On a Saturday afternoon in West Hollywood, the shelves of Book Soup offered something considerably spicier than their usual selection. Inside the cozy neighborhood bookstore, guests gathered among stacks of gardening books, murder mysteries, and literary classics to celebrate the launch of FalconINK and its first two releases, "Hard Ball" and "Wild Game: Open Season."
The afternoon offered attendees a chance to hear steamy passages brought to life and meet some of the men behind the stories, including Falcon/NakedSword President Tim Valenti, Creative Director Sister Roma and Co-Chief Content Officer and Chief Creative Marketing Officer Ben Rush. They were joined by studio stars Beau Butler, Tony Genius, Ryan Orion, River North, Trenton Ducati, Eddie Burke and Derek Kage.
Among them, Kage and Burke lent their voices to the audiobook editions of "Open Season" and "Hard Ball," respectively.
For Valenti, FalconINK is a natural extension of Falcon and NakedSword’s work across film, streaming and other media.
“We’re a multimedia company,” he said. “Obviously, hardcore is our core, but we’ve also produced indie films and a lot of indie shorts that are not hardcore. This is just one more way for us to tell our stories.”
A Novel Attraction
While recent projects have included SFW vertical series and a special underwear line tied to the studio’s latest release, “Eat the Rich,” Rush believes prose offers its own storytelling possibilities.
“Falcon/NakedSword has always been about fantasy and storytelling,” he explained. “Film gives us an immediate way to tell those stories, but written fiction lets us go places that film can’t.”
For Valenti, FalconINK also offers an opportunity to participate in a medium he has long admired.
"I love fiction and anyone who's a good writer," he shared. "It's one of my favorite forms of entertainment. I'm just glad we can participate even in a small way."
Sister Roma, a prominent member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and a lifelong bibliophile, shares that enthusiasm for the written word.
"I'm somebody who grew up an avid reader, with the 'Hardy Boys' series and Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House on the Prairie' books. As I got older, I discovered reading erotica was my favorite thing to do," she said. "It's like a return to the days when you could read your own pornography, and it appears in your head the way you imagine it, and it's perfect every time."
Given the increasingly complicated environment surrounding adult content, FalconINK's arrival inevitably raises questions about whether publishing offers the company a way around those pressures. Rush sees the venture differently.
"We're still very comfortable being an adult company and telling sexually explicit stories,” he affirmed. “At the same time, the environment around adult content has unquestionably become more complicated. Platforms, payment systems, social media and distribution channels all have their own rules about hardcore sexual material. Publishing gives us another medium and another way to reach an audience, but the goal isn't to sanitize what Falcon/NakedSword is. The idea is to broaden the kinds of stories we tell."
The Plot Thickens
That broader vision has created opportunities for Falcon/NakedSword's films and books to lead audiences toward one another. Sister Roma credits Valenti with recognizing that potential.
"He seems to have endless ideas for ways to stay relevant, keep people attracted to our brands and keep them coming back for more," she enthused. "People who love to read male erotica will say, 'Oh, this is actually about a movie. I need to watch that movie so I can see what happened.' It's brilliant."
"Open Season," for example, serves as a prequel to the award-winning film "Wild Game," allowing readers to explore its world beyond what appeared onscreen. Valenti sees similar possibilities throughout the company's catalog.
"We've done a lot of really great films," he says. "We have a lot of ideas for how to expand on those films or tell the stories that led to those films."
For Rush, that potential goes beyond filling in the events surrounding a film. Fiction allows FalconINK to explore its characters' inner lives and build more emotionally expansive stories.
"A character who might have only a limited amount of screen time can have an entire history on the page," he says. "You can explore what somebody is thinking before an encounter, what happens afterward, and why the relationship matters to them. It also allows us to tell bigger stories."
FalconINK can revisit worlds audiences already recognize from Falcon, Raging Stallion and NakedSword films, but its ambitions are not limited to expanding existing stories.
"We're also publishing completely original fiction," Rush notes. "For example, 'Hard Ball' introduces a new story and characters."
Romancing New Readers
Although FalconINK creates opportunities for films and books to feed interest in one another, Rush emphasizes that each project must work on its own terms.
"We're interested in that crossover, but we don't want it to become mechanical," he explains. "Every project should justify the format it's in. The larger opportunity is to treat Falcon as a storytelling universe rather than something confined to a single medium. FalconINK gives us a lot more room to build that."
The publishing imprint has been part of Rush's vision since he joined the company, though Valenti says the idea had to wait until Falcon/NakedSword was ready to support it.
"When Ben and I started working together, that's what he wanted to do most," Valenti recalls. "The timing was just not right with what we could handle as a company."
Now, that timing coincides with growing mainstream enthusiasm for erotically charged queer romance and its cross-media potential. "Heated Rivalry," which began as part of a romance novel series about gay hockey players, became an international phenomenon after its television adaptation debuted on Crave and HBO Max. Its success attracted an enthusiastic fan base that includes a significant number of women, a crossover Valenti also sees within Falcon/NakedSword's audience.
"It is a different demographic from our audience. It's much younger and female," he says. "It's funny, we now know 12-13% of the membership of our hardcore sites is female, all watching muscle guys and jocks. The women love the Trenton Ducatis of the world."
Kage, who is expanding his work into straight and bisexual content, has noticed that interest firsthand.
"Heterosexual cisgender women are loving gay stories," he said. "I find it fascinating. I also find it a little lucrative. I've noticed an uptick on my fan sites from heterosexual women who love watching two men have sex with each other."
According to Kage, the influence of "Heated Rivalry" is also showing up in collaborations between performers.
"Since 'Heated Rivalry' came out, there's actually been interest from a lot of women within the industry to have sex with gay men," he noted. "They know that, one, we're not a threat; two, nothing is going beyond that; and three, you actually get the benefit professionally on your fan sites. My best friend Sophia Locke and I collaborated with Ryan Driller. Sophia wanted to enjoy that moment with two guys."
Locke was among those at Book Soup supporting Kage as he and fellow narrator Eddie Burke posed for photos and met with fans. Meanwhile, FalconINK is already preparing to turn several more pages.
"We have another realease coming out next month that's derived from the movie we're releasing right now, 'Eat the Rich,' taking on closeted gay billionaires," Valenti reveals. "Then we have an original fictional story for November, and we're going to do an audio version for Christmas of one of our favorite franchises, 'Bred and Breakfast.'"
"Hard Ball" and "Wild Game: Open Season" are available in print, digital, and audiobook editions wherever books are sold.
Click here to view the full gallery of photos from the event.
