LGBTQ+

by Nicholas Scott

by Nicholas Scott

If you listen to Aiden Pike all he wanted to do was try kissing a guy. Cody Beaumont is dubious, though certainly not hesitant. After that first kiss, all he wants is more. Then there's Ashton Prince, the perfect guy, some might say too perfect. Putting their hearts on the line is the last thing they expected.

by Nicholas Scott

Contest for a Valentine story.

by Nicholas Scott

This story came from a contest for an epistolary short story (which is the prologue). What continues is their story.

by Vexen Spell

**You find yourself in the zombie apocalypse with a Serial Killer, a Mafioso, a Loser, a Hockey Player, a Bounty Hunter, and a Preacher’s Son.**   **What could possibly go wrong?**   Welcome to the end of the world.

by Gia Watson

Princess Gràís D’hè MàcBhàtàr was born billions of years ago in a universe long since collapsed. Marked by prophecy as the Eternal Heir, she is destined to rule for a thousand years, then be reborn again and again, carrying her power and memory across countless worlds and ages.\ But even immortals must learn to lead.\ As a teenager in the kingdom of Llamda, Gràís D’hè is sent to the borderlands to hone her skills. Amid smoke, steel, and endless threat, she discovers a rare gift for command—bold gambits, unshakable resolve, and the ability to inspire loyalty where others would yield. Defending a besieged Valorian town against impossible odds, she proves that prophecy alone is not enough. Her destiny must be earned through sacrifice.\ In Valoria, she finds not only her purpose but her heart, in Princess Elara, whose courage awakens a love as fierce as any battle Gràís D’hè has fought. Their union promises to bind kingdoms and challenge enemies, setting the stage for the thousand-year reign foretold at her birth.\ But shadows gather. King Fergus of Dùn Breagha stirs unrest on Valoria’s northern border, and whispers speak of his daughter—ambitious, ruthless, and raised to claim more than her share of power. For Gràís D’hè and Elara, love and alliance will not be enough. They must prepare for the storm Fergus is only beginning to unleash. ​

by Meridian Lyra

How exactly did Io get into this predicament in the first place? Oh yes, that's right, by stupidly volunteering. Now she was the future bride of an alien King, and about to be the queen of an entire planet. *Her* planet, if one wanted to be technical- he wasn't from there, nor did anybody want him there. But there he was.  Sixteen years ago, they came. The Imdalians. War was waged and was lost. Well, humans were the ones on the losing side of that battle, and just over half a decade later they'd officially lost control over Earth. His Majesty took over, redrew borders, renamed countries, established themselves so well it was like they'd been there to begin with.  But with further bloodshed and riots, continued rebellions over the years, something needed to be done about it. Earth history was scoured for a solution, and that solution was a peace treaty- one that was solidified by a royal wedding. How lucky Io was, to be the human to marry the queen. But was she really that lucky, or was she about to find herself in way over her head?

by Tal Stineman

It’s Nico’s final day at Harrison & Dillon, and although he’s relieved to leave behind a condescending executive and an exhausting workplace, saying goodbye is bittersweet. He plans to slip through the day with muffins, smiles, and minimal emotional damage—until he walks straight into Cal, the quiet, devastatingly handsome IT guy who has been fueling his workplace fantasies. When an emergency lockdown traps them together in the break room, Nico’s nerves go into overdrive. But as the hours pass, Cal reveals a thoughtful, observant side Nico never expected. Their conversation moves from books and bad bosses to abandoned ambitions and the quiet ways people show they care. Cal has noticed far more about Nico than Nico ever realized—including his kindness, creativity, and not-so-secret attraction. A smoking electrical unit briefly raises the stakes, and Cal’s calm, capable response only makes him more irresistible. Once the danger passes, their growing chemistry becomes impossible to ignore. A nervous confession leads to a heated encounter against the break-room wall, followed by an unexpectedly tender moment together on the sofa. When the lockdown is finally lifted, Nico discovers that their connection isn’t limited to the strange circumstances—or the break room. Before they return to reality, Cal asks him to dinner, transforming Nico’s last day at Harrison & Dillon into the beginning of something new.

by Elijah James

They were supposed to be rivals. They were never supposed to become each other’s weakness.   Mateo is everything football expects him to be: disciplined, controlled, talented—and careful. As the golden captain of Argentina’s U20 team, his future is already mapped out by coaches, sponsors, family, and a world that expects him to never make the wrong move.   Noah is the opposite. Brilliant, reckless, and unapologetically difficult, the German prodigy has built a reputation for saying whatever he thinks and playing like the rules were made for someone else.   When Argentina and Germany collide at the U20 World Cup, their rivalry ignites instantly.   But after the cameras disappear, something neither of them expected begins between them.   What starts as one unforgettable night becomes a secret carried across continents, clubs, championships, and years. Because on the pitch, Mateo and Noah know exactly how to play against each other.   Off it, neither knows how to resist.   And when the world starts watching, Mateo must decide how much of himself he's willing to sacrifice to keep the perfect life he's been taught to want.   Some lines are meant to be crossed. Others are meant to be erased.

by Brittney Paige

Some mysteries are too big for one generation to solve.

by Brittney Paige

Pearl Frost moved to Hearthglen hoping for a fresh start. She just wanted to paint, restore her grandmother’s old farm, and build a life of her own. Instead, she finds a family she chooses, love, and a town full of secrets- including the mysterious theft of several of her paintings. For now, though, she’s content to paint, fall in love, make friends, and build a life in the little town she’s come to call home.  But secrets have a way of lingering. And some mysteries are bigger than one generation can solve.   **Welcome to the Berry Universe.** This isn’t quite the world you know. Here, people are called Berries—ordinary people living ordinary lives in a world filled with extraordinary color. Their skin, hair, and eyes can be shades of lavender, blue, orange, pink, green, purple, or white, passed down through generations in ways that can reveal secrets about where a family came from. It’s an alternate universe where colorful people aren’t unusual. They’re simply people. And this is one family’s story.

by JD Berryhill

At the center of *Stoic* stands Theresa—a matriarch whose life redefines what it truly means to be stoic. Far from cold detachment or suppression, her endurance is an active, grace-filled love that acts as the anchor for her family through relentless trials. ​Spanning decades, the memoir captures the subtle rhythms of family life, the unspoken sacrifices that build home and security, and the tragic loss that ultimately tests their seams. Through raw honesty and poetic grace, J. D. Berryhill reflects on the emotional inheritance passed down from mother to son: the strength to stand steady when everything else falls apart.

by K.D. Page

by K.D. Page

Rhosalin It’s funny how murder investigations will have you doing things you didn’t think possible. Four years ago, I made the horrible mistake of letting my bloodlust run wild. Rayvn kicked me to the curb with nothing but the clothes on my back and the bill for cleaning services. I never thought I'd ask him for help in my wildest imagination, but here we are. Rayvn As a former angel, the repercussions of leaving the Realm of Deities and O.M.B Vice Presidency are hard enough to handle on a good day. With an asshole getting under my skin at every turn and gods from different pantheons vying for my assistance, life couldn’t be more of a living hell. Or so I thought until Rhosalin came barrelling back into my world.

by Emmett Hotchkiss

Live action, happening now.

by Jeff B White

Octavia survived banishment to the crushing depths of the Trench by carving away the merman she was expected to be. She's managed to build a life for herself where she is genuinely happy and able to give back to those less fortunate than her. And what does she get for it? Deadnamed by her brother-in-law and blackmailed by her trashy niece. She gives her niece legs in exchange for her voice so that the stupid girl can go to the surface and try to bag a prince. But the girl's beauty was a trick played by the distortion of water. She ended up a drooling mute with bad hair and trollop vibes. So Octavia says goodbye to her hips and watches her own breasts fade as she stuffs herself into a man shaped suit and heads to the surface to help the helpless. But the Prince is a Queen, so to speak and he has other plans. Based on Andersen's *The Little Mermaid*, this campy and irreverent fairy tale retelling pays homage to John Waters and the late Harris Glenn Milstead with a girthy celebration of drag and filth that is not the fish story that you're used to.

by D.O'Neil

From Surviving to Thriving: Reclaiming Your Life After Childhood Trauma and Abuse is a compassionate guide for survivors who are ready to understand their past, heal their wounds, and rediscover the person they were always meant to be. Through powerful reflections, healing insights, and practical tools, this book explores the lasting impact of childhood trauma and abuse while offering encouragement for rebuilding self-worth, restoring trust, setting healthy boundaries, and creating a life rooted in self-love and empowerment. This journey is not about forgetting what happened—it is about reclaiming your story. Survivors are guided through the process of releasing shame, recognizing their strength, and transforming painful experiences into wisdom, resilience, and hope. With compassion and understanding, this book reminds survivors that their past does not define their future. Healing is possible, and a life filled with peace, purpose, and freedom can be created one step at a time.

by JUSTIN HALL

Codey Hall is an exhausted twenty‑two‑year‑old scraping by in East Tennessee when a roadside ambush awakens the impossible: he is the prophesied “boy‑good witch,” born once every thousand years, the only soul who can keep the Veil between worlds from shattering. His power surges just as factions close in—warlocks, blood mages, werewolves, and vampires—some desperate to use his storm, others determined to tear the Veil open and unleash Hell’s triad. Thrown into a hidden war of ancient magic, coven betrayals, and buried family secrets, Codey must learn to control his will‑fueled mana before the forces hunting him rip everything apart. At his side stands Lucian, a rogue vampire protector whose cold devotion becomes the one anchor in the chaos, even as a charismatic blood mage sparks a dangerous love triangle. When Codey discovers he has a twin sister whose blood can break the Veil forever, survival turns into a race against destiny, betrayal, and the storm inside him that refuses to die. With vampire politics, coven sieges, and a cursed sword that chose him, Codey’s fight for love and power becomes the last barrier between Earth and ruin.

by oliverd

## **Where They Begin** Since losing her husband and then both parents, Dee has quietly convinced herself that happiness is dangerous — that every joyful moment is simply another loss waiting to happen. Years of caregiving have taught her to rescue everyone except herself. She has become so skilled at surviving that she no longer knows how to choose joy. When she breaks one of her own emotional rules and watches an elderly woman dance with an invisible partner, long-buried grief begins to surface. Gary, also sixty-five and eleven years sober, has spent a lifetime running — from relationships, from vulnerability, and ultimately from Dee. Five years earlier they met aboard a cruise, fell deeply in love, and exchanged letters for months. But when his growing feelings challenged everything he believed about himself, fear won, and he simply disappeared. ## **The Reunion** When Gary sits down at Dee’s casino table, five years of longing collide with five years of heartbreak. Dee grants him one hour to explain, on one condition: complete honesty, especially when the truth makes him look bad. Every conversation becomes a test. Gary must prove through actions — not promises — that he has become someone capable of staying. AA becomes the unexpected blueprint for rebuilding love. In meetings aboard ship, Gary abandons the polished explanations that have protected him for years and confesses the truths most likely to cost him Dee, including the shame of imagining her waiting after he vanished. For the first time, telling the truth matters more to him than being forgiven. ## **The Turn** While Gary learns to stay, Dee must learn that her worth is not measured by how useful she is to others. Each day Gary asks a question no one has asked her in years: *When was the last time you did something simply because you wanted to?* She cannot answer. Two people illuminate her path. Lou, Dee’s fiercely loyal friend, challenges her to separate evidence from fear rather than let grief masquerade as wisdom. Sandra — the elegant woman dancing each evening with an invisible partner — reveals the novel’s deepest truth: loving again does not betray the dead. Love does not end. It changes form. ## **The Test** The turning point is not a misunderstanding but a series of chances to trust. On a beach with a hidden rip current, Gary risks his life to pull a drowning boy from the water while entrusting Dee to organize the rescue from shore — and for the first time she learns what it is to be trusted rather than only to rescue. Days later, on a zip line strung across a rainforest gorge, it is Dee’s turn: she has to let go of the cable and fall, on faith, with Gary waiting below. Trust, the novel insists, is built in ordinary acts repeated until they hold. The true climax comes when Dee falls hard on the ship’s pickleball court, breaking her ankle and her nose on the last days of the cruise. Gary — days from a national championship he has trained three years for — quietly withdraws to fly her home and see her settled, asking for neither recognition nor gratitude. The choice detonates a hidden conflict: his tournament partner and closest friend, who has quietly loved him for years, forces a reckoning that proves Dee right about her all along and costs Gary the person he thought knew him best. Watching him choose her and lose something real for it, Dee confronts her deepest fear — not losing Gary, but leaving first, before she can be hurt again. In the terminal she confesses that for one honest moment she hoped he would miss his flight, and telling the truth, rather than being reassured, is the point. ## **Where They Arrive** By the end of ten days, both have crossed the distance that truly matters. Gary learns that staying is the most courageous promise he can make. Dee finally abandons the belief that avoiding joy can somehow prevent loss; grief came anyway, and refusing happiness never protected her from it. On the flight home, her ankle in a cast, she places her hand in his — and lets herself, perhaps for the first time in years, receive love without believing she must earn it. Then the novel turns the story inside out. Then ending chapters present a major twist and readers are left to craft an answer to a final question.

by Stuart Grant

**For twenty years, Stuart Grant stood inches from the spotlight while witnessing everything audiences were never supposed to see.**   **Remember, I’ve Seen You Naked: A Backstage Memoir pulls back the curtain on life behind some of America’s biggest touring theatrical productions. As a hairdresser, makeup artist, wardrobe professional, and quick-change expert, Stuart traveled from city to city helping performers become glamorous, heroic, terrifying, and occasionally presentable—often while complete chaos erupted around them.**   **Backstage, personal boundaries disappeared quickly. Actors undressed without hesitation, wigs malfunctioned at the worst possible moment, costume changes became full-contact sports, and conversations took turns no ordinary workplace would survive. Stuart found himself surrounded by outrageous personalities, unexpected hookups, touring disasters, sexual misadventures, nightclub escapades, and situations so absurd they could only have happened in show business.**   **But beneath the laughter is the story of a demanding and deeply intimate world built by people the audience rarely notices. It is also a remembrance of the friendships formed on the road, the people whose curtain came down too soon, and a career Stuart believed would last forever—until an injury abruptly took it away.**   **Candid, adult, darkly funny, and unexpectedly moving, Remember, I’ve Seen You Naked celebrates the people behind the scenery who make the magic happen, clean up the disasters, and return the next night to do it all again.**

by A.M Isle

A century of stillness does not end quietly. The empire is waking hungry and afraid, and the people who survived the freeze are discovering that survival was only the beginning. Kathera is returning, and the world is moving again. It should feel like enough.\ \ It isn't.\ \ Sahora never asked to be the one who carried Kathera's soul across realms. She never asked to crawl to the bottom of a waterfall and trade her breath for a world she barely knew. She never asked to stand trial before a village that wants her dead, or to fall for the man who broke every oath he had ever kept just to pull her back from the dark. She never asked for any of it.\ \ The world didn't ask either. It just needed her anyway.\ \ While Oliver faces the cost of choosing love over law, and Lyrian holds together an empire built on grief and rose gardens, a darkness older than the freeze is moving in the east. Carlosa of the Dark Court does not doubt. She does not stumble. She has spent a lifetime being certain. But something is pulling her toward the cliffs of Sinthia, something her shadow recognized long before she did, and Carlosa is beginning to understand that certainty is only as strong as what you refuse to look at.\ \ Ten shards. One stone. A world still remembering how to breathe.\ \ And the people brave enough, or broken enough, or desperate enough, to believe it can.

by L.A. Peña

Kaelin was bred for control, a subject engineered with a fragile spine augmented by ruthless technology. When the Cradle burns and her world shatters, she escapes into the inhospitable wasteland of Ashkaru with a silent, feverish child whose eyes see too much. The Drifting Truth, an old patched ship, becomes her sanctuary - but the Core reclamation teams are relentless, their reach stretching into the broken edges of space. As alliances shift and secrets emerge, Kaelin must navigate a maze of trust, technology, and survival. Will she protect those she loves, or become the weapon they made her to be?

by A.M Isle

A saga following a mercenary who is being hunted by people who keep telling her Celentra must stay frozen. She doesn't know what this means until she meets a cloaked stranger who tells her that she is carrying the soul of a dead Empress from another world. That she must revive this Empress to save a world frozen in time.

by Bambi U.

Sapphyra used to have it all. Great super-genius husband, great job as a superhero. She even got along with her dragon side. Really, nothing could go wrong for her. Until it did. When the world faced a threat she couldn’t punch, she tried to make the ultimate sacrifice so everything and everyone she ever loved could flee. But Wyatt, her husband with plans for his backup plans, wouldn’t allow it. He trapped her inside a digital coma, intent on waking her up when everything settled down. That was 100 years ago. When Sapphyra finally rips herself free from the nightmare, she finally sees the extent of the damage done to her city. Not just her city either. Her body has been twisted, her powers and dragon side locked away behind a Class System—something Wyatt placed inside her. It only gets worse from here. Guy, a charming labrador-energy man she met inside her coma is in the real world, with real feelings she’s returning. Oh and Wyatt? He separated his mind from his body, and now his consciousness follows Sapphyra around the broken city like a bad hangover. He’s less than thrilled to have competition for his wife but without a body, he’s screwed. As if an awkward love triangle and rebuilding a city weren’t enough on her plate, Sapphyra has to deal with a familiar face. Rupert Domingo, the madman who also escaped her digital nightmare now taunts her with all the answers she’s asking for…as long as she plays his game first. Sapphyra will have to navigate her new powers, her growing list of lovers and her grief with Wyatt if she wants to stand any chance of winning Ruperts game and fixing her city once and for all.

by Shea Hallen