Hi, I'm Elliot Hayes, and if you've found your way here, I have a feeling we might read the same way.

I'm the kind of reader who dog-ears the page before the confession, not after. Who rereads the scene where they almost touch more than the scene where they finally do. Who finishes a book and then just sits with it quietly, because the feeling needs to be savored.

For a long time I searched for stories that lived in that space, paranormal romance with real darkness in it, forbidden love that took the forbidden seriously, monsters who weren't just humans with better cheekbones. Stories where the tension wasn't a detour on the way to something else. Where the tension was the point.

My debut is the book I kept looking for.

It's a story about two people from worlds that were never meant to meet and what happens when they do anyway. It's paranormal, it's atmospheric, and it takes its time.

I write closed-door romance, which means this is a story about hunger without being explicit about it. About longing. About the unbearable weight of almost. I believe deeply that restraint can be its own kind of intensity and I hope my debut makes you feel that.

Thank you for being here at the beginning. It means more than I know how to say.

Something wicked coming August 2027.