Nuno R.F.C.R

Mark pulled away. His mouth tore from Julian’s. The separation was a sound, wet, abrupt, two surfaces that have been sealed together being forced apart, and the air that rushed into the space between their lips was cold, shockingly cold, as though the kiss had generated its own climate and the world outside it was winter. Mark’s hands were on Julian’s chest, on his shoulders, pushing, but the push was uncoordinated, his fingers alternating between gripping and releasing, the motor conflict

I saw enough of it to know the show name should have been "Just Jack...and Karen" 😉

He woke before Mark, which almost never happened. Julian was the deeper sleeper, always had been, the one who sank into unconsciousness, completely and without resistance, and who surfaced only when the world became too bright or too loud to ignore. Mark was the opposite. Mark slept with some inner mechanism ticking even in the dark, so that he was usually up before Julian, already showered or reading or standing on whatever balcony was available, as though sleep were a country he visited b

The glimpses into what lies ahead, the emotional fractures, the quiet unraveling beneath the surface, are there by design. The narrator is not confined to Julian’s present awareness. He purposely operates with a broader, more omniscient lens, one that allows the reader to perceive what he cannot. Yet. This choice shifts the experience of the story. Rather than building tension purely through surprise, it leans into a sense of inevitability. The reader is invited to sit inside that contradiction: to witness joy while knowing it carries the seed of its own undoing. It’s less about 'what happens' and more about 'how it feels to watch it happen'. That quiet awareness is, by my own creative choice, central to the emotional architecture of this particular narrative. Thank you for taking the time to read the first chapter @peter rietbergen

Julian Aldrich has never had reason to doubt the world built for him. At twenty-one, heir to a gilded American dynasty, he sees his life as most people see a painting: beautiful, composed, complete. His father Victor is the architect of that world. His mother Catherine is its atmosphere. And Mark, his best friend, is the person Julian loves most. During a family trip, the careful geometry of these relationships begins to warp. What Julian slowly uncovers will collapse every structure he has built his identity upon: family, loyalty, desire, and the dangerous assumption that the people we love are who we believe them to be.

The argument had been going on since somewhere over Virginia, and Julian was losing. “You’re out of your mind,” he said, knee pressed to Mark’s thigh. They faced each other, Mark composed but tense, turning his glass of sparkling water. "You are genuinely, certifiably..." “Name a single scene,” Mark said. “...deranged, actually. The word is deranged.” “One scene. One. Where the writing actually earns the emotion instead of just pointing a camera at a beautiful face and lettin

To everyone who walked beside me through Wrenhaven, thank you. This story was definetely something I carried gently, something I built piece by piece with an open heart. And knowing that so many of you stepped into this world, cared for these characters, and stayed until the very end...means more than I can properly put into words. There’s always a quiet kind of grief that comes with closing the door on characters you’ve nurtured, protected, and loved. Letting them go is bittersweet, but also deeply beautiful. I do have a new project in development (duh, of course I do), something I’m incredibly excited to eventually share with you. But after writing "Finding Liam" and "Wrenhaven" practically back to back, I feel I owe myself a moment to breathe, rest and refill. I’ll be back. Until then, stay safe my beautiful "page worms". Nuno R.F.C.R.

The dock was working. The dock was always working. The dock had been working for forty-five years, since the father laid the first berth, and the son inherited the operation, and the operation became the institution, and the institution became, in the daily, seasonal, tidal rhythm of a working harbor, the heartbeat of Wrenhaven. Tuesday afternoon. October. The low-activity window, the morning's departures completed, the evening's returns not yet begun, the dock in the exhale between th

I feel like you're on a "me" marathon! 😉

Wrenhaven knew itself. The knowing was not metaphorical. It was literal, daily, conducted-through-proximity knowledge that a town of twelve hundred produces when the twelve hundred share the same harbor and the same main street and the same post office and the same bars and the same grocery store and the same weather and the same gossip, the gossip being the weather's social equivalent, the atmospheric condition that pervaded everything, that was discussed in every encounter, that shifted a

True. The fact she isn't the 'whole system' doesn't excuse her from a villain role. She represents it, so she's inherently part of the problem.

Enjoy the ride @dboggs9700 !

Rowan climbed in. The door closed. Elias started the engine. The headlights came on. The truck pulled out of the lot at Cutter's Point, and the granite and the railing and the cliff fell away behind them, and the coastal road opened ahead, south, toward Wrenhaven, toward the cottage where Camille was driving, toward the world that was waking up. They drove. In silence. The silence of two people who are in a truck together after a night that has exceeded every available metric for n

True. It's implied that David resorted to coercive tactics to lure Camille back at some point. Full disclosure: I actually wrote an entire chapter exploring Camille's backstory, addressing some of those issues, but ultimately, I decided to set it aside. It simply didn't mesh with the narrative I'm crafting. Because the story isn't about the "why" behind their actions. They're all flawed, that much is established. This chapter serves a deeper purpose. It highlights that Rowan and Camille's bond will never evolve into a traditional mother-son dynamic. Instead, it solidifies their mutual acknowledgment of this reality and showcases their determination to persevere together, regardless of what form their relationship takes going forward.

Camille was in the kitchen. She had been in the kitchen since she came back. To the cottage. To the chair at the table where she sat now, in the dark, without light, without tea, without the prop of activity or the alibi of purpose. Where she had fed her son and watched her son and hoped for her son and where she had, hours ago, served fennel stew to the man who was sleeping with her son while her son sat across the table and the three of them performed a dinner that was a lie, and th

Tonally, "Wrenhaven" is different from my previous story. Hopefully, this won't persuade from reading the rest of the story.

Elias told Rowan not to come to the dock during the day. He said it clearly. Rowan had said nothing. Rowan's nothing was not agreement. Rowan's nothing was the deeply familiar silence of someone who has heard an instruction, processed it, and filed it in the part of the brain where instructions go to die. Rowan did not follow instructions. Rowan Leclair had never followed instructions. The not-following had been a defect until now. Now the not-following was a

"I can't smell you on it anymore." The sentence was simple. The sentence was the most complex thing either of them had ever heard. The sentence contained, in its seven words, the complete and irreducible confession of a boy who had stolen a piece of a man and held it in the dark and breathed it in and slept against it and mapped its scent, obsessively, secretly, with the meticulous, desperate attention of a person cataloging a thing they know they're losing. And the loss was the

The sea had a word for it. Elias didn't know the word. It was probably Latin, or Greek, or the kind of term that exists only in the vocabularies of oceanographers, poets, and people who combined the two. But the sea had a word for the thing that happens after a storm passes and the water hasn't returned to calm but has entered the intermediate state, no longer violent, not yet still. The surface holds the memory of the disturbance. The current carries its echo. Everything

Elias woke at 3:47 a.m. with a decision already in his body. Not in his mind, his mind was still assembling, performing the groggy boot-up sequence of a man dragged out of shallow sleep by an alarm he hadn't set. The decision was lower than thought. It was in his spine, in his jaw, in the set of his shoulders as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and planted his feet on the cold floor of the flat. He was done. He didn't phrase it that way. He didn't phrase it at all.

There 'is' such a thing as bisexual people @Modified Cub 😉😜

The morning was three hours old, and Elias had accomplished nothing. This was unprecedented. Elias did not have unproductive mornings. His mornings were machines, calibrated, sequential, ruthless in their forward motion. He woke at four-thirty. He made coffee that could dissolve enamel. He reviewed tide charts, updated schedules, checked weather reports. By six, he was on the dock. By seven, he had solved three problems, created one, and delegated the rest. His mornings did not stall. His m

There are towns that exist on maps and towns that exist despite them. Wrenhaven was the latter. A congregation of salt-bleached buildings clinging to the edge of the world like they'd lost a bet. It sat on the southern elbow of a coastline that cartographers had always seemed embarrassed by: too jagged, too moody, too far from anywhere anyone was trying to get to. The kind of place GPS directions described, with what felt like reluctance. From the high road, the only road, real

In a salt-worn coastal town, Elias Voss has built a life of routine and uncomplicated arrangements. His closest bond is with Camille Leclair, whom he once dated and now calls his best friend. But when Camille's estranged son, Rowan, is forced to move to Wrenhaven after his father's death, what arrives is not a young man but a lit fuse: beautiful, furious, and sharp. What begins as mutual hostility between the two men slowly turns into something neither of them can avoid: a consuming, intense, secret love affair. Wrenhaven is a story about desire, lust, and a town too small to keep secrets and too proud to forgive them.

To every single one of you who walked this road with me, all I can really say is: thank you. Stories breathe because someone chooses to give them time, attention, and a bit of their hearts. Whether you left long, thoughtful comments or quiet little hearts, whether you read in silence, carried scenes with you through your day, or simply came back chapter after chapter, please know it mattered a great deal to me. Writing this has been this sort of strange, tender act of trust, and if it found its way into your hands, it’s because you made room for it. This was my first contribution to this beautiful community of writers and readers, and I’m grateful, deeply, for the warmth and presence you’ve given it. Needless to say, I’m excited to share other projects, invite all of you into new worlds, new voices, new journeys. And as for Hudson, Liam, and the rest of the gang: they'll be here. Waiting for us whenever we feel the pull to return. With deep gratitude, Nuno