A wonderful send up of AI, big movies and tv tropes. Well written, suspenseful
horror, witch fleshed out characters and just the right amount of violence.

I would urge the publishers to get rid of the word “spastically” though. Especially in a UK market.

love IS real and chuck tingle proves it yet again with what’s literally the book of the year imo!!!

bury your gays is everything you could wish for in a book about a queer screenwriter fighting for representation in a capitalist hellscape (hollywood) 💛

it may be fiction, but there’s clearly real and honest feelings behind this and it’s easy to relate to several moments in this as a queer person. misha’s story of growing up wanting to be represented, but it only being through queer baiting or queer tragic stories is way too real. i could so easily see myself in this and it’s rare feeling SO seen in a book published by such a huge and mainstream publisher. but chuck did it!!! i love it.

but also the general story was great!! it was weird, kinda bordering on horror at times and it had a great cautionary tale of capitalism and [spoiler]. it also had a great aroace character, tara, and i would lay down my life for her actually 🫶🫶🫶

anyway, five stars baby! this is by far my most fave read of 2024 and i think a lot of it is (obviously) chuck tingle’s ability as a writer but it also hits all the right spots for me, when it comes to what i love in fiction — to me it’s basically a ‘what if kiss kiss bang bang met john dies at the end but it was infinitely more queer’. which is to say, actually, if you love john dies at the end and you’re gay, you’ll absolutely love this!

// thank you to titan books, chuck tingle and netgalley for this arc 🥲🫶

Chuck is an icon, and it's wonderful to see his scathing satirical abilities being brought to a wider audience. This horror bites mercilessly into the world of media production and the cynical, heartless pursuit of profit above all else at the core of capitalism. I wasn't expecting to find a resonant message about being true to yourself and the value of art and creation in a pulpy novel where someone is flattened by a falling piano, but of course I should have known better. Dr Chuck Tingle always has the emotional core in mind. Fabulous

Chuck Tingle, bisexual taekwondo grandmaster and pseudonymous author of too many stories to mention (most featuring romantic and sexual encounters with everything from dinosaurs to inanimate objects) has released, after Camp Damascus, his second mainstream publication.
When I say ‘mainstream’ I mean published by someone else and without a photoshopped cover the way his earlier ‘tinglers’ have been.
Whether you consider the plot ‘mainstream’ will depend on your own reading preferences.
So, let’s talk plot for a moment: Misha is a Hollywood writer who, if not hiding his sexuality, isn’t shouting about it. He believes his work (primarily gay tinted horror flicks) speaks for him – and now that he’s about to win an Oscar for an animated short, things should be going well, right?
Except…Misha’s been told by the studio he writes for that he must kill off a gay character in the season finale of his TV series. Misha’s had enough of the ‘bury your gays’ tropes in Hollywood. He’s not willing to go along with the studio argument that ‘the algorithms’ say it makes sense. So, Misha says no.
And that’s when the pressure starts. Not just your every day run of the mill pressure.
We’re talking about characters from his previous work apparently coming to life and threatening the lives of Misha, his boyfriend Zeke and his best friend Tara. And given Misha’s spent his career writing horror…these characters are not ones you want coming to life.
To say more than that about the plot would be to spoil the fun – and believe me, there’s a LOT of fun to be had with this book. Plotwise it’s like some concoction of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Player directed by John Waters and David Cronenberg.
Theme wise?
If the story sounds like your standard (ha) B-movie inside joke, it’s not.
There’s a lot being said here through, like all the best horror genre pieces, a monster lens.
The author makes reference within the book to the ‘message’ of the likes of Night of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and more. Here? We’re considering, through the most satirical of lenses, Hollywood, creativity, originality, the media, algorithm decision making and over correction for the sake of finance. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
That might seem a lot to cover in a ‘goofy little horror story’, but what the author does so well is introduce a real heart to the piece: So we get manifestations of Misha’s previous writing like The Smoker, the black lamb and Mrs Why hunting him down– each an interesting creation in their own right – and that might seem like something Stephen King’s done in the likes of The Dark Half…but don’t let that fool you. There’s more than that going on here. What Tingle does SO well is the dropped in Inspiration chapters – seeing where from Misha’s past these cartoonish horror characters come from and allow us to judge what’s really more disturbing: the artifice or the reality that sits behind it. For me THAT was the brilliance of the writing. To write such real, sad, and illuminating moments in amongst the cartoonish horror…that’s a real skill that lies beneath (and who knows - perhaps even sparks the outlandish humour of Chuck Tingle.)
This book lurches between graphic violence and tender moments, cartoon characters and real human emotion, sci/ fi & horror elements and real world issues.
It should be a mess that doesn’t work.
The fact it did and, for me at least, did so well, is glorious.

What a creative and fast paced novel! I’ve read Tingle’s other book, Camp Damascus, and loved it, so it’s no surprise that I loved this one as well. Misha was loveable and easy to root for, and I really liked the incorporation of horror and science fiction. While I was a little disappointed by the big reveal at the end, this was still an entertaining read. I particularly enjoyed the focus on found family and pride, despite the horrors that persist. While this was a horror, it was also a book that reveals the importance of joy and love, in spite of everything.

RIP gay clichés! Wickedly funny and hella entertaining, this takes great pride in digging up Hollywood's skeletons and gleefully pounding them to dust. I loved every eerie, nostalgic, blood-spattered, rainbow-flag-waving page.

Bury your gays follows Misha who is a jaded scriptwriter working in Hollywood. Misha is pressured by producers to kill of a gay character as ultimately the studio bosses have the final say over what will happen in TV. Misha has been nominated for his first Oscar but success is not the answer to everything especially when he has to confront his past.

This was okay but personally I struggled to connect with the writing. The story was fine and there was great representation of asexuality and bisexuality. I’m not sure I’d read from this author again but this was enjoyable and I would recommend it.