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Whispers From The Closet: A Collection of LGBTQ+ Short Stories
A door opens in a quiet room. Not a miracle, not a spectacle, just a hinge choosing the honest angle. These stories live in that the instant before recognition, the breath after a name is spoken, the slow courage of returning to yourself.
Set in bookshops and kitchens, city rooms and back-alley shelters, Whispers From the Closet gathers tender, necessary moments from LGBTQ+ lives. A borrowed cardigan becomes a banner. A receipt learns a new name. A sister keeps the door unlatched. A father learns what love sounds like when it stops performing. Each page moves by lyric cadence, not ornament, and keeps faith with ordinary counting a till, washing a cup, tying a leash. Nothing grand; everything true.
This collection is mythic by temperament rather than costume. Archetypes are turned to face the the pilgrim as customer, the oracle as cashier, the beloved as the one who stays. The grammar is spare, the pulse steady. Longing has its own sovereignty here; recognition is a rite, not a verdict.
You’ll like this book if you quiet queer fiction, intimate realism with a mythic undertone, unrhymed lyric prose, stories where tenderness does the heavy lifting.
Content gentle but direct encounters with misgendering, family conflict, and public scrutiny; nothing gratuitous; a clear arc toward safety and self-possession.
Readers step in as witnesses and leave as not to a cause, but to a life that fits. The door is already open.
Set in bookshops and kitchens, city rooms and back-alley shelters, Whispers From the Closet gathers tender, necessary moments from LGBTQ+ lives. A borrowed cardigan becomes a banner. A receipt learns a new name. A sister keeps the door unlatched. A father learns what love sounds like when it stops performing. Each page moves by lyric cadence, not ornament, and keeps faith with ordinary counting a till, washing a cup, tying a leash. Nothing grand; everything true.
This collection is mythic by temperament rather than costume. Archetypes are turned to face the the pilgrim as customer, the oracle as cashier, the beloved as the one who stays. The grammar is spare, the pulse steady. Longing has its own sovereignty here; recognition is a rite, not a verdict.
You’ll like this book if you quiet queer fiction, intimate realism with a mythic undertone, unrhymed lyric prose, stories where tenderness does the heavy lifting.
Content gentle but direct encounters with misgendering, family conflict, and public scrutiny; nothing gratuitous; a clear arc toward safety and self-possession.
Readers step in as witnesses and leave as not to a cause, but to a life that fits. The door is already open.
234 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 30, 2025
1 person is currently reading
About the author
Lia Declan
17 books2 followersLia Declan is a transgender mythic fiction writer, queer romanticist, and ritual designer whose work initiates readers into sovereign longing, emotional labor, and the reversal of canonical myths. As co-owner of Stargazer’s Book Nook, Lia curates literary thresholds that honor erased truths and celebrate queer imagination.
Her stories—rooted in LGBTQ+ experience, fantasy, and poetic structure—reclaim mythic archetypes through emotionally authentic, often romantic, reversals. Her debut novel, Chosen By Winter, explores misrecognition and ritual love through epic cadence and sovereign myth. She is currently developing a lesbian romance set in 1797 Belfast, where longing, power, and ritual initiation unfold between Brid and Aisling.
Lia holds a doctorate in theology and postgraduate degrees in grammar and classical literature. Her scholarship informs her mythic grammar, poetic cadence, and ritual pedagogy, allowing her to teach mythic narrative to students age 16+ with exacting care and emotional depth. Every flyer, author page, and public invocation she creates is a sacred act—ritualized, refined, and uncompromising in its mythic and queer intent.
As a transgender woman, Lia’s work embodies the transformative power of recognition, reversal, and reclamation—inviting readers into stories where truth is sovereign, love is ritual, and identity is mythic.
Her stories—rooted in LGBTQ+ experience, fantasy, and poetic structure—reclaim mythic archetypes through emotionally authentic, often romantic, reversals. Her debut novel, Chosen By Winter, explores misrecognition and ritual love through epic cadence and sovereign myth. She is currently developing a lesbian romance set in 1797 Belfast, where longing, power, and ritual initiation unfold between Brid and Aisling.
Lia holds a doctorate in theology and postgraduate degrees in grammar and classical literature. Her scholarship informs her mythic grammar, poetic cadence, and ritual pedagogy, allowing her to teach mythic narrative to students age 16+ with exacting care and emotional depth. Every flyer, author page, and public invocation she creates is a sacred act—ritualized, refined, and uncompromising in its mythic and queer intent.
As a transgender woman, Lia’s work embodies the transformative power of recognition, reversal, and reclamation—inviting readers into stories where truth is sovereign, love is ritual, and identity is mythic.
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