Two consorts, lost forever in the Empress’s palace. Will they learn the difference between need and love before time runs out for them?
Where to find this book
There is an ancient tale of a powerful woman who demands a tribute of young men to serve her at court and in bed. But that tale has never been told like this.
When Sofian woke up this morning, he was the heir to a land blessed by prosperity and science granted by the Empress. Though he will never please his father, he will rule Mazinara after the old man dies.
Before nightfall, the Empress will claim him as a consort, summoning him to her court beyond the stars where he will live out the remainder of his life surrounded by strange people with stranger customs.
Sofian has one last chance for love with the only other person who can understand him—one of the Empress’s discarded consorts, a man so broken he can’t remember how to feel.
This is a tale of adventure and self-discovery as much as lust. There are relatively few sex scenes. However, they will leave you breathless and aching. They have an emotional complexity that is fairly rare, especially in erotic romance, which I suppose is the appropriate genre. I’ve never encountered a more brutal or more moving BDSM scene in erotic romance than the final session when Sofian begs for Numair’s pardon.
Available for the first time in years.
This novella has a long history.
Once upon a time there was a call for submissions for an anthology of speculative fiction stories with Gothic romance flavor.
I love Gothic romances. Give me Bluebeard and Beauty and the Beast vibes. Give me dark atmospheres, innocent young heroines trapped in ancient castles full of locked doors, secrets and monsters, hints of sexual perversion. The genre has come to be defined by female protagonists battling to be with their true loves, who are always brooding men with dark backstories.
Sometimes tropes are more fun when you subvert them. Why should heroines have all the fun? What if Beauty is a man? What if his true love is a man, too? Why is he innocent? What does innocent even mean? How did he end up in the castle, and what’s keeping him there? What makes someone a beast? What would a happy ending look like for the main characters?
The novella was rejected with a very nice note (this was back when you might expect a nice note instead of a form rejection letter). I re-wrote it with the sex and kink that I’d left out to match the tone of the original call and submitted it to a small gay romance press, which accepted it. It was available for a little while, then went out of print.
Sitting down to re-write something one first wrote 16 years ago is…challenging. But I’m a better writer now. I understand pacing (at least a bit) and how the original novella fell short. Reviewers on Goodreads mentioned being confused in some places. I agreed with them and did my best to address what was less than clear. There were some subtextual elements that needed to be made into text. And, inevitably, there were typos here and there.
As I’ve continued to write more books, I’ve returned to The Memorial Garden. No matter how good I get at pacing and other mechanics, I will have a tough time matching the raw emotional intensity of the main characters’ relationship, the enemies-to-lovers vibe, the exploration of consent and how two imperfect people can fit together perfectly.
Content Warnings
BDSM (Impact play), non-consensual sex, drug use, brief mention of suicide.