MELT: refrain

re·frain /rɪˈfreɪn/

n. the burden of a song.

v. to hold back.

n, again. the burden of a man.

what you return to, again and again.

One-two-three-four…

Have you been enjoying your holiday?

The London-based biotech company Ichorous Innovations was founded, ostensibly, sometime in the 1900s by René Louvel, a man determined to not only research, but build, a better life for people like himself—vampires, that is. Surely the specific year is on the wall-length plaque by the ground-floor lift or something, but Hector can never remember it. He’s preoccupied with other, more important things, like the next time he’s going to get laid, the satisfying shock waves up his arms when he cracks someone’s skull, or, most recently, hazy memories from his thirty-ninth birthday party that ended in sharp glass being plucked from his forehead by cold, gentle hands.

The fact that it took two decades of animosity is impressive, he'll give himself that much. Not his fault the worst person in the office has an explosive fuse and a mean left hook.

The company was founded, for the record, in 1922, though it didn't get off the ground until several years later. The date is burned into Simon's retinas, courtesy of a keen memory and too many hours staring at the plaque on Lee's wall proclaiming as much. Same goes for the image of blood streaming down Hector's face, and the knowledge that Simon can't let something like that happen again. Managing the tension grows more difficult by the day, though, as being a turned vampire is just as taxing during its eighth year as it was on day one.

Simon's always thought immortality was the short end of the stick. Being proven right has never tasted so sour.

…five-six-seven-eight.

Relearning the world is a nightmare.

AKA:

When your interpersonal life can be explained via organizational chart, or

medically managed immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, or

vampires in love (and other four-letter words).

MELT: REFRAIN is the first book in a queer, trans Gothic horror series about toxic corporate vampires reinventing what it means to be alive—to live—and the pieces of themselves they lose along the way.

Told non-chronologically from multiple POVs, it's dipped in noir, drenched in subtle terror, and urges you to remember that, much like hate and love, sex and death are eternal bedfellows.

Stats: Novel | Gothic horror-romance & science-fantasy | ~68k words | Explicit | M/M*, T4T(4T4T4T...) | Complex extended polycule

This book is for adults only, and contains heavy topics that may not be suitable for all readers.

Want a physical copy? Follow the Backerkit campaign for the print run to be notified when it starts in October, and get some exclusive goodies along the way.

External credits:

Cover illustration by V. E. Phemera.

GenAI didn't and will never touch this. Get bent.