Behind The Books
Behind the Books
Every story starts somewhere. Usually long before the first sentence is written.
Sometimes it begins with a memory I can't shake.
Sometimes it's a person, a place, a ridiculous question, an uncomfortable truth, or one line that appears in my head and refuses to leave.
And occasionally, apparently, it begins with a shart.
Welcome to Behind the Books—the place where I step beyond the jacket copy and share the ideas, questions, emotions, and wonderfully strange moments that become stories.
My books cross genres: contemporary fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, romance, Southern Gothic mystery, comedy, spiritually inspired fiction, and memoir. Some stories will make you cry. Some will make you uncomfortable. Some will make you laugh at something you probably shouldn't be laughing at.
But beneath all of them is the same fascination:
What happens to ordinary people when life forces them to become someone they never expected to be?
This is where those stories begin.
The Books That Started It All
Inheritance of Silence
Published April 24, 2026
"What happens when the things left unsaid shape an entire lifetime?"
Inheritance of Silence began with silence—not the absence of sound, but the kind families carry.
The things nobody discusses. The grief nobody resolves. The expectations passed from one generation to another without anyone stopping to ask whether they should have been inherited at all.
I didn't want to write a novel simply about trauma. I wanted to write about what happens after someone decides the trauma will not get the final word.
That became Chase's journey.
Through grief, identity, family, forgiveness, love, and found family, the novel asks whether we are destined to become products of everything that happened to us—or whether we can eventually decide what deserves to follow us into the future.
At its core, Inheritance of Silence is about breaking cycles.
And perhaps more importantly, it is about hope.
Not the easy kind.
The kind you have to fight for.
Behind the story: Generational trauma • LGBTQ+ identity • Found family • Grief • Forgiveness • Resilience • Healing • Hope
House of Windows
Published September 11, 2026
"Every window offers a view. Not every view tells the truth."
House of Windows grew from my fascination with the emotional architecture people construct around themselves.
We build walls.
We open certain doors.
We close others.
And through carefully selected windows, we allow people to see only what we're prepared to reveal.
But intimacy requires something much more frightening.
It requires being seen.
The novel explores vulnerability, trust, memory, grief, identity, and the complicated process of allowing another person into the rooms we have spent years keeping locked.
It is ultimately a story about what happens when hiding feels safe—but living requires stepping into the light.
Behind the story: Vulnerability • Trust • Memory • Identity • Recovery • Love • Emotional growth • Being seen
The Story I Had to Tell
Burn the Map: Life Beyond What You Were Given
Memoir | Coming 2027
"Sometimes the bravest thing you'll ever do is choose a different direction."
There are books you invent.
And then there are books you eventually realize you have been living.
Burn the Map is the latter.
This memoir explores the distance between the life we're handed and the life we eventually choose for ourselves.
It's about trauma, addiction, recovery, identity, reinvention, failure, survival, and the uncomfortable realization that sometimes the map you've been following was never actually yours.
I didn't write Burn the Map because I believe I have everything figured out.
Quite the opposite.
I wrote it because there is something powerful about admitting that sometimes we don't know where we're going—and choosing to move forward anyway.
The destination isn't perfection.
It's ownership.
Behind the story: Reinvention • Recovery • Identity • Trauma • Resilience • Self-discovery • Second chances • Hope
Before and After Inheritance
Some characters refuse to remain inside one book.
Theo and Chase were two of them.
Chasing Pavements
In Development | Prequel to Inheritance of Silence
"Home isn't always a place. Sometimes it's a decision."
Before readers met Theo Allen in Inheritance of Silence, he had already lived an entire story.
Chasing Pavements tells it.
This novel explores the experiences that shaped Theo before Chase entered his life—the movement, displacement, injustice, grief, survival, and relentless search for somewhere he could finally stop running.
Writing Theo's history allows me to explore an important question:
How does someone learn to believe in permanence after spending a lifetime expecting everything to disappear?
Chasing Pavements isn't simply a prequel.
It's the road that eventually leads Theo home.
Theo & Chase: Happily Ever After
In Development | Sequel to Inheritance of Silence
"Love doesn't end with 'I do.' That's where the real story begins."
Stories love endings.
Real relationships have mornings afterward.
Bills. Jobs. Family. Arguments. Grocery lists. Bad moods. Inside jokes. Forgiveness. Sex. Laundry. Unexpected crises. Sunday mornings.
And choosing each other again.
Theo & Chase: Happily Ever After explores what comes after the sweeping romantic conclusion.
Because I've always been interested in the part after the words happily ever after.
What does lasting love actually look like when nobody is rolling the credits?
For Theo and Chase, the answer is imperfect, funny, complicated, deeply human—and theirs.
Love, Friendship & Everything In Between
Friends With Possible Upsides
In Development
"They agreed on three things: friendship, honesty, and absolutely no falling in love. Two out of three isn't terrible."
Dating has become exhausting.
The apps. The awkward conversations. The unanswered messages. The endless search for someone emotionally available enough to survive dinner.
So what happens when two longtime friends arrive at what seems like the obvious solution?
Each other.
Not dating, obviously.
Just friends—with possible upsides.
What fascinated me about this story wasn't simply the friends-to-lovers premise. It was the idea that sometimes people spend years searching for intimacy without realizing they've already built it.
John and James create rules designed to protect their friendship.
Naturally, feelings are terrible at following rules.
Friends With Possible Upsides explores friendship, sex, vulnerability, emotional safety, commitment, and that terrifying moment when the person you can't imagine losing becomes the person you realize you've fallen in love with.
Behind the story: Friendship • Romance • Intimacy • LGBTQ+ relationships • Vulnerability • Emotional safety • Love
Searching for Something More
Lux's Tarot & Spiritual Awakening
In Development
"Sometimes the greatest journey isn't outward—it's inward."
Lux's story grew from my fascination with intuition, symbolism, spirituality, synchronicity, and those moments in life that feel too meaningful to dismiss as coincidence.
Tarot is part of the story.
But tarot isn't really what the story is about.
At its heart, this is a novel about learning to trust yourself—especially when the life unfolding in front of you doesn't resemble the one you expected.
It's about asking questions without knowing whether answers exist.
And discovering that sometimes the person we're searching for has been waiting inside us all along.
Behind the story: Spirituality • Intuition • Tarot • Identity • Transformation • Self-discovery • Purpose
Art, Ambition & Being Seen
Starving Artist & Saviors
In Development
"What is the true price of being seen?"
Artists spend years hoping someone will notice their work.
But what happens when they finally do?
Through Darius Baer, Starving Artist & Saviors examines creativity, recognition, money, integrity, ambition, and the uncomfortable relationship between art and the people who profit from it.
Success can open doors.
It can also become another kind of cage.
This story asks what an artist is willing to sacrifice to be seen—and whether success still counts when you no longer recognize the person receiving it.
Behind the story: Art • Ambition • Recognition • Integrity • Exploitation • Success • Identity
When the Stories Got Darker
The House on Highland Avenue
Under Publisher Consideration
"What if the house remembers what everyone else has tried to forget?"
I've always been fascinated by houses.
Not simply by architecture, but by what buildings witness.
Families grow inside them. Arguments disappear behind closed doors. Secrets settle into rooms. Memories become attached to staircases, hallways, bedrooms, and walls.
People leave.
The house remains.
That fascination became The House on Highland Avenue.
Set against the atmosphere of a Southern Gothic mystery, the novel asks what happens when family history, memory, faith, secrets, and the supernatural begin occupying the same space.
But beneath the mystery is a very human question:
What happens when the truth a family buried refuses to stay buried?
Because sometimes the most frightening thing waiting inside an old house isn't a ghost.
It's the truth.
Behind the story: Southern Gothic • Family secrets • Memory • Faith • Generational history • Mystery • Supernatural • Truth
And Then Things Got Ridiculous
I Sharted!
Under Publisher Consideration | The Dunnamverse
"What happens when the most embarrassing moment of your life refuses to stay a moment?"
Yes.
The title is I Sharted!
And yes, the book begins exactly where you think it does.
But the ridiculousness was always only the doorway.
I wanted to write about humiliation.
We spend enormous amounts of energy constructing versions of ourselves for other people. Professional. Successful. Attractive. Competent. Completely in control.
Then life occasionally reminds us—in spectacular fashion—that control is largely an illusion.
For Martin Plunkett, that reminder arrives at possibly the worst moment imaginable.
What follows is absurd, embarrassing, chaotic, and increasingly complicated.
But underneath the comedy is a story about identity, friendship, reinvention, authenticity, and what happens when the version of yourself you've worked so hard to protect falls apart.
Sometimes humiliation destroys you.
Sometimes it introduces you to yourself.
And sometimes...
you shart.
Behind the story: Comedy • Humiliation • Identity • Reinvention • Friendship • Authenticity • Chaos
I Sharted… Again!
Under Publisher Consideration | The Dunnamverse
Apparently one catastrophic gastrointestinal event was not enough.
I Sharted… Again! expands the world introduced in I Sharted! and asks a deeply philosophical question:
How many times can one man's dignity reasonably be expected to survive?
The sequel takes the absurdity further while continuing to explore the surprisingly human territory underneath it—relationships, friendship, self-image, vulnerability, consequences, and what happens when life refuses to cooperate with the carefully curated version of yourself you've presented to the world.
Because surviving embarrassment once is character development.
Doing it again?
That's a franchise.
Welcome to the Dunnamverse
What started with one spectacularly unfortunate incident grew into something I never originally planned:
The Dunnamverse.
An interconnected collection of contemporary comedies about ordinary people surviving extraordinarily unfortunate encounters with their own humanity.
The stories are outrageous.
The titles are unapologetic.
But underneath the bodily functions and catastrophes are stories about confidence, intimacy, friendship, vulnerability, identity, and finding people who accept us after they've seen us at our least dignified.
Especially after they've seen us at our least dignified.
I Trusted the Fart
In Development | The Dunnamverse
There are moments when confidence is admirable.
And then there are moments when confidence is catastrophically misplaced.
I Trusted the Fart begins with one of humanity's oldest and most dangerous assumptions:
I've got this.
Narrator: He did not.
Beneath the inevitable chaos is a story about control, embarrassment, vulnerability, and learning that being human occasionally means accepting that your body did not consult you before making an executive decision.
Behind the story: Comedy • Confidence • Control • Vulnerability • Embarrassment • Humanity
Never Trust a Sneeze
In Development | The Dunnamverse
A sneeze should be harmless.
A sneeze should last approximately two seconds.
A sneeze should absolutely not alter the trajectory of your personal life.
And yet...
Never Trust a Sneeze takes another ordinary bodily function and turns it into the catalyst for misunderstanding, connection, embarrassment, and unexpected possibility.
Because sometimes the most important relationships begin with carefully orchestrated romance.
And sometimes your respiratory system has other plans.
Behind the story: Comedy • Relationships • Misunderstanding • Vulnerability • Unexpected connection
Oops, I Queefed
In Development | The Dunnamverse
Bodies are weird.
Intimacy is vulnerable.
And pretending otherwise has caused humanity entirely too much unnecessary embarrassment.
Oops, I Queefed takes an awkward moment and uses it to explore body confidence, sexuality, intimacy, acceptance, and what happens when embarrassment collides with genuine human connection.
Because perhaps the person worth keeping isn't the person who only sees you at your most polished.
Maybe it's the person who stays when dignity has temporarily left the building.
Behind the story: Comedy • Body confidence • Intimacy • Acceptance • Vulnerability • Relationships
Different Stories. One Literary Philosophy.
At first glance, these books probably shouldn't belong on the same bookshelf.
A contemporary novel about generational trauma.
A novel about vulnerability and being seen.
A memoir about rebuilding a life.
A prequel and sequel exploring love before and after Inheritance of Silence.
A friends-to-lovers romance.
A spiritual journey through tarot and self-discovery.
A story about art, ambition, and exploitation.
A Southern Gothic mystery.
And an expanding comedy universe involving an objectively unreasonable number of bodily functions.
Yet to me, they absolutely belong together.
Because genre changes.
The human question doesn't.
Again and again, I find myself writing about people standing at the dividing line between who they have been and who they might become.
People carrying things they need to put down.
People hiding things they need to confront.
People searching for home, love, identity, purpose, forgiveness, belonging—or simply permission to begin again.
Sometimes I explore those questions through heartbreak.
Sometimes through mystery.
Sometimes through romance.
Sometimes through spirituality.
Sometimes through laughter.
And apparently, sometimes through gastrointestinal betrayal.
But every story ultimately comes back to the same belief:
The things that happen to us shape our stories. They don't have to write the ending.
Welcome behind the books.
There are many more stories to come.
https://johnerikdunnam.com/books
https://johnerikdunnam.com/series/the-i-sharted-series
https://johnerikdunnam.com/collections/inheritance-of-silence-collection
https://johnerikdunnam.com/collections/the-dunnamverse-collection