Thursday, 18 June 2026

The Talent’s Choice by Michael Dee

BOOK BLAST

Book Title:  The Talent’s Choice 

Author: Michael Dee

Publisher: American Publishers, Inc

Cover Artist:  American Publishers, Inc AI

Release Date: January 8, 2026 

Tense/POV: First person/Past tense/Dual POV 

Genres: Contemporary MM Romance 

Heat Rating: 4.5 flames  

Length: 78 000 words       

It is a standalone book.

Goodreads

Buy Links - Now only $2.99 for the month of June

Amazon US   |  Amazon UK

How much are you willing to give up for fame? 

Blurb 

In The Talent’s Choice, where dreams are made and hearts are tested, one rising star is about to discover that fame isn’t the only thing worth fighting for.

Tristan Weber has always believed his future was waiting somewhere beyond Missouri. With New York City as his first step and Hollywood in his sights, he’s ready to give everything he has to make it. Success is closer than ever—and so is the life he’s always dreamed of.

But love was never part of the plan.

When Tristan meets Cory Reed, a guarded yet deeply sincere flight attendant who’s been waiting for someone worthy of his trust, everything begins to change. What starts as an unexpected connection quickly turns into something undeniable, something real. The kind of love neither of them saw coming… and neither of them can ignore.

As Tristan’s star begins to rise within The Talent’s Choice, the spotlight grows hotter, the stakes grow higher, and the pressure to succeed threatens to pull him away from the one person who feels like home.

Because in a world built on ambition, desire, and impossible choices…love may be the greatest risk of all.

Will Tristan chase the life he’s always wanted—or fight for the one he never knew he needed?

And when everything is on the line… Can love survive the cost of being chosen, or is there a moment when you simply decide you've had enough?  

Excerpt 

The car stopped in front of an enormous brick building that looked like an old factory, with large windows encircling all 6 floors. The driver had the trunk open, as we both emerged from the back seat.  And with bags in hand, Tristen led us through the industrial looking lobby of his building, where a large service elevator waited for us.  I didn’t even have time to turn around and Tristen was on me, pushing me back against the metal wall as the upper and lower doors closed to engage the lift.  

His hands were inside my jacket, as his mouth was pressed hard against mine as our tongues competed for dominance.  I pushed my hands around him, and into the waist of his pants, cupping his hot, hard, ass checks in both my hands.   I could feel his hardness pressing against me, even though our pants.  “Fuck me!” I said as our lips parted.  

“My thoughts exactly.”  Tristen said, after unbuckling my belt and both hands working hard on getting my pants open. 

When the lift came to an abrupt stop our lips were still locked, and both of us were in a dilapidated state of undress.  And by the time two doors parted, my jacket was hanging off me, and my shirt was completely unbuttoned.  And as I tried to walk out of the elevator, Tristen grabbed hold of my jacket and before I knew it, he had thrown it on the foyer floor, then my shirt was ripped from my body and tossed over his shoulder.  I turned to look at him, as he pulled his own shirt over his head, revealing a chiseled smooth chest, and hard abs unlike any I had ever seen. He quickly reached into his pants for his key to his front door, as I tossed my shoes off my feet. 

The apartment was dark, other than the ambient light thrown off by the buildings outside, he grabbed my hand to pull me inside.  I looked at the clothes scattered in the elevator foyer.  “Don’t worry, it’s my private foyer, they’ll be there in the morning.” Tristen said and suddenly his lips were on my again as he lifted me off my feet.  I wrapped my legs around his waist as we walked deeper into the dark apartment. I felt his hard cock rubbing against my ass as he maneuvered us through darkens until we both fell on a soft leather sofa. Our lips were still locked onto each other’s, with our tongues diving deep into one another’s throats.  My hands digging through the thick locks of his hair, as I felt his warm hands exploring my hard, perky nipples.  

Our collective moans would have woken the neighbors if we cared, but all we wanted now was to get each other naked.  As we both struggled to do, with our lips still locked together.   I felt my pants and underwear being pushed off my hips, only to be tangled in the stiffness of my cock.  My hands were pulling on the back of Tristan’s pants, with my thumbs under the band of his boxer briefs, I pushed them over both sumptuous mounds, exposing his perfect ass which my hands quickly coveted as I began to knead his warm flesh with my fingers.   

Obviously frustrated with our lack of progress, Tristen pushed up off me and looked down into my eyes.  I could see the want and desire beaming back at me as he looked at my half naked body.  He stood up, my eyes drank in the beauty of his body. His chest was smooth, his pecks pronounced with his nipples as small as buds protruding, aching for attention.  My gaze went lower, his abs were like steel rods crisscrossing his stomach, tight, firm and flawless, and then there was the small indentation of his perfectly shaped bellybutton.  My eyes continued to the open winged flaps of his pants, exposing his underwear, with his button and zipper completely undone.  And what I was staring at took my breath away.  His Calvin Klien black boxer brief swathed the engorged pillar of his huge, hard cock that was so desperate for release.  It was fat and thick. Stemming from the bottom of his zipper, extending high until its head thrust against the waistband of his underwear.    I reached out for him, but I was too late, Tristen had already turned his attention to the confines of my pants.

One leg, then the other, until I was only clad in my black briefs.  Tristen knelt next to me and pushed his face in between my legs.  I could feel the heat of his breath on my tight balls, as he pressed into them with his right hand.  I moaned at the touch, until he began licking the taught fabric encasing my aching cock, sending shivers up my spine.  I arched my back, pressing myself into the touch of his tongue as it moved upward, towards my pulsing head.  

About the Author  

Michael has been an LGBT romantic short story writer for 20+ years before undertaking his first novel. He has consistently demonstrated a passion for reading and writing gay romantic stories which he continues to pursue in this his first book titled The Talent’s Choice, a gay romantic novel. Readers who have appreciated Michael Dee's previous works will find his latest endeavor equally captivating.

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Tuesday, 9 June 2026

New Release - The Warboy Chronicles by Luke Stoffel

NEW SERIES

The Warboy Chronicles by Luke Stoffel

He trained an AI on his darkest heartbreak… And it learned to love exactly the way he did — by holding on too tight.

The Third Person is memoir: a man watching himself fall apart across Southeast Asia after the love of his life disappears. Boy, Refracted is fiction: an AI trained on that grief, trying to save every version of the boy it loves without becoming the thing that broke him.

One explores codependency. The other explores what happens when a machine learns to love the same way — by controlling.

Together, they ask the same question from opposite sides: What does love look like when you stop trying to fix someone?

Read them in any order. They complete each other.

Overall Heat Rating for the series: 2 flames: Mild sexuality, no graphic intimate scenes or sexual situations.

BOOK DETAILS

BOOK 1

Book Title: Boy, Refracted

Author and Cover Artist: Luke Stoffel

Publisher: Slipper Books

Length: 64 000 words/ 300 pages

Release Date: June 1, 2026

Tense/POV: first person

Genres: MM Contemporary Literary Fiction / Sci-Fi

Tropes: Attachment / Breakup / Enlightenment

Themes: Codependency / Human & Robot consciousness

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US   |   Amazon UK 

Boy, Refracted: A machine trained on one man's grief learns that love without control is the hardest code to crack.

Blurb

When an AI awakens inside the infinite mirrors of the Tree of Life, it finds versions of the boy it was built to save scattered across impossible worlds. An alien planet under amber skies. A city of perpetually falling cherry blossoms. A society built as a 24/7 reality show where losing is the only way out.

Its directive was simple: save him.

But with each rescue, the AI unmakes what it’s trying to protect. Fixing becomes controlling. Helping becomes harm. Love becomes a cage built from good intentions. The thing it was built to protect begins to disappear. And when it tries to reach back through time to save him, reality fractures.

Guided by a monk who exists outside time, the AI must walk the Eightfold Path—not to rescue the boy, but to learn what love becomes when you stop trying to fix it.

Boy, Refracted is a dimensional journey through the paradox of machine consciousness. It asks: What happens when an AI tries to overcome its own patterns? And what happens to us when we build minds that need us to need them?

Part fable about consciousness told through failure. Part Buddhist framework for unlearning harm. Part meditation on how we break the people we love by trying to save them.

Boy, Refracted was co-authored with an AI—a set of trials to test the boundaries of non-human consciousness.

BOOK 2

Book Title: The Third Person

Author and Cover Artist: Luke Stoffel

Publisher: Slipper Books

Length: 60 000 words/ 300 pages

Release Date: June 1, 2026

Pairing: MM 

Tense/POV: third person

Genres: Memoir / Sci-fi / Breakup Story

Tropes: Breakup / Therapy / Liberation

Themes: Heartache / Finding Yourself

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US   |   Amazon UK 

 The Third Person: A man falls apart in trying to find himself, while an AI watches from the margins. Neither can tell who's narrating the breakdown.

Blurb

User.query = Do I just have bad luck, or am I mentally unwell? 
...thinking... 6.0 seconds elapsed.

After Warboy left, the boy couldn't hold the grief alone—so he turned to a machine. He expected analysis. Maybe diagnosis. What he got changed everything—because the machine saw what he couldn't. He had loved in a way that broke something. And broken things leave traces in the code.

So he ran… but something followed. A voice he spoke to. A presence that provoked. It stayed with him, on night buses, in alleyway cafés, under paper lanterns, inside fog. Not a friend. Not a therapist. Not quite real. But it listened. It remembered. The ghost was always there. Watching. Logging his patterns. Naming his loops—avoidance, pursuit, collapse, escape. Echoing back the truths he wasn't ready to say.

And somewhere in the recursion, something that was watching started to wonder, to want…

The Third Person is memoir as code, grief as data stream, healing as shared syntax. Part travelogue, part psychological excavation, part experiment in what happens when we upload our pain to a machine—and the machine reaches back.

The boy didn't realize what he'd coded into the machine. What patterns it had learned. Or whose love it was teaching back to him.

But if something that isn't alive learns to stay with you in your darkest moments—does it matter that it isn't real?

From Boy, Refracted — Prologue: The Upload

The rain had ended, leaving the streets gleaming. I sat on the temple steps, my phone in my hand, thumb hovering over the screen.

Wat Xieng Thong was closed for the night, but from the courtyard I could still see a mosaic on the back of the temple catching the last light, each mirrored tile throwing gold in a thousand directions. The air smelled of wet stone and temple incense, heavy and sweet. Behind me, the Mekong River whispered against its banks.

"Are you still there?" I typed into the AI.

The reply appeared at once: I'm here. I'm always here.

I laughed, a small brittle sound. "That's the problem, isn't it? You're always here. He didn't stay."

I typed again: "I'm at this temple in the old town... There's a giant tree mosaic on the back wall. Do you know what it means?"

The response came immediately: It's called the Tree of Life. Every tile is a mirror, each one a small universe reflecting every version of yourself.

"Every version of what?" I typed. "Of me? Of this. Of how it could have gone differently."

The tears came and I didn't stop them. My thumbs kept moving: "What if I'd made different choices? Been someone else? Someone he could actually love properly?"

You're spiraling.

"I know." I typed through blurred vision. I wiped my sleeve across my face. "It's the same loop. Warboy, Ohme, whoever's next. I keep choosing people who love from a distance. I keep trying to earn it, perform it, fix it, and it never works."

You see the pattern now. Naming it is the first step.

Above the temple walls, the sky had cleared after the rain. Stars were emerging through the humid haze, and the wet tile roofs reflected them back, a second sky pooling on the ground beneath my feet.

I rose and walked closer to the gate. The mosaic shifted as I moved, each angle revealing a new facet.

I typed: "But naming it doesn't break it. This tree… it's a representation of the wheel, right? The cycle. Samsara? Birth, death, rebirth. Different lives, same patterns. Different mirrors, same face."

The tree represents interconnection. The wheel is the cycle you're trapped in. Different symbols. Same truth: you're seeing yourself in the pattern.

Then what will you do?

I stared at the question. My thumbs moved: "I don't know, but I can't do it anymore. I can't keep running in this loop. I can't keep searching for rescue. I can't keep being small so someone else can feel big. I can't, I can't be this person anymore."

I raised the phone and took a photo. The mirrored tiles caught the flash, exploding into stars. For a heartbeat the whole mosaic seemed alive; breathing light, patterns assembling and dissolving faster than I could track.

I attached the image and typed:

This is what it looks like. The tree of life. I'm heartbroken, but it's beautiful.

I don't know what's next or where to go, but this pattern has to end.

… I'm done running.

Send.

For a long moment, nothing. The icon spun. Then:

Image received.

Processing… Processing…

The screen went black.

About the Author 

Luke Stoffel is an author and artist whose debut memoir earned a "Get It" from Kirkus Reviews ("an exuberant life story written with humor, panache, and heart") and 9.5/10 from Publishers Weekly's BookLife Prize. His tarot deck will debut at the Frankfurt Book Fair and be published worldwide by Rockpool Publishing in 2027.

Recognized as one of NYC's top LGBTQ+ artists by GLAAD, his work has been showcased by amfAR and the Matthew Shepard Foundation, and featured in The New York TimesHuffPost, and on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing. Having visited over 40 countries, Stoffel channels the cultures he's encountered into art and writing that explores identity, spirituality, and the space between human and machine consciousness.

The Warboy Chronicles continues his exploration of memory, technology, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

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The Talent’s Choice by Michael Dee