People sometimes ask me what kind of writer I am. It's a fair question—one I've grappled with myself. Am I a romance writer? A literary fiction author? Someone who dabbles in the paranormal? Looking at my catalog, the answer isn't immediately obvious. I've written about vampires in London, ghosts in Indiana, and a nine-year-old boy trying to survive a Midwestern winter. But beneath the surface differences, there's a thread that runs through everything I write.
The Books at a Glance
My work spans what might look like disparate territory:
Flickering is set during Christmas week 1996, bringing together three strangers—a grieving professor, a teenager who's been cast out by his family, and a young man trying to rebuild after betrayal—as a winter storm forces them into each other's lives.
Reflections at the Window follows David Harmon, a Los Angeles film executive who has mastered the art of appearing successful while remaining profoundly alone. His encounter with a homeless man forces him to confront the walls he's built around his heart.
Bloodlines: Transcendence moves between modern London, rural Sweden, and the Philippines, weaving together four lives across supernatural boundaries—including a centuries-old vampire who has spent decades protecting his family by staying away from them.
PRISM centers on Tyler Anderson, a forty-five-year-old man whose mismatched eyes earned him his nickname, and who has built a rich life of work, travel, and deep friendships—the kind of chosen family that defines who he is.
treffen drops us into 1978 Kokomo, Indiana, where nine-year-old Gabriel Hanson navigates a world where he's been forgotten by his father and abandoned by his mother. When a local girl vanishes, the town begins to unravel, and Gabe must find his way through both the physical cold and the emotional one.
Almost Always follows Patrick O'Brien and David Chen across fifteen years of near-misses after they meet during two magical weeks at the University of Chicago in the mid-1980s—a story about timing, geography, and the loves that haunt us.
By Lantern Light is set in Connersville, Indiana, 1989, where Jason Reynolds has learned to make himself invisible to survive. But he keeps dreaming of two boys from 1892 who loved each other in secret—and when he and his friend Christopher investigate, they discover a tragedy on the railroad tracks and ghosts who refuse to let history repeat itself.
The Common Threads
So what binds a vampire romance to a Christmas story? What connects a child's survival tale to a decades-spanning love story?
Chosen Family
If there's one theme I return to again and again, it's this: the families we build matter as much—often more—than the ones we're born into. In Flickering, three strangers become family over the course of a single week because they choose each other. In Bloodlines: Transcendence, the bonds that matter most aren't written in blood alone—they're written in love. In PRISM, Tyler's "chosen family" spans the globe. Even in treffen, young Gabe finds his only warmth in his best friend's home, the one place he feels safe.
This isn't accidental. I grew up in a small Indiana town where family could mean everything or nothing, depending on the luck of the draw. I've watched people find their true families at forty, at sixty, at nineteen. The idea that belonging is something we create rather than something we're assigned has always resonated with me.
The Midwest as Character
Indiana appears in four of my seven books. Kokomo. Connersville. Small towns with big histories and complicated secrets. The Midwest shapes my characters the way it shaped me—teaching them to be quiet about what they feel, to keep their heads down, to survive the cold.
But there's beauty in that landscape too. The silence of a winter morning. The way a small town holds its history in abandoned farmhouses and overgrown railroad tracks. In By Lantern Light, the ghosts of 1892 linger because the land remembers. In treffen, the frozen streets of Kokomo are both prison and refuge. I write about the Midwest because I know its particular textures—the way isolation can be both crushing and clarifying.
Queer Love, Often Quiet
My stories center queer characters, but they're rarely "coming out" stories. My protagonists are more often grappling with connection itself—with allowing themselves to be seen, with the courage to love openly, with the weight of loving in a world that has historically demanded silence.
Jason in By Lantern Light has learned to make himself small to survive. Patrick and David in Almost Always spend fifteen years orbiting each other because geography and timing keep pulling them apart. Rafael in Bloodlines: Transcendence has spent years in solitude to protect those he loves. The queerness in my work is woven into character rather than plot—it's about who people are, not a problem to be solved.
The Weight of History
I'm drawn to stories where the past isn't finished with us. The ghosts in By Lantern Light aren't seeking revenge—they're trying to ensure that what happened to them doesn't happen to Jason and Christopher. In Bloodlines: Transcendence, century-old connections between bloodlines reveal themselves. Even Almost Always, with no supernatural elements at all, is haunted by two perfect weeks in Chicago that neither Patrick nor David can let go of.
History in my stories is never just backdrop. It's active. It reaches forward. It insists on being acknowledged.
The Quiet Moments
I've been told my writing is slow. I take that as a compliment. I'm interested in the moments between the dramatic ones—the conversation over dinner, the silence before someone finally says what they mean, the small gesture that reveals everything. Plot matters, but character matters more. I want readers to feel like they know these people, like they'd recognize them on the street.
Genre and the Question of Categories
Where do my books belong on a bookshelf? That's genuinely complicated. Bloodlines: Transcendence could sit in paranormal romance or LGBTQ+ fiction. By Lantern Light bridges YA and adult literary fiction. Flickering is a Christmas story, but it's also about found family and healing from loss. treffen is literary fiction with thriller undercurrents.
I've stopped trying to fit my work into neat categories. I write the stories that insist on being told, and they tend to blur genre lines because life does too. Love is love whether there are vampires involved or not. Family is family whether it's formed by blood or by choice. And the Midwest is always the Midwest—quiet on the surface, complicated underneath.
What I'm Really Writing About
At the end of the day, I think I'm writing about the same thing over and over: the human need to be seen and the courage it takes to allow that to happen. My characters build walls. They hide. They survive by becoming small or staying distant or burying themselves in work. And then something—or someone—breaks through.
That's the story I keep telling because it's the story I keep living. The details change. The century changes. The supernatural elements come and go. But underneath it all, I'm asking the same questions: What does it mean to truly connect with another person? What do we risk when we let someone see us? What does it cost when we don't?
Those questions don't have easy answers. But I'll keep exploring them, one story at a time.
Michael Manosca is the author of seven novels exploring love, identity, and the families we choose. He currently resides along the western coast of the United States. Learn more at michaelmanosca.com.