🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈UPDATE🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈: When I said to stay tuned, I meant it.

“Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums” release date and preorder information is here!

Full cover art coming soon though… you can catch a glimpse of a few interior illustrations in the preorder link. I can’t stress enough how excited I am and happy I am to have been able to work with Josh and Hex Publishers putting this book together.

And a special thank you to my good friend, Angela Yuriko Smith for her honest and visceral introduction. It brought tears to my eyes.

This poetry collection will be FULL COLOR with both paperback AND hardback (with dust jacket) editions and will be released on June 20th, 2023.

Check out the preorder information here.

Additionally, I’ve received some incredibly kind, thoughtful, and generous blurbs from friends and colleagues in the writing community (with more on the way).

Here’s what they have to say:

“If Zeus picked up Ganymede in a gay bathhouse, if Laura met Carmilla in a BDSM dungeon for vampires, their tales of supernatural sexual awakening would resemble the poetry in Maxwell Gold’s terrifying—and incredibly sexy—Bleeding Rainbows and Other Spectrums. Gay sex isn’t relegated to metaphor in Gold’s steamy verse, for Bleeding Rainbows has smashed all of its closets, freeing the monsters who live within and shining its fearless light on the many ways in which they arouse us. Vampires, werewolves, and the ancient gods themselves are as hungry as they are mesmerizing, and are prowling your local nightclub where they dangerously exude the seductive aroma of leather.”

—Sumiko Saulson BRAM STOKER AWARD®-NOMINATED AUTHOR OF THE RAT KING, A BOOK OF DARK POETRY

“A bold, visceral collection that pushes past comfort zones into a fever dream of raw, ugly truths refracted by the spinning disco ball of Gold’s audacious poetic storytelling. Anchored in tremendous humanity, Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums will transport readers through their own personal infernos of guilt, shame, and utter imperfection, shooting them out somewhere into a cosmic void where voracious mirror monsters are slain by the healing light of self-forgiveness.”

-Vince Liaguno BRAM STOKER AWARD®-WINNING EDITOR OF UNSPEAKABLE HORROR: FROM THE SHADOWS OF THE CLOSET AND OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGY

“With this bold collection of desiccated erotic fantasies, Maxwell I. Gold creates a dread-palace of beautiful perversion. Confronting and brimming with universal truth, Bleeding Rainbows is a primal and dangerous work. Authentic and affective.”

—Lee Murray FOUR-TIME BRAM STOKER AWARDS®-WINNING AUTHOR OF GROTESQUE: MONSTER STORIES

I’ve always been nervous about reading my own poetry, and I know that has to change at some point. Though, when my friend Angela Yuriko Smith asked me to read my poem for her online show SPILLING THE INK you can sure bet, yes, I was just as hesitant.

Back in 2018 when my now Rhysling Award nominated poem Crimson Faces was published Angela’s husband, Ryan Smith produced an audio recording with him narrating the poem. The way he read every word, emphasized every breath, it was beautiful.

Naturally, I asked Angela if Ryan had the time to produce a similar version for The Gates of Katharion (Weird Tales #366, 2022) and well, without further explanation I’m pleased to share with you the finished product

The Gates of Katharion.

I can’t believe January has already almost come and gone. There’s so much to do, but I wanted to take a few minutes and update everyone with some of my upcoming writing appearances.

The Winter Edition of Spectral Realms No. 16 has been released from Hippocampus Press which includes contributions from Christina Sng, Wade German, Ann K. Schwader, Frank Coffman, and a host of familiar faces. The cover was designed by Dan Sauer which features the artwork A Witches’ Sabbath by Cornelis Saftleven, c. 1650.

I will have three prose poems in this issue, ‘The Great Parade,’ ‘The Beast with a Billion Stomachs,’ and ‘The City of Dreams.’

I’m particularly fond of the last piece due to the fact I tend to write a lot of my poetry as if I were dreaming in cities, landscapes and other metallic-scapes.

Next up is the Spring 2022 issue of the award winning publication The Horror Zine edited be Jeani Rector. This issue will feature three of my poems, ‘The Näigöth Waits,’Where No One Goes,’ and ‘Chthonic Dreams.’

Artwork by Janusz Gierat, formatted by Bruce Memblatt