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jessicalprice · 1 year

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christian universalism strikes again

(Reposted from Twitter)

So a rabbi I know came back from LA pretty jazzed about a Jewish addiction treatment facility there called Beit T'shuvah and so we talked about their approach and that got me curious about non-AA approaches to dealing with addiction which, my friends, was fascinating.

I’ll admit that almost everything I know about AA is more or less from The West Wing. I'm fortunate in that no one in my immediate family has dealt with substance abuse issues, and as far as I know, none of my close friends are alcoholics. My knowledge is pop culture knowledge.

But hearing about Beit T’shuvah was very interesting to me because:

I'd heard that a lot of people who aren't Christian have a hard time with AA because it's so Christian.

The difference in philosophy was subtle at first glance but actually paralleled a lot of the differences between Judaism and Christianity if you dug into it.

Anyway, I got curious about whether success rates were different for Christians vs. non-Christians and started googling. I didn't find much in the way of the data I was looking for, but I did find something a lot more disturbing, which is that the whole 12-step thing is not science-based. At all. For example:

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse compared the current current state of addiction treatment to medicine in the early 1900s, when there weren't a lot of standards for who could practice medicine. In order to be a substance abuse counselor in many states, you don't need much more than a GED or high school diploma.

A 2006 survey found "no experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA or TSF approaches for reducing alcohol dependence or problems."

And I want to make clear here that I'm not saying AA is bad--clearly it's helped people. The problem is that it's touted as a universal approach, which is a problem when it's not based on any sort of actual science.

AA claims that its success rates for people who "really try" are 75%. (And boy does that mirror gaslighting diet language.) But the most precise study out there that's NOT coming from AA (https://amazon.com/dp/B00FIMWI1O) put actual success rates at 5-8%. One of the major textbooks on treating addiction ranks it at 38th out of 48 on its list of effective treatments.

So just like most fad diets, it fails for almost everyone who tries it, and then blames the individual for its failure.

A glaring issue is that the 12 steps don't really acknowledge--or provide any guidance or structure for dealing with--other mental/emotional health issues. That’s a giant problem when people with substance abuse issues have higher than average rates of those issues. (Take a moment to consider how the victim-blaming approach of “if you didn’t succeed, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough” is going to intersect with someone’s major depression.)

Now, if 12-step programs were just one available treatment approach out of many, this wouldn’t be that big of an issue.

But 12% of AA members are there because of court orders. Our legal system is requiring people to undergo treatment that is:

Christian-based

Not scientifically supported

A failure for the vast majority of people

I mean, here's a pretty comprehensive breakdown that talks about the lack of scientific support for it, alternative treatments (like those in Finland, and naltrexone), and the fundamentalist origins of AA.

The founder was a member of the Oxford Group, an evangelical organization that taught that all human problems stemmed from fear and selfishness, and could be solved by turning your life over to divine providence, basically. Sound familiar? He based AA on those principles, and given that the only alternative was "drying out" in a sanatorium, and that AA members would show up at bedsides there and invite inpatients to meetings, it must have looked really enlightened to people. In 2022, it bears a queasy resemblance to evangelizing to people in prison, literally a captive audience.

To be fair--to their credit--they were some of the first people out there saying alcoholism was a disease, and not a moral failing. But they didn’t treat it like a disease when it came to testing treatment options:

Mann also collaborated with a physiologist named E. M. Jellinek. Mann was eager to bolster the scientific claims behind AA, and Jellinek wanted to make a name for himself in the growing field of alcohol research. In 1946, Jellinek published the results of a survey mailed to 1,600 AA members. Only 158 were returned. Jellinek and Mann jettisoned 45 that had been improperly completed and another 15 filled out by women, whose responses were so unlike the men’s that they risked complicating the results. From this small sample—98 men—Jellinek drew sweeping conclusions about the “phases of alcoholism,” which included an unavoidable succession of binges that led to blackouts, “indefinable fears,” and hitting bottom. Though the paper was filled with caveats about its lack of scientific rigor, it became AA gospel.

And then Senator Harold Hughes, who was an AA member, got Congress to establish the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, which promoted AA's beliefs, and sometimes suppressed research that conflicted with them:

In 1976, for instance, the Rand Corporation released a study of more than 2,000 men who had been patients at 44 different NIAAA-funded treatment centers. The report noted that 18 months after treatment, 22 percent of the men were drinking moderately. The authors concluded that it was possible for some alcohol-dependent men to return to controlled drinking. Researchers at the National Council on Alcoholism charged that the news would lead alcoholics to falsely believe they could drink safely. The NIAAA, which had funded the research, repudiated it. Rand repeated the study, this time looking over a four-year period. The results were similar.

The standard 28-day rehab stay, prescribed and insured:

Marvin D. Seppala, the chief medical officer at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in Minnesota, one of the oldest inpatient rehab facilities in the country, described for me how 28 days became the norm: “In 1949, the founders found that it took about a week to get detoxed, another week to come around so [the patients] knew what they were up to, and after a couple of weeks they were doing well, and stable. That’s how it turned out to be 28 days. There’s no magic in it.”

The last sentence here (bolded for emphasis) is especially chilling.

That may be heartening, but it’s not science. As the rehab industry began expanding in the 1970s, its profit motives dovetailed nicely with AA’s view that counseling could be delivered by people who had themselves struggled with addiction, rather than by highly trained (and highly paid) doctors and mental-health professionals. No other area of medicine or counseling makes such allowances.

There is no mandatory national certification exam for addiction counselors. The 2012 Columbia University report on addiction medicine found that only six states required alcohol- and substance-abuse counselors to have at least a bachelor’s degree and that only one state, Vermont, required a master’s degree. Fourteen states had no license requirements whatsoever—not even a GED or an introductory training course was necessary—and yet counselors are often called on by the judicial system and medical boards to give expert opinions on their clients’ prospects for recovery.

And, again, the idea that this is the One True And Only Way to deal with alcohol abuse leads to medical professionals ignoring research and treatment options that could be helping people. They are, in essence, taking all this completely on faith.

There has been some progress: the Hazelden center began prescribing naltrexone and acamprosate to patients in 2003. But this makes Hazelden a pioneer among rehab centers. “Everyone has a bias,” Marvin Seppala, the chief medical officer, told me. “I honestly thought AA was the only way anyone could ever get sober, but I learned that I was wrong.”

Stephanie O’Malley, a clinical researcher in psychiatry at Yale who has studied the use of naltrexone and other drugs for alcohol-use disorder for more than two decades, says naltrexone’s limited use is “baffling.”

“There was never any campaign for this medication that said, ‘Ask your doctor,’ ” she says. “There was never any attempt to reach consumers.” Few doctors accepted that it was possible to treat alcohol-use disorder with a pill. And now that naltrexone is available in an inexpensive generic form, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to promote it.

I'm not saying that AA is bad. I'm saying its hegemony is bad. It clearly is effective for some people--a minority of people. But it's not for the majority of people, and that's a problem when it's being prescribed by courts (and doctors) as if it's a one-size-fits-all approach.

It’s not an accident that a Christian approach to treating addiction presents itself as the One True Way For All Humankind, insists that courts and doctors privilege it, demands that people take its effectiveness on faith, and blames anyone for whom it doesn’t work for not believing/trying hard enough.

Hegemony is a problem.

(Photo credit: Pixabay)

#christian hegemony #addiction #christian supremacy #aa #maybe courts should be recommending treatment with a better than 8% success rate and actual science behind them just saying

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 months

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Good Omens Card Game Masterpost! :)❤

Renegade Game Studios released Good Omens: An Ineffable Game charging players with stopping the apocalypse in seven different battle games, each of which you can learn as you play, all in one box. Each of the seven cooperative battle games sees players taking on a different challenge, and each can be played at varying difficulties.

There are three different version of the Good Omens Game! :)

And each of the versions has different bonus thing and a different cover. Originally they were each exclusive to certain stores.

1. The Aziraphale and Crowley under the umbrella cover - this verson has a bonus Heaven& Hell themed diced bag - black with silver etching Good Omens Show Logo. It is available at the Barnes & Noble page, weirdly they have the wrong promo photos for it.

Barnes & Noble - $25.00

2. The Aziraphale's and Crowley's wings form a skull cover - this version has bonus 12 foil shiny character card versions. It is available on amazon:

amazon.co.uk - £25.98

amazon.com - $22.06

3. The Aziraphale and Crowley sitting on the wordl cover - this version has a bonus Agnus Nutter dice green bag. It was suppsoed to be only Hobby Store exclusive but now there are also other options:

The Renegade Studios page - now it is on sale for only €12.50 / $12.50! :) - choose your proper store at the top left corner.

amazon.co.uk - £24.99 - it seems to be on amazon if they didn't mess up the cover photo :).

#good omens #good omens card game #good omens ineffable game #good omens goods #good omens merchandise #merchandise #goods #masterposts #renegade studios

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pumpkin-angle · 3 months

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https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/its-okay-to-be-yourself-alyson-m-wilson/1144581032?ean=9798218317249

Hello friends,

I’m happy to share that my second children’s book in now available for Preorder on (Amazon) and (Barns and Nobles)

The book is called It’s Okay To Be Yourself. It’s about a young skunk kid who finds their courage to be true to themselves.

Promised more of my regular post will be out soon. I just want to share this news with you.

#independent author #books #books for children #self love #animals #animal friends #courage #puppy #skunk

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traegorn · 3 months

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The Rose House, a Victorian relic in the quaint college town of Parrish Mills, harbors a dark secret. A malevolent spirit haunts its halls, and seeks to claim the home’s newest owner, young professor Riley Whittaker. Riley seeks the aid of the enigmatic Mia Graves, a captivating witch with a mysterious past. Only Mia can stand against the vengeful spirit's spectral grip and the lingering enigma of Lila Rose, another ethereal resident of the haunted mansion. In a dance between danger and desire, Mia must unravel her own darkness to save Riley from the clutches of the supernatural.

My new novel, The Witch and the Rose, is now available in paperback and Kindle editions. It's queer (occasionally spicy) contemporary fantasy, and it's a lot of fun.

Not that I'm biased or anything.

#contemporary fantasy #urban fantasy #novel #queer #Insert Jay Sherman “Buy My Book” voice #Mia Graves #The Witch and the Rose

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chroniclesofnadia111 · 1 year

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🙏🏾Publishing my first book at this time in life has been a deeply sentimental and spiritual experience. Thank you to all who have supported. I truly believe these poems and musings will deeply resonate in the hands of whoever it comes in contact with. Words are Life and Art is eternal. 🌹

If anyone wants a real insight into my mind, you can find that in Hopeful Nets. It’s me at my most transparent and vulnerable.

Available now on Amazon at the link below.💫✨👇🏾 📖 Blessings.

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campbellthompsonwrites · 2 months

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Double Cross is now available for Kindle pre-orders!!!

Release date is 9th March.

Will be on Kindle Unlimited.

There will be a paperback version (but damn, physical books are pricey and most goes to Amazon so if you have an e-reader, go with that option!)

UK link:

If I can beg one favour... please, please leave a review, it's like currency but better!

IT'S LIVE PEOPLE - THIS IS NOT A DRILL... REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

Thank you to #teamdoublecross for getting me over the finish line!!!

Thank you @caffiend-queen for all the help and guidance, would not have known where to start without you.

And to @hithisisbry for the fabulous artwork!

@maple-seed @lokisgoodgirl @mochie85 @caffiend-queen @nildespirandum @fictive-sl0th @jaidenhawke

#teamdoublecross #authors #book review #reading #kindle #publication #double cross #campbell thompson

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impala-dreamer · 7 months

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Now Available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon

INSTAR MEDITATIONS by Rebekah Jordan

Young women around the country are going missing and the only one who seems to care is unlucky FBI agent Nora Hammond. Not even her partner, ladies' man Jason Carter, thinks it's worth looking into.

Meanwhile, the TruLove Corporation has a new line of luxury sex dolls that will truly love you back - for a price. When the dolls start attacking their owners, the FBI is called in to investigate and things with Nora and Jason get a little sticky...

Kidnapping Investigations, Sex, Hypnosis, Corporate Intrigue, Technosexuality, and Love... All packed into this awesome new story by Rebekah Jordan!

Get it now at now at Barnes & Noble or Amazon on paperback and ebooks!

More titles by Rebekah Jordan can be found on her author page on Amazon.com

#books #booklr #booklaunch #authors #writing #new books #book stuff

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monster-bait · 7 months

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Harper and Azathé by Bloodwrit

Two For Tea is available now!

#exophilia #monster boyfriend #monster lover #cambric creek #shadow monster #monsterbait

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lululayers · 3 months

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BIG STRATEGY SHIFT. David has cited Apple TV, Amazon Prime and Netflix and potential streamers to pick up Our Flag Means Death. We need to be polite menaces. More strategies are being developed, but for now you can go on Twitter, tag their accounts one at a time, and show them why Our Flag Means Death is worth saving. Make sure you use the hashtag #AdoptOurCrew

ALSO, if you’re an international viewer and the streamer has an account related to your nation, tag them as well. Streamers love to see their content reach worldwide. If they have a queer-oriented account, tag them too.

Additionally, Netflix has an online form where you can submit shows to be added:

You can submit more than once, but don’t spam them or you’ll be blacklisted.

There’s also a feedback form for Apple TV. Rick Apple TV then select Apple TV+ under dropdown menu.

And a feedback form for Prime:

This is a HUGE development. Everybody GO GO GO!!!

I’ll be adding more info to this post as it’s available.

Don’t forget to sign and share the petition!

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chalamet-chalamet · 11 months

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Paul experiencing sand and spice for the first time. Image from Dune Part One: The Photography book. Available for pre-order now:

Twitter credit to secretsofdune

#timothee chalamet #timothée chalamet #dune #dune part one

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earlgreytea68 · 7 months

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Ta-da!!!!

Look, I want all of you to know: THIS WAS TECHNOLOGICALLY WAY MORE CHALLENGING THAN I WAS PREPARED FOR. It might just be that I'm getting old. And I'm still not sure I've done it entirely correctly, since I cannot locate the book by searching Amazon, Idk. But Amazon claims you can pre-order Book 1 of Swan Reunion Tour: Trick Up Your Sleeve, in both Kindle and paperback format!

Is this the same story available on AO3? Not quite! It's been edited! Actually, I added quite a bit to expand and fix the love story, now that I knew what it was actually about oops lol. So I suppose you can consider this to contain bonus content. I did, however, have to take out a couple of characters (sorry, Adam and Bach, it was just too crowded a canvas). But, other than that, it should be pretty recognizable as the beginning of the story we all know and love. If you want to see a little bit of how it's different, though: I posted a little preview on my Ainsley North Tumblr, and you'll see that now, per the recommendation of my very smart editor friend, the story starts with a little bit of Matt, just so you know he's coming. ;-)

I want to particularly think @anotherwellkeptsecret for the cover. ISN'T IT AWESOME?????? I love it soooo much, I cannot even deal with it.

Now, I'm honestly very proud of myself and now I have to get started to do it all over again with Book 2 lolololololol

#swan song

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robertjw4688 · 8 days

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TODAY IS THE DAY! My new poetry collection, Coffee Ring Lies, is now available for purchase! I poured my entire existence into this collection so it would mean alot if you checked it out!

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traegorn · 3 months

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My original post on where to buy The Witch and the Rose was getting too long, so instead of reblogging it, I'm making a new one.

For those who (somehow) missed it, my debut (non-graphic) novel The Witch and the Rose is now available for purchase. It's a contemporary fantasy novel. It's got a witch, it's got queer people, it's occasionally a little spicy, it has the occasional bleed through of my witchcraft opinions... it's fun! It's the first book in a series, and I think folks will enjoy it.

So let's talk about how folks can buy it!

For one, it's on Kindle (also, if you pay for Kindle Unlimited, you can read it right now for free), but there's also a dead tree version too. While eBooks are exclusively through Amazon right now, the dead tree version comes in two (identical) forms. First off, there's the version listed on Amazon. This is the fastest way to get it, and probably the version with the cheapest shipping (since it qualifies for Prime).

I know some folks don't like Amazon though, which is why there's a separate Paperback edition done through a different printer. You can either order that directly, or booksellers can order via ISBN 9798869132666.

So, to quote the eminent critic Jay Sherman, "Buy my book!"

Random stuff under the cut:

Amazon:

Non-Amazon:

#The Witch and the Rose #Mia Graves #Bookblr #Contemporary Fantasy #queer books #queer #witch #book

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maverick-werewolf · 7 months

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NONFICTION BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT - The Werewolf: Past and Future now available in HARDBACK!

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT - my popular nonfiction werewolf book (on folklore and many things besides), The Werewolf: Past and Future - Lycanthropy's Lost History and Modern Devolution, is now available in hardback, in addition to paperback and ebook/digital!

Click here to purchase on Amazon.com!

Also check out the many pics of it in this post (plus the book received cat approval; pics included)! Note that pictures are, obviously, of a proof copy.

The book is very good quality! I'm impressed! You won't be disappointed. The hardcover is nice and hefty without being bulky, and the spine is sturdy and lovely.

And best of all, the book comes kitty certified, inspected by Ty Beanie Baby (yes, that is his name) himself.

He gave it a sniff.

And even honored it with a rub. Clearly it's a good book. And it didn't fall over! It's very sturdy.

(Disclaimer: He did just want treats afterward, as he cannot read. Treats and pettings were of course given.)

Synopsis:

Since before recorded history, werewolves have captivated human imagination. Simultaneously, they represent our deepest fears as well as our desire to connect with our primal ancestry. Today, werewolves are portrayed negatively, associated with violence, cruelty, cannibalism, and general malevolence. However, in ages past, legends depicted them not as monsters, but as a range of neutral to benevolent individuals, such as traveling companions, guardians, and knights. The robust legacy of the werewolf spans from prehistory, through ancient Greece and Rome, to the Middle Ages, into the Early Modern period, and finally into present-day popular culture. Over the ages, the view of the werewolf has become distorted. Media treatment of werewolves is associated with inferior writing, lacking in thought, depth, and meaning. Werewolves as characters or creatures are now generally seen as single-minded and one-dimensional, and they want nothing more than to kill, devour, and possibly violate humans. Hollywood depictions have resulted in the destruction of the true meanings behind werewolf legends that fascinated and terrified humans for so many ages. If these negative trends were reversed, perhaps entertainment might not only discover again some of the true meanings behind the werewolf myth, but also take the first steps toward reversing negative portrayals of wolves themselves, which humans have, for eons, wrongfully stigmatized and portrayed as evil, resulting in wolves receiving crueler treatment than virtually any other animal. To revive the many questions posed by lycanthropy, entertainment must show respect to the rich history of so many cultures all around the world – and rediscover the legend of the werewolf.

Again, be sure to check out the book on Amazon.com!

If you would prefer to buy a signed copy directly from me, I'll have something very fun in store for you in October... along with another surprise: a brand new book! And it's more werewolf nonfiction. My big fiction publication is coming next year, and it's also werewolf-related. It's a great time to love werewolves.

Expect another big announcement soon about a brand new nonfiction werewolf folklore book!

So stay tuned for a whole lot more on the way! Be sure to give me a follow here and elsewhere on social media. I'll also have a newsletter coming very soon that'll help you keep up with my work, and it'll come with free reading!

Until next time, and happy fall!

Patreon --- Wulfgard --- Werewolf Fact Masterlist --- Twitter

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tdcloud · 2 months

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Happy Infaust cover reveal Friday! Give it up for @ambisun for another banger of a cover! But of course, this is only the beginning...

A witch with a dead familiar is an outlier and an ill-omen to every village they pass through. Rehan Nadir is one such witch. The only jobs available to him are terrible ones, and vagrancy is his only recourse… At least, it was until he heard tell of the town of Hamelin’s plight. Stories of a malicious entity, a chaos god, have tormented the village for hundreds of years, and like clockwork tragedy has struck once more: while the adults gathered elsewhere, the children were spirited away. No trace of them has been seen since. The town is desperate to bring them back. Very desperate.

Finding and returning the lost children would be just the thing to give Rehan a new chance at the life he lost after the death of his familiar, and if all it takes is killing a god of chaos, then he’s more than ready to take the plunge and open that door. Unfortunately, he just didn’t anticipate opening a few more in the midst of dealing the finishing blow.

More Info below!

Infaust is a dark romance recounting the tale of the witch Rehan Nadir and the elusive chaos god known only as the Piper. Trapped in a world where even the very dirt wants them dead, the two must depend on one another to escape—and along the way realize that perhaps the definition of a happily ever after really is a subjective one.

This is a story for those of us who know things can always get worse, that there's always still something left to lose. Infaust has been a very long time coming, starting as an initial concept idea back in 2018 and undergoing multiple rewrites over the years to bring it to the state it's in now. But with that long timeline comes bigger pay-offs. I'm incredibly proud of where this story has gone and all that it continues to develop into.

With that said...

This isn't the final cover.

I've had to delay this reveal once already, and nearly did so again last night. My cover artist is currently in the midst of an international move and her time is, as you can well imagine, limited. We thought we'd have the final cover done last night but alas, we had to prioritize elements to meet this deadline. The actual cover will look a little closer to this when it's all said and done.

I don't have a solid date yet on when to expect this full version alongside the full spread. Our tenuous goal is April 10th, but moving to a different country isn't easy, simple, or fun. We'll have it by the time the book launches, so please be patient with us as we navigate this really bumpy timeline!

If you'd like to pre-order Infaust, you have a few options!

For Signed Paperback copies alongside a really cool, limited-run merch box bundle, please check out my Itchio: https://tdcloud.itch.io/infaust

For unsigned pre-orders, the Amazon sales page is the place to go for ebooks, with paperbacks coming closer to the launch date: https://amazon.com/dp/B0CRX5M7TX

Thank you so much for your support thus far and your excitement for Rehan's terrible, no-good dance with the Devil. It means the world, and I'm so excited to unleash this beast May 1st!

#infaust #cover reveal #indie author #folklore #fairytale #dark fairytale #dark romance #horror #queer #queer horror #update

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