Kat Hillis is an author of queer speculative fiction full of silly jokes and twisty plots. A southerner now living in Alabama, she’s a lifelong fan of vampires, murder, and puns. When she’s not writing or reading, she’s gaming, drawing, or making handcrafted soaps.

Rosiee Thor began their career as a storyteller by demanding to tell their mother bedtime stories instead of the other way around. Now, they write stories for all ages, including young adult novels Tarnished Are The Stars and Fire Becomes Her, the picture book The Meaning of Pride, and tie-in novels for franchises like Life is Strange and Firefly. They live in Oregon with two cats, a dog, and an abundance of plants.

In a year when we wake to learn what fresh homophobic hell will grace the headlines each morning, it’s a special kind of gut-punch when it’s about you specifically. In March of this year, I received a Google alert boldly informing me that one of my books was one of the top 25 most banned books in Alabama. This isn’t a unique experience, as hundreds of queer authors across the world face similar challenges on a daily basis, but it is still devastating every single time.

Alabama is not a state full of just bigots. In fact, my co-author, Kat Hillis, happens to live there, as do countless others queer readers who did not vote for this, but are forced to live with it all the same. This kind of legislated hatred is designed to make us quiet and complacent. It is designed to force us to write only the narratives they deem worthy–straight, cis, and devoid of people like us. But the more they try to tell us we don’t exist, the louder we will be.

It’s a strange sort of whiplash to fight bans like these and celebrate a new book release at the same time. There is anger and frustration right alongside the hope and joy, but I think they have often gone hand-in-hand, especially for queer creators.

In the face of increasingly depressing news permeating every angle of our lives over the past few years, my co-author, Kat Hillis, and I found respite in our creative work on Dead & Breakfast, a cozy mystery about married gay vampires solving crime. Often, we questioned if a goofy project full of puns and hijinks was a responsible reaction to the dire state of queer rights in our country, but ultimately we found it was necessary. While the world around us was getting scarier, we only got sillier.

Laughter isn’t just the best medicine; it’s also an act of resistance. In the face of rampant homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia, finding joy is an act of defiance against those who want to make our lives miserable, silent, and invisible.

Throughout our lives, we have found solace in stories. From the subtle queernormative fantasy world of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic to the coming of age narrative of Simon vs. the Homo Sapien Agenda, and later from the aching tragedy of Song of Achilles to the wild romp of The Murderbot Diaries, queer books have always been there for us in one way or another. None of them are the same, but they’re all bangers. What’s more, they all bring different emotional experiences to the forefront, allowing queer readers to feel seen in all their varied facets.

With Dead & Breakfast, we set out to write a story not free from bigotry, but joyful nonetheless. Arthur and Sal are a happily married couple, their love spanning many immortal decades, to represent the optimism we feel for the longevity of queer love, even in an imperfect world. They are surrounded by people who want to be in community with them because of who they are, not in spite of it. And even in the face of a murder accusation, they find ways to live their lives (undeaths) with a spirit of hope rather than fear.

In writing their story, we found strength in ourselves to endure. We also found some truly terrible puns, which we have now made our readers’ problem.

The history of Queer liberation can be painted with many brushes–perhaps one for each color of the rainbow. Stories that tell of our triumph are just as true, just as important as those that tell of our struggles. In times like these–and, truly, in all times–it is vital to share the breadth of queer experience, be it one of joy, discovery, perseverance, or rage. We as a community contain multitudes, and so do our stories.

Dead & BreakfastDead & Breakfast by Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor

Arthur and Sal are a completely normal married vampire couple. They’ve just opened a bed & breakfast in the cozy town of Trident Falls, Oregon, ready to start a new, quiet chapter of their lives. But when the mayor turns up dead on their property with suspicious puncture wounds in his neck, Arthur and Sal must team up with the town’s quirky paranormal residents to catch the killer.

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