Bury Your Gays

The horror in this book was excellent. The idea of being attacked by the monsters you create is certainly not unique but the method used in this book certainly is. The main character's journey was fantastic. It never felt scripted (pun intended) or ridiculous. The book also at it's heart does what every great horror book does and speaks to a societal ill. My main gripes with this book are that the supporting characters never felt fully fleshed out. Their motivations always seemed to be specifically in service of the main character rather than their own. And there is a very specific plot hole that I don't want to name as it is in some ways a spoiler. I'm not sure how it worked and it is never explained. Those are the only reasons I can't show more give this book 5 stars. Otherwise I think this is an excellent book and I'll be sure to check out some of Chuck Tingle's other works (yes I know). show less

Some torture and creature feature nastiness, but not beyond my fairly low tolerance for gore or body horror.

Interesting balance of playing with genre & cultural stereotypes in fun and also possibly trite fashion. But the writing moves along briskly, interrupted with moments of pathos that act as a neat bookend explaining the various monsters' symbolic origin.

Kind of a horror beach read. Competent, unusual enough, with some appeal to queer trauma and joy that could read melodramatic but doesn't read false.

Nitpick of sorts
After a certain point, I was anticipating meta-horror: the characters actually being in a movie or book, ending with the protag safely ensconced again in the Matrix. Otherwise, how is Mrs. Why able to do her trick show more with instilling existential horror? Granted, physical triggers in the body creating emotions or thoughts is a thing. But being able to cause that effect via precision pokes in the brain would require research we don't yet have, so the Hollywood nanobots wouldn't have that knowledge to draw on, much less cure -- even with mapping, brains are wildly mysterious. Deus ex future tech, I suppose. But regardless, I'm happier with the ending as written.

Probably won't reread this, but I'll definitely check out more of Tingle's books. show less

Screenwriter Misha Byrne is working on the queer kissing scene between Agent Lexa and Agent Naomi for the season finale of an X Files–like show he writes for, when he’s told by his producer in not so many words to “bury his gays,” that is, to kill off the gay characters. He has no intention of doing so, but he has no idea of the havoc this decision will unleash. At first he thinks the studio has hired actors to stalk him in the guise of the movie monsters he’s written to pressure him. Then people start actually dying.

This was a wild ride! Funny, tongue in cheek, plus page-turning horror and suspense, and full of heart at the core. There are jabs at the crass commercialism of Hollywood, at capitalism, at queer erasure, and at show more commercially motivated queer “allies.” Tingle’s “about the author” page says, “Tingle writes to prove love is real, because love is the most important tool we have when resisting the endless cosmic void.” This book is evidence of that. show less

Happy #bookbirthday to this brilliant bit of queer horror, BURY YOUR GAYS by @chucktingle from @tornightfire.

Misha, recently Oscar-nominated writer, is being forced to kill off the main characters of his hit TV series, ostensibly for the ratings, but really because they’re gay. When he refuses, monsters of his own creation from prior horror movies he’s written start stalking and attacking him. While he’s trying to figure out how to keep his fiancé and his best friend alive, he’s also trying to figure out the whole Hollywood thing and keep his job at the same time.

Tackling a large swath of subjects from queer joy and shame, to the treatment of gays in Hollywood, to the rise of AI and what that means for the entertainment show more industry, there’s also plenty of blood and chills to keep you awake at night. Tingle also offers probably the best description I’ve ever read of the importance of horror and why it can resonate with so many of us.

BURY YOUR GAYS is hella queer, hella creepy, and one helluva great book. Don’t miss out!

Thanks to @tornightfire and @netgalley for the free eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. I picked up my physical copy at @a.novel.concept.

🏷️ #chucktingle #buryyourgays #tornightfire #netgalley #queer #queerbooks #queerbookstagram #queerlitread #queerhorror #queerallyear #horror #horrorbooks #booksbooksbooks #bookstagram #book #books #gaybooks #gayhorror #gay #bookreview #bookworm #bookdragon #🌈 show less

Most would call Misha a successful screenwriter. He just got an Oscar nomination for a live action short film of his, and he has a popular long-running streaming series. Things are different now than when he was a kid, watching his favorite TV show and seeing the queer subtext he knew was there get stomped out. He has a wonderful boyfriend, and he's spent his whole career making the kind of queer movies and shows he'd have liked to see when he was younger.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is ruled by numbers and greed, and the numbers are telling his studio's board that it would be best if he either cut the romance brewing between the two female main characters in his show, or only allow them to kiss if one of them then gets killed off. Misha show more has no intention of choosing either option, although this will likely lead to a legal battle between him and his studio.

It's horrible, infuriating, and stressful. Then events rapidly recalibrate what Misha defines as "stressful." He witnesses a man being killed by a falling piano only a few feet away. He's approached by what he initially thinks is a fan cosplaying as one of the creepy monsters he once wrote...but the makeup and special effects are a little too good. Then things happen that couldn't possibly be set up by even a handful of rabid fans.

The monsters were wonderfully creepy (I particularly loved the lamb), but the horror here turned out to be a lot more than a few eldritch horrors run amok. As Misha tried to figure out how to keep himself and his friends from being killed by monsters and curses that he himself wrote, there were flashbacks that showed the inspiration for the current-day horrors in Misha's past. The bit with Uncle Keith, while completely bloodless, was so intense I had to take a break partway through. And this is in a book that features a literal on-page torture scene. (I had to take a break during that scene too. Yeesh.)

I figured out some of what was going on with the monsters fairly early on, but that in no way ruined things for me, because my mind didn't make the full leap to the ice cold motivation behind everything, and just how far it went.

I got a kick out of the way Tingle essentially weaponized asexual invisibility - three cheers for Tara! Zeke, on the other hand, seemed a little too perfect and just...there. But that's a fairly nitpicky complaint about a book that I, on the whole, really enjoyed.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

This is a perfect mix of horror, heart, and humor. There were moments I genuinely regretted reading it at night because it was so creepy! From scream-worthy scares to moments of raw emotion, this story kept me reading. I fell in love with these characters and felt every tense moment with them. It’s fast-paced but still takes the time to make some sharp, relevant commentary on capitalism and queer representation in media. Just when it seemed like it might go overboard, the tongue-in-cheek tone pulled it back perfectly. Honestly? No notes. Please read it. It’ll blow you away.

Misha Byrne is a Hollywood screenwriter best known for horror movies with a gay subtext. Now he's writing the season finale to his vaguely X-Files-ish TV show, in which he plans to pay off the lesbian romance he's been building up to for ages. But he's called into the office of one of the studio suits and told the ratings algorithms say that stories about gay characters only score high when they're tragic, so he needs to either make his fictional agents straight or kill them off. He refuses, and you'd think this confrontation would be the most upsetting thing happening to him this week, but then he starts seeing -- and being threatened by -- his own monstrous movie creations.

None of that description remotely does this book justice, show more though. It's all just a weird, wild ride.

The social commentary themes involving homophobia and its polar opposite, queer joy, the importance of media representation, corporate greed, and AI are not exactly subtle, but they're heartfelt and more layered than you might initially expect. The writing... Well, look. When I'm king of the publishing industry, I'm going to make a rule that writers get one free use of a verb other than "said" or "asked" as a dialog tag every, I dunno, 5,000 words or so, and after that they have to pay a $10 fine per use, like a sort of literary swear jar. Having your characters "mutter" and "state" and "protest" and "assert" everything is distracting and stupid and it needs to stop. And Mr. Tingle, I fear, would have a jar nearly full enough to cover my mortgage this month. That aside, though, while it's probably not winning any literary awards, the writing is zippy, readable, and entertaining.

The story itself is completely batshit. It's full of bizarre twists and turns that manage to somehow be both utterly silly and kind of clever. The monsters and other plot elements are a fun combination of pop cultural nods and imaginative originality and are both interesting and genuinely kind of scary. There's a bit of humor, a lot of meta, some gore, tons of ridiculousness, but also some sincerity and heart. Honestly, none of it seems like it should remotely work, but somehow it does. Or, at least, I found it a consistently enjoyable read. show less