The Care of Broken Things (Breaking Free Book 1) An MMM prison Romance of Survival and Redemption by October Arden Release Blitz with Author Interview & Giveaway

BLOG TOUR - NEW RELEASE

Book Title: The Care of Broken Things

Author and Publisher: October Arden

Release Date: August 1, 2025

Tense/POV: Third person, past tense, single POV

Genres: Contemporary MMM prison romance (leans into literary with a strong romantic core)

Tropes: Grumpy/sunshine, found family, hurt/comfort, healing from grief, obsessive devotion, fake dating, prison husband, marriage of convenience, wrongfully imprisoned, morally gray characters, polyamory that heals

Themes: Trauma recovery, self-loathing to self-worth, redemption through love, the violence of tenderness

Heat Rating: 2 out of 5

Length: 82,000 words/320 pages

It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US | Amazon UK

Some loves rewrite your sentence

Blurb

Samuel has spent years building walls.
Not the prison’s concrete ones, but the kind that keep lives from bleeding into each other. As the prison’s self-appointed librarian, he’s carved out a fragile peace where silence is his shield. The inmates call him The Ice Queen—a title he wears like armor. After a lifetime of being preyed upon, he knows better than to let anyone close.
Then Eli arrives like sunlight through bulletproof glass.
A wrongfully convicted pediatrician, and unbearably kind, Eli is everything Samuel knows to avoid, so when he steps in to protect the man, it’s supposed to be a one-time act of mercy.
But Eli’s husband has another plan.
Nathaniel—who looks at Samuel like he’s something more than a convict—makes a request that shatters everything:
"Be his prison husband. Love him where I can’t."
It’s a lie that should be easy. Samuel’s an expert at deception. But the longer he plays the role, the more the lines blur: Eli’s warmth seeping into his frozen bones, Nathaniel’s quiet strength, the whispered secrets of Eli’s daughter who trusts only him.
Now the man who built his life on solitude hoards these moments like contraband.
Some loves rewrite your sentence.

A devastating queer romance about the families we carve from our own ribs, and the love that refuses to let us stay broken.

Excerpt

Twenty minutes later he kicked Eli’s bed. It had been a day and a half since the library incident, and he hadn’t spoken a word to him since. He’d thought Eli’s perseverance would continue, but maybe the man was learning about personal space. He knew he ought to be happy about that, but the change unnerved him. He didn’t like things that didn’t come with explanations.

Eli didn’t open his eyes. “Hi, Samuel.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Your particular brand of hospitality.” The man paused. “Also, you smell like Reese’s cups.”

“You can smell that from here?”

He took a somewhat discreet sniff of himself, but all he could detect was the shitty prison detergent.

“Hunger sharpens the sense.”

He was appalled. “You still haven’t—It’s been 48 hours!”

“I’ve done 100 hour fasts before.”

That boggled the mind. “Why?”

“To rest my gut after glutenings, mostly,” Eli said. “Why is it that you can ask questions of me, but won’t answer any of mine?”

True to form, he ignored the question and upended his new purchases onto the bed. Eli’s eyes sprang open. “What—”

“No more fasting.”

Eli picked up one of the packages on his chest. Sardines.

“They’ve got Omega 3’s, right? That’s good for inflammation. There’s some salmon there, too, in those pouches.”

Eli sat up. Packages and pouches slithered off him and onto the bedspread.

Suddenly nervous, Samuel found himself rambling. “I wasn’t sure if your commissary account was up and running yet, and the stuff I gave you before were things you couldn’t eat, so I—”

The man was smiling. Not smirking, not grinning—and Samuel knew he was in trouble.

“You’re amazing,” Eli said, as if he hadn’t just ruined a man’s life. “Thank you. And you’re right. My commissary account still isn’t linked up yet.”

As if that wasn’t enough, Eli then swept a space clear on the bed and pointed his invitation. It was the smile Samuel would blame later. He sat where indicated, more pliant and cooperative than he’d ever been in his life.

Eli was impressed. “This is a better haul than I was expecting. I might actually survive on this.”

Samuel was beginning to come back to himself. It was easier now that Eli was sorting through the food, like the spell of that smile had been broken—or at least weakened.

“Who’s Nathaniel?”

Eli flashed him a grin. “My murderer-hating husband.” He ripped open a bag of trail mix. “Don’t suppose I could trouble you to eat the M&M's out of these for me?”

He expected the man to dig in, but Eli only ate an almond, a cashew, and a peanut before setting the package down. That broke his brain a little. “Aren’t you hungry?”

Eli brought the pouch of sardines up to his mouth and ripped it open with his teeth. “Labels are useful, but they’re not foolproof. If I haven’t reacted in half an hour, I’ll eat a little more.”

Samuel knew that if he’d gone more than two days without food, he’d have gnawed his own leg off. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“Hmm?”

“You knew you couldn’t eat what I bought you, and you knew they’d continue to keep screwing up the special meal thing. So why didn’t you come to me? We could have done this two days ago.”

Eli fished a sardine out with his fingers. The slimy things looked repulsive, and the smell alone was enough to knock someone out. Eli caught him staring and tilted the pouch toward him. “Pardon my rudeness. Would you like some?”

He had to swallow bile. “Your husband’s never going to kiss you again.”

Tell us a little about yourself.

I'm a chronically ill writer who lives like a hermit. My Mast Cell Activation Syndrome keeps me indoors most of the year—my windows are sealed, and everything entering my apartment gets inspected and cleaned. I follow the schedule of a three-year-old, heading to bed before sunset in summer because I need to save my mental energy for writing. I'm neurodivergent (ADHD) with a fountain pen obsession and a stereotypical love of trains. If I could perpetually make it rain, I would.

What would people be most surprised to know about you?

That I have a degree of aphantasia—I can't form clear mental images in my mind's eye. Everything is blurry and vague, which probably influences why I keep my character descriptions intentionally hazy. I want readers to form their own connections rather than me imposing my fuzzy mental pictures on them.

Do you have a favorite quote (either from your own books or one's you've read)?

I have far too many favorite quotes, but I’ll share a couple from fellow writers about the creative process itself. 

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”— Rumi

Almost all my writing is pain. That’s where my creative well sits. I know I’ve done a particularly good day’s work when I’ve cried at least twice.

And “A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people.”

— Thomas Mann

This one is what I remind myself whenever I get stuck, or whenever I’m staring at a terrible first draft and the long road of editing ahead. Writing is hard. And writing the kind of stories only you can write is harder than writing what the market wants.

How long have you been writing and what made you fall in love with writing?

I've been writing since I was twelve, but only recently decided to make a serious go of it professionally. What made me fall in love with it was discovering I could create people who felt real to me—Samuel and Nathaniel were my first original characters, and they've lived in my head for years. Writing became my way of exploring how love functions when everyone is carrying fractures.

Did you always want to be a writer?

The dream was always there, but for most of my life it felt like pure fantasy. There's ego in saying "my stories deserve to be read by lots of people"—it sounds obnoxious. But I realized these particular stories weren't being told elsewhere, and I wanted them to exist.

What are your ambitions for your writing career?

To keep telling stories that matter to people who feel unseen. I want to write characters who are chronically ill, neurodivergent, or broken in ways that make them unappealing to most but exactly what’s needed by their most important people. Jagged shards can fit together as well as standard puzzle pieces too, and I want to show that these “unwanted” characters deserve love and happiness. My next project is the Inside trilogy about plurality/DID, because that representation barely exists in romance.

What's your favorite part of writing?

Dialogue! My books are very dialogue-heavy because I'm addicted to witty banter—the electric kind that makes you want to keep characters talking forever. When characters start speaking for themselves, that's when I know I've found the story.

Tell us about your writing style.

I aim for emotional intensity without melodrama. I like to live with my characters in a narrow band just above total mental breakdown—where radical honesty meets impossible devotion. I try to keep the prose clean so readers don't get snarled in fancy metaphors, though I naturally tend toward the dramatic and have to rein myself in.

What does your writing process look like?

I need to know my characters well enough for their words to flow naturally, but I start with a loose outline that inevitably gets abandoned. I aim for 3000 words a day but usually hit 2000 (less during health flares). The first draft is just the beginning—then comes the hell of editing.

When/where is your favorite time/place to write?

Ideally beside a waterfall, but practically in my room with HEPA filters running and rain sounds playing on YouTube. I can't listen to music while writing because the words distract me, but I need soothing background noise.

Why did you choose to write LGBT romance/fiction?

I write what I know and what I want to see in the world. My own gender and sexuality have become very flexible over time, and that's reflected in my characters. Plus, queer love stories often explore themes of acceptance and finding family that resonate deeply with anyone who's felt "different" or broken.

Have you held any interesting jobs while you worked on your books?

I used to work at a residence home for women with special needs. There was one individual there—I’ll call her D—who was in her early twenties. She was small, only about eighty pounds. She couldn’t walk, severely limited in her movements, and was cognitively at about the “level” of a six-month old infant. When I tell you that this young woman profoundly changed me, I am underselling it. What D taught me was the truth and power of unconditional love. Because D's love was freely given. She had no ulterior motives. No goals or expectations for her love. She simply loved, and in the purest, most healing form I have ever met with. My own love could never match it. My heart isn’t that open, nor so brave or whole or generous, but she cracked me open with her love, and every memory I have with her is one I cherish. I remember everything about her. The unbearable softness of her cheeks when I kissed them, the smell of her shampoo, the sound she would make when the wind touched her face or when I spun her around in my arms. And though I only had her for about five years before her death (just two weeks shy of her 23rd birthday due to cardiac arrest) I will forever consider it the most profound experience of love in my life. I was already quite ill myself by then, sick enough that even with active rest and conserving my energy and health as much as possible, I found it extraordinarily difficult to keep up with the rigors of the job. But even so, I wish I had taken more shifts to be with her. To have just a little more time, a few more hours in her company. Life is so precious, and only the more so when you’re sick and have less time than other people do. I don’t know how long I have, or how many of my stories I’ll have the energy to write, but I still think of D most days, even though at this point, she’s been gone for as long as I knew her. You never know which people will love you most and love you hardest, and often it’s not from the source you expect. In all things, choose love. Love of people. Love of craft. Love of self. From what I’ve seen, it's more meaningful than anything else.

Describe a scene in your writing that has made you laugh or cry?

Samuel asking Nathaniel "Can I be your wife?" after kissing him for the first time always makes me both cry AND smile. Here's this man who's spent his whole life feeling unworthy of love, finally brave enough to ask for what he wants, even if he doesn't think he deserves the role of "husband." The vulnerability and hope in that moment makes me so proud of how far he’s come.

Give us a brief summary of your latest book. What genre does it fall in?

The Care of Broken Things is an MMM character driven prison romance about Samuel, a beautiful young man serving fifteen years for murder, who falls in love with Eli, a doctor wrongfully imprisoned, and Eli's husband Nathaniel on the outside. It's about how love can exist and grow even in the most broken circumstances, and how we can heal through connection despite (and maybe because of) our trauma.

Give us a little insight into your main characters. Who are they?

Samuel is a walking wound who'd do anything for the people he loves and nothing for himself. He's hypervigilant from trauma but has a fierce protective instinct and hidden gentleness. Eli is strength and kindness personified—a chronically ill doctor who carries darkness but genuinely tries to see the best in everyone. Nathaniel embodies "compersion"—he loves so cleanly he can celebrate others' joy rather than feeling possessive. Together, they prove that families can be built from the most unlikely circumstances.

Will we be seeing these characters again? Is this book part of a series?

You’ll see them immediately in Boyfriend on Parole the extended epilogue for The Care of Broken Things. But you should also be seeing them again in a spinoff AU. I won’t say anything else to avoid spoiling, but if you’re curious about how these characters and their relationship might have developed in entirely different circumstances (and without a prison setting) then stay tuned.

Which actor would you like to see playing the lead character from your most recent book?

Oof. I don’t know. But I’ve always pictured Idris Elba for Eli (coincidentally, Idris Elba is Nathaniel’s celebrity crush.)

What genre/s do you enjoy reading in your free time?

Fantasy, mostly, bonus when most (or all) of the characters are queer.

About the Author

October Arden writes emotionally raw queer stories that live somewhere between literary fiction and romance. Their work explores fluid identities, found families, co-dependent devotion, and complicated love—often through the lens of characters who are chronically ill, neurodivergent, or quietly self-destructive. These are stories for anyone who's ever felt unwanted or unseen, where even the most damaged hearts can find a home.

October loves hearing from readers, so feel free to reach out, ask questions, or suggest what you'd like to see next. You can also join the newsletter to stay in touch—and as a thank you, you'll receive a free copy of Starting with Cake, a quietly unhinged neurodivergent love story full of snack cakes, janitor uniforms, and the kind of care that sneaks up on you. Find out about new books and other extras at octoberarden.com

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