Bury Your Gays

Chuck Tingle
Completed 4/5/2025, Reviewed 4/6/2025
5 stars

I read this book because I was intrigued by the title.  “Bury Your Gays” is the slang term for killing off the LGBTQ+ character in fiction, even when they are the hero because of the old, McCarthy-istic, moralistic bullshit that the film industry had to deal with.  That’s what the main character of this book receives pressure from the studio board of directors to do.  It then devolves into a mix of horror and science fiction that is dark, gory, frustrating, and a little fun.  I haven’t read much horror in a while, and though the science fiction isn’t exactly original, it makes for a thrilling ride through the underside of the Hollywood system.  This book was published just last year, so it hasn’t been nominated for any awards yet, though his previous book was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award.

Misha is the successful screenwriter who has just been nominated for an Oscar for Live Action Short.  He is also the creator and writer of a streaming series featuring two Lesbian agents.  It has never been openly discussed in the series, but the sexual tension is riveting, making it a big hit.  His plan is to end this season with them falling in love.  Misha is a semi-closeted gay man, but writes characters that, if not openly gay, have a gay subtext.  However, the board of directors want him to kill off the characters, “for the algorithm,” and introduce a more conservative agent.  He refuses.  Of course, they threaten him with lawsuits for breaking his contract.  More sinisterly, the evil characters from his early horror films begin to haunt and stalk him.  He accedes, agreeing to kill the Lesbians at the season finale, but he is still pursued by these ghosts, aliens, and monsters.  And they are not just threatening him, but his boyfriend, his best friend, and other people in close proximity to him.

This book had a grip on me pretty much from the beginning.  His confrontation with his boss at the studio over killing off the main characters sets up an immediate conflict.  But then when the first ghost shows up and threatens to kill him by pulling out his bones at the end of five days, as in Misha’s first screenplay, things take a terrifying turn.  That period ends at midnight on the night of the Oscar ceremony.  Next, a seven-foot-tall alien wearing the skin of a woman and gives a vision of the meaninglessness of the universe through a single touch stalks him.  The horrors continue and Misha tries to find a way to end this based on the monsters’ characters in his screenplays. I was riveted and little frightened, but also found it a little fun, like a good horror tale.  

Misha was a great character.  He’s smart and witty, even though he’s afraid of coming out completely.  When he’s invited to his high school reunion, he does not take his boyfriend Zeke, which puts a strain on their relationship.  But Zeke is no passing boyfriend.  He believes in Misha’s stalkers even though the studio execs, and of course the press, blow them off as crazed fans.  In fact, the tabloids eat this story up, as people upload videos of his confrontations with the “stalkers” from their phones.  They even spread a story that he’s a serious drug abuser.  But Misha deals with this in his own way as he fights the monsters and gets to the bottom of what sent them.  

In addition, this story is a great coming out tale.  Many of his friends know he’s gay, but keep it quiet for him since in Hollywood, the news can ruin a career.  Through well placed flashbacks, the psychology of why he has such trouble coming out emerges, making Misha deal with his past demons as well as the present monsters.  When he finally comes to full acceptance and comes out, it’s with a glorious bang.

I give this book five stars out of five.  I might be a little overly generous with this since the last horror novel I read with a gay main character was Clive Barker’s “Sacrament,” I think, for which I don’t have a review.  So this book feels outrageously wonderful.  I felt like I was in Misha’s skin as he navigated the horrors of the past and present.  The AI nanobots that come into play later in the book are a common trope these days, but I thought it was done well and quite imaginative.  And the prose sucked me into Misha’s world instantaneously.  I definitely want to read his previous book, “Camp Damascus,” which has even better reviews.