Every story has that one character who arrives and refuses to stay in the background. For She Came at the Glass Heel, that character is Echo Dela Cruz.
Echo began as a practical idea. I needed someone who could anchor the world of The Glass Heel nightclub from story to story. Since each novella follows different characters and different weekends, I wanted one steady presence connecting them all. I needed someone who understood the room, knew the regulars, and could make the club feel alive...
There are moments in a creative journey that feel quietly affirming, and this is one of them. I’m honored to share that She Came at the Glass Heel has been awarded Third Place in Romance – Series at the Spring 2026 The BookFest.
This series has always been deeply personal to me. It was built around the idea that transgender women deserve to be centered in stories of love, desire, and connection—not as side characters, not as symbols, but as fully realized people whose experiences are worthy...
Desire is one of the most powerful forces you can put on the page. It drives action, reveals vulnerability, and creates tension that readers can feel in their bodies. But it’s also where a lot of stories lose their footing. Characters who feel grounded and specific in every other scene can suddenly become generic the moment intimacy enters the room. The voice shifts. The choices blur. The character disappears, and something flatter takes their place.
That’s the line I’m always trying not to...
Erotic writing is often treated like a guilty pleasure—something to hide, something to apologize for, something that somehow “doesn’t count” as real storytelling. That framing has always felt limiting to me. It assumes that desire is trivial, or worse, shameful. Velvet Orchid Press exists because I don’t accept that premise. Desire is not a distraction from story. It is story.
Desire is information. It reveals what a character wants, what they fear, what they are willing to risk, and where...
People often think of nightlife as noise, dancing, cocktails, and flirtation. And yes, those things are part of it. But for many people—especially those who have spent parts of their lives feeling out of place—nightlife can become something far more meaningful. It can become a place where strangers slowly become familiar faces, and familiar faces become something that feels very much like family.
Not the family we are born into, but the one we find.
In She Came at the Glass Heel, the...
Today, Chicago is once again reminding us what January really means.
Not “cute snow.”
Not “cozy sweater weather.”
But wind that slices through wool, air that burns the lungs, sidewalks that punish heels, and the kind of cold that makes every exposed inch of skin ache.
It is the same cold that opens all four of the first She Came to the Glass Heel novellas.
In First Step, Claire walks toward The Glass Heel through falling snow, mascara threatened by moisture, courage threatened by fear, every...
Sanctuary Nights is the fourth installment in the She Came at the Glass Heel series, and it is firmly rooted in the world, tone, and emotional commitments established by the earlier books. Set within the orbit of The Glass Heel and the community that surrounds it, this novella focuses on what sanctuary actually looks like when it is not abstract or idealized, but built through deliberate choices, boundaries, and human care .
Rather than positioning safety as something discovered fully formed,...
Popular romance is crowded with knights—men who arrive at precisely the right moment, sword raised, danger vanquished by their presence alone. The fantasy is tidy: distress is external, solvable, and temporary; love is proven through decisive action; the rescued is grateful, changed, and safe because someone stronger intervened. It is a compelling myth, but it is also a deeply limiting one.
Jordan is written deliberately against that grain.
Although the story flirts with the...
When people first hear about She Came at the Glass Heel, they usually picture one thing: a glamorous queer nightclub where the lights are low, the music is loud, and the sex is unapologetically front and center.
They’re not wrong.
The Glass Heel absolutely is a place of desire. It’s a club where women come to explore kink, experiment with fantasy, and step into versions of themselves they might never reveal in daylight. There are bodies on the dance floor, private rooms behind velvet...
There are forty-eight weekends at The Glass Heel. Forty-eight women stepping through those doors, each carrying her own hunger, her own secrets, her own reasons for being there. Some nights I close my eyes and I can see them all—a crowded dance floor of characters waiting for their turn in the spotlight, each one whispering, Tell my story. Tell mine.
So how do I choose? How do I decide which woman gets her weekend, which desire gets explored, which corner of intimacy I'll illuminate next?
The...
It started with a wild, impossible thought. I remember staring at my notes for what was supposed to be just one novella and realizing it wasn’t enough. There were too many women, too many stories, too many nights under the strobe lights of The Glass Heel waiting to be told. Forty-eight. That was the number that came to me—one novella for every weekend in a year. I laughed when I said it out loud. Am I really doing this? Forty-eight? But even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. I had...