adventure – J.K. Pendragon

Hello all! Got some exciting news to share! Junior Hero Blues has a brand new cover, and a release date of March 29th! PLUS if you pre-order you get it 3 days early! Here’s the new cover:

I love it! It feels like an upgraded version of the old cover. ☺️

I’ve been having fun with artbreeder.com and came up with portraits of the two main characters:

So much fun! Oh and also here’s a moodboard I did a while ago.

What, you want to know what the book is actually about? Okay, fine:

Last year, Javier Medina was your average socially awkward gay high schooler with a chip on his shoulder. This year, he’s…well, pretty much the same, but with bonus superpowers, a costume with an ab window to show off his new goods, and a secret identity as the high-flying, wise-cracking superhero Blue Spark.
But being a Junior Hero means that Javier gets all the responsibility and none of the cool gadgets. It’s hard enough working for the Legion of Liberty and fighting against the evil Organization, all while trying to keep on top of school work and suspicious parents. Add in a hunky boyfriend who’s way out of Javier’s league, and an even hunkier villain who keeps appearing every time said boyfriend mysteriously disappears, and Blue Spark is in for one big dollop of teenage angst. All while engaging in some epic superhero action and, oh yeah, an all-out battle to protect Liberty City from the forces of evil.
Welcome to the 100% true and totally unbiased account of life as a teenage superhero.

Can’t wait to once again share Javier and Rick with you. This book was so much fun to write, and is really special to me. ☺️ I hope you’ll consider checking it out!

Other news!

Ink & Flowers is now available to download as an ebook on Kindle and Kobo! It’s been out of print for a while, except for the Audiobook so it’s great to finally have it available again!

Ink & Flowers is right now the only contemporary novel I have, and it’s full of coming out themes and anxiety, something that I struggled with a lot in my early 20s. It’s a personal book, but it’s also a little escapist. Here’s the blurb:

About to lose his apartment, and desperate to avoid having to move in with his horrendous relatives, shy art student Luke impulsively agrees to a deal from hell: sex with a man he doesn’t know in exchange for a couch to sleep on.
His new “roommate” Cooper is everything that Luke hates: crude, uncouth, and covered in tattoos, not to mention openly gay. Luke has all but resigned himself to a miserable fate when it turns out Cooper might want something a little different than he expected.

I hope you’ll consider checking it out as well! I think that’s all the news I have today, but I have another big announcement coming soon, so stick around!

Thanks for reading and here’s a picture of my cat looking out the window.

Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is plot-driven fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre. Genre fiction is generally distinguished from literary fiction.

–Wikipedia

I love genre. For me, it’s the fun stuff. The stories that focus on plot and excitement, rather than pages of introspection and characters behaving badly. They have likable characters, and involve adventures outside of the normal every day experience. I’ve always been drawn to fiction (and movies/television) as an escape from my everyday world. I don’t want to crack open a book or turn on the tv to see more of the same. I want adventures on the high seas, sprawling fantasy, science fiction that takes me to the very edge of the human experience.

A lot of the time genre is seen as somewhat lesser than literary fiction, partially because it’s (apparently) more derivative, basing itself on already established conventions like setting, plot, characters. And a lot of the time that’s true, but working within conventions doesn’t necessarily make you less creative. Sometimes it forces you to be more creative. For every hack-job heartless, dime a dozen sci-fi movie, there’s a boundary-pushing, convention-defying masterpiece that surprises you at every turn. And then there are the stories that fit every convention, don’t really offer anything new, and don’t try to be anything better than just quality entertainment, that you can easily slip into and enjoy, without worrying that it’s going to unsettle you, or take you somewhere you don’t necessarily want to be right now.

And I love those stories. I love writing those stories. I don’t always want to be stressed out, or disgusted by humanity, or depressed all the time. Genre fiction and movies give me characters that I love, stories that I want to know the ending to, and they leave feeling happy and content.

But here’s the thing: What do those stories almost always have? Especially the movies and tv shows, but adult genre fiction most of the time too. (Hint: it’s rooted in the very sexist “hero gets the girl” trope.) Yeah, it’s romance. Romance in genre spans from a barely there, shoehorned in with a kiss at the end type of deal, to a deep meticulously developed love that becomes the emotional basis of the story, and everything in between. But one thing that’s missing from almost all these stories: queer romance.

This is something that I love to rant about, because it’s really depressingly prevalent. Queer characters are always relegated to the depressing stories, the literary fiction and its movie equivalent. We don’t get happy endings very much, and even when we do, it’s usually after a lot of depressing things that happen because of our sexuality. Now, queer people are slowly becoming more visible in genre, and it’s great, but we’re almost always given a supporting role, a side character, with a romance that is mostly sex-based, or else completely side-lined. And yeah, a lot of the time, we die.

It’s always a huge surprise to see a genre-type story with a queer person as the main character. I was plesantly surprised to start season 2 of American Horror Story and see a lesbian as the main character (although, don’t spoil it for me, but I’m guessing she dies). I was super excited to read about a new tv show, The London Spy, starring Ben Whishaw, who was rumoured to be playing a gay character who is also a spy. Further digging shows this rumor to be false. And my interest in the show just dropped down to nothing. That’s the thing though, I’m desperate to see a queer character in the lead role of a genre story. I’ll take anything! But it really is depressingly rare. And that’s where I turn to romance.

Well, okay, no, I love romance anyway. For a long time I pretended I didn’t. Probably partially because I was struggling to express my gender identity, and my solution at the time was to distance myself from all things “girly” including, apparently, stories about being in love. But I do love them. My favourite part of all those sci fi and fantasy stories was the romance, and my favourite ones were the ones that made it the centre of the story. When I grew up and discovered genre romance novels, I was hooked.

And that’s how we come to lgbt genre romance. I love it dearly. I can see awesome lgbt characters, the centre of their own story, with a wonderfully developed romance at the heart. This is what I want to read, this is what I want to write, and I’m never going to leave. With the stigma of “queer” inside the further stigma of “romance,” it’s unlikely that it’s ever going to become mainstream. But I’ll keep doing my best to get the word out.

I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m going to keep writing about people like me falling in love and having adventures. Because we deserve it too.

To Summon Nightmares comes out November 4th! Less than a week!

To Summon Nightmares

Three years ago, Cohen Brandwein was “Ireland’s Favorite Daughter”, a popular teenage author and internet celebrity. But ever since he came out publicly as trans, the media’s treatment of him has been less than golden, and these days, Cohen is desperate for escape.

When he inherits an old house in the country, Cohen sees it as a perfect opportunity to escape the press and work on his new book. What he doesn’t count on is becoming embroiled in a small town murder mystery and falling for the primary suspect, a man whose reality makes Cohen’s fantasy books seem like child’s play…

Wordcount: 53,000
Price: $5.99
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy, Trans, M/M
Excerpt
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Thanks for reading! Oh, I almost forgot.