Bury Your Gays Cements Chuck Tingle’s Place as a Vital Voice in Horror

Before that can happen, though, a series of encounters shakes up Misha’s life. It seems that his own creations—monsters from the horror movies that made his name and reputation—are stalking him, and signs point to them being something more than just demented fans in cosplay. If Misha’s going to survive his own life, let alone Hollywood, he has to get to the heart of what’s really happening and face both his past and his future simultaneously. 

Tingle’s narrative unfolds through several devices, from flashbacks of Misha’s childhood to screenplay excerpts of his current life his own propulsive, witty, first-person narration, all focused on showing us a man in conflict with his own past, his own identity, and of course his future as a creator. The horror seems to come from outside Misha, of course, but Tingle is adept at showing us just how rooted that horror is in certain fears Misha himself has been reluctant to face, from his queer identity and how it might impact his hometown to his personal attachments within the industry and, of course, his determination to give his characters what he feels they deserve. His voice is the core of this story, and it’s both strong and vulnerable, imbuing Bury Your Gays with the kind of warmth we’ve come to associate with a Chuck Tingle story. 

But none of that will save you when the horror elements come, and when they emerge, they do so unforgettably. While there are clear genre inspirations at work in the background—everything from The X-Files to The Ring—what stands out in Bury Your Gays are the monsters that seem to have emerged whole cloth from Tingle’s imagination. He’s great at warm, human moments, yes, but he’s arguably even better at making monsters and unleashing them on characters we genuinely fear for, and here, with everything from a strange black lamb to an absolutely terrifying figure known as The Smoker, he gives us some of the scariest scenes I’ve encountered in a horror novel this year so far. 

All of this, combined with some frightening ruminations on AI and on what happens when a creator is in conflict with his own creations (both literally and figuratively) solidifies Bury Your Gays as another triumph for Chuck Tingle. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s crackling with vibrant humanity, and it’s the kind of book that will keep you up late into the night, searching for monsters in every shadow. In other words, it’s the perfect summer horror novel, so don’t miss it.

Bury Your Gays is available now wherever books are sold. 

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire who’s been writing about entertainment for more than a decade. His writing about movies, TV, comics, and more regularly appears at SYFY WIRE, Looper, Mental Floss, Decider, BookPage, and other outlets. He lives in Austin, Texas, and when he’s not writing he’s usually counting the days until Christmas.