Thanks to Boys, Bears & Scares, I’ve become familiar with a whole lot of fellow gay horror authors who grew up on 1980s slasher movies as I did. Just like me, these guys have taken their love of scary movies…and thrown gay characters into the mix! So I present to you a trio of slasher fiction with final guys!
THE LITERARY SIX, by Vince A. Liaguno
Start a slasher novel back in 1986 and you’ve got my attention!
After a brief prologue that sets up the tragedy that happened years before (you know the drill), we flash to the present. Six friends, who call themselves the Literary Six, reunite every New Year’s Eve. This year, they take a ferry to an isolated, snowy island…that soon begins to turn blood red.
The Literary Six perfectly follows the formula of classic slashers. The friends are keeping a secret. They’ve all moved on with their lives but some old love and lust hasn’t died—including major gay desire! And there are little signs that someone else is on the island with them. We even get “killer POV” as we go inside the mind of the killer.
There’s a masked murderer, characters going off alone for various reasons, inventive kills, straight and gay sexual encounters, and an unfolding mystery of what really happened back in ’86. And it all leads to a chase scene complete with body reveals.
Slasher fans will be right at home. The Literary Six is like New Year’s Evil, April Fool’s Day, and I Know What You Did Last Summer all rolled into one. There’s even a gay take on the hot tub scene from Halloween II!
SEQUEL, by Mark Allan Gunnells
Back in the 90s, a slasher was made called Class of ’93. It was a huge flop then, but has since gained a cult following. So reuniting the cast for a sequel ten years later seems like a great idea.
Only someone doesn’t want this sequel—or its masked killer—resurrected from the dead….
Now that’s how you formulate a slasher! Mark delivers all the slasher staples and self-aware banter you could hope for—after all, these characters all starred in a slasher film, so they know the deal!
There are red herring. Evenly paced kills throughout. A “slasher movie within a slasher” structure. A whodunit mystery. Plus, not one but two gay characters, male and female.
You pretty much want to blast through Sequel. It’s a deliciously quick read. And taking into consideration the title of the book and its overall homage to slasher sequels, you best bet that the ending leaves the promise of a sequel. In fact, a sequel is pretty much a necessity!
Think of Sequel as the marriage of Scream 3’s movie-within-a-movie concept and the “high school reunion” angle of movies like Slaughter High.
SCREAM, QUEEN! by Daniel W. Kelly (aka: me!)
I can’t talk about gay slasher fiction without mentioning my own novella Scream, Queen!, which is included as a bonus in my Halloween horror novel Wet Screams. I take my favorite elements from many of my favorite horror flicks and exploit them to the fullest, weaving them into a gay slasher.
In Scream, Queen!, a bunch of guys is going to a Halloween sex party at the creepy house of a weird dude who recently lost his mother…and seems rather happy that he can finally come out of the closet (and leave the skeletons in it). With this group of horny men, a killer in a gimp mask will fit right in….
It’s campy, it’s scary, and of course, it’s sexy! It’s also loaded with references any horror fan will recognize. Plus, some of the characters in this novella (those who survive) show up in my Comfort Cove gay horror series, beginning in No Place for Little Ones, the second book in the series.
Scream, Queen! is kind of like my gay love child of Psycho and Halloween.
“Please don’t kill me, Mr. Gay Face!”
If you love masked killers and high body counts but just wish the male body count was a bit higher every once in a while, then this trio of page-turning slashers is definitely your cup of wee-wee.
