RELEASE BLITZ with EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: 'Renegayd' by David Kraine
Title: Renegayd
Author: David Kraine
Published: April 26, 2018
Publisher: Self-Published
Cover Artist: Daniel Conway Cover Design: JAKE!
Chapter Illustrations: Elwira Pawlikowska
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 244 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M
About Renegayd
How far would you go to reach global equality faster?
Every gayborhood on Earth hides a closet door to a magic world. Sam is not the first to find it, but when he does it's in the early days of a violent revolution for LGBT liberation. The Queen of Witches is building an army, and Sam doesn't know what's more frightening: the fact that his "real" world may be in danger, or that he isn't sure he wants to save it.
Renegayd shows the yin-yang struggle of global LGBT rights by dipping it in glitter and asking the cost of progress.
The queen saved me from my own silence. “There hasn’t been a single successful civil rights movement without a militant arm. It’s not a new idea. Stonewall sparked the foundation of the Gay Liberation Front, which fought—using whatever necessary—for change. Then, we got tunnel vision—forgot how bad things still are, forgot we didn’t want assimilation, but liberty. Renegayd is Sylvia Rivera’s beer bottle. We’re restarting the rebellion. Gay rights is a familiar story playing over again. We all know we’re headed for equality. Problem is we’re taking for-fucking-ever to get there.”
“We’ve been faster than other movements. We learned from them!”
“Faster? People been gay since we crawled out the ocean on our bellies. We’re the dog of civil rights: happy with a few crumbs of humanity as conciliation for rolling over. Your back’s to your family because you live in California. People are dying. Children are dying! Every second we stand by, waiting for change, they’re being killed or killing themselves. You know we only see the half of it.”
“Nobody thinks that’s okay,” I said.
“But no one is doing anything about it!”
“Tons of people work for equality every day.”
“Well.” She pointed her wand straight at me. “I say it’s time we demand it. Whatever it takes. Equality means balancing the equation—we make things equal. Our side’s been in the red too long. Faster change means less pain. Think of the harm we can avoid for every day we speed up equality. Let’s say the world reaches equality in five hundred years. Perfect equality. Like here, where no one thinks about gender or sexuality. So much good will come from speeding that up: victims with no bullies, prisoners with no persecutors, deaths with no reason. The sadness and pain that comes with it… all avoided.”
Her conviction, the path she described… it was frightening to see an unstable mind and understand it.
“But you would kill people on the other side of the equation? You feel justified?”
“Not if we don’t have to. But can’t you feel the urgency? We’re racing to save people in torment. Radical good permits radicalism. Just balancing an equation. If we can do that with only addition, we’ll do it.”
“Who are you going to fight?” I asked. “Everyone?”
“Why? You wanna help me strategize?” She smiled.
“I want to stop you!”
“Oh! Is that why you’re running for the Transpo Hub? Off to stop me from the comfort of your pinhole?” She was right, but hearing it confused everything. “It ain’t easy, Prickly Pear. Put your big boy pants on. If our fight for human dignity is the same story, then there’s plenty of examples to follow. American civil rights had Black Panthers, Soul Students Advisory Council, and the Revolutionary Action Movement. Feminism’s sure sprinkled with radicals. Hell even the tree huggers got Deep Green Resistance. Pick your saveur de résistance.”
“Haven’t we seen those fail?” My limited knowledge came pouring out. “I’m pretty sure we know nonviolence is the way. Civil disobedience, MLK Jr, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela!”
“Sure, peace gets the victory, but it’s too damn slow. The verbal abuse, the beating, the homelessness, suicide, incarceration… it needs to stop. The LGBT movement needs us.”
A tear picked up flecks of glitter as it fell down her cheek.
“You can’t destroy the world to make it equal.”
“You got it ass-backward, don’t you? What you saw at Transpo Hub Square, that was our coming out. That look like murderers to you? Spray paint, limp-wristed high-fives, and grab-ass? We ain’t destroying anything but hate. We’re makin’ a statement; one only our fabulous group of gays can make.”
Amazon/KU
Meet the Author
David was born and raised in Texas but now lives and writes in San Francisco, California with his husband. His newest book, Renegayd, explores the yin-yang struggle of LGBT equality.
The biggest influencers in writing Renegayd are those that collided with him as a gay man: the supportive ones who instill love, and the hateful ones who breed anger. Even in one of the most progressive cities in the world, someone still drove by his wedding ceremony to shout “Faggots!” Renegayd tells the story of that struggle between love and hate. For any LGBTQ person who’s been bullied, or beaten, or made to feel inadequate by inequality’s various forms Renegayd is sweet revenge—but it also explores important questions about our continued struggle for equality.
For more from David be sure and visit his website!
