**ONC SHORTLIST 2024** Heems is an energy vampire, a parasite draining xeir hosts' energy with a single touch. That is until xe meets handsome thief Shiro, the only person immune to Heems's parasitism. ---- Working as a doctor on dwarf planet Eris, Heems drains the energy of xeir unknowing hosts -- Eris's sickly hospital patients -- to survive. Heems's rare parasitic condition doesn't seem to have a cure until xe attempts to make a host out of an injured smuggler. Heems's touch has no draining effect on the handsome vagrant, Shiro, possibly the only person in the Solar System immune to Heems's parasitism. Galvanised by the hope of finding a cure, Heems is lured by Shiro into a world of criminality and obsession, setting them both on a collision course with powerful organisations desperate to keep hidden Eris's biggest secret: that parasites can be hosts too. ☉ Energy vampirism ☉ LGBT+ romance ☉ Non-binary main character ☉ Cyberpunk ~~☉~~ ☆ No sci fi knowledge is needed to understand this story. Basically Eris is cold, has no atmosphere (literally and figuratively), and everyone's broke. I will put some sci fi comments inline for those who are interested, or if you don't understand something, just ask me. I'm happy to help! ☆ Notes on gender: Heems uses xe/xeir/xem pronouns. This book is written in first person so don't worry if you're new to these pronouns since there aren't so many instances of them being used in the book. Content Warning: This book is rated mature. It contains potentially triggering topics such as extreme hunger, chronic debilitating illnesses, suicide ideation, drug misuse, sexual intercourse while under the influence of recreational and medicinal drugs.

The real world skins you alive. It's a hazard of growing up in rural Suffolk... or possibly, it's a hazard of growing up. Either way, the Dorian Andrade and Isaiah Matalon who reunite at a party in Oxford have become equally disenchanted imitations of the boys who used to spend summers eating apples on the riverbank. A lot has changed in the six years since they saw each other. One thing is still the same: the longing for each other's company. But aren't the objects of our yearning so much easier to encounter in the imagination than when they're standing in front of us? GENRE: literary fiction, queer romance TROPES: second chance romance, friends to lovers, mutual pining COMP TITLES: A Little Life, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Call Me By Your Name, basically Wolfstar Muggle AU featured in Ambassador Reads featured in Ambassador Recommendations: Living Beyond Labels Dec 24 featured in Ambassadors: Slice of life featured in ContemporaryLit: Ambassadors' Picks featured in ContemporaryLit: LGBTQ+ Contemporary featured in ContemporaryLit: Literary Fiction featured in lgbtq: ManxMan (NA/Adult Fiction) featured in FreeTheLGBT: Diverse Literature featured in WattpadLitFic: Novels featured in WattpadMulticultural: September 2023 Reads of the Month

Levi is a nineteen-year-old asexual wizard with too many problems and not enough friends to help him with them. The magic and the price for using it is taking its toll but he refuses to give up before he has fixed what he broke eight years ago. But when magical beings start disappearing around him he is forced to acknowledge he is in way over his head. He needs help. But the price for that help may be even greater than that of the magic. Placed third in the Triple moon awards (2025) Longlister ONC 2024 Winner Round 2 ONC 2024 ONC 2024 Prompt 48. The curse of magic is that for every reward, there is a great loss. For every spell that goes right, there is something else-in the real, natural world-that goes terribly wrong. Nature loves its balance. Mature rating is due to on-page description of (magical) substance abuse in chapter 13. Cover by Supreme Rat Queen Rai who just said nope to my feeble attempt (as I knew she would :P)

"We caused the end of the world. Turns out it's easier than you might think it is. All you need is a group of eco anarchists and an ounce of magic, and the world goes down in a poof." After another manic episode, Phoenix gets written off his parents' will, and he's trying to find a reason to keep living. Causing the end of the world and being the only one who can save the world wasn't exactly what he had in mind. Phoenix wasn't meant to have magical abilities, and he most definitely shouldn't have been able to make all the money in the world disappear just by thinking about it. To make matters worse, it came with a minor side effect: a disease called Gold fever. In other words, people started to turn into gold. Over the course of a single day, Phoenix becomes the most hated person in the world. As the economy collapses around them, only three of his friends are willing to stay by his side. Their job is to keep Phoenix alive while he tries to make money reappear and find a cure to Gold fever. Which turns out to be more challenging than they thought, as they find out someone is tailing Phoenix with the intention to kill.

Nicolás Velez is done with casual sex. Listen, yes, he might've slept with everyone in his flat within the first week of living in halls and had a respectable run on Grindr, but what eighteen-year-old wouldn't? He's almost twenty-four now, though, and hooking up with people who can't pronounce his name is, as his best mate would say, "not cute, baby girl". Problem: Nikki sucks at dating. With only disasters to show for his efforts, he decides to take a break from it all. That is, until he meets Josephine Rawlins. GENRE: romance, pan man x bi woman TROPES: workplace romance, friends with benefits, mutual pining COMP TITLES: Entergalactic, Take A Hint Dani Brown featured in Wattpad: Black Love featured in Wattpad: BHM Contemporary Lit featured in Wattpad: Pride Community Recommendations featured in lgbtq: Pride Shelf Dec 24 featured in lgbtq: Bisexual and Pansexual featured in Ambassador Recommendations BIPOC Mental Health featured in Ambassadors: Rainbow Fiction featured in Romance: Slow Burn featured in Romance: LGBTQAIP+ Romance featured in Romance: Pride Month featured in Romance: New Beginnings FreeTheLGBT Pride Awards winner 2025 Nano Watt Romance shortlister 2025

They say knowing is half the battle. But sometimes it takes more than acknowledged love to turn a friendship into something more. Being lovestruck and unable or unwilling to do anything about it is a special kind of hurt. Can childhood friends, Calvin and Ian, get over their own individual hangups and finally take that plunge?

THE YEAR IS 2050. Human-like androids have become integrated into society and every household, becoming part of our daily lives. They look exactly like us from the pigment of their artificial skin to every follicle of their hair. They protect. They serve. They obey. They learn. Tyler North is a struggling young photographer in New York. When he wins a voucher for a personalized android, Tyler reluctantly purchases one and names it Aiden. Instead of a dull subservient Android, he was blown away by Aiden's adaptiveness, and is not like the regular androids Tyler had met before. However, Tyler can't hide Aiden's free-willed gift against the corporation that built him who planned to use Aiden for a more sinister purpose. Whoever controls Aiden can change Earth for the better...or worse. Mechanical Gods is a near-future Science Fiction Epic by D. Alec Lyle, infused with stylized heart-pounding action, sleek thriller, and provocative intrigue. Picked as part of Wattpad's Up and Coming List (2018), and Editor's Choice List (2020). STATS: 132,385 words [ 511 pages in a paperback ] [Highest -- #1 in Science Fiction] [ #1 in Philosophical ] [ #1 in Android ] [ #1 in LGBT ] [ #1 in artificialintelligence]