No jokey intro here – I’m just beyond happy to announce that The Giddy Death of the Gays & the Strange Demise of Straights is getting a re-edition from Amble Press (an imprint of Bywater Books) with the release scheduled for May 28th!
The new edition features an afterword written by the wonderful Dr. Meg-John Barker, and a foreword written by myself. Here’s a brief preview:
It’s hard to convey how damaging it can be to your sense of self when everyone you see is straight, cis, binary, and monogamous—it’s like you don’t exist, or, worse, like you don’t deserve to exist. Without positive representation it’s easy to feel like a freak. Alison Bechdel once remarked on the importance of seeing yourself reflected in the cultural mirror, and for queer people of all kinds, that reflection is the surest antidote to shame and humiliation.
You are not a freak. There are many more of us out there, just like you.
And from MJ’s afterword:
This diversity of representation is deeply refreshing in a world where so few mainstream books include queer characters at all, and those that do often only include them in exoticising or tokenistic ways, while few queer books include characters who are not explicitly queer but who are also grappling with their gender, sexuality, and relationship style. As with masculinity/feminity, gay/straight, cis/trans, and dystopia/utopia, this is yet another binary that Redfern gently but firmly challenges in their novels.
Copies of the novel are already available for preorder from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all major booksellers.
Order one! Order twenty! Build a house from stacks of my books and you shall earn my everlasting gratitude.
– Redfern