A Book You've Likely Never Heard Of

Every couple of years, I'll blow the dust off a book -- one of my books -- that isn't in the m/m romance genre and show it off. (I have worn other author hats.) So in case you're unaware of it, I published a novel with Samhain waaaaay back when they first opened their virtual doors. It's a dystopian thriller without an HEA, but it's very much a love story. A multifaceted love story. And it's dramatic. And angsty. Moreover, it bears my first-ever Anne Cain cover, which I adore to this day.

The book never took off -- to say the least -- because shortly after Samhain got up and running, they decided to publish standard erotic romance to the exclusion of everything else. (In practice if not in theory, they pretty much had been doing so right from the start.) My red-headed stepchild was not a good fit in this family and thus ending up languishing in the cellar. Of course, the fact I published it under another name didn't improve its subsequent visibility.

So . . . here it is. Book Utopia Mom had the courage to write a review of this novel. The print edition is available at the publisher's site and Amazon. All e-book formats are also available at the publisher's site, or you can get a Kindle edition straight from Amazon. (It's cheap, too!)

A blurb follows. I believe the first chapter is posted at Samhain.

Books burned, adulterers stoned, gays attacked, government leaders and institutions controlled by a religious hierarchy, visions of a worldwide holy war—is it happening in the Middle East…or in the United States?

Paragenesis is a coalition formed by ultraconservative religious leaders and their devout followers. A man known only as the Summoner, never seen in public, is its leader. As this juggernaut gains momentum, cherished rights and freedoms are swept aside, and the United States becomes a theocracy as fierce and unforgiving as any within the Islamic world.

Two ordinary citizens—Catherine, a divorced woman, and Theodore, her alcohol-dependent former parish priest—set out to find the coalition’s secret nerve-center, the Citadel, gathering whatever information they can by traveling the “Devil’s Railroad” from one resistance group to another. In St. Louis they meet Martin Sovalle, a bisexual man of startling beauty with whom Catherine falls in love and who disappears following a vicious vigilante attack.

Unbeknownst to Catherine and Theo, the Summoner has in fact been luring them to his headquarters for the purpose of playing out an End Time drama he believes God has relayed to him in a series of visions. And Martin Sovalle has become his bait.

What happens once the lives of these four people collide at the Citadel is something none of them—except perhaps the unlikely mystic, Theo—could have foreseen…

Contains controversial material, graphic language, and moderate violence.