Suspense & Forbidden Desire

Welcome. My stories live in the space where gothic fear and emotional — often romantic — tension begins to mirror one another. I’m drawn to stories shaped by atmosphere, buried histories, spectral presences, and the quiet terror of things long left unresolved, particularly stories exploring male/male attraction, vulnerability, and emotional intimacy under pressure. If you’re drawn to mystery steeped in emotion, haunted spaces, and a lingering sense of unease, this is the territory my stories inhabit, and where we may meet.

At the heart of my writing are stories where the complications of love collide with uncertainty, vulnerability is heightened, and emotions become difficult to name. I’m drawn to claustrophobic, high-pressure spaces where gothic suspense and forbidden attraction coexist. Where every step toward intimacy feels dangerous, where houses remember, where old ghosts linger, and where what’s buried refuses to remain hidden. In those moments, desire sharpens, tension tightens, and internal truths become impossible to outrun.

About the Author

Craig Leask

My Latest Book

The Whitlock Inheritance

Current Projects

The Haunting at Lochmare Castle

The Whitlock Inheritance

Now Emerging from the Shadows

A Haunted Coastal Estate. A Buried
Legacy. A Dangerous Inheritance.

Osprey Point

A house built to endure disaster,
now rotting around a lie.

The Whitlock Inheritance by Craig Leask - Book and buy from Amazon Canada.

Some houses do not want to be inherited.

Osprey Point, the Whitlock ancestral estate, towers above the cliffs: once stately and imposing, now quietly decaying. As Matt and a small group of friends explore its shuttered rooms and locked grounds, the house begins to turn hostile. Doors slam without cause. Corridors shift. Unseen forces move with deliberate intent. At the center of it all lingers the spirit of Chester Whitlock, whose malevolent presence still guards the legacy he left behind.

Amid the search for answers, Matt must confront another truth he can no longer ignore: the quiet pull toward Ryan, his best friend Susan’s boyfriend.

What begins as furtive glances and unresolved tension deepens into a slow-burning attraction, sharpened by the mansion’s eerie intimacy. Awkward closeness gives way to stolen kisses, and to a courage neither man is prepared for.

Their secret echoes a scandal the house has buried before. Long before Matt’s arrival, the estate concealed another forbidden bond, one Chester worked ruthlessly to destroy. As past and present begin to mirror one another, the house grows more volatile, determined to enforce the silence that once kept it powerful.

The Whitlock Inheritance is a gothic suspense novel of possession and desire, where love is both a liability and a lifeline, and the dead have not finished demanding obedience.

In Progress

The Haunting At Lochmare Castle

A New Gothic Mystery Emerging From the Mist

A storm-bound castle. A forbidden love. A haunting that refuses to stay buried.

An ancestral seat built to preserve a legacy,
now dragging the living into
a war festering among its dead.

Some secrets survive longer than the people who buried them.

A storm-stranded castle. A group of strangers. A haunting that doesn’t forgive, and a connection that complicates everything.

A group of strangers, brought together on a European discount bus tour, find themselves stranded by a storm in a remote Scottish castle, cut off from the outside world and from any easy escape. What begins as an inconvenience quickly turns into something far more unsettling as tensions rise and guests begin to vanish.

It becomes clear the castle is not just haunted, but watching.

At the center of it all, two men — initially at odds, strangers until this journey — are forced into uneasy alliance, relying on one another as the castle begins to turn against them.

One guarded, the other unwilling to back down, their friction sharpens under pressure. What begins as mutual survival quickly becomes something far more complicated: an attraction that feels as dangerous as it is undeniable.

In the suffocating atmosphere of the castle, hesitation gives way to something sharper, more urgent, something neither of them can fully control. But in a place built on buried secrets, intimacy is not just complicated, it may be what puts them most at risk.

The Haunting At Lochmare Castle by Craig Leask - In Progress about a New Gothic Mystery Emerging From the Mist.

The Author Behind The Shadows

Craig Leask

Craig Leask Writes - Author on Gothic suspense and forbidden attraction coexist in Ontario.
I write stories where haunted spaces and human longing collide.

Call it a penchant for linking gothic fear with the dangerous vulnerability of desire, self-discovery, and forbidden attraction. My work blends gothic suspense, queer mystery, psychological tension, and male/male romance, often placing vulnerable characters inside spaces that seem to remember more than they should.

From an early age, I was drawn to custom homes under construction — quiet, half-finished spaces that felt full of possibility. They weren’t just buildings in progress; they were ideas taking shape in real time. It didn’t take long for my industrious younger self to discover that general contractors rarely lock sliding doors, and blueprints are often left somewhere on site for easy reference.
Those unfinished houses became my playground — part ideation lab, part adrenaline-fueled intrusion—where I could study innovative layouts, follow sightlines, and begin to understand how spaces are experienced, all while enjoying the undeniable thrill of trespassing…

Around the same time, and like most kids, I became obsessed with the mystery and atmosphere of The Hardy Boys and Scooby-Doo — not for the plots (which rarely surprised anyone), but for the creaking houses, secret passages, foggy moors, and the sense that something nefarious was always waiting just out of sight. Between those influences, I wasn’t simply exploring spaces; I was searching for what they might be hiding.

While those B&E tendencies have mostly subsided (I still occasionally catch myself eyeing a new build and wondering whether the doors are locked), that instinct never really disappeared. Rather than being confined to a drafting board, I built a career in architecture and design project management: a balance of design thinking and hands-on site work that deepened my appreciation for how spaces function, how people move through them, and how environments quietly shape emotion and behaviour. That same instinct — to read spaces and imagine the stories unfolding inside them — translated naturally into fiction.

As a writer, I’m drawn to atmospheric, character-driven stories where setting and emotion become tightly intertwined. I create spaces that hold memory, unease, grief, longing, and tension until they begin to feel alive, then place emotionally vulnerable characters within them.

Those spaces become the perfect canvas for the emotional terrain of new love: particularly the charged uncertainty of male/male attraction. I’m drawn to queer characters navigating love, loss, intimacy, and self-discovery alongside the quieter, more disorienting experience of questioning who they are. At the center of it all is that delicious tension: the electric edge where desire collides with doubt, where hesitation lingers, signals are misread, and the ache of wanting something you don’t yet fully understand simmers just beneath the surface.

The Whitlock Inheritance is my debut novel — the kind of story I spent years trying to find: one where atmospheric buildings, buried secrets, spectral hauntings, and queer intimacy exist side by side. With the manuscript now complete, I currently have two additional gothic suspense projects in development, alongside several others quietly taking shape in the background.

At home, I live with my partner of more than twenty years and a series of “foster fails” who quietly became permanent. We’re based in a rural waterfront community on the shores of Lake Ontario—a quiet refuge perfectly positioned between the energy of Toronto and the cultural pull of Montreal.

Step inside with caution

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