My Manuscripts

SAINTFIRE

Dark Fantasy - LGBT - 115,000 Words

When a tormented former concubine trained in dark magic and a scarred trans swordsman are forced to fight side by side in a gladiatorial arena, their shared hunger for revenge ignites something far greater than themselves: a fire that could burn angels, kings, and their own humanity alike.

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Women’s War Academy

When three young women are recruited into the all-women officer’s academy of an expanding military empire—one out of compassion, one out of revenge, and one by sheer chance—they must rely on each other to survive the academy’s deadly lessons and hostile peers before their conflicting morals and motivations tear their group apart.

Fantasy - War - LGBT - 95,000 Words
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About the Author

Rosemary Stauffer (R.M. Grant) is a Michigan-based writer of queer dark fantasy. She is a queer, plus-sized woman whose experiences overcoming cancer, childhood poverty, and sexual violence deeply influence her stories. In the late 2010s, Rosemary won the Sheila Officer and William Jenkins creative writing competitions, and used the prize money from those events to put herself through Tennessee Technological University, where she graduated in 2020 with a bachelor's degree in Creative Writing.

Rosemary has resumed creative writing in her remission from a years-long battle with lymphoma. When she isn't writing, she works as freelance writer, editor, and beta reader. Her short stories have been published three times.

You can read some of her work here.

SAINTFIRE AGENT’S GUIDE

  • SAINTFIRE is a story of human sacrifice in all its forms. Thahira, a captive to a cruel prince, learns to sacrifice others in exchange for her first taste of power and freedom. Nations away Daud, a trans man, finds himself and the community that has accepted him on the other side of the sacrificial flame. By chance, they are drawn to the same order of holy knights. When the leader of their order is betrayed by the king, Thahira and Daud are imprisoned in a gladiatorial arena, forced to fight side by side. Through their blood-soaked bond, they discover in each other the only sense of comfort and security that either has ever felt. 

    Daud is determined to stop those who continue the cycle of sacrifice, even if it means his death, leaving Thahira with a desperate choice: to abandon Daud and her magic and save herself, or gamble it all by diving deeper into the mind-breaking dark magic for the chance to possibly save them both… losing her own humanity in the process.

    SAINTFIRE was selected as one of this year's Round Table Mentor novels, and was revised with the help of a number of talented professional authors. The manuscript is currently under consideration by an agent.

  • SAINTFIRE features the esoteric, twisted magic of Caitlin Starling’s The Starving Saints with the historically inspired rags-to-vengeance of Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress.

    Other comps include the LGBT protagonists and tragic fantasy romance of The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw and the dark and twisted setting and morally gray protagonists of Christopher Buehlman’s Between Two Fires.

  • "Very well. How does one free the soul?"

    This question, Thahira had thought, was the simplest. Death, of course. Death frees the soul.

    For a time.

    Every faith around the world agreed that there was life beyond death. The shaman and scholars of Mircalla believed in the churning moon-wheel of reincarnation. The heretics of the west believed in a conquered heaven, ruled by a long dead man—absurd.

    Both systems, every system, simply rearranged the deceased from one system of control to another. Even death was not freeing, she realized. It was merely the shuffling of feet.

    So. How does one free the soul?

    “By shoveling so much divinity inside oneself that you cannot help but rise, like a balloon filled with fire,” she said. “By capturing so many gods within your stomach that your soul is made divine itself.” So that the maggot can become the fly.

    Madra’s eyes shone brighter, as if the oblong moon burned from inside each of her twin pupils. Moonlight, silver and blue, reflected off of her teeth from the water beside.

    “Well, then, my girl. How do you capture a hidden god?”

    Thahira barked out a single laugh.

    “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked. “You eat it.”

  • All professional matters can be directed to my author email, rosemary.mclean.grant@gmail.com.

The Protagonists

After surviving the harrowing sacrifice of his village, Daud is left scarred both mentally and physically. Determined to prevent such atrocities from ever impacting another, he commits himself to knighthood as a saint-in-training. Yet when his order is betrayed, he learns that some goals are not achievable by those with honor… and that sometimes vengeance is more achievable than justice.

Thahira was never content to be a nameless, moonless girl. When her first aspiration—to become a princess—leads to her imprisonment and torture, she learns to dig deeper to earn back her freedom and her first taste at power. Is there any depth to which she won’t descend? Is there anything she won’t burn to warm herself?

WOMEN’S WAR ACADEMY

Women’s War Academy is a finished manuscript, but is still in the process of undergoing beta reading and potential re-writes before I begin the process of querying it.

If you would like to be a part of bringing this story to life, you can apply to be a beta reader by emailing me at rosemary.mclean.grant@gmail.com.