R.M. Virtues Books

R.M. Virtues is a bestselling author of romantasy and paranormal romance whose work runs on mythology, fairy tales, and folklore. He is Afro-Indigenous and Two-Spirit, currently residing as a guest on Nuwuvi lands, and that perspective shapes how he handles the source material. Where a lot of mythology retellings flatten the gods into archetypes, Virtues writes them as complicated people carrying long histories and unresolved obligations to each other, which turns out to be a much better engine for romance.

The breakthrough is Drag Me Up, published in March 2021 and the first book in the Gods of Hunger series. It relocates Hades and Persephone to Khaos Falls, a dark, gothic modern city where Hades is a reclusive casino owner and Persephone is an aerialist performing in a Cirque production inside his building. The setup gives him everything he needs. A man who controls a space, a woman who moves through it on her own terms, and a mythological history the reader already half knows working underneath every conversation. The series continues across further books following other gods in the same city, and Songs of Khaos collects companion stories originally written for Patreon, including a Hephaestus and Aphrodite date night and a celebration involving Hecate, Hades, and Persephone.

His work extends beyond that world. Sing Me to Sleep, Keep Me Close, and Let Me In sit in his paranormal romance catalogue, and Wicked Pursuit and Divine Intervention continue the mythological line. Across all of it the same preoccupations recur: found family, negotiated power, characters with more history than page count, and relationships that are frequently not limited to two people.

What defines his writing is emotional maturity inside a very high heat register. His characters communicate. They talk about what they want, they establish boundaries, and conflict comes from circumstance and history rather than from a misunderstanding that a single conversation would fix. That is unusual in this corner of the genre and it is a large part of why readers become devoted rather than merely satisfied. The prose is dense and voice-forward, the chapters run long, and the worldbuilding assumes you arrive with some Greek mythology already in hand rather than explaining as it goes.

On heat, he runs high. On our spice scale his work sits around a 4, sometimes higher, and the explicit content is frequent, detailed, and central to how the relationships develop rather than bolted on at the end. There is also queer representation throughout and polyamorous configurations in several books. Content warnings vary considerably by title and are worth checking, because the darkness in these books is real. If you want a closed door, this is emphatically not your author.

Why he matters to a romantasy audience: mythology retellings are one of the largest and most crowded categories in the genre, and Virtues is one of the few writers doing it with a distinct authorial voice rather than an interchangeable house style. He is also one of the more prominent Black and Indigenous authors in a space that has been slow to broaden, and his books make a case for morally gray leads whose moral complication comes from history and obligation rather than from a bad temper. Readers who love a villain romance where the villain is treated as a full person will find a lot here.

Where to start: Drag Me Up and read the Gods of Hunger books in publication order, because characters recur constantly and the city accumulates meaning as you go. Save Songs of Khaos for after at least the first two books, since the companion stories assume you already know everyone. If Khaos Falls is not your city, the standalone paranormal titles are a lower-commitment sample of his voice. For more in this heat bracket once you are done, the spicy romantasy collection is the right next shelf.