Kinjite: Blog

June paints Cass. She's in love with her, and Cass is in love right back — my first love story between two girls, and I meant all of it.

Then there's Cass's father: the widower the whole street trusts, and — because it's me — the worst thing in the house. He can't stand that his girl went and picked a girl, so across one summer he sets out to prove she picked wrong — slow, patient, kind the whole way — with June kept in the room to watch him do it.

One house. One summer. A love story the whole way through, and the taking-apart of that love at the same time, braided too tight to pull one out clean.

Nobody gets out. What they keep, he never gets to touch.

It's all very pretty. That's the point.

More soon.

— Kinjite

Remember the coldest thing I mentioned when In Her Place went up, the one I said was all horror where that book had a heart? It has a name now, and it's nearly here. Sex Doll is in final draft and going up very soon.

The honest history of this one: I stalled on it for the longest time. I couldn't find a way to write it that met my own bar, so it sat half-built while I went off and wrote other things. What finally broke it loose was a reader asking me, out of nowhere, when I was ever going to get back to it. That did it.

A father can't have his teenage daughter, so he buys a lifelike maid and starts rebuilding it, down in the basement, into a copy of her. The hair, the voice, the face, the body. She works out what he's making and who it's for, and by the time she does, the copy turns out to have only ever been practice. First person, her POV, the whole way. No rescue, no happy ending, and she never comes to want it. But be clear on the kind of dark this is. It's dark the way A Father's Weekend or Prison Daddy is dark, filthy and bleak, not cruel for its own sake. No torture, no gore, nothing done just to make you wince. It's a defilement story, and the heat in it is yours, not hers. You're the one meant to be turned on, by what's done and how wrong it is. Hot and sick at the same time. It's the meanest thing I've finished, and if a book that ends in the dark isn't for you, this is your fair warning at the door.

And once that one's up, something completely different comes right behind it, for anyone who needs the temperature brought back. Madison is back. For everyone who loved Thigh Gap Obsession and BBL Obsession, there's a third: Ozempic Obsession. The outline's done, I'm already drafting, and since these run short by design, it'll land close behind rather than months out. She's older now, a couple of kids in, staring down the baby weight, and there's a shortcut everyone's on that her father, wouldn't you know it, can get for her. This time she's nobody's fool. She's learned not to trust a word he says about what's safe, she knows exactly what he'll want in return, and she goes to him anyway. Same deadpan, same Madison narrating her own bad decisions in real time. Only now she can see where this goes as well as you can. That's the joke.

More soon on both.

In Her Place is submitted. It'll be live once it clears moderation, a few hours, maybe a day. Then it's all there, start to finish. Go read it.

I've pitched this one a couple of times already, so I'll keep it short: a daughter who barely knew her dead mother teaches herself to become her, and walks into her grieving father's dark as the wife he lost. Three people who can't survive one woman's absence, each reaching for her through the others, and not one of them able to stop.

A word before you start, so you go in calibrated. This is the outlier in what I do, the warmest book I've got in a catalog that mostly runs cold and cruel. It's nothing like a Prison Daddy or a Father's Weekend, those are built to disturb you, this one is built to move you. It's the one with real tenderness in it, people who reach each other instead of only using each other, and something close to grace by the end. It carries more feeling than most of what I write. That doesn't make it a fairy tale, there's no tidy happy ending here or anywhere under my name, I don't write those. But the ache in it is the ache of people finding something real in the last place on earth they should have found it.

There's an afterword at the end, Chapter 28. It's me stepping out from behind the book to talk about how it got made, and it's meant for after you've finished, not before. It changes nothing in the story and there's no twist hiding in it, so if you'd rather keep the book whole and never hear the writer explain himself, you lose nothing skipping it. If you're the other kind of reader, it's waiting.

This is the one I've said is me reaching for whatever Raw Prose had. Whether it gets there isn't mine to decide, it's yours. That's the whole reason I hand these over.

One thing while I've got you: keep sending me ideas. I almost never take a premise straight, these come out of my own head, but a good idea leaves a residue, and it shifts the shape of what I reach for next in ways even I can't trace. A strong premise can carry a story further than careful writing ever will, so I don't take a single one for granted, even the ones it looks like I do nothing with. Nothing here lands in a void.

One more thing before I go. This book closes out a strange, lucky stretch. The last few weeks the ideas came faster than I could get them down, and I'm sitting on a handful of them now, each with a hook I can't stop picking at. One is the coldest thing I've built in a long time, all horror where this book had a heart. A couple of the others go places I haven't taken this pen before. I'm not naming them and I'm not dating them, and that part's deliberate. The fun for me is not knowing which one takes hold until I'm already inside it, and a deadline is the fastest way to smother that. When one's ready, you'll hear it here.

But that's all for later. The finished book is the one right in front of you. Go read In Her Place. The rest is just me getting ahead of myself.

— Kinjite

PS, one unrelated question while I have you. How much does cover art actually matter to you? I put real hours into the covers, and I honestly can't tell whether they pull anyone in or whether I'm making them mostly for myself. Is a cover what makes you click, a nice bonus you'd read past anyway, or something you barely notice? Let me know, blunt is welcome.

Cuise Control is out. A man's wife gets pulled off his company's cruise at the last minute, and right as he's grinning about being off the leash for once, no wife, no ring, nobody watching, his teenage draughter talks her way into her mother's spot. What he doesn't tell her: the cabin's booked for a couple. One bed. Twelve days on open water and nowhere for her to go. It's a mean one, the villain in the driver's seat the whole way, and you spend the entire book locked in his head, so you don't get one inch of distance from what he does out there. Fifteen chapters, first-person, complete. No rescue. No happy ending. Just an ending. It's up now, start to finish.

And the new one I've only just started is called In Her Face.

A woman named Robin dies young and leaves three people who can't let her go: the husband who still reaches for her in the dark, the best friend who loved her quietly her whole life and married the widower just to stay close to what was left of her, and the daughter who barely knew her and would give anything to.

So the daughter goes looking. And there's exactly one place her mother is still warm and breathing, and it's her own grieving father. Here's the part I couldn't stop writing: she teaches herself to be Robin. The voice off old home videos, the tilt of the head, the way her mother went first at everything. She studies the dead woman until she can walk into the dark and be the wife he's grieving. And he lets her. God, does he let her.

It goes all the way. No fade, no flinch, wrong in ways that are going to sit with you for a while. And under all the heat it's a sad one, because every one of the three of them knows exactly what they're doing to each other and not one of them can stop. Somebody bleeds for it. Somebody doesn't make it out whole. But somebody, for once, gets a door that opens instead of one that closes.

If you loved Raw Prose, this is me reaching for that again. Whether it gets near it, that's yours to call. More soon.

— Kinjite

Cruise Control

A scheduling conflict pulls Frank's wife off his company's cruise retreat at the last minute, and just as he's picturing a week off the leash — no wife, no ring, nobody watching — his teen daughter talks her way into her mother's spot instead. What he doesn't mention: the cabin's booked for a couple. One bed. A week on open water, and nowhere for her to go.

There's another father-daughter pair aboard he can't stop watching, for reasons he won't let himself name.

Twelve chapters, first-person, Frank's POV start to finish. You don't leave his head, which means you don't get any distance from what he does with the week.

⚠️ Warnings: Father/daughter incest, rape/non-con, forced pregnancy/breeding content, drugging, psychological manipulation. No happy ending — just an ending.

First draft complete. Full read-through still ahead — that's usually when things move around — so no posting date yet.

— Kinjite