family drama – Queer Sacramento Authors Collective

Everything We Thought Was true

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Editions:Audiobook, ePub, Kindle, Paperback

Los Angeles lawyer Lena Antinori has dedicated her career to fighting discrimination, including for the LGBTQ community, but her own family's secret haunts her. At thirteen years old, she made the startling discovery that her father, Frank, was gay and her mother, Teresa, knew. Fearing social stigma, Teresa instituted a code of silence meant to protect their Italian Catholic family—a code Lena adhered to for decades.

Now, Frank plans to marry his partner, and he wants Lena to help plan the wedding. Lena is torn between maintaining loyalty to her mother and supporting her father's newfound happiness. As her father’s wedding approaches, Lena learns her childhood wounds run deeper than she thought, and failing to heal them might sentence her to a life of hypocrisy and the inability to discover the true meaning of coming out.

Told by Lena in the present, and her parents, Frank and Teresa, in the past, Everything We Thought Was True examines how the truth doesn't set you free until you embrace it.

Published: January 27, 2025

Genres:

family drama, fiction, gay, historical, lgbtq

Tags:

audiobook, family drama, gay, gay awakening, Italian American, LGBT, LGBTQ fiction, Los Angeles, New York

First place winner, LGBTQ Fiction, 2024 International Firebird Book Awards

Honorable Mention, General Fiction, 2025 Los Angeles Book Festival

Brewing (Dis)trust

Trust Series Book 1

by D.L. O'Neil

Paramedic watching firetruck leave station

Amazon

Part of the Trust Series series:

Brewing (Dis)trust

JC Washington is laser focused on the debut of her new, all-natural energy drink. !ZING’s success will free her from her father’s unreasonable expectations. Abby Martin is running from her past, determined not to let anyone get too close. Those close to her always got hurt. When JC and Abby’s paths cross in a small northern California community neither is sure they can trust the other. Facing a series of unexplained incidents threatening to disrupt their lives, both women realize they need to trust someone. But who? Can that question be answered before anyone gets seriously hurt?

Published: November 5, 2024

Editors:

Allison Behrens

Genres:

contemporary, family drama, fiction, lgbtq, mystery

Tags:

bartender, entrepreneur, lesbian, paramedic/fire fighter

Excerpt:

JC didn’t speak to her father for four years after admitting to him she quit college. The day she declared her independence from Cole Washington’s empire and all the things it stood for. Everything JC did since that day declared her liberation from the family business. Even though she now spoke with her father, their business separation remained. JC wanted none of his world.

She shook her head, bringing herself back to the present. JC tried hard not to forget about that time in her life. It embarrassed her to think of things she’d done. How she’d treated others in pursuit of her father’s approval while growing up. The ways she’d chosen to get ahead. Every day JC awoke determined to live a life that made up for all of that. And to prove to her father that there were paths to being a winner that did not have to come at someone else’s expense.

Footsteps drew her attention as Dre emerged from the warehouse. JC stared, arching an eyebrow and stifling a laugh. Dre’s cargo shorts and tee were covered in brownish-black goo. It was splashed on her face and in her neatly combed black hair, making it appear she’d fallen into a mud pit. “Do I even want to ask?” JC queried, struggling to keep the smile from her face.

COLLAPSE

For You, Sir

by Emily Brandish

Amazon

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Jun Kim thrives as butler to the stars of L.A. His demanding job offers the perfect excuse to ignore his messed up family, and nonexistent love life. But his tidy, organized world is turned up-side-down when he’s hired to serve L.A.’s most challenging client: a depressive screenplay writer who quit writing after a nervous breakdown.

Once a shining writer-director, Einar Eriksen has become a shut-in after a crippling professional failure. He’s sworn to never write another script, and resents the movie studio for hiring a butler to spy on him. But as Einar learns of Jun’s wounded past, he commits to helping Jun toward self-acceptance, and unlocking his butler’s hidden sensual side…

For You, Sir is a sweet & spicy contemporary hurt/comfort MM Romance between an overachiever butler and his pleasure-Dom employer, where D/s play builds trust and empathy, and loving support can heal the wounds of the past.

MM Boss/Butler Romance
Hurt/Comfort
Later-in-Life Romance
Service sub + Pleasure Dom
Opposites Attract
Forbidden Love
Sexual awakening
Praise k!nk
Interracial Couple
Loving, Respectful Power Play
HEA Guaranteed

Published: November 30, 2023

Cover Artists:

100 Covers

Genres:

contemporary, family drama, fiction, gay, lgbtq, M/M, romance