As is often said around this time, new year, new me. Maybe not quite, but I am shifting things a bit with my writing. I haven’t made it much of a secret that Grayson Bell is my pen name. When I first came up with this persona, my intention was to keep all my queer erotic romance writing under this name, and everything else under my other pen name, G. L. Balend.

However, as my writing has evolved and my readership has grown, I find there would be a space for the science fiction novel, Artifact of the Dawn, I’ve been working on under the G.L. Balend umbrella. While it may not be an erotic story, it includes a queer romantic subplot. So, I’ve decided to shift all my fiction writing to Grayson Bell and leave my G. L. Balend persona to focus on non-fiction. I’ve been writing quite a lot about LGBTQ+ issues on a website called Medium, and I may expand beyond that platform at some point.

I hope I won’t disappoint my readers who enjoy my queer erotica by not including explicit sex scenes in “Artifact of the Dawn.” It is a hard science fiction novel, and the romance is merely a subplot that plays out in the first half of the novel. The story is the first in a planned series of five books, following the same two protagonists throughout.

That being said, I will write out the sex scenes that I am fading to black in the novel and posting them to the fanfiction website Archive of Our Own. If you really, really want to read the smut, I’ll make sure you can find it.

I will also publish my recent Kindle Vella story, “Suddenly, Omega” as a novel on Valentine’s Day, so please keep an eye out for that announcement. It will be available for pre-order on February 1.

A sheltered omega has been on suppressants since he was a child, believing he was a beta. After his parents die in a tragic car accident, he no longer receives his regular doses of suppressant. This forces him to experience his first heat. Not understanding what’s wrong, he goes to the ER. To save the omega’s life, the alpha doctor on call helps him through a dangerous heat. Afterward, they must deal with the consequences.