SCROLL ALL THE WAY DOWN FOR THE GIVEAWAY…

Welcome to the second Friday the 13th of 2026. Yes, SECOND. We had one last month. We get another in November. Three in one year. The universe is clearly trying to tell us something.

And what it’s telling us is: you’re welcome.

Because every major breakthrough in spicy romance can be traced directly back to a Friday the 13th. I’m not a historian but I AM a scientist. And I am telling you — the data is clear. When the 13^th day of the month falls on a Friday and a book drops… Readers better be ready. Because weird things happen to books on Friday the 13th.

Here’s the spicy (partial) truth of it…

1813 — The MOAN of 1813

Prudence Whitmore’s debut novel, A Tender Correspondence, released Friday, August 13th, 1813, was supposed to be a gentle story about a widow exchanging letters with a clergyman. Wholesome. Moral. The kind of book you could read in front of your mother.

Except on page 74, the clergyman kisses the widow on the throat. And she had the AUDACITY to… MOAN.

Parliament got involved.

Prudence blamed the quill. Said she bought it from “a peculiar shop on a peculiar street” and that the ink “ran hot.”

The book sold 40,000 copies in six weeks. The quill was never found.

1907 — The Boob Heard Round the World

Dottie Maguire was a print press operator at Dark Avenue Quarterly, a pulp noir magazine out of Chicago. On Friday, September 13th, 1907, the latest installment of The Thornton Files hit newsstands — and on page 16, Detective Brick Thornton seduced a woman named Velma. On his desk. And touched her boob.

The author, Leonard P. Hackett, had not written that scene. Dottie denied everything. Said she couldn’t even read. (She had a library card and three overdue books.)

Readers — mostly women who’d stolen the magazine from their husbands — began writing in demanding more Brick and Velma content. They called it “coupling.” (Historians now recognize this as the earliest known case of what modern fandom calls “shipping.”)

Dottie was quietly promoted. She took whatever really happened to her grave.

1974 — The ‘Lady Pendulum’ Incident

Meadow LaRue’s Tangerine Summer, released Friday, September 13th, 1974, had a perfectly acceptable love scene on page 203. Nobody cared about the sex. Nobody cared that the hero was described as having “the chest of a Greek column and the hands of a man who had milked many goats.”

The problem was one phrase. She referred to the female anatomy as… a “lady pendulum.”

Senator Richard Dowdy (R-Tennessee) read the phrase aloud on the Senate floor and had to sit down. A subcommittee was formed. Their 40-page report used the phrase “lady pendulum” 74 times and concluded it was “anatomically ambiguous but spiritually clear.”

Tangerine Summer sold 1.2 million copies.

2014 — The Dino Incident

On Friday, June 13th, 2014, sweet romance indie author Amelia Hartwell released Kissing the Cowboy in Cowboy Boots. Clean. Closed door. The spiciest thing in the book was hot cocoa.

What actually uploaded to KDP was Mounted by the Triceratops, Book 3 of her secret dinosaur erotica pen name — featuring explicit content between a woman and a dinosaur who communicated through gentle snorts.

She didn’t notice for three days because she was at a craft fair in Branson, Missouri with no wifi. Amazon banned the entire genre. Amelia lost both pen names. The craft fair gave her a ribbon for her crocheted bookmarks, which she described as “the only good thing that happened that week.”

2019 — HORN-DICKED ALIENS

Catherine Ashworth-Billings owed her Big Five editor a quiet literary novel called The Orchard at Dusk on Friday, September 13th, 2019. What her editor received was a 90,000-word sci-fi romance about horn-dicked aliens running a human slave trade called Dominated by the Zyraxians.

Catherine blamed her husband’s experimental AI program. In 2019 this sounded insane. Her editor said “AI can’t write books.” The publisher killed the deal.

Four years later, when ChatGPT launched, Catherine posted a 47-tweet thread titled “I TOLD YOU ALL IN 2019.” It got 3 likes. She had 43 followers. One of them was her husband’s AI, which had apparently created its own Twitter account.

2026 — The Curse Continues

Smoke and Honey is LIVE

Today is Friday, March 13th, 2026. Today I released Smoke and Honey, Book 4 of the Book of Legion series.

I want you to know that I wrote a very clean, very wholesome book about love and redemption.

If what you find inside is something else entirely — that is not my fault.

It was the quill.

The press.

The pendulum.

The algorithm.

It has always been Friday the 13th.

It has never been the author.

Salvation looks a lot like surrender when you’re recovering under the Ashby roof. Sleeping in their guest room. Eating at their table. Watching Mercy get everything he never could’ve given her—ponies, new clothes, a bedroom with a door that locks from the inside.

Hardest part is… spoiled looks good on his baby sister.

And Ashby money is something Legion will never have.

Ponies and presents.

Princess in training.

Dynasty wealth.

Always on the outside lookin’ in.

Some men weren’t built to stay.

SMOKE AND HONEY

Where the right side of the tracks meets the wrong side of everything.

Be brave and get BOOK 4 – SMOKE & HONEY now…

Weekly releases won’t kill you… much.

If you’d like to get the whole series all at once, click through and do that!

#1 – Dust and Flowers

#2 – Blood and Grace

#3 – Scars and Promises

#4 – Smoke and Honey

#5 – Skulls and Lace

Win a signed copy of SMOKE AND HONEY plus a very super cool STICKER PACK of all your FAVORITE BOOKISH TROPES!

LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW TO ENTER — ANSWER THIS QUESTION…

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Of my MOSTLY FAKE stories above – which one is PARTIALLY true?

MY ANSWER

I CAN’T TELL YOU!

THAT WOULD GIVE IT AWAY!

What do you think?