Hope you enjoyed these sensual images from my ‘Art’ folder. Watch your inbox for The Black Velvet Gallery’s next post.

Image credits remain with the original creators and copyright holders. Shared here for illustrative purposes only.

There’s something uniquely powerful about the erotic fiction community on Substack, and it’s something I’ve come to value more with every passing year.

It isn’t just about the stories. Though the stories are bold, intimate, and unapologetically alive. It’s about the people behind them. The voices that refuse to be quiet. The writers who show up, again and again, to put desire, vulnerability, and connection on the page in a world that often wishes they wouldn’t.

I love this community because it feels like defiance and belonging at the same time.

We’re constantly navigating a landscape that tries to diminish what we do. Erotic fiction is dismissed, shadowed, hidden, or outright erased depending on the platform or the moment. There’s an ongoing pressure to soften it, sanitize it, or pretend it doesn’t exist at all.

But it does exist—and it matters. Deeply. Because erotic fiction gives people a safe space to explore themselves. It offers release, curiosity, fantasy, and sometimes even healing. It lets readers feel seen in ways they might not experience anywhere else.

That’s why I keep saying we’re stronger together—and I mean it.

When we support each other, amplify each other, and stand beside each other, we create something that can’t be easily pushed aside. We build a network where readers can discover new voices, where writers can grow without fear of being isolated, and where creativity isn’t stifled by shame. Community turns something fragile into something resilient.

I’ve been on Substack for two and a half years now, and I’ve spent sixteen years writing in the MM+ space. I’ve learned a lot along the way—about craft, about platforms, about what it means to keep going even when it feels like the odds are stacked against you. And because of that, I don’t just want to exist in this space—I want to contribute to it.

If someone has a question, I want to help.
If someone is unsure where to start, I want to guide.
If someone needs encouragement, I want to give it freely.

Because none of us got here entirely on our own.

This community thrives when we show up for each other—not just as writers, but as people who understand the courage it takes to create this kind of work. And if I can be even a small part of making that path easier for someone else, then that’s exactly where I want to be.

Writing MM+ Romantasy as JT Fader has always felt a little like opening a hidden door and finding a universe waiting on the other side.

There is something electric about blending the mythic and the intimate. About placing swords, spells, and ancient rivalries alongside longing glances and trembling confessions.

MM+ Romantasy lets me explore power and vulnerability in the same breath. It gives me the freedom to build epic stakes while centering queer love as the story’s beating heart.

When I began the Circle Trilogy, I wanted to create a world that felt vast and dangerous, yet deeply personal and romantic. Magic in that world is not just used as a weapon. It forms a bond

What I love most about this series is how immersive it feels. I get to design ancient systems of magic, layered political conflicts, and landscapes that feel almost tactile.

But the real thrill is watching three men stand at the center of that storm and realize that the fiercest battle isn’t the war outside. It’s the war inside themselves. Writing those emotional arcs, especially in high fantasy settings, feels both indulgent and sacred.

My Drakkar Coven series, filled with vampires and shifters, lets me play in a darker, more sensual space. Here, the stakes are more immediate, and the atmosphere is charged with danger. Coven politics, supernatural hierarchies, and forbidden bonds create a playground for tension.

Then there’s my Creekside Township Rivals series, where wolf shifters rule their small town. Writing rivals-to-lovers arcs in that setting gave me a different kind of thrill. The battleground might not be enchanted forests or coven chambers, but the emotional stakes can be just as fierce.

Across all these series, what delights me most is the act of world-building. I love sketching out histories, secret lineages, and social rules. I love inventing cultural rituals and asking, “How would love look here? How would desire be shaped by this world?”

Creating my own universes gives me control, yes, but it also gives me the joy of discovery. Often, the characters surprise me, bending the world in ways I hadn’t planned.

I grew up loving epic fantasy and paranormal stories, but so often the love stories didn’t reflect the lives and desires I wanted to see. Writing as JT Fader is my way of carving out that space. Of placing two or more men at the center of prophecy, power, tenderness, and triumph.

It feels rebellious and restorative at the same time.

Ultimately, writing these series is pure joy. Whether I’m crafting ancient magical bonds, dark coven seductions, or small-town rivalries that spark into something deeper, I’m chasing the same thing: connection.

The thrill of watching souls collide and choose each other against fate, against fear, against history never gets old.

Building worlds is magic, but watching love take root inside them?

That’s the real enchantment.

Hope you enjoyed these sensual images from my ‘Ass’ folder. Watch your inbox for The Black Velvet Gallery’s next post.

Image credits remain with the original creators and copyright holders. Shared here for illustrative purposes only.

Some days, being bigender feels like standing in a doorway that never quite closes. It lets me peek inside somewhere I sometimes long to be.

I was assigned female at birth. The world decided what that meant for me long before I had language for how I felt inside.

For years, I tried to live comfortably in that box because it was easier than explaining why I didn’t fully belong there. Easier than explaining why some days I felt like a woman moving through the world, and other days I felt unmistakably, undeniably male in ways that had nothing to do with how I looked and everything to do with how I existed.

Being bigender is not a neat 50/50 split. It’s a constant shifting of internal gravity. Some mornings, I wake up, and my reflection feels like a stranger. Other days, I feel almost aligned, almost at peace.

And threaded through all of it is gender dysmorphia—the quiet, persistent discomfort of living in a body that doesn’t always match the shape of my mind.

That dysmorphia is not loud or theatrical. It’s subtle. It’s the way clothes sit wrong. The way my voice sounds unfamiliar. The way I sometimes feel like I’m performing a role that was handed to me rather than one I chose.

It’s the way I carry myself differently depending on which part of me feels closest to the surface that day.

And then there’s the writing.

For years, I wrote MM+ Romance. Stories about men loving men. Stories about male desire, male vulnerability, male intimacy.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that I wasn’t just writing about men as an observer. I was writing from a place that felt deeply personal. Deeply internal. As if part of me was finally allowed to speak without being filtered through the expectations placed on my body.

Writing homoerotic fiction intensified that realization.

Because homoerotic fiction doesn’t allow for distance. It demands closeness. Physicality. Sensation. It asks you to inhabit male bodies, male desire, male touch, male longing in an intimate, unapologetic way.

And when I write those scenes, when I write that desire, it doesn’t feel like something outside of me. It doesn’t feel like performance.

It feels like recognition.

This is one of the quiet, complicated truths of being a bigender AFAB author writing about men: sometimes my writing feels more aligned with who I am than my reflection does.

There’s a strange kind of relief in being able to explore masculinity, male sensuality, and male vulnerability on the page in ways I cannot always express outwardly in my own life. My characters get to move through the world in bodies that match the way I sometimes feel inside. They get to desire and be desired without the constant hum of dysmorphia in the background.

But it also comes with difficulty.

Because I am aware that to many readers, I am seen as a woman writing about men. And that perception can feel like a quiet erasure of the part of me that is not a woman at all. The part of me that feels seen, even healed, in the act of writing male/male passion and love.

There is a vulnerability in knowing that the space where I feel most authentic is also the space where I am most likely to be misunderstood.

And yet, I keep writing.

I write because queer male stories matter. I write because desire between men deserves to be shown as joyful, tender, messy, hungry, and deeply human. I write because somewhere out there are readers who see themselves in these stories in ways they may not yet be able to articulate.

And I write because, in a way, these stories are where I get to exist most fully as myself.

Being bigender and AFAB means living with a constant negotiation between how I am seen and how I feel. Writing homoerotic fiction is one of the few places where that negotiation falls away. Where I don’t have to explain. Where I don’t have to justify.

Where I can simply create from the truest parts of me.

And maybe that’s why I’m still here, still writing about men loving men, still exploring lust and love and intimacy sixteen years later.

Because in telling their stories, I get to quietly tell mine too.

Hope you enjoyed these sensual images from my ‘Wet’ folder. Watch your inbox for The Black Velvet Gallery’s next post.

Image credits remain with the original creators and copyright holders. Shared here for illustrative purposes only.

I didn’t set out to write homoerotic fiction.

For four solid years, I lived happily in the MM romance space—love stories, longing, happy endings, the slow burn of two men finding each other against the odds. I thought I knew exactly what kind of stories I wrote.

Then a close friend of mine, someone who knew my work and my obsessions a little too well, looked at me one day and said, “You know you should be writing the other parts too, right?”

I laughed it off at first.

But the idea stuck.

What would happen if I stopped fading to black or clinging to the sides without fully leaping? What if I leaned into the heat, the physicality, the charged moments that I was always circling but never fully stepping into?

What if I let myself explore male/male desire without apology, without restraint, without packaging it neatly into a romance arc?

So I tried.

And I never looked back.

Twelve years later, I’m still here, still deeply in love with writing about passion between men. Not just the tenderness, not just the emotional journey, but the lust, the hunger, the intimacy, the vulnerability that comes when two men meet each other body to body and soul to soul.

There is something profoundly human in those moments.

Something honest.

Something raw.

Those stories matter.

Because queer male desire has so often been hidden, softened, censored, or treated like something that needs to be made “acceptable” before it can be shared. For so long, stories about men loving men were either tragic, coded, or erased altogether. The heat, the joy, the messy, beautiful physical connection was rarely allowed to exist on the page without shame attached to it.

Writing homoerotic fiction became my way of saying: this is part of the story too.

These men deserve to want. They deserve to crave. They deserve to touch and be touched without their desire being treated like a footnote to the romance.

Today, with The Black Velvet Room, I finally have a space built exactly for those stories. A place where I can explore lust and love between men in ways that feel honest, bold, and deeply personal. A place where readers who crave those same stories can come without feeling like they’re asking for something they shouldn’t want.

And maybe most importantly, it’s a place where queer male voices get to be centered.

Because their stories of love matter.

Their stories of desire matter.

Their stories of intimacy, joy, confusion, fear, longing, and connection matter.

I write homoerotic fiction because those stories deserve to be told in full color, not in shadows.

And twelve years after a friend dared me to try, I’m still grateful I said yes.

The friend who challenged me to grow.

Taboo Gay Erotic Stories

Captivating, boundary-pushing gay erotica that explores forbidden attractions, hidden desires, and steamy scenarios you won't find anywhere else.

By Evan J. Xavier

Hey friends 💜

Story time.

Once upon a time, in MM+ Fiction land, a bigender MM+ Contemporary Romance author named Leigh Jarrett sat down to write a sexy homoerotic short story and accidentally met a very opinionated man named Gavin E. Black … in their own damned head.

They got along immediately.

Gavin had Opinions. Gavin had Vibes. Gavin absolutely insisted he should be the one telling certain stories. And honestly? He was right.

So for years, you’ve known and loved Gavin E. Black. And I do too. But here’s the part that’s been quietly waiting in the wings: I’m bigender and AFAB.

Here’s the deal, though: Gavin isn’t a disguise, a trick, or a marketing decision. Gavin is me — specifically, who I am when I’m in my male identity.

I’ve never meant to fool anyone. I just didn’t always have the words, comfort, support, or courage to explain this out loud. Writing as Gavin has always felt natural because it comes from a very real place inside me.

And for the record… I am just as gay in real life as Gavin is in the story world. Some traits are beautifully consistent across identities. 😄

This isn’t a confession. It’s more like introducing two people (actually three) who’ve been standing in the same room this whole time.

If you’ve supported my work as Gavin, you’ve supported me. All of me. And I’m so grateful for that.

In the coming weeks, I’ll introduce you to my other two pen names and share their stories as serialized guest posts. I have a truly impressive backlist.

Thank you for being here, for reading, and for giving me the space to show up more openly as my romantic, smutty, kinky, story-obsessed self.