robintalley

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It’s a strange day to be launching a new book, but publishing timelines are set wayyyy in advance, and so my new release, Music From Another World, is officially out today. So maybe check it out if you have a few?

You can order a signed copy from my local independent bookstore, Politics & Prose, which like most independent bookstores is closed right now and depending more than ever on customers to support them to get them through this time. They’re shipping within the U.S. for free within the next two weeks.

And tonight at 7pm you can join me for a virtual launch party, also hosted by Politics & Prose. It’s free and you can join from absolutely anywhere. 

Here’s the summary: 

It’s summer 1977 and closeted lesbian Tammy Larson can’t be herself anywhere. Not at her strict Christian high school, not at her conservative Orange County church and certainly not at home, where her ultrareligious aunt relentlessly organizes antigay political campaigns. Tammy’s only outlet is writing secret letters in her diary to gay civil rights activist Harvey Milk…until she’s matched with a real-life pen pal who changes everything. Sharon Hawkins bonds with Tammy over punk music and carefully shared secrets, and soon their letters become the one place she can be honest. The rest of her life in San Francisco is full of lies. The kind she tells for others—like helping her gay brother hide the truth from their mom—and the kind she tells herself. But as antigay fervor in America reaches a frightening new pitch, Sharon and Tammy must rely on their long-distance friendship to discover their deeply personal truths, what they’ll stand for…and who they’ll rise against. A master of award-winning queer historical fiction, New York Times bestselling author Robin Talley once again brings to life with heart and vivid detail an emotionally captivating story about the lives of two teen girls living in an age when just being yourself was an incredible act of bravery.

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I grew up in an Appalachia-adjacent area off the Blue Ridge Parkway and this is the first I’ve heard of this. But I will say that if I had heard this story when I was in middle school, say, I probably would have engaged in far fewer Blue Ridge Parkway-related risky behaviors once I got a little older and acquired friends with access to cars, and thus, let’s all share this tale far and wide, shall we?

What do you mean by That's Not A Deer in the mountains near you????

Anyone who spends decent amount of time in Appalachia knows the Not Deer. If you’ve gone on the Blue Ridge Parkway at night, you’ve probably seen him.Now: keep in mind if you don’t live in an area with a lot of deer, deer are freaky bastards on their own. They’re really big, extremely agile, move surprisingly quietly, and are extremely durable. It’s not unheard of for someone to hit a deer and total their car. Once I heard a story of a man who hit a deer on accident and decided to take it home and least get some good meat out of a bad situation. On the drive home the deer woke up and absolutely shredded the inside of this man’s trunk. They’re very cute but you definitely don’t want to mess with one. Just keep that relationship in the back of your mind. Anyway, the Not Deer is more or less what I’d call a folk cryptid. Everybody has their story about it. They’re all somewhat similar. You’re in a car at night, in a rural, heavily wooded area, and probably a bit lost. It’s not wildly uncommon to see a opossum crossing the road, see blips of little animals with your headlights. You see a deer. So you/your friends go “Oh! Deer!” and slow down in case it leaps in front of you. Then you see it more clearly. There’s just something wrong about it. There’s something about its eyes. You feel your stomach get heavy like a rock, the hair on your neck raise. You sense intelligence that you shouldn’t. It doesn’t move like a deer, it moves like a… oh god, what is that thing? Whatever that thing is, it’s not a deer and we need to leave. You hit the gas and get the hell out of there.A group of my friends got lost on the Parkway once and reemerged with a chilling story. They aren’t the kind of folks to lie or over exaggerate. Among other freaky stuff that happened, the driver claimed she saw a deer in the road. Then she noticed the deer was on two legs. 

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“Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy—” “Find my what?” “—and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!” “What’s a Wheezy?” “Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy—Wheezy who is giving Dobby his jumper!” Dobby plucked at the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts. “What?” Harry gasped. “They’ve got… they’ve got Ron?” “The thing Harry Potter will miss the most, sir!” squeaked Dobby.

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We love an actor warmup.

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I maintain that the acting was more than 50% of the reason this show worked, and Aaron Sorkin’s writing was, AT MOST, maybe like 30%. These three actors are part of the reason why. 

My Dictaphone is stuck on record. It won’t stop recording things. So it’s just what you want lying around the White House Counsel’s Office, because there’s never been a problem with that before.

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Kiera Knightley in the Pirates movies is my kryptonite. 

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Tipping the Velvet 20th Anniversary ↳ If I were to write Tipping now, what, I wonder, would I change? Well, I’d tidy it up, for starters. I’d give Nancy that kick, make her less selfish and ungenerous. I might be kinder to the ghastly older ladies of Dina’s salon. I wouldn’t wheel in a black character, Bill, simply to have him be part of the white protagonist’s moral education. And I think I’d pay more attention to Nancy’s first love, Kitty. Poor Kitty: she starts off as Vesta Tilley in a shaft of rosy limelight, and ends up as a Victorian Wee Jimmy Krankie – a casualty of the novel’s 1990s take-no-prisoners out-and-proudness. But she’s a bit of a blank, and I find myself wondering now: what’s going on for Kitty? Where did she come from? What makes her tick? If I were ever to write a sequel to the novel, hers is the story I might tell. (Sarah Waters, London, 2018)

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me: I’m working on a new show

my friends: okay yeah cool

me: there are hot girls and they kiss

my friends: TICKETS ? WHERE ? NOW PLEASE.

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god im reading a text about romance fiction (especially targeted at young adults) for class and one sentence in it literally made my brain explode because ive been thinking about this kind of stuff too, how “Many people wouldn’t fall in love if they’ve never heard about it before.” and like…imagine there was no ideal/overaccentuated image of love and romance painted in postmodern mass media….how would we love? would it be purer? more authentic? what would we do differently? would we fall in love at all if we werent constantly being fed an ideal concept of love as the norm in mass media? like what is a natural process of human feelings and what is just a projection of how we want to love and want to be loved based on what we’ve seen on tv and read in books etc? in this essay i will

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Fave Five: All-Queer Anthologies

All Out and Out Now ed. by Saundra Mitchell Summer Love and If the Fates Allow…

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Vanity Fair’s 2008 ‘Hitchcock Hollywood Portfolio’

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Queen Elsa in “Frozen II” (2019, dir. Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)

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Sex Education (Season 2, Episode 4)