About West

West is a writer and illustrator working in cozy and epic fantasy. Hammer’s Rest is his ongoing serial. He writes about the men he wants to read about.

How Hammer’s Rest Began

Hammer’s Rest started, like a lot of good things, as a side effect of boredom. Back in 2020, during COVID, I built out an entire world: history, races, political systems, all of it, because I wanted somewhere fun to run Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Over that year I wrote more than 300,000 words of world-building. We played in it for a little while, but schedules and life got in the way, the way they do.

I didn’t want all that world-building to just sit there, so I wrote a story instead. It was a fantasy murder mystery set in the port city of Klim, action-adventure with some heat to it, following two gay leads, Cormac and Breki. In that draft, they used to hang out at a gay bar called the Slippery Eel.

After I finished the draft, the Eel was the part that stayed with me. I kept wondering what a story built around the bar itself would look like, something like a fantasy version of Cheers. That question became Hammer’s Rest, a tavern, inn, and bathhouse built by two dwarves, Frerin and Durnar, the Eel’s last owners.

I write it from Salt’s point of view. He’s a man figuring out who he is on land after years at sea. I’ve spent time in places like this myself, and heard plenty of stories from others who have too, and that’s what I’m drawing from.

This isn’t only a series about sex. It’s about belonging, the different shapes relationships take, and growing into yourself. Thank you for reading this far. I hope you find something in Hammer’s Rest worth staying for, and there’s more to come.