but instead find a city that tests their insecurities and vulnerabilities at every turn. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve been a creative seeking the right avenues—and at times, reinvention—for much of my life. Andy and Sakeenah’s stories are a culmination of firsthand and secondhand experiences. They represent those moments when a creative type bets big on a metropolitan area as their new base, only to be completely consumed by the local culture, poverty, and politics.
Andy and Sakeenah have very different inner lives but parallel struggles—what made you decide to structure the novel in alternating first-person voices?
In the literary realm, I’d be daft not to credit the Urban Fiction writers who mastered the dual-perspective novel decades ago—people like K’Wan and Sister Souljah. I wanted to bring that fast-paced, modern structural style to a narrative that otherwise might have existed in the eras of Jack Kerouac or Charles Bukowski—assuming they stayed sober enough to actually go outside.
The book engages heavily with themes of exploitation, intimacy, and transactional relationships. What conversations were you hoping to open about those dynamics?
Exploitation, intimacy, and transaction are much bigger parts of the modern LGBT experience than most within the community would publicly admit. Grids on location apps dominate the hookup scene, making monogamous dating look more like a corporate PR stunt or a suburban rarity than the norm. The book forces the reader to confront these harsh realities. For example, Andy’s foray into escorting is what ultimately keeps him fed and sheltered, even if his surroundings are rapidly dilapidating. On the flip side, Sakeenah’s Islam keeps her head on straight, but it also births a world of hypocrisy and unrealistic expectations that she has to grapple with daily until she nearly loses her mind. Glimpses of characters like Tony Vee, Clyde, or Janice aren’t just setups for future installments; they’re raw slices of life pulled straight from those environments.
What do you hope readers carry with them after leaving the world of Freedom Boulevard?
Ultimately, I hope readers walk away with an authentic literary experience. This is not the type of “LGBT Fiction” designed to make you feel cozy or encourage you to buy a rainbow “Ally” pin. This is a cold glimpse of real-life problems hitting a real-life community in real-life cities. The series only expands from here, highlighting a myriad of characters across this diaspora.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
Andy Blackwell is a bisexual hip-hop artist who burned every bridge in Maryland to chase the neon lights of the West. But in Cordova, exposure isn’t free. Desperate to keep a roof over his head, Andy finds himself entangled in the brutal web of Tony Vee, a nightlife kingpin who treats human beings like expendable assets. Traded between seedy club promoters, lonely sugar daddies, and the criminal underworld, Andy is sprinting headfirst toward a dead end.
Sakeenah Bailey is a bipolar, trans Muslima writer fleeing the suffocating judgment of conservative Connecticut. She arrives in the desert seeking a creative awakening, but quickly drowns in the legalized, soul-numbing haze of the city’s medical marijuana industry. Trapped in a roach-infested motel and tangled in a violently toxic romance, Sakeenah trades her spiritual compass for a paycheck in a corporate weed factory.
They are two sides of the same counterfeit coin—strangers bleeding out in the same dystopian city. One will find a ladder out of the pit. The other will become a ghost in the machine.
Written with unapologetic, razor-sharp prose, Freedom Boulevard is a visceral, neon-noir descent into the American underbelly. Yusuf Blanton delivers an agonizing, authentic masterpiece about addiction, the dark side of the cannabis boom, queer survival, and the brutal cost of chasing a dream in a godless city.
Perfect for fans of gritty urban fiction, LGBTQ+ psychological dramas, and raw stories of addiction and redemption.
During a Shared Psychedelic Experience
a three body solution centers around three lovers who become unlikely leaders trying to save the Earth from global collapse. What inspired you to write a three body solution?
If I can be completely honest, the idea was “downloaded” during a shared psychedelic experience with two other people. Like much of the best science fiction, the novel exaggerates reality just enough to help us see it more clearly. My queer reply is that the book edges reality just enough to make readers blush, laugh, and hopefully think.
One of my closest friends is Thai and fascinated by aliens, so TaDoo was born. My partner of eighteen years is Vietnamese, deeply logical, and yet somehow equally devoted to RuPaul’s Drag Race, so Tâm emerged. And then there is me—an empathic, slightly overwhelmed middle-aged human trying to make sense of a world that often feels like it is unraveling.
One night, squeezed together on an all-too-small bed, dreaming about a larger Murphy bed, struggling with an Alexa that refused to play the right music, something unexpected happened. We shared a vision of a future that felt more hopeful, more connected, and more playful than the one currently being offered to us.
By morning, we realized we had all experienced something remarkably similar. QuBit and the advanced tech MMMurphyBed were envisioned, the characters followed, and eventually a three body solution emerged.
At its heart, the book asks a simple question: What if we could bottle our best moments of mortality and connection and share them with humanity?
Which came first: the relationship between Chip, Tâm, and TaDoo, or the larger vision of a world in crisis?
The world crisis came first. I’ve been wrestling with existential distress far longer than I’ve been imagining alternative relationship structures.
As Lily Tomlin famously said, “Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.” That line has haunted and inspired me for years.
The more I looked at our political divisions, ecological challenges, and collective loneliness, the more I found myself imagining leaders who approached power differently. What might happen if tenderness, honesty, vulnerability, and cooperation were treated as strengths rather than weaknesses?
The thruple became my laboratory for exploring that question.
The three protagonists are imperfect, messy, occasionally ridiculous, and often in over their heads. Yet they keep choosing each other. In a world increasingly organized around fear, I wanted to imagine people organizing themselves around connection.
Maybe that’s what I mean by “pink magic.” Not perfection. Not ideology. Just the radical belief that love, creativity, humor, and community might still have a role to play in shaping our future. I write with the following mottos in my heart:
#BooksNotBombs
#DreamMoreDreadLess
Were there particular science fiction authors who influenced your work?
Not all of my influences are strictly science fiction, but the writers who stayed with me are the ones who cracked open reality in some way. They each affirmed something that influences how and why I write.
Cixin Lui gets a big gay hug for his daring The Three Body Problem series and for acknowledging character development was not his primary interest.
C. S. Lewis gave me portals to a land with talking animals and a way to observe grief.
Stephen King gave me permission to be strange, sprawling, and a little haunted. Daniel
Quinn’s Ishmael helped me think differently about humans, animals, and culture. Octavia
Butler showed me how speculative fiction can be prophetic, political, and deeply embodied.
Ocean Vuong may not be sci-fi, but his prose reminds me that language can wash over you without having to comprehend every word. And David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas* helped me appreciate stories that move across time, bodies, and identities.
Also, full confession: I may be one of the rare unicorns who loved the Wachowskis’ film adaptation of Cloud Atlas even more than the book. Queer cinematic heresy, perhaps, but I stand by it.
What was the most challenging aspect of writing such an ambitious and genre-blending novel?
Believing I had permission to write it.
The book blends queer romance, science fiction, grief work, neuroscience, primatology, psychedelics, spirituality, and political commentary. Conventional publishing wisdom would probably suggest picking one lane. Instead, I decided to create a traffic jam.
I also relied on a great deal of support along the way: the encouragement of my partner, insights from psychedelic experiences, and AI tools that occasionally helped untangle my famously long-winded sentences.
The deeper challenge wasn’t writing 600-plus pages. It was trusting that the story deserved to exist.
I know some readers may use the book as a bedtime companion, while others may discover it works equally well as a yoga block or doorstop. I’m genuinely okay with either outcome.
At some point, every creator faces the same question: “Just because I can, should I?” For this book, my answer was yes.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
Runner-Up – Alternative Future
Honorable Mention – Unconventional Romance
Welcome to the world of a three body solution-a daringly subversive and juicy tale that reimagines what it means to save humanity.
At its heart is Chip, Tâm, and TaDoo-a queer thruple-turned-global leaders united by love and an uncanny knack for tackling the impossible. In a world teetering on the edge of collapse, these unlikely heroes rise to power as the self-proclaimed MMMperors: Men of Mind and Magic. With humor as sharp as their strategies and compassion as boundless as their dreams, they embark on humanity’s most daunting challenge yet: saving Earth herself.
Chip, the globe-trotting empathic healer, struggles to reconcile kin’s enlightened wisdom with the absurdities of leadership. Tâm, the silver fox scientist and reluctant leader, balances their razor-sharp mind with an unexpected flair for drag, channeling their alter-ego, Dr. Phở-nomenal, to inspire a world hungry for hope. And then there’s TaDoo, the dreamer and cosmic envoy who believes salvation might just arrive aboard a celestial mothership. Together, they weave through a chaotic mosaic of love, resilience, and otherworldly ambition.
This is a story of resilience, connection, and the beauty of trying-even when the outcome seems uncertain. A wild ride that will make you laugh, cry, and reconsider the very fabric of what it means to be human.
Back to the Beach
Back to the Beach by Alistair Sutton is a queer historical coming-of-age novel about Tim, a young gay man who leaves Queensland’s Sunshine Coast for Sydney in 1981, while the story also looks back at the childhood, family tensions, friendships, and betrayals that shaped him. The book moves between Lorikeet Beach in the 1970s and Sydney’s gay scene in the early 1980s, building a portrait of someone trying to understand desire, shame, freedom, and belonging. It is as much about place as it is about people, with the beach, the city, and the body all becoming parts of Tim’s search for himself.
What I liked most was the way Sutton lets the past and present talk to each other. Tim’s adult life in Sydney feels brighter, louder, and more open, but the childhood chapters give that freedom weight. We see the bullying, the awkward friendships, the longing for Saxon, and the complicated pull of family before we see Tim trying to make a life on Oxford Street. That structure works. It reminds us that becoming yourself is rarely clean. You do not just arrive in a new city and shed the old skin in one piece. Some of it sticks. Some of it has to be scraped off slowly.
The writing is rich in period detail, sometimes almost crowded with it, but I found that part of the book’s charm. The restaurants, bars, surf clubs, clothes, music, and social rituals make the world feel lived in rather than staged. Sutton is also candid about sex, and that frankness will not suit every reader, but it does fit the novel’s larger interest in bodies, power, discovery, and risk. I was especially drawn to the author’s choice to give space to characters beyond Tim, including Olivia and Sylvia. Their chapters widen the story and keep it from becoming a simple escape narrative. Still, I did feel the novel occasionally lingers longer than it needs to, especially when a scene has already made its emotional point. Even then, the excess often feels tied to the book’s appetite for life.
I would recommend Back to the Beach to readers who enjoy LGBTQ+ historical fiction, character-driven coming-of-age stories, and novels that explore gay identity with warmth, humor, and a clear sense of social context. It will especially appeal to readers interested in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, the pull of chosen family, and the messy courage it takes to leave home without fully knowing what waits on the other side.
Pages: 339 | ASIN: B0GR8PC61J
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
The Absurdity of All Kinds
The Legend of Leanna Page follows a servant’s daughter with dream-born powers as she challenges kings, kingdoms, and ancient hatred in a fairy-touched world where magic, grief, and prejudice threaten peace. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This one kind of hit me out of nowhere. I was reading this 19th century novel, and in it the author briefly alludes to this even older story, and I didn’t know what he was referring to. I tried to just context-clue it to keep reading, and in a matter of milliseconds I had this whole legend in my head, and I wasn’t sure whether I remembered it or made it up. When I realized it was mine to write if I pleased, I started thinking about the metaphors within the environment of the legend, and I decided it was particularly important in these times to write something that highlighted the absurdity of all kinds of borders and the power people can have to cross them.
Leanna’s bravery is rooted in tenderness as much as defiance. How did you develop her moral center?
I read a lot of philosophy books! I do a lot of work personally on being the morally strongest person I can be, and a lot of that work has been through a study – both academic and independent – of philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. All those studies very directly influence my characters’ behaviors. That balance of tenderness and defiance you mention is particularly missing in the world right now. People tend to lean too far toward one or the other, both to their own detriment and to that of those around them. I know that living up to our own moral codes can be hard work, and I wanted Leanna to embody that constant effort to do the right thing, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I wanted to explore the question of whether something with a wicked history can one day bring larger goodness. Humanity has done plenty to earn the name wicked. After billions of years of natural harmony, we come along and literally start destroying the earth, not to mention the atrocities we’ve done and continue to inflict on each other. But, through her story, Leanna learns that for something (or someone) to be good, someone else first has to believe they can be so. Can we do that for each other? Can we believe in humanity’s ability to bring about large-scale long-term goodness? If we can start with believing that, then I think we’d really have a chance at proving ourselves right.
How did you approach writing the bond between Leanna and Kennedy, especially within the larger political conflict?
It was vital to me that they brought each other joy. Because they grow up together, there’s a childlike playfulness they share that sustains them even when things get complicated. The very things we’re taught to fret over as adults can look very simple to children, and most often that simplicity is more truthful than any fretted over conclusion. When they’re older, both Leanna and Kennedy become an anchor for the other, and when one starts to fret, losing faith in her own goodness, the other believes in that goodness twice as hard. This relationship more than any other is what teaches Leanna the power of believing in someone. If Kennedy hadn’t done that for her, she might have had a very different path.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Facebook | Website
In this long lost legend from the ancient World Within The Woods, a found family unites across impossible borders. Two servants from warring nations and a pair of fairy warriors from the Infinite Wood come together in a hidden cave to raise two little girls, Leanna and Kennedy, whose very existence poses a threat to the structures of their societies.
Discovery and danger go hand in hand, but the children can’t stay in the cave forever. When they emerge, they find themselves in a world riddled with myth, prejudice, and dangerous power. More, they discover it’s up to them to try and put the world right – even if it means losing everything.
The debut of emerging non-profit publisher For Elenvia Publications.
For Elenvia: Publications and Productions is an interdisciplinary arts organization focused on using theatre and literature to collectively imagine a better world and consider how we might make it real. It’s mission: “With a focus on theatre and literature, we use the arts to unite people under a common philosophy of limitless respect, empathy, and curiosity. We believe in the possibility of a better world and work towards its creation through artistic education and active community organizing.”
The Legend of Leanna Page
In The Legend of Leanna Page, Volume One, author Cedar Flyte opens a deliberately old-fashioned fantasy saga in the World Within the Woods, where Masor, Pavoline, and the fairy nation of Alquoria are knotted together by grief, political suspicion, inherited hatred, and dangerous magic. At the center is Leanna Page, a servant’s daughter with dream-born powers and a fierce bond with the fairy Kennedy; as rulers scheme, a drought spreads, and the Jewel of Nebulous becomes a weapon of power, Leanna moves from hidden child to moral force, challenging kings and kingdoms that have mistaken prejudice for wisdom.
I was taken by the book’s insistence that wonder should carry ethical weight. The fairies aren’t merely decorative wings in the trees, and the kingdoms are not simple chessboards of good and evil. Flyte gives the world a parchment-and-ivy texture: songs, epistles, maps, courtly titles, family grudges, and little ceremonial gestures accumulate until the setting feels less invented than unearthed. The prose asks the reader to slow down. Its archaic turns will not suit every taste, but I found that, once my ear adjusted, the language gave the story a pleasingly lantern-lit cadence.
What stayed with me more than the spectacle was Leanna’s particular kind of bravery. She isn’t brave because she is untouched by fear; she is brave because fear keeps arriving and she keeps answering it with tenderness, wit, or defiance. Her relationship with Kennedy gives the book its warmest pulse, and the political plot gains bite because the personal stakes are so intimate: fathers, mothers, servants, monarchs, and children all pay for the stories their societies choose to believe. The pacing can feel slow, but that slowness also lets the emotional and philosophical consequences settle instead of simply rushing toward the next marvel.
I would recommend this to readers of epic fantasy, YA fantasy, fairy lore, queer romantic fantasy, and coming-of-age adventure, especially those who enjoy immersive worldbuilding and prose with an antique shimmer. It may appeal to fans of Tamora Pierce’s moral clarity and courtly adventure, though its diction and legendary framing also bring to mind older Arthurian retellings. The Legend of Leanna Page is a lush, earnest, many-chambered beginning: a fantasy that believes peace is not naïve, but arduous, luminous work.
Pages: 342 | ASIN: B0G26ZL86L
