In his breakout novel, K. Murry Johnson combines two never before paired genres: black gay and vampire fiction. Set in Louisiana, Image of Emeralds and Chocolate masterfully explores the past and the present. The novel speaks to all who have ever dreamed of finding romance, and captures the national obsession with vampires. The story follows Eric Peterson, a talented high school senior enrolled in a creative writing course at Loyola University. Insecure and inexperienced, he often daydreams about finding love. His fantasies quickly become reality when a strikingly attractive new student, Marquis LeBlanc, is assigned as his writing partner. But the man of Eric’s dreams is hiding something. Marquis has been severely depressed for a very long time. His therapeutic motive for enrolling in a writing class is abruptly derailed when he unexpectedly falls in love for the second time in his life. If Marquis reveals his secret, will Eric accept him…or even believe him?

Image of Emeralds & Chocolate opens with poetry written for an advanced creative writing class, where loneliness, longing, and unanswered questions first find their voice. In Chapter One, that inner reflection leads to an evening at Loyola University, where Eric Peterson—working a campus tour assignment—is asked to guide a new student outside Bobet Hall. Under lamplight and live oaks, what begins as a routine obligation becomes a charged first meeting, quietly unsettling Eric’s sense of himself and what may lie ahead. In sharing Chapter One, K. Murry Johnson invites readers into the exact moment where solitude gives way to connection, and the story begins.