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Tag Archives: Chuck Tingle

Lucky Day: A Review

New Chuck Tingle horror means that it’s my lucky day. The mysterious man behind Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays is back, and he’s about to throw a curveball the likes of which you’ve never seen.

Vera Norrie is a statistician and University of Chicago professor who is about to celebrate the release of her first book, a takedown of Everett Vacation and Entertainment. On May 23rd, she and her fiancée, Annie, are going out for brunch with a group of their friends and Vera’s mother. The whole day has been meticulously planned by Vera as a way of coming out as bisexual to her mom and announcing their planned marriage. When things don’t go quite as hoped, Vera’s mother storms out of the diner with Vera close on her heels, and then all hell breaks loose.

May 23rd would become known as the Low-Probability Event, a disaster of nearly impossible (and statistically ridiculously unlikely) proportions. Nearly eight million people die that day, and Vera flees from the carnage, leaving everything and everyone else behind. I’m not going to say more about the event itself here, because there’s something to Tingle’s crafting of a series of Rube Goldberg-esque deaths that rival anything seen in the Final Destination films that just needs to be experienced for oneself.

Four years after the LPE, Vera’s depression and isolation are interrupted by the arrival of Jonah Layne, an agent for the Low-Probability Event Commission. He’s on a mission to expose Everett Vacation and Entertainment and their flagship Vegas hotel and casino, Great Britannica, as being somehow behind the disaster of May 23rd, and he’s come to get Vera’s help. She’s enlisted as a consultant to examine the reality behind the LPE, and decides to tag along with Agent Layne, mostly because he’s picked the same fight that she once had all those years ago. The big problem is that, while there was only ever one major low-probability event, there’s been a lot of little ones. For Vera and Agent Layne, things can only get weirder.

Lucky Day is an absolute blast to read. It may not appear as strictly horror on the outside, but Tingle’s writing will leave you questioning the odds of, well, everything you could ever fear. Vera is a painfully relatable protagonist, dealing with utter chaos and devastation by functionally shutting down and ignoring society because, after the LPE, nothing really matters. Agent Layne is a delightful foil, a hyper-competent federal agent reminiscent of Twin Peaks‘ own Dale Cooper or Tingle’s own Dark Encounters (the X-Files-esque TV series Tingle’s protagonist, Misha, was writing in Bury Your Gays). The book is out in the world as of Tuesday, August 12th. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for granting me access to an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Bury Your Gays: A Review

In which Chuck Tingle goes to Hollywood.

Misha Byrne is a screenwriter, and he’s just locked in his first Oscar nomination. He’s also gay, and executive meddling is on the cusp of forcing him to kill off the two queer leads of his latest TV series. Nearly four seasons of wildly successful X-Files-esque television, and he’s finding his work being subject to one of the oldest tropes in fiction: bury your gays. For Misha, this is particularly egregious, as his favorite childhood show fell victim to the same treatment years before. However, if he doesn’t go along with the studio’s plans, he’ll be in breach of contract and lose his job, and potentially any chance of working in Hollywood again.

Then, things start to get weird at the studio lot. Raymond Nelson, one of the oldest working animators at the studio, is crushed by a piano in an ironic echo of a cartoon death. Not long after, Misha spots a character from one of his horror films while walking out of a bar. This omen warns him that he has only five day to live, a timeline that coincides with the night of the Academy Awards ceremony. Soon, more of his horror characters begin intruding into his life, and he’s forced to face the very real traumas that shaped his career (and are threatening his boyfriend). Will Misha succumb to studio pressure by Oscar night, or will he fall to a twisted version of one of his own creations?

Chuck Tingle is absolutely killing it in the horror genre, y’all. Bury Your Gays is littered with little nods to actual Hollywood staples, all while carefully avoiding name-dropping any specific real world studio. Tingle builds phenomenal tension and intersperses some clever screenwriting aspects between segments of the story. This is a brilliant follow-up to last year’s Camp Damascus, and further solidifies Chuck as a horror writer of note. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Bury Your Gays is out as of yesterday, 7/9/24. Go get it.

Camp Damascus: A Review

By now, I think that just about anyone who spends time in literary circles on the internet has heard of the legendary Chuck Tingle. While the pseudonymous author is probably best known for his short erotica works (aka “Tinglers”) like Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, Tingle has been making forays into longer stories in other genres. The one that caught my attention most was Camp Damascus, a horror novel about a gay conversion camp in Montana. Needless to say I leapt at the opportunity to read it as soon as I could.

Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling, a twenty year-old autistic woman living in Neverton, Montana. Rose and her family are members of The Kingdom of the Pine, a close-knit ultra-conservative Christian community that runs the titular camp. Unlike any other such camp, Camp Damascus boasts an unheard-of 100% success rate for kids who are sent there by parents who don’t want them to be gay. Rose’s life (and life at the Darling house in general) seems perfect. She’s about to finish high school (all Kingdom kids spend two years on church activities in between years of school, and so by senior year are older than any of their non-Kingdom or secular classmates). She loves volunteering for the church, and she loves her parents. She also loves research, and memorizing scientific facts alongside bible verses.

When Rose is out with her friends at the local swimming hole trying to build up the confidence to dive off the little cliff, she takes the hand of her classmate, Martina, and they leap together. It’s an exhilarating experience, and the first time that Rose has dared to do something so brave. However, when she returns to the top of the cliff to test her newfound courage and jump again, she sees something horrifying. An old, drowned-looking woman with unnaturally long fingers and white eyes appears to be staring at her, and no one else can see her. Later that night, in the middle of dinner with her parents, Rose coughs out a large mass that turns out to be a swarm of insects. Something is very, very wrong.

Soon, Rose’s investigative mind begins racing, trying to understand what she has seen and felt. Memories begin to surface, and she finds herself questioning everything that she has ever known about herself, her parents, The Kingdom of the Pine, and Camp Damascus. In Neverton, trying to uncover the truth is going to be impossible to do alone, but it’s the right thing to do, even if it means casting aside everything that she knew that made her Rose Darling.

Camp Damascus is a pitch-perfect horror novel. It’s a quick read, and it’s delightfully discomforting to a former member of a Christian community. This book is going to be absolutely life-changing for so many people. Tingle’s writing is tight, packing a solid story into under 300 pages. There are loads of little nods to his particular turns of phrase throughout as well. If you’ve ever given his Twitter feed a read, you’ll find yourself chuckling (ha) at some familiar wording. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Camp Damascus is out this Tuesday, July 18th. Go get yourself a copy and help to prove that love is real.