My Roommate is Trying to Kill Me Book Release

Join us for the release of this incredible book by local author, Maya-Gawonii Shabazz-Saleh. About the Book: Some things are harder to survive than murder. Hakeem Morales wants to be the kind of horror actor people build midnight screenings around. At the moment, he's mostly working nights at a Los Angeles horror bar, The Last Cue; trying not to spiral about his stalled life; and wondering whether his new roommate is trying to kill him. Antonio Sanchez is older, private, unfairly attractive, and suspicious in ways Hakeem feels should be illegal. He writes cryptic things in notebooks. He jokes too much about Hakeem's upcoming twenty-seventh birthday. Every time Hakeem almost convinces himself he's being dramatic, Antonio does something else deeply alarming. Unfortunately, Hakeem's growing list of evidence is matched only by his growing attraction-because nothing improves a possible murder situation like developing a crush on the man you're pretty sure is planning it. “Funny, frightening, and unexpectedly tender, My Roommate Is Trying To Kill Me is a deliciously unhinged queer horror romance for anyone who’s ever ignored a red flag because the face attached to it was just that good!“ - Aiden Thomas, NYT bestselling author of Cemetery Boys About the Author: Maya-Gawonii Shabazz-Saleh is an author and critical essayist whose work spans genres. Her essays appear in Dead Pretty: Beauty in the Horror Genre (Nottingham Horror Collective, September 2026) and Echoes of the Earth: Black Voices Reclaiming Ecology and Justice (Cassava Republic Press, forthcoming), among fifteen other literary journal publications across 2025 and 2026. She was also just awarded first runner-up for Red Hen Press’ Quill Prose Award for her unreleased manuscript, HER BITE, a Black Southern gothic, sapphic vampire novella. Her BIPOC-led, queer horror romcom, My Roommate Is Trying To Kill Me, is forthcoming October 13, 2026, with advance praise from New York Times bestselling author of Cemetery Boys, Aiden Thomas. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.