Romance, Chosen Family, Love & Darkness
The second book, in SANCTUM is out now! And the first reviews have been lovely! Thank you to my ARC readers.
Please find Lay It Bare on Amazon and Kobo, and Kobo affiliated international stores.
Smashwords is currently experiencing difficulties shelving Lay It Bare. While I hope to work it out, feel free to reach out me directly. I am offering a temporary solution of a direct buy from me with PayPal and Bookfunnel. And yes, this has sped up my plans for a direct store.
That’s it, that’s the big news: twelve days until the second SANCTUM book is out. At this point it has been edited, checked, rechecked, and is off with ARC readers now. Will Sevastyan find a way to tell Ellisandre his secret? You’ll have to read it to find out.
Pre-Order Here: Amazon
Pre-Order Here: Kobo
And if you haven’t read the first book, Prior Claim, find your copy here.
Would you like an Advanced Reader Copy of my next book?
Lay It Bare comes out on Wednesday, July 15th, 2026! You can pre-order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, etc right now, or, if you like, put your hand up for an ARC in exchange for a review.
ARC copies will be released starting July 1st, 2026. So very soon.
Short Description:
The price that Sevastyan has paid to protect Rei is higher than he realized. The consequences could damn them both. But while Sevastyan is fighting for Rei, Ellisandre is fighting for Sevastyan, even if that fight is with Sevastyan himself. There are secrets that must be disclosed, and the risk is growing higher with each passing day. Can they trust each other long enough to survive?
FYI: Advanced Reader Copies, otherwise known as ARCs, are given out as a book is released, in exchange for reviews on sites like Goodreads, Fable, Storygraph, etc, or storefront where the book is sold.
I screen my ARC team out of necessity, so please be willing to answer a few questions in the above form. I do limit how many team members I have at any time so as not to get overwhelmed. If I cannot take you on directly, Lay It Bare will also be available to ARC readers via Gay Romance Reviews.
Sanctum Book 2 • MXM • Romantic Suspense • Second Chance Romance • International Crime • Found Family • Interracial Romance • Trauma • Hurt/Comfort
Ellisandre speared a quarter of the peach with their knife and held it up, meeting Sevastyan’s eyes. “Myths—the old ones—endure not because of their brightness. It’s their darkness. The stories might be of gods and heroes, but gods and heroes are gloriously terrible.
“They consume their children, slay their lovers, abandon friends, commit patricide, drink rivers of wine, grieve to the point the earth itself ceases to grow food, and through it all, they are us—writ large. Their crimes are larger, their loves are deeper, all the better for us to see ourselves inside of them. And yet, there is one crucial difference between the mundane man and a god or hero—the gods and the heroes, they dare.”
Sevastyan’s training is now a hinderance. In the wake of his failure, he must find new methods to break the lock on his voice. If he cannot, he will have failed to protect Rei. Time is running out. A power struggle within the criminal organization is going down, and Sevastyan is unwillingly at the center.
Rei grapples with not knowing why new marks have appeared on Sevastyan’s body. It is not his place to ask, and Sevastyan is offering no explanation. Before Rei can make peace with this mystery, they have a visitor, one neither of them knows if they can trust. Rei must make choices between obedience and taking a risk to preserve a life.
Ellisandre’s hands are full with their chosen family and knowing that Sevastyan has a secret he is trying to divulge. In preparation for the war that is coming, they train their protégé, guard their chosen family, and rebuild what was lost while they and Sevastyan were kept apart. And yet it may not be enough. While some Merchari agents are following the direction of the Yadro to watch and wait, others are not. And Ellisandre’s family has already been in their crosshairs.
If Sevastyan cannot speak, if Rei cannot pierce the shadows of what has gone unsaid, Ellisandre may never arrive in time. Can they untangle truth and trust from betrayal and lies before they become three more sacrifices to the Merchari’s greed?
If you’d like to be an ARC reader, please fill out this Google form.
Couple of quick disclaimers.
This serial is a dark, modern MXM+ chosen family romance intended for mature audiences only. While Ellisandre, Sevastyan, and Rei are the central triad, this is a firmly polyamorous romance. There is no cheating. If you like your romance difficult and explicit, then this story is for you. A full list of trigger warnings is in the front of the book.
This is a stand alone serial. It contains spoilers for Collin and Damian & Jun in The Residency Boys Universe. Read those first if you want to avoid finding out some things early. Sanctum Episode 1 starts roughly a week after Damian & Jun Episode 1. The two serials run parallel, but neither has to be read to understand the other. Collin: Episodes 1-3 is the very first book if you wish to read the entire universe chronologically.
Trigger Warnings: The following is either a buffet table of favorite reading topics, or a warning label to be taken seriously. The gloves are off for this one. You decide.
• second chance romance
• massive kink for pagan mythology
• master/slave (the noncon kind)
• on page murder
• parents who should never have been allowed to have pets let alone children
• non-con/dub-con
• consensual power exchange
• blood play
• knife play
• love that heals
• bondage
• erotic humiliation
• consensual non-monogamy
• polyamory
• sassy friends
• lost souls
• human trafficking
• egregious hurt/comfort
• disassociation
• burn victim far along in their healing
• the grayest version of a knight in cracked armor
• a main character whose pronouns have changed over time (I have done my best to keep it from being confusing!)
• suicidal considerations
• eating out
• situations where there are no good choices
• Do I need to say C-PTSD? Because no one is escaping that.
There will be vengeance. There will be justice. There will be an HEA—hard won, but HEA—just not in this volume. This is a serial.
Reader Review: An expansion of the RESIDENCY BOYS universe, this is a multilayered multicultural plot advanced by original in depth characters and an entertaining engrossing read that i could not put down. ~ Jean on Goodreads
Reader Review: Damn, this is Dark! But also heartbreakingly sweet. The last story in this universe left a lot of loose threads that are picked up in this book. I really enjoy this author’s style of writing – it sucks you in immediately and puts your heart through the wringer. It’s as poetic as it is story-driven. ~ Jvles on Goodreads
Reader Review: A complicated story with complicated, morally grey characters that the author has total mastery of . . . Once I started reading it was very difficult to put the book down and get some mandatory things done like work, lol. I definitely lost some sleep reading well past bedtime. Very much looking forward to more. ~ Ida on Goodreads
Sevastyan dedicated his life to destroying the criminal world into which he was born, but the walls are closing in and it’s no longer just his life at stake. To save the man he loves, he must reach out to a ghost from his past, a lover he thought he’d lost forever.
And if you’re the kind of reader who can’t stand to start a series and not have several more books to tear through, Sanctum Book 2: Lay It Bare is coming July 15th. It’s on pre-order now!
Please leave your own review wherever you enjoy reviewing books. It is so helpful. And drop a recommendation wherever your chat with your reader friends about books. Word of mouth is the very best way for all of us to find new books. It’s how I find almost every new author I read now!
Would you like an Advanced Reader Copy of my next book?
Prior Claim comes out on Friday, May 15th, 2026! You can pre-order it on Amazon and Kobo right now, or, if you like, put your hand up for an ARC in exchange for a review. It feels like it’s been forever since I released the end of Damian & Jun’s story last August, and also like we just did this yesterday.
ARC copies will be released starting May 1st, 2026. So very soon.
Short Description: Sevastyan dedicated his life to destroying the criminal world into which he was born, but the walls are closing in and it’s no longer just his life at stake. To save the man he loves, he must reach out to a ghost from his past, a lover he thought he’d lost forever.
FYI: Advanced Reader Copies, otherwise known as ARCs, are given out as a book is released, in exchange for reviews on sites like Goodreads, Fable, Storygraph, etc, or storefront where the book is sold.
I screen my ARC team out of necessity, so please be willing to answer a few questions in the above form. I do limit how many team members I have at any time so as not to get overwhelmed. If I cannot take you on directly, Prior Claim will also be available to ARC readers via Gay Romance Reviews.
Sanctum Book 1 • MXM • Romantic Suspense • Second Chance Romance • International Crime • Found Family • Interracial Romance • Trauma • Hurt/Comfort
“You wouldn’t touch me, if you knew what I’ve done,” Sevastyan whispered.
Ellisandre’s fingers trailed over Sevastyan’s skin, certain and steady. “I know what you’ve done.”
“Impossible.”
“You’ve ruined lives. You’ve crushed dreams. There are souls that wake screaming to the memory of your face. You’ve failed. Again and again.”
Sevastyan shuddered. That was the Ellisandre he knew behind the mask. Honest to the edge of a blade. They had not so much found their way into him as cut their way in, bled him until there was room, and then set their throne up in the wreckage.
Ten years ago, Ellisandre tore a hole through the Eurasian criminal underground and disappeared, presumed dead. Now that same underworld is reaching out again, threatening the lives and freedom of Ellisandre’s new chosen family, and bringing back someone they had lost: their lover and submissive, Sevastyan.
Born into the fall of the Soviet Union, Sevastyan didn’t so much learn to survive as to persist. Restrained by a promise and shattered by the loss of Ellisandre, the criminal underworld dragged him under. Now, his greatest crime is also his greatest living love, the trafficked K-Pop trainee he rescued from fire and execution, Rei. But neither of them are free.
Once the leader of a K-pop group about to debut, Rei is now a veteran slave with a scared face. Masked and silent, he follows Sevastyan into the world’s most dangerous rooms, a breathing symbol of Sevastyan’s status. Now the same people who enslaved him are trying to sell his former members. But Rei remembers everything. And from his knees, he owns the heart of an assassin.
And Ellisandre was never going to be a footnote in the lives of others. They bathed the world in blood once, for righteousness. How much further will they go when they come to claim the man they lost and the slave he saved?
If you’d like to be an ARC reader, please fill out this Google form.
Couple of quick disclaimers.
This serial is a dark, modern MXM+ chosen family romance intended for mature audiences only. While Ellisandre, Sevastyan, and Rei are the central triad, this is a firmly polyamorous romance. There is no cheating. If you like your romance difficult and explicit, then this story is for you. A full list of trigger warnings is in the front of the book.
This is a stand alone serial. It contains spoilers for Collin and Damian & Jun in The Residency Boys Universe. Read those first if you want to avoid finding out some things early. Sanctum Episode 1 starts roughly a week after Damian & Jun Episode 1. The two serials run parallel, but neither has to be read to understand the other. Collin: Episodes 1-3 is the very first book if you wish to read the entire universe chronologically.
Trigger Warnings: The following is either a buffet table of favorite reading topics, or a warning label to be taken seriously. The gloves are off for this one. You decide.
• second chance romance
• massive kink for pagan mythology
• master/slave (the noncon kind)
• on page murder
• parents who should never have been allowed to have pets let alone children
• non-con/dub-con
• consensual power exchange
• blood play
• knife play
• guns where guns shouldn’t be put
• love that heals
• bondage
• erotic humiliation
• consensual non-monogamy
• polyamory
• sassy friends
• lost souls
• human trafficking
• egregious hurt/comfort
• disassociation
• burn victim and depictions of fire in a dwelling
• the grayest version of a knight in cracked armor
• a main character whose pronouns have changed over time (I have done my best to keep it from being confusing!)
• suicidal considerations
• eating out
• situations where there are no good choices
• Do I need to say C-PTSD? Because no one is escaping that.
There will be vengeance. There will be justice. There will be an HEA—hard won, but HEA—just not in this volume. This is a serial.
If I’m up late tonight, it’s because I’m reading book 2 of The Whispers in the Shadows series by Kai Jennex and Casey Cross. This morning I finished the first book, Cold Fire, and I’m already deep into Silver Magic, even though I have so much to do today.
Cold Fire was one of those books that I saw recommended several times and somewhat begrudgingly downloaded because it sounded like something I SHOULD like but somehow wasn’t really hooked on. I started reading it once and felt lost on the first or second page and put it down. There was a lot going on. Rereading comfort books was where I was at.
And then I just picked it up one night and pushed through the first two chapters. And I’m so glad I did. The world just opened up. The characters colored themselves in with brilliant strokes of nuance and aching imperfection. I forgot about the promised tropes and was just reading for the story. For days. This book is long! Honestly, the authors could have split this into three books. It has a rhythm and episodic feel to the way the story turns and moves. And move it does.
This is the type of heated, tense slow burn I adore. Where the waiting is purposeful and articulate. Where intimacy and sheet ripping is earned and relished and no choice comes easy. This is fantasy and mixed pantheons (something I adore). Contemporary and historical settings are mixed together. Above, below, and beyond. Yes, time travel is a thing, and it’s not cheap. It comes with a cost.
So many books don’t make the impact they might make because the costs are never brought up for reckoning. Not so with Cold Fire. The authors wrote this with a steady hand, holding the characters together while letting the actual impact of events fall upon them, all while the core strengths of the characters still lead them towards the light of themselves and each other.
The story isn’t finished, for me. I have Silver Magic to finish. And at 1,312 pages, that’s going to take me a couple days.
This was not an ARC copy or an author request. Each Monday I sit down and think about what I want to share, and I just kept thinking about art and art that makes life more beautiful, and Cold Fire rose to the surface. It might have been taking up a good portion of my free thought space lately. No particular reason… lol. I’m going to go read now.
Here’s Kai Jennex’s website: https://kaijennex.ca/ And here’s the Amazon link to Cold Fire: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FXMPMXG8
An editor once sent me back a note that read something like, “It will be easier on your American readers if you use inches here.”
I read that feedback twice because I respect my editors; thenI firmly crossed that suggestion off.
Why?
The character speaking was not from the U.S.A.
And outside the U.S.A., who uses the Fahrenheit system? When I lived abroad, I was always translating between systems to communicate between my lived experience and my family and friends stateside. The metric system became quite comfortable to me. I might have had to translate something now and then, but after a short period of time, not that often. Helpfully, this was a system I could use as I went from country to country as well. It stayed the same everywhere I went, in every language. The U.S.A. was the only place I had to adjust for. Insert laughing emoji here.
Math with the metric system is just plain easier. Enough said.
As an author, there are other reasons I have an absolute standard around which system international characters will use in their thoughts and sometimes in their speech. First, it’s recognition and respect for my readers from other countries outside of the U.S.. They deserve to be seen and represented in the books they read when they see characters that come from their region. They do not need to be “translated” when it amounts to erasure of their own traditions. What if a U.S.A. person was reading a book and an American person speaking to another U.S. person suddenly started talking in Celsius? It would feel off, right?
Second, I get wicked satisfaction from being comfortable with both systems. It’s a layer of realism and global citizenship that takes relatively little effort to slip into the text. So why wouldn’t I bring that to the narratives?, Something authentic and unique. Like describing someone’s hair color, or the atmosphere of a room, using the metric system is one of those passing details that add up over time to paint the story with layers of texture and color.
So short hand for my U.S.A. readers: If it’s 40 degrees Celsius, it’s too hot for a casual jog outside, unless you’re training for something wild, like 104 F wild. And in Celsius, we freeze at zero degrees. So logical! In the middle, 20 degrees C is about 68 degree F. With just those three points, you can get a feel for the temperature.
Don’t even get me started on inches versus centimeters.
In Damian & Jun, there are a lot of song lyrics written by Jun. I thought I’d share the full lyrics of one of them today. I can hear the music in my head, but haven’t figured out how to get it out so anyone else could experience it. The full album of lyrics for Jade Butterfly— English only, I am not competent to write sentences in Korean— was nearly finished while I wrote the story. Haven’t decided how or when to share the collection. Perhaps it will be a future Kickstarter extra. Until then, here’s my own recording of the words as beat poetry while I was working out the scenes for Jun.
Hail, My Demons
Hail, my demons
Are you not entertained?
As I strut, and I dance, and I sing on this stage
Hail, grand sinners
Are you not deeply pleased?
That for you I exist to appease
You appetite
Your twisted delights
Your greed beyond need
Your avarice
Shall we all have a party?
A grandslam soreé
Let’s swan about under patterned lights
Like our hearts are all cut from damaged blocks of ice
Your appetite, I swear
Has no end or so I hear
Ego in motion
Your worst diabolic emotion
Open jaws, gimme hands
Tell the band to leave the stands
To serve as flesh
Torn up fresh
Upturn the bed
Leave them unfed
Justify starvation
For some future libation
The present is pleasant
Only for your golden bezant
But we’ll cry
And we’ll die
For your unclean
Your goddam caffeine
Go suck on your cigar
Rub off on your fuckboy, you watch me trick car
Let’s check your lips
For dagger tips
You can’t even feed
If others don’t bleed
Hail, my demons
Are you not entertained?
As I rave and I cave, and make love to the cage
Aren’t all little canaries the going on rage?
Such a pretty image
Bred for it’s lineage
The patriarch’s dark
But the babe is all art
Pretty white lark
With a wide open heart
You’ll slice it in two
To check that it’s true
And then misconstrue
The reason it’s blue
Hail, my demons
Can you not see?
The world’s not endless
The prey is not deathless
There’s a mark in the dark
Calling out for the start
Of a war
You’ll abhor
And a boy they’ll adore
He’ll dance on a stage
And give you no wage
He doesn’t care
That you stare
For at his hand
Is a band
You can’t understand
They’ll dance in the stand
Forget what you planned
Repeal your commands
For we are the ones
The fatherless sons
Who march out of hell
Like life from a shell
To grow and to sow
Beyond your control
A tree to the sky
Summer bees butterflies
Green branches spread wide
Our lives dignified
So hail, my demons
There’s a spark in the heart of the dark
An art you can’t narc
Be entertained
And sustained
On loot wrapped in soot
Quench thirst in my tears
And rest in my fears
For I will burn down this stage
And tear up my cage
When my hunger is gone
I’ll no longer fawn
For your appetite
Your twisted delights
I’ll be mine on my own
There’ll be no dance for your bone
Writing the Sanctum serial this year has been a new kind of challenge. Collin was writing on home turf. Chicago was a city I knew. Kink was a world in which I had experience. Polyamory came from my own life. Damian & Jun led me a little further afield, but still in realms where I had deep knowledge or at least familiarity. The park along the Han River where Damian chases Jun was a place I myself had run. Seattle where Jun was born were streets I’d walked. While K-Pop required some research, it had been on my radar since 2010 when one of my coworkers in South Korea confided in us that she’d turned down a talent hunter from an agency. Music itself and performances were experiences I understood. Yoihei, Jun’s fellow group member, comes from a prefecture in Japan where I lived. The story of the butterfly was a tale I’d learned in university and remunerated on often.
When Ellisandre, Sevastyan, and Rei made it clear that their story was next, I knew Sanctum would be partially new territory. I’ve never taken a class on the Russian language. I went in knowing that my cultural literacy on Sevastyan’s backstory was lighter than what I’d started with for Damian, Collin, or Jun. I started, as I always do, by hitting up the Chicago Public Library website, knowing that my searches would be too esoteric for the books to just be sitting on the shelves of my local branch. I filled my podcast playlists with relevant episodes and speakers and listened while scrubbing dishes and cooking. And I kept dozens of research tabs open on my computer, sometimes walking up and down the streets of one Russian city or another via Google maps to make sure the building descriptions were accurate.
One thing that gets forgotten in the English-speaking world is that Russia and China share a long border. I knew from the beginning that this was a region in which Sevastyan was well versed. Even with my degree in East Asia Studies, focused on China, this area was rarely mentioned. Despite sitting atop East Asia, Russia largely only appeared in my studies during the Soviet era when Stalin was friend and foe by turn to Mao Zedong and Communist China. When I lived in mainland China, you could still see Soviet-inspired architecture and Soviet-influenced art. The eras are built into the landscape.
There’s always a danger in representing any culture, even one’s own, because every single person in that culture has their own perspective and their own words. No single individual carries the entire heritage in their own person. A long time ago, I made a commitment to myself and my characters to never force them to become a stereotype to carry an entire identity. The world is a vast place. One of my Chinese students had red hair and blue eyes. One of my Japanese friends was deeply involved in hula dancing from Hawai’i. There are concentrations of Korean populations in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. When a new character shows up, I sit down and ask them for their story, because that, in the end, matters more than labels I could quickly derive for them. They, like us, are human before they are anything else.
I’ve been getting multiple requests recently to share a list I crowdsourced last year for MM authors on Kobo.
Click here for the Google Spreadsheet “MM Authors on Kobo”.
I haven’t hand-checked everything. The sheet is open for other people to add authors as they find them. Email me at ciaradarren@gmail.com if you find an author has left Kobo and is incorrectly listed.
Also, Kobo has the Kobo Plus reading and listening subscription program. And services MORE countries than Amazon. Here’s the linked for the U.S: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus
For unlimited ebook and audio book listening, Kobo+ is $9.99 in the U.S.A. I’m not seeing Canadian and Australian prices, but if you’re from that region, search “Kobo Plus (insert region)” in a search engine and you should find it really easily.
Kobo+ is in so many more countries and offers books in so many more languages: Do you see your flag below? Then Kobo+ is available in your region.
And for those who need text based: Kobo Plus is available in: Canada, United States, India, South Africa, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru.
Pros of Kobo+:
Cons of Kobo+
Helpful new habits: things I learned after going 11 months in Kobo+ and not using KU.
Kobo has real people behind the scenes. If enough readers ask for something, like nuanced search abilities, it can happen. So don’t be afraid to reach out and ask Kobo to change things or improve your experience.
Do use the app. It does make reading Kobo books and starting to create a curated recommendation list of Kobo published books so much easier.
And remember, you have this whole list of over 300 MM authors on Kobo to explore, just to get your started.
Ciara Darren