Act fast! Like, run don’t walk to Amazon and get your copy now! Make THE CAMINO CLUByour PRIDE READ for PRIDE MONTH!
SYNOPSIS: After getting in trouble with the law, a group of wayward teens are given an ultimatum: serve time in juvenile detention for their crimes or walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across Spain over the summer holidays with a pair of court-appointed counselors. Although they come from diverse backgrounds, the unlikely friends try to make the best of their situation. The pilgrims grow closer on their journey, but they may not make it to their destination—the Cathedral in Santiago. If they do, will they each find what they’re looking for, and will their newfound friendships endure?
If you have already read The Camino Club, please consider telling your friends! I’d love to see this story of my heart reaching more readers!
Happy Pride Month to all! It’s time to consider reading books with LGBTQ+ representation!
I’m currently reading HOWL by Shaun David Hutchinson and LOVING it! Highly recommend! It’s such a subtly told powerhouse of a story about struggling to find oneself while fearing becoming something other than oneself…while at the same time punching back against bullying and biases. Really, such a deep read. Written for the Young Adult market.
My recently read Pride reads were pretty fascinating looks into growing up with gay dads. One from a Canadian woman whose father gravitated to the Toronto gay village area and one from an American woman whose father gravitated to the Castro in San Francisco. Loved them both! Poignant, sad, funny…all the feels. Highly recommend them…even as side by side reads:
I too write Pride books. Here are 3 that are available now!
Billions of Beautiful Hearts (Interlude Press/Duet Books) is a young adult story with two nonbinary teens finding love online during the time of Covid Lockdown. The Camino Club (Interlude Press/Duet Books) is a young adult story with six teens walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain as atonement for their crimes back home in Toronto. It features a gay narrator with lesbian rep. Pride Must Be A Place (Muse It Up) is a young adult story with Ezra Caine and his friends coming together to create their small-town high school’s first Gay Straight Alliance. Ezra discovers along the way that he can find happiness, love, and safety in the places he once feared.
I also have upcoming PRIDE reads! One of which you could definitely PRE-ORDER during Pride Month! YES, I’m talking about BOOK OF DREAMS again!
The Book.
Here’s the synopsis:
Gaige’s curiosity gets the better of him when he discovers a bookstore on an abandoned street where no bookstore should be. He steps inside and is immediately enthralled by its antiquarian sights and smells. But one book in particular calls to him. It isn’t long before he gets a bad feeling about it, but it’s already too late. The store’s aged bookseller gives him no alternative: once he touches the book, it’s his—whether he wants it or not. It’s bought and paid for and there are no returns. The book leads Gaige on a horrific descent into the unknown. As he falls into the depths of its pages, he loses blocks of time, and his friends become trapped inside ancient cellars with seemingly no means of escape. Gaige soon learns that the ancient bookseller is a notorious serial killer from a previous century, and fears that he has fallen into a predicament from which he may not escape. When all seems lost, he finds the one person he can turn to for help—Mael, a sweet teen also trapped inside the book who didn’t fall for the bookseller’s tricks. Together, they race against time to protect Gaige from joining a long string of boys who vanished without a trace inside the Book of Dreams.
AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD! Also, put Book of Dreams on your Goodreads shelf!
It’s Pride Month. Whatever you choose to do with your reading time this month, just consider spending some of that time reading and supporting LGBTQ+ fiction!
Today is the COVER REVEAL day for my upcoming novel BOOK OF DREAMS!
I’m so excited to be able to share the cover of this LGBTQ young adult novel that falls somewhere between horror and contemporary in the genre scale (here I go again, mashing genres)! Coming May 24th, 2022, from Duet Books, the YA imprint of Interlude Press, Book of Dreams is the 3rd of 4 Duet Books projects! The fourth, to be released in 2023, is a YA contemporary with a nonbinary lead…Where is Ethan Sinclair.
Book of Dreams has been a long time in the making. In fact, I began writing it back in 2014 at the Muskoka Novel Marathon (this is a yearly 72-hour novel writing marathon that raises money for literacy programs in the Muskoka region of Northern Ontario).
The cover reveal will NOT be taking place here on my site. Below is a link to the site hosting the reveal. You’ll have to click over to that site to see the book cover!
Designed by CB Messer, I really feel that the cover captures the mood and aesthetic of the story so well! The main character, Gaige, finds Book of Dreams on a shelf in a bookstore on a deserted street where no bookstore should be. In a sea of spines in blacks and greys and beiges and muted tones, one shiny book stands out among all the others. Inextricably drawn to it, Gaige seals his fate once he reaches for it. The cover that CB Messer came up with encapsulates both the shininess of the book and the portent of bad things to come once it falls into Gaige’s possession. I love it! CB Messer knocks it out of the park, just as they did with the cover of my previous Duet Books novel THE CAMINO CLUB!
LGBTQ READS is a phenomenal site! It covers all LGBTQ literature, from MG LIT to NON FICTION to YA to ADULT to POETRY to CHILDRENS to HISTORICAL…literally everything. It’s the number one resource for LGBTQ literature on the web. Once you’re there, I urge you to take a look around. It’s a fabulous site!
And today, I have the honor of having the cover for my new baby revealed there! I couldn’t wish for a better place to have host this cover reveal. Thanks to LGBTQ READS and to my amazing publishers at INTERLUDE PRESS and DUET BOOKS for making it happen!
Want to help spread the word about my COVER REVEAL??? I would GREATLY appreciate it! Please, instead of sharing this post…please consider sharing the LGBTQ READS post! I want the spotlight to be on THAT site today! Thank you so much!
SO MANY GREAT AUTHORS TO CHOOSE FROM! You can’t go wrong choosing any of them! From Julian Winters to Jude Sierra. From Kate Hazel Hall to C.B. Lee. From Joy Huang-Iris to Rudy Foster. From Celeste Castro to F.T. Lukens! You get the picture…every single book is on sale. 50% off for both the print and the ebook. THURSDAY NOVEMBER 25th, 2021 to MONDAY NOVEMBER 29th, 2021!
This coming THURSDAY to MONDAY! 50% off of EVERYTHING IN THE STORE! (only at their online store!) The 50% discount will appear in the cart at CHECKOUT!
You may have noticed a couple of new covers if you recently visited My Amazon page. Both Pride Must Be a Place & Summer on Fire are now sporting new clothing. (-;
Unfortunately, my publisher, MuseItUp, had to make a tough decision and close their doors. It was a great pleasure working with the folx at MuseItUp! We had a long relationship. They were the publisher of both my debut novel and my sixth novel. I’m grateful for the time we spent together!
I now offer the SAME stories wrapped in newer clothing.
Here are the new covers:
PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE – Ezra Caine is gay. He’s sort of out at school but not at home, where he fears the wrath of his father’s bigotry. When Ezra’s flamboyantly out friend Alex Mills takes one too many beatings from homophobic bully Will Carter, Ezra finally snaps. Fed up with the situation at school, he decides to do something about it. With the help of his BFF, Nettie, and some unlikely allies, Ezra rallies to create their small-town school’s first gay-straight alliance. The Rainbow Alliance Club is formed. But the changes don’t come without hiccups, one of which being a messy scandal involving Alex and a gay hook-up app. As Ezra and his friends attempt to sway their school into an alliance of tolerance and acceptance, Ezra experiences a few surprises of his own on the home-front. He also learns the hard way that friendships out of convenience aren’t always a good idea, just as some enemies might not be as bad as he originally imagined them to be.
SUMMER ON FIRE – Zach Carson is a loyal friend. But is loyalty enough to keep best friends together when one of them sets fire to the rural barn they use as the local hangout? Zach, Jeff Barsell and Arnie Wilson struggle to pick up the pieces when news spreads that a body was discovered in the burnt out shell of the neighboring home. When the word murder is used by the local police, the stakes grow even higher. When the police start searching for their most likely suspect—none other than Jeff’s older brother, and nemesis, Marty Barsell—the boys decide to join forces and come up with a way to prove his innocence. But just how innocent is Marty Barsell? When Marty admits to being at the scene of the crime, the three friends enlist the help of Zach’s annoying sister, Sherry, as well as the sympathetic town eccentric, Ms. Halverton. But can they keep it together long enough to save Marty, and themselves, from eminent catastrophe? Summer on Fire is the story of friendships, and the lines we are asked to cross in order to keep them.
To purchase copies of either of these novels, you can visit MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE RIGHT HERE. Maybe consider grabbing a copy of PRIDE MUST BE A PLACE for #PrideReads! Pride month is almost over.
Please note that if you already have copies of either of these books–THE CONTENT IS THE SAME. ONLY THE COVERS HAVE CHANGED.
My cute little short story BILLIONS OF BEAUTIFUL HEARTS about two teens who find a way to come together during the time of Covid lockdown is now out in the universe! Much thanks and gratitude to my readers who made this a #1 New Release on Amazon this week! My two nonbinary teen characters also thank you! I don’t think I have to say this, but representation is so important. I’m glad Wen & Kaye have made their way out into the world…and I’m excited that they’ve been well received. Thank you all who supported this short story!
Click the image below to go to Amazon to pick up a copy of Billions of Beautiful Hearts!Billions of Beautiful Hearts is one of four short stories in the COME WHAT MAY series…and I can promise you that the other 3 are quite lovely. One of the perks of being involved in this project is that I was able to get early reads on the other 3 stories. You’ll want to pick them up! Links below for the other COME WHAT MAY stories:
The cover of THE CAMINO CLUB was revealed earlier this week and I am 100% in love with it. Not only did CB Messer capture the beauty of the Milky Way in this cover, but they also nailed the Camino vibe with stamps, arrows, shells, backpacks, and footprints. This cover IS the Camino de Santiago! I could not possibly be happier!
You can head over to CB MESSER to see other gorgeous CB Messer covers and illustrations.
Before I drop all the purchase links for places you can go to pre-order The Camino Club, I just wanted to add that the stamps in the background of this cover are the actual stamps Michael and I collected on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain last September when we walked the route to Santiago de Compostela. One of the things pilgrims do is carry a stamp book with them on their journey. They get stamps at churches, restaurants, hotels, hostels, albergues, etc…to prove that they have made the journey. Once they get to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, their stamp books are verified prior to them receiving the compostela (certificate) which states that they have walked the pilgrim’s path. MY STAMPS ARE LITERALLY ON THE COVER!!
Here’s where you can pick up your pre-ordered copy of THE CAMINO CLUB:
THE CAMINO CLUB – After getting in trouble with the law, six wayward teens are given an ultimatum: serve time in juvenile detention for their crimes, or walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route across Spain over the summer holidays with a pair of court-appointed counselor guides. When it becomes clear the long walk isn’t really all that much of an option, they set out on a journey that will either make or break who they are and who they are to become.
Check out this Wiki Ezvid List on which Pride Must Be A Place is being featured! Pride is in some great company on this list of YA novels with diverse LGBTQ+ representation! Watch the accompanying video to get a snap-shot of Pride‘s synopsis! CLICK ON THE HEADLINE BELOW TO WATCH THE VIDEO FEATURING THE 11 BOOKS:
If you have already read The Camino Club, please consider telling your friends! I’d love to see this story of my heart reaching more readers!
KEVIN CRAIG 