I literally JUST got this information today so your timing is impeccable.

Like Real People Do
Narrator: Lance West
Audio Publication Date: July 8th, 2025
Landing Page: RBmedia | Like Real People Do

Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove
Narrator: Lance West
Audio Publication Date: October 7th, 2025
Landing Page: RBmedia | Like You’ve Nothing Left to Prove

All Hail the Underdogs
Narrator: Lance West
Audio Publication Date: December 30th, 2025
Landing Page: RBmedia | All Hail the Underdogs

Free From Falling wasn’t published yet when the deal happened, so we’ll see if that pick it up as well.

Next to Swordcrossed even!! Delightful.

@rainbowsandcoconut

I don’t currently have any substantive plans for a Kuzy story, but if you want some of my brainworms about him/his eventual romance, here you go:

He lives right next to a firehouse and there’s a cute, kickass firewoman (cis, leans androgynous) named Nicole “call me Nic” with whom he has occasional banter-moments (I used to live next to a firehouse and if they were out front they’d always chat with me when I walked the dog; I loved that community dynamic).

One night after a rough game, Kuzy is going for a walk and Nic is sitting out on a lawn chair in front of the house processing a rough call, and they have a moment of shared vulnerability together, looking up at the stars. She’s the child of immigrants and they bond over how stupid the English language is. Kuzy tells her about Eli/Hawk and she mentions that she loves dogs but can’t have one with her work schedule.

Over the next few days, Kuzy can’t stop thinking about her. He wants an excuse to see her more often that doesn’t feel creepy, so he goes to the shelter nearby and offers to exercise dogs. Now, he has a perfectly good reason to walk past the firehouse (sometimes multiple times a day!) on the off-chance the firefighters are out and he can politely offer a dog’s brief company for Nic’s enjoyment.

Except he’s not super smooth about it because the rest of the folks at the house realize pretty quickly that the giant Russian walking dogs only happens to walk dogs on the days that Nic is on shift.

Convenient.

This continues for longer than it probably should. Until Kuzy is hosting some of the Hounds and one of the rookies does something stupid. Not sure what. I’m thinking gets his hand stuck in an expensive vase. Or maybe his head. And Kuzy very sheepishly has to walk him over to the firehouse like, “hello, this baby is my responsibility, can you please rescue him?” And they eventually get the thing cut off of his hand/head/whatever but one of Nic’s bros pulls Kuzy aside and says, “maybe you should just ask her out instead of coming up with increasingly more creative excuses to talk to her—at this rate someone is going to get hurt” and Kuzy is like, “ok, this was 100% not contrived and while I would like to go out with her, she is a goddess who saves lives and I am but a goofy athlete, undeserving of her attentions,“ and Firefighter Bro like, "you know, I think she’d settle for you.”

So, spurred on by this bit of hope, he’s like, “I need to do this right, this can’t just be some hookup, I like her.” And he starts Operation Woo Nic.

And the whole time Nic is like, “would you just fucking take me home, I would like to bang you,” but he’s trying so hard to be a gentleman about it that she lets him for a while. She’s never been woo'ed before. Might be fun. Eventually she gets fed up and when he’s dropping off cookies or whatever on his daily dog-walk she’s like, “hey, do you want to be my boyfriend? Yeah? Great. We should have sex about that. My shift ends in three hours, what’s your address?”

It is possibly the best day of Kuzy’s life.

Anyway. As usual, there’s no real plot, just vibes. But he is Smitten. And she is hopelessly endeared. And she’s certified as a paramedic, so she’s constantly ragging him for his little injuries and keeping him honest about PT. At some point she gets injured in the line of duty and he gets to be suitably dramatic and probably make declarations at her hospital bedside. He dotes on her for a while during her recovery.

And eventually he convinces her to move in with him so she can be close to work and she’s like, “yeah? That’s the only reason? For the ease of my commute?” And he says, “well that but also because I love you more than I thought was possible and when we’re not together I miss you like a limb and our schedules are shit enough as it is, I’m greedy for every second I can have with you,” and she’s like, “yeah, fair enough.”

So. Not really sure how it would end, but uh. There you go! Kuzy and his Firefighter Lady. Also he definitely foster-fails multiple times and hires a full-time nanny to take care of all his and Nic’s dogs when she’s on shift and he’s traveling. It’s great.

AND I imagine some very funny cultural confusion moments when her family (Japanese) interacts with his family (Russian) but they all generally bond over their shared love of fermented foods and dumplings. And alcohol. There are hijinks.

Ok. The End!

[wow this ended up being long]

Yes! Like Real People Do’s title came from the Hozier song.

To me, the song is about two traumatized people wishing they could love with the simple of ease of the “ordinary” and I know I’m not the only queer person to take that interpretation.

See, I knew intimately what it was like to look at someone and think I could love them, maybe, but also recognize that the process of finding out wouldn’t be simple purely because that person shared my gender.

I recall a pretty terrible moment of recognition when I was a teenager; being bisexual, I’d had a handful of crushes at that point. But when I had a crush on a boy, the scariest thing about it was if I flirted and he wasn’t interested. If he was, the rest was easy—dates and kisses and getting to know each other.

But with a girl, I wasn’t even sure what the scariest thing could be. There wasn’t just the risk of her not returning my interest. If she WAS interested, that would be far more dangerous. How would we maintain our relationship in secret? What if we were discovered? We’d certainly be kicked out of our very conservative private school. But would we also be kicked out of our homes? Would we be sent away to special schools or conversion therapy? Would our lives irrevocably be changed purely because we wanted to experience the simple teenage pleasure of falling in love?

It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t we just kiss like real people do?

And even when I moved away from home and went to college, that fear [not to mention the boatload of religious trauma] followed me and colored my interactions as I cautiously started seeking out queer spaces.

The first time I heard the song, I had an almost visceral reaction to it—I was catapulted back to being a teenager struggling with this yearning that existed within me that I felt I could tell no one without cataclysmic risk.

When I wrote Like Real People Do in my early 20’s I was still very much grappling with that feeling and I put a lot of that yearning into Alex’s character. And while I’m not sure the book does justice to the title, I certainly thought the title encapsulated the excitement-tempered-by-fear vibe I was going for with Alex and Eli’s romance.

(I had another formative moment, many years later, after I moved to the Gayborhood in Dallas [mentioned in book 4!]. It was the opposite scenario, where I found myself waiting outside the S4 club, looking around at so many unapologetically queer people and feeling like I could kiss anyone I wanted on the street without fear. And god do I wish everyone felt that way all the fucking time.)