Misha knows that chasing success in Hollywood can be hell.
But finally, after years of trying to make it, his big moment is here: an Oscar nomination. And the executives at the studio for his long-running streaming series know just the thing to kick his career to the next level: kill off the gay characters, "for the algorithm," in the upcoming season finale.
Misha refuses, but he soon realizes that he’s just put a target on his back. And what’s worse, monsters from his horror movie days are stalking him and his friends through the hills above Los Angeles.
Haunted by his past, Misha must risk his entire future—before the horrors from the silver screen find a way to bury him for good.
Dr Tingle's tinglers aren't my bag (they have a whole legion of fans, though, and if you reckon you might be interested, give them a go — he has a bunch of anthologies that could make good starting points) but I do love his mainstream horror novels. Straight and Camp Damascus show an author who's always trying something new and developing, which is great. He could have ridden the tinglers from now until the heat death of the universe — like I say, they have legions of fans, and there's no shortage of material in the world for Dr Tingle to keep drawing on. But I'm so glad he made the leap into horror.
The title Bury Your Gays refers to the trope — if you'd like to be buried under the pile of examples, search for 'tv tropes bury your gays' and kiss the rest of your days goodbye. It's explicit in the novel: Misha is a successful screenwriter, who is "LA out, not Montana out". His series, Travellers (think a modern-day homage to the X Files if both agents were women. In the novel, it's homage to a Files-ish series in Misha's youth, where both agents were men), is coming up to the climactic season finale in which his two FBI agents will finally give in to the UST (unresolved sexual tension, and this really is taking me back to X Files days in the early days of the internet) and kiss.
The suits are not happy. Misha's given an ultimatum: he can keep them gay and kill them, or he can make them straight and let them live. The third option is he can do neither — and the suits will take him off the show and make the decision for him.
As Misha tries to decide what to do, things take a sudden turn to the weird: supernatural characters from his earlier films and from the Travellers series start showing up. There's The Smoker, a cursed characters who only wants a light and, if you don't give him one when he asks, he'll give you five days to worry and then debone you; there's the Lamb, a demon in cute baby sheep's clothing; Mrs Why, who just wants a chat. They're all pretty good villains — but they're not the real villain of the piece.
And not only are they all threatening Misha, they're also threatening his boyfriend Zeke and his best friend Tara.
Bury Your Gays is a critique not just of how pop culture treats queer characters (hint: Tara, who is ace, is especially important here), but of how it appropriates any discussion about the subject. When Misha gets his moment to declare that gay joy is important and that it should be seen, you'd think it's the cathartic moment — that it'll fix everything. Nope: pop culture will chew that up too. The algorithm eats everything, has a little burp sometimes and then keeps on moving and making money.
While the plotting is important, it's the characters that shine through for me. Misha, Tara and Zeke, the people from Misha's past that we meet in flashbacks, they all feel very real. It's pacy, with a structure designed to keep you moving through the novel at a solid clip.
Started: 14 January 2025
Finished: 17 January 2025
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