For the Love of Cake

"Intersectionality is woven throughout this complex novel. Layered on top of transgender issues are racial issues, class issues, male/female issues, sexuality issues, and even more." - Amazon Reviewer A fearless and contemplative novel about Black masculinity, queer love, and the spiritual awakening that begins when we stop hiding from ourselves.🖤 What if the life you built to survive is not the life meant to set you free?Bryan Hicks is a cisgender Black executive in Houston, Texas - disciplined, accomplished, and emotionally guarded. In the high-pressure world of oil and gas, control has been his shield. Strength has been his currency. Conformity has been his survival strategy.But when he falls in love with Nadia, a self-assured transgender woman who refuses to live in the shadows, his carefully constructed identity begins to fracture. Loving her openly in conservative Texas forces him to confront cultural expectations of masculinity - and the deeper question beneath them:Who is he when no one is looking?Through meditation and the quiet discipline of Buddhist wisdom, Bryan begins to untangle shame, desire, and fear. Coming out later in life is not just a social risk - it is a spiritual reckoning. Guided by stillness and self-inquiry, he must decide whether isolation is safer than truth, and whether vulnerability might lead him not to rejection, but to community.Cake Walk is a character-driven literary novel for readers drawn to stories of spiritual growth, identity, and emotional courage. Set in Texas yet resonant far beyond it, this novel explores how contemplation can dismantle conformity - and how love, when lived openly, can connect us to the community we once believed we had to face alone.Content Warnings: Cake Walk contains material that might prove to be explicit sexual content and contains potentially triggering subject matter including racism, homophobia, transphobia, and hate speech.