Forever shelf
Favorite books
- The Song of Achilles — Madeline Miller
- Captive Prince — C. S. Pacat
- Wolfsong — T. J. Klune
- A Marvellous Light — Freya Marske
- The Monster of Elendhaven — Jennifer Giesbrecht
- Summer Sons — Lee Mandelo
Lantern author
Pierce Arden
Men who should know better, monsters who definitely don’t, and the trouble they fall in love with.
MM RomanceDark RomanceMonster RomanceRomantasyDark RomantasySports RomanceParanormal RomanceQueer Fantasy
Behind the byline
About the author
Pierce Arden writes stories about dangerous men, impossible creatures, bad decisions, and the kind of love that tends to make everything worse before it makes anything better.
Based in Wilmington, North Carolina, he writes MM romance with a dark edge, from sports romance and obsession to monsters, myth, and saltwater-soaked romantasy.
Expect sharp banter, bruised devotion, morally questionable choices, and men who fall hard enough to make it everybody else’s problem.
⌖ Wilmington, North Carolina
Visit the author’s website →Author marginalia
The fun stuff.
The little things readers always want to know after the last page.
In the headphones
Writing soundtrack
- Dark ambient playlists
- Southern gothic blues
- Sleep Token
- Deftones
- Noah Kahan
- Woodkid
Tiny author lore
Things to know
- Keeps a notebook of overheard lines he’ll probably never admit using.
- Has a weakness for old maritime maps and stranger local legends.
- Writes best during thunderstorms.
- Owns too many black shirts and exactly one respectable blazer.
On Lantern
Stories by Pierce Arden
MM Dark Romantasy
To Have And To Drown
Rook came to the blackwater river for one thing: a way back to the wreck that killed his crew. The river gives him Naere instead. Naere is a Binder, a dangerous river-merman bound to laws older than the port at the river’s mouth. His freshwater world is dying as salt creeps inland, and the same treacherous shoals that keep Rook from his dead keep Naere from the source of the wound. So they make a bargain. Rook gets safe passage. Naere gets a road to the sea. Neither expects the bargain to become desire. But the farther they travel from the river, the more the balance between them shifts. Rook begins to see the loneliness beneath Naere’s possessive certainty. Naere discovers that the one man he most wants to keep may be the one man who cannot bear to belong to anyone. And beyond the shoals waits a wreck neither of them understands as well as they think they do. With a rival captain closing in and the boundary between river and ocean beginning to fail, Rook and Naere are pulled toward a choice that could cost them the dead, the living, and whatever has begun growing between them. A dark MM pirate-merman romantasy about dangerous bargains, supernatural claiming, shifting power, and two men discovering that being kept is not the same thing as being chosen.
Read Sweet Water →Found a new favorite?