Fallow Till We Bloom by Nikki Null

TWIN PEAKS meets STARDEW VALLEY in this stunning queer small-town farmyard romance. "Never talk about the Dark Watchers..." Robyn Fields first saw the ghostly shadows after arriving at her grandfather's farm. By the time she arrived, grandpa was dead and the farm had burned down. Villagers whisper that the cryptids atop the foggy foothills must have been involved. Local vineyard heir Ash Grantor has seen them for decades without incident. Bottling himself up worked out just fine, until he got disinherited and lost everything. After Robyn invites Ash and his friends to live on the farm, long repressed feelings bubble up to the surface as the Watchers draw ever nearer. It's said that the Dark Watchers are drawn to big secrets, and that they had something to do with the old farmer's mysterious death. To save the farm and avoid that strange and haunting fate, Ash and Robyn must cast secrets aside and bloom together...

Our Simulated Selves by Nikki Null

A mind-bending quantum thriller about simulated realities, brainscanners, a digital apocalypse, trans awakenings, and tabletop gaming at a cozy queer café. Jeanne said she wouldn't date Ren if he were the last man on Earth. Unfortunately, he had the technology to test her claim. Dejected programmer Ren "Zero" takes notes after uploading his brain into a supercomputer, using his memory to recreate his past. He sets the world in motion and watches his simulated self go through many steps he has taken in his reality, including: - Buying a stolen brainscanner from punkish technologist Jeanne in exchange for getting her hired; - Getting dragged to a queer café to play tabletop RPGs with Jeanne's trans friends; - Having the best time of his life playing a female character there, for unknown and mysterious reasons; - Asking Jeanne out in a storm of confused signals and emotions. That's when Zero deletes everyone from the simulation except Ren and Jeanne. Now wandering together through the empty city, Ren and Jeanne must work together to find the truths behind their baffling reality, while Zero subtly manipulates their world to achieve his desired ends. In order to defy the controller's plans, Ren must outsmart his real-world counterpart by finally confronting the fundamental truths that even the all-powerful Controller could not compute... Nikki Null is a trans writer based in Southern California. She took inspiration from lots of sci-fi she loved, including The Matrix, Black Mirror, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, added massive, *massive* quantities of estrogen to the mixture, then cooked for over a decade.