NEW RELEASE: Wonder Boy: Owned by Calan Mercer (Excerpt + Q&A with Author)

NEW RELEASE

Book Title: Wonder Boy: Owned

Author: Calan Mercer

Publisher: Valleyburn Press

Cover Artist: Neslihan Yardimli for BookCoverZone

Release Date: September 15, 2026

Tense/POV: third person, past tense, three alternating POV 

Genres: Contemporary MM Dark/Erotic Romance, BDSM

Tropes: Forbidden love, workplace, boss/employee, age gap, power exchange, possessive mmc, insta-obsession (touch him and die), psychological, hurt/comfort, aftercare heavy

Themes: Identity, Belonging, Complicity, Power as intimacy, Self-destruction, Legacy and ownership, Survival

Length: approx. 129 000 words

It is book one in a trilogy. It ends as an HFN where it is clear there is more to resolve.

Heat Rating: 5 flames

Goodreads

Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US   |  Amazon UK 

He came for the job. He left owned.

Blurb 

Alex Mercer was supposed to be untouchable: the golden heir to his family’s powerful law firm in Los Angeles, two years of associate experience under his belt, dispatched to Las Vegas to bring the chaotic Global Combat League to heel.

Instead, he met Jack Doyle.

Compact. Battle-hardened. Close-cropped dark hair just beginning to gray. The cold, calculating stare of a man who built an empire from nothing and never learned how to lose. One command from across the desk and Alex’s perfectly tailored world began to unravel — jacket, tie, shirt — every step an exit offered and refused, every refusal a choice Alex made with open eyes.

What started as an interview ended with Alex stripped bare on Jack’s desk, claimed so thoroughly he could still feel it weeks later. What started as a contract became something neither of them had a name for. And what started in Las Vegas wasn’t going to stay there.

Some men break you. Jack owned him. And the worst part? Alex let him.

A dark MM romance about power, possession, and the cost of being chosen by a man who doesn’t share what he claims.

Excerpt 

“Kid,” Jack said. “You any good at not fucking up?”

Alex registered the question for what it was, not the interview he had prepared for, but the one underneath it, the one that wanted to know whether he was going to give a law school answer or an honest one. He had prepared the law school answer on the flight. He looked at Jack and set it aside.

“Depends on the definition,” Alex said. Then he looked at Jack and reconsidered. “Yes, sir.”

Jack’s mouth curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Sir. I like that. Most of these Ivy League pricks walk in here calling me Jack like we’re old pals.” He held the look. “What does ‘yes’ mean to you?”

“It means you tell me what’s coming before it arrives, I keep it from becoming a problem. You call me after it’s already a problem, I make it go away.” He held Jack’s eyes. “Either way works. I’d rather the first.”

Jack regarded him for a moment. Then he set down what he was reading and leaned back.

“Marco says you’re good,” he said. “That means something, coming from him. I know your father. I know his firm. They’ve been handling my contracts for three years.” He picked up his mug and took a drink. “If you’re even half the lawyer Richard is, you’re worth the conversation.”

“I’m not my father,” Alex said. There was no edge to it. He was stating a fact. “But I can do the job.”

Jack looked at him with the full quality of attention he would come to understand was Jack’s primary mode: complete, unhurried, costing the subject of it nothing and requiring everything. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Alex said.

Jack almost smiled. He set the mug down and leaned forward, elbows on the desk.

“Alexander Mercer. Thirty. Top of your class at USC Law. You know why you’re here?”

“My father said you needed a personal attorney. Available at all hours. Fighter issues, sponsorship conflicts, anything that doesn’t go through the league office.”

“That’s the version that goes on paper.” Jack tapped the desk once with two fingers. “Off paper it’s simpler. You work for me. The league, the fighters, your old man — none of them own you. I do. I snap my fingers at three in the morning because some idiot heavyweight punched a casino bouncer, you’re already in a car. I need an NDA before breakfast because one of my champions knocked up a ring-girl, you’re already writing it. You breathe when I say breathe. You eat when I say eat. You exist for the GCL. The GCL is me. I need someone I can trust completely to have my back. Not the league’s back. Mine.” He let that land. “You want this job, Mercer?”

Alex had known, somewhere on the flight over, that he wanted it. Not only the money, though the money was real. It was the room he was sitting in. The building below, with its blood smell and its training cages. The man across the desk, who had not yet said a single thing that was anything other than exactly what he meant. Alex had spent two years in an environment that prided itself on precision and had not yet been in a room where precision was this unconcerned with its own appearance.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I want the job.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed, dark and unreadable. He let the words hang in the air for a long ten seconds, the air conditioner droning in the background. Then he smiled, slow and predatory, a smile that had closed million-dollar deals and ended careers in the same breath.

“Good,” Jack said. “Then you’re going to prove it.”

The shift in the room was immediate, like the temperature had dropped ten degrees. Alex’s mouth went dry. He’d expected a hard interview. Maybe some locker-room hazing. Not… this. Whatever this was.

Jack stood up. He came around the desk, without announcement, without the excess of motion that would have signaled awareness of being watched. He stopped three feet away and crossed his arms and looked at Alex the way he had been looking at him since Alex walked in, which was completely and without apology.

“Take off your jacket.”

Alex blinked. Once. His heart slammed against his ribs like it wanted out. Not standard. A line. A test. The kind powerful men drew in the sand to see who’d cross it and who’d run.

Jack’s voice stayed even, almost conversational, but there was steel underneath. “You heard me. Jacket. Off. Or you can stand up right now, walk out that door, tell your Daddy I’m a crazy prick, and we’ll both pretend this meeting never happened. Your call, kid. Last chance to keep your suit clean and your dignity intact.”

Q&A With Calan Mercer

How long have you been writing?

Like most authors, I have been writing since I was a kid. For the past two decades it has been almost entirely fanfiction. There is also a novel I wrote in grad school sitting in a drawer, which I will get around to publishing one of these days. Possibly by more traditional means.

What made you decide you wanted to put yourself out there to be published?

I finished grad school a year ago and decided it was time to stop circling and actually do it. I taught for a little while and worked out fairly quickly that education was not for me. Now I write full time and do MMA journalism on the side.

At that point you may as well go for broke. Not literally broke, if you feel me.

Before you started, had you written any fan fiction? If so, what fandom?

Plenty. My first was Forever Knight, an old show about a vampire detective named Nick Knight, and naturally I paired him with his maker, LaCroix. That set the tone for the next twenty years.

Since then it has been Lost, Ghost, Hamilton, Our Flag Means Death, and lately MMA.

Are you in agreement that writing fan fiction is a great way to hone ones’ craft – why or why not?

Absolutely. Anyone writing fanfiction is almost certainly reading a great deal of it too, and nothing improves you faster than doing both constantly.

It is also a rare setup for a beginner. The characters and world are handed to you, so all your attention goes to craft, and there is an audience waiting who will tell you immediately what landed and what did not. Most writers pay for that kind of feedback loop. Fandom gives it away.

What was your first published book?

Wonder Boy: Owned is the first, and I am self-publishing it. Someday I would like to see the literary historical fiction novel go out through a traditional house, but this one is mine start to finish.

Do you have a favorite character from one of your books? Why?

Alex has a hold on me at the moment. He brings a lot of things to the table that I admire, competence above all. I have been told I have a competence kink, and I will not be fighting the allegation. Intelligence, drive, and yes, the looks, if we are being fully honest.

Hans, from the historical novel, is dear to me in a different way. There is a great deal of me in him, which is probably why that book was so hard to write.

Would you ever write a hetero romance? Why or why not?

I have, back when I was younger and in fandoms with het ships I liked. I would not now. I am a lot more honest these days about who I am and what I actually want to spend my time on.

I will also admit that het as the assumed default wears on me, particularly in spaces that do not tag pairings. There is nothing like reading a first-person blurb three times over trying to work out whether the narrator is a man or a woman

What are your thoughts on erotica?

I think it can be great. A lot of fanfiction shorts are essentially erotica, two characters from a fandom dropped into a situation, and there is nothing wrong with that.

That said, it lives or dies on the setup for me. If the premise is a handyman at a garage and some dad walks in to pick up his car, I am already gone. Give me a reason these two people being in a room together matters and I will follow you anywhere.

What book are you reading at the moment? It’s okay to give a fellow author a plug!

Dungeon Crawler Carl. Sometimes we all just need some fun and a cat named Donut in our lives.

What are you currently working on?

Wonder Boy: Owned launches September 15^th, so all the last minute checks making sure it’s ready to be shipped! That and Book Two of the series – Wonder Boy: Reclaimed.

When creating your characters, do you have models/actors/real people in mind or are they totally fictional?

The disclaimer at the front of the book is accurate: any resemblance to real people is coincidental. What I will say is that a few of the archetypes came from people I have known at arm’s length, the way you absorb a certain kind of person after enough time around an industry. That is where it stops, though. The personalities went somewhere else entirely, and by the second draft the characters were fully their own people.

If you write gay romance or erotica, just how descriptive are you in their sex scenes?

Very. That has changed as I have gotten older, too. When I was younger I would flinch away from the explicit stuff out of sheer embarrassment, which is ridiculous when you consider I was sitting alone in a room. Now I really do not care.

I am sex positive, and I do not think it is anything to be ashamed of. Handled well, it is a gift. It is also where a lot of my story actually happens, so writing around it would cost the book too much.

As a gay fiction or m/m romance author, do you feel that the trend is changing where it is becoming more mainstream?

I do. Heated Rivalry moved the needle in a big way, and before and alongside it you had Heartstopper and Red, White & Royal Blue breaking out to audiences well outside the genre. It is a very good time to be writing and reading MM.

What I think really carries it is how open the space is. The barrier to entry is low on both ends, for writers and for readers, and that has not always been true of cis het romance. People can find their way in, and once they do they tend to be loud about it.

What would you say is the distinct difference between m/m and gay fiction?

The way I think about it, MM romance puts the relationship at the center. Two people (or more) getting together is the engine of the book, and the genre makes you a promise about where it ends up.

Gay fiction can have a spine that is about something else entirely. The characters are gay and that identity shapes the story in real ways, but the book is not obligated to end in a couple, or even to be about love at all. Romance owes you a landing. Gay fiction owes you nothing but the truth.

Do you believe it’s important for you to know the gender of the author?

No, it should not matter. I still catch myself guessing when I do not know, which is a habit I would rather be rid of. The book either works or it does not, and the answer was never on the cover.

Do you think women making up a good portion of the m/m fiction writers detracts from the genre? Why or why not?

The jury is still out for me. I would like to see the split be more even, sure. But consider the flip side: men have dominated traditional publishing for a very long time, and knowing how the patriarchy tends to work, if more men moved into this space it might finally get taken seriously. It would also get scrutinized in ways it currently escapes. Hard to say which trade you would rather have.

Either way, I do not much care who wrote a book. I care whether it is good.

What is it about gay fiction and or m/m romance that pleasures you to write it?

As an m/m romance or gay fiction writer, what stereotype of gay men bothers you the most?

Probably the impulse to map straight gender roles onto two men. One has to be the feminine one, one has to be the masculine one, and the whole relationship gets sorted from there. It is lazy and it is not how any of this works. Two men can both be masculine and both be soft with each other, vulnerable, emotional, the whole range. And if a man is fem coded, wonderful, let him be, just not because the structure demanded somebody fill that slot.

In Wonder Boy both men read as alpha to the outside world, in fairly different ways. There is a top and a bottom, but that is a preference, not a personality, and even the shape of it shifts toward something more equal as the relationship goes on.

What promotional method works best for you?

Honestly, I love social media because it gives me the chance to interact with so many other authors and readers!

About the Author

Calan Mercer writes dark, character-driven romance about powerful men and the things they can’t control. A nine-year Army veteran with deployments to Iraq and Kosovo, he earned his MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University and has spent years ringside, drawn to the brutal intimacy of combat sports and the speed of the ice.

Wonder Boy: Owned is his debut and the first book in the Global Combat League series. He lives in San Diego with his husband and four very opinionated cats.

Author Links

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Twitter/Pinterest/TikTok @calanmercer

Instagram/Threads: @calanmercerwrites

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