LGBTQ+ literary fiction bestseller: Rowan Thornwell breaks into Top 10

The Body Remembers Where Desire Lives

Last night, I dreamed of Nico’s hands.

Not as I wrote them, but as I knew them. The kind of memory that clings like sweat after a long run, salt-stung and intimate. He wasn’t real—not in the way the world measures reality—but his fingers traced the same fault lines in me that lovers once mapped with tongue and devotion.

When I woke, “His, Theirs, Enough” was sitting at #10 on Amazon’s LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction list. Right there in black and gold: Rowan Thornwell among titans and sinners. Among men who break and rebuild.

His, Theirs, Enough—and that title has always been my ache, hasn’t it?

That whisper we never say aloud:
Am I too much?
Will I ever be enough?

How a bisexual sailor learned to kneel and tell the truth

The keyword they want me to use is “LGBTQ+ literary fiction.” Fine. Here it is.

But what I wrote wasn’t crafted for keywords. It was built from sweat, tears, and the years I spent wondering if loving both men and women made me broken or greedy. If the hunger in me—to serve, to be taken, to be held—made me less of a man. Or more.

“LGBTQ+ literary fiction” is a mouthful for what I think of as scripture written in bruises and balm. I didn’t grow up with language for queerness that didn’t also mean punishment. And yet here we are: ten fingers deep into a chart that includes Tóibín, Yanagihara, Jaye Pratt, Syn Blackrose. And me.

Me, with my kink and softness. With my desire for polyamorous devotion and aching masculinity.

Not in opposition—but in communion.

The ache of arrival: Gratitude, guilt, and the ghost of who I was

It shouldn’t matter. And yet it does. That little orange “#10” felt like a lover’s hand slipping around my waist in the dark, saying I see you, babe. I see what you made.

And I remember the boy in uniform, fists clenched under a mess hall table, pretending he didn’t see the way his heart leapt when another man smiled at him too long.

The first time someone kissed me like they wanted to unmake me.

The first time I let them.

The first time I wrote it down and hit “publish,” with trembling hands.

Now that boy is here. Still scared. Still tender. But no longer hiding.

“LGBTQ+ literary fiction” means more when we bring our bodies with us

Let me tell you what this genre really is:

It’s Alaric’s teeth on Elias’s throat.
It’s Lina holding her own hunger with reverence.
It’s Nico asking to be forgiven for needing all of them.

It’s me, naked in more ways than one, writing down what it means to be pierced—not by violence, but by love you didn’t think you deserved.

“His, Theirs, Enough” was never just about polyamory. It was about belonging, choosing, offering yourself up without asking for chains in return.

When I saw it among the bestsellers, I thought of everyone who’s ever said, “Your book felt like my body finally made sense.”

You are the reason this book lives.

Closing the distance between us

Ten might not seem like much.

But for a queer, bi, ex-military man who was told his softness made him weak?

It feels like the body remembering where desire lives.
Like a long exhale in a room where no one is watching—except the people who know.

And now you do too.

Thank you for bringing me here.

Let’s see how far we can go.