Listen… Chuck Tingle is <b>iconic</b>. There is none other like him. He is COMMITTED.

I know we’ve all heard of and read the silly ones (like [book:Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt|25183293] and [book:Trans Wizard Harriet Porber and the Bad Boy Parasaurolophus|54004449]) but Tingle can write a serious (or at least, a more serious) book too.

This one was fun and unexpected, and I found myself utterly enamored with Misha and Tara. Beautiful characters, fun story, and a nice little <i>fuck you</i> to every corporate entity that has only decided “gay is A-okay” because it’s cool and profitable now. We see you, you shills!

“𝐇𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲’𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐰𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞.”

The gorgeous cover and bold title had me sold before I even turned to the front page - what’s not to love in a book that takes place in Hollywood, involves murder, and the gays!?

Chuck Tingle has crafted an enthralling tale that is equally terrifying and deeply nuanced. His writing will suck you into this bloody satire of Hollywood, its film industry, its obsession with making money, and its quick erasure of queer joy in exploration of queer trauma. The opening chapter highlights a portion of what the 2023 writers and actors’ strikes were all about: AI taking over the film industry between digitally created actors and executives trying to convince screenwriter Misha to use the tech to help write his scripts faster. Tingle’s writing is a fantastic mix of scary (I’ll never quite look at airplanes the same again) and humourous (“𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧”), that is fast paced and absorbing. Misha is a strongly principled character, who I immediately rooted for, especially as the horror characters that he created start stalking and threatening him, and his best friend, Tara, and boyfriend, Zeke, are equally principled and supportive. I love when an author makes nods to their other works, with Misha spotting a film poster for a documentary for Camp Damascus - is this the beginning of some world building?

Bury Your Gays is a story of being seen, storytelling, trauma, queer joy, and heroes. Its queer Twilight Zone vibes make for a fully engrossing read, that would be SO GOOD adapted as a television series. I highly recommend. Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the ARC!

I have loved Chuck Tingle for a long time and this was absolutely delightful. It has the same type of weird, fun energy as other Chuck Tingle books, but different and still heartfelt.

This was a very well done horror novel. I wish there was less technology and more slasher vibes but this was overall very well written. Certain scenes I had to set the book down due to gore, which is major kudos to the author.

Queer horror excellence! The story grips from the very first page, as the reader wonders where it could all be going. The plot takes an unexpected meta twist before plunging into the depths of the human condition to celebrate who you are. The representation is vital and through every shift the book maintains a throbbing pulse of high interest, captivated by what could happen next. Highly recommend this cinematic novel for all collections.

*5 stars* This book was amazing! I loved every single word! Praise for gay joy and not just gay trauma!

Chuck Tingle is a national treasure. I have no notes. This was fantastic. Loved the nod to Camp Damascus. Loved the message. It was just great.

Fun and campy horror exploring themes of queer representation in media, corporate greed, and the use of AI in creative fields. This story is engaging, clever, and satisfying. I quite enjoyed the pacing and it was hard to put down. The Horror aspects were done well but are not Super Scary (particularly because the monsters intentionally feel quite trope-y) making this book a great choice for readers looking to dip their toes into the genre but not wanting anything too intense.

Misha, the protagonist, was great and I enjoyed the emphasis this story placed on both romantic and platonic love. His relationships with his boyfriend, Zeke, and his best friend, Tara, were at the heart of this story and it was lovely (though I would've liked a just few more scenes with both of them). I also really appreciated the aro/ace representation through Tara! She was fantastic and felt unique compared to a lot of other aro/ace side characters that I find can sometimes feel very one-note.

Chuck Tingle can do no wrong, I love his writing. After Camp Damascus, I thought he would go back to his Tinglers but I was pleasantly surprised that he wrote another hardback. Lovely work.

As a queer person I wanted to love this so much but I ended up only liking it. I loved the horror elements of this and the audiobook was top tier but once we got into the sci-fi part it was losing it for me. The commentary on queer media was spot on though I just didn’t love this.

Chuck Tingle, you will always be famous!

Bury Your Gays is an engaging, entertaining book that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. I knew that, after reading Camp Damascus, I would be very interested in whatever he wrote next and I am so pleased with this.

This story started off strong and felt like horror but slowly became somewhat tiring. It also shifted genres in my mind to science fiction. The characters were fairly likable but maybe too obsessed with being gay.

I'm a bit torn on this one. Some of the creepy scenes were reeeeally creepy, and I loved the Hollywood atmosphere. However, I didn't find the characters to be all that engaging. Being in Misha's head was...fine. I feel pretty much completely neutral about it. His friends felt like nothing characters. There's sort of a "main trio" here, but the other two had very little personality and could have been replaced by any randos on the street and the story wouldn't change at all. I liked the overall message and commentary on capitalism, especially when it comes to commodifying queer characters and stories, but this overall fell a little flat. I normally like a fast-paced book, but I think this story would have benefited from being allowed to breathe more and hold a bit more tension.

While its prose is more workmanlike than inspired, a compelling narrative and timely commentary on the entertainment industry make Chuck Tingle's latest worth reading.

Chuck Tingle, for those who don't know, is the pseudonym of an eccentric writer best known for his prolific career in bizarre erotica. Well over 400 stories have been published as ebooks, most with titles like My Billionaire Triceratops Craves Gay Ass, Open Wide For The Handsome Sabertooth Dentist Who Is Also A Ghost, and My Macaroni And Cheese Is A Lesbian Also She Is My Lawyer. It seemed like an elaborate troll job at first, and an irony-poisoned internet responded in kind. (An alt-right group got Tingle nominated for a Hugo Award, a campaign the author himself has firmly disavowed.) But while Tingle is frequently funny, his body of work is no joke: he is something of an outsider artist, animated by a sex-positive, radically sincere ethos.

Bury Your Gays, Tingle's second mainstream offering after Camp Damascus, is a horror novel that satirizes modern Hollywood as a world of soulless executives who reanimate dead actors with AI and defer their decisions to the almighty Algorithm. One such directive from the C-suite of Harold Bros., a thinly-veiled parody of Warner Bros., is addressed to a cynical screenwriter named Misha Byrne who serves as our narrator. It demands that he kill off a lesbian couple on the TV show he writes for. He's not at all pleased by this, but he's not given much time to process it before he watches a lecherous old bigwig get crushed by a falling piano.

What follows is a sort of queer meditation on pop culture, weaving in threads of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Misha is a frustrated creative forced to suppress his truest self for the sake of his career, just as he suppressed his sexuality growing up in the conservative state of Montana. As in I Saw the TV Glow, a recent film whose queer metafictional horror narrative is not too far removed from Bury Your Gays, nothing good comes from hiding: everything has to come to the surface eventually, and swallowing it only makes it fester.

Tingle has no shortage of great, provocative ideas, and there are plenty of amusing digs at Hollywood that add up over the course of the story. (When Misha asks if the actor resurrected by AI to play a mob boss was even Italian, he receives a stern response that the script didn't specify nationality.) But as imaginative as the author clearly is, his prose rarely does more than get the job done. There's the occasional burst of gnarly imagery (as when the aforementioned bigwig "pops like a water balloon" under the falling piano), but too often Tingle settles for phrases like "breathtakingly large" or describes a gaze as cutting "directly into your soul." Clichés become cliché for a reason, but such vivid ideas deserve equally vivid prose.

Still, it's hard to quibble when you're given a narrative as interesting as this. Simply put, you want to see where the story goes next, and Tingle is adept at making sure you never quite know what's about to happen. And as Hollywood executives seem eager to sacrifice the human condition at the altar of Silicon Valley, it's downright cathartic to see a novel portray algorithms and AI as the existential threats that they clearly are: call it Pounded in the Butt By Corporate Greed and the Insidious Devaluation of the Humanities.

Chuck is a brilliant writer. He is an auto buy for me and this book is just as good as camp damascus. He has an authentic perspective on medias outlook on the lgbtq+ community and his voice is important.

A really great book, grappling with issues of representation and the algorithm as people's identities become more and more marketing tools. I really enjoyed the shifting formats with the screenplay chapters, and getting to see glimpses of both the main character's past and his horror creations alongside the main storyline. I also loved the easter egg of Camp Damascus! Looking forward to more Chuck Tingle books.

Bury Your Gays follows Misha, a gay Hollywood scriptwriter that is being pressured to essentially not make his characters gay (or bury them) in his series finale.

(spoilers follow)

This was a super interesting concept that was executed really well. I love stories where imaginary things come to life and it was especially interesting to how each monster related to Misha’s personal life. I wasn’t expecting the technology aspect of it but I really enjoyed it especially considering the relevancy of A.I. in creative spaces, as well as queer erasure in media. The monsters are greattttt and their powers are so fun (the plane scene especially had me so stressed!!) Misha was a really interesting protagonist and I also enjoyed his found family. Tara and Zeke were both super fun additions to the cast but I do wish more was done with them.

Will definitely be recommending this book to everyone around me and thinking about it for a long time!! I love queer horror!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I absolutely loved this book. This book had such good themes but was also so creepy. It gives American Horror Story and Black Mirror, and I love both of those shows.

This book touched on representation of the LGBTQ+ community in entertainment, which I think is such an important topic. Not only is there not enough representation in mainstream film and television, but when it is represented, it’s often so over exaggerated and stereotypical that it’s borderline appropriation. It’s also often exploited for profit. Which was also mentioned in this book.

I thought Misha’s horror monsters based on traumatic childhood experiences were so creepy and clever. This book was so well written and the scene descriptions were so detailed, I could picture the monsters clearly. Definitely nightmare fuel.

I could go on about all of powerful themes in this book but I don’t want to spoil. 🤫

This book was scary, entertaining, and just an all around wild ride and I highly recommend.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for this gifted advance copy!

A big thank you to Chuck Tingle, Tor Publishing, and Netgalley for the ARC!

3.75 rounded up! Chuck Tingle as an author and person has intrigued me for a really long time, so I was curious to get my hands on one of his queer horror books. I also know the tingleverse has some...interesting stories and series so I figured we could go off the rails with this one. While some of the twists and turns were a little over the top and definitely out there, I feel like the writing was genuine and had a lot to say about queer erasure, capitalism, and the rise of AI in movies and television. I also related to the main character Misha more than I ever thought I would as a queer horror enjoyer. Some of the tangents he went on felt like they were pulled straight from my brain. Additionally, I felt like the monsters were super creative, fleshed out, and just plain creepy. They, along with the climax of the book, added a lot to the originality of the story that I couldn't help but enjoy because I've never read anything quite like it. Like the horror movies written by the main character, it leans WAY into camp and in a way, feels cinematic for doing so. I'm super interested in the rest of Chuck Tingle's writing and really look forward to seeing more from this author in the future. I feel as though I've been burned before in a lot of modern horror, but I feel comfortable and confident here in the Tingleverse.

I thought this book was fantastic. I couldn't;t put it down. The layers of social commentary woven throughout the novel were equally hopeful and horrific. This was the first I have read from this author and am excited to go back and read his previous novel.