“Midnight 99” By Genderqueer/Non-Binary Writer Ashley Christine Releasing This October!

If you’re looking for a new LGBTQ+ writer to support, you should consider checking out Midnight 99 by Ashley Christine. New digital publisher NeoText will be releasing the novella come October 6, 2020.

According to the press release, Midnight 99 has been described as “an outrageous, mind-bending take on the classic whodunnit tale—where the victim is a 7-foot-tall Lizard Reptilian Overlord and the detective is too blitzed to remember how he ended up dead on her toilet in the first place.”

Midnight 99 will serve as Ashley Christine’s novella debut. It will feature art by WBYK. 

The official description reads:

Meet Tulsa Kalhoun. Once upon a time she was a well-respected, pantsuit-wearing broadcast journalist— until an inconvenient supernatural awakening left her career and sanity in tatters. Now she stumbles through this world peddling a private pharmacy of perception-expanding herbal narcotics, made with plants you’ve never heard of from places not found on maps. But when Tulsa wakes up in a hotel bathroom on the eve of the secret unveiling of Earth as the ultimate Reptilian vacation destination, blacked out from a particularly indulgent vision quest bender, she knows that she’s supremely and epically screwed. Because a supposedly unkillable Lizard Overlord named Doug is dead on the toilet.

With no memory of what happened— and an ever more tenuous hold on the daily cocktail of alien pharmacologicals that barely keep her tethered to this plain of existence—Tulsa has to retrace her steps searching for clues of how she got to her current predicament. She’ll have to wade through a swamp of daunting challenges and colorfully shady characters like the Illuminati, the Youthinati, debauched Reptilian tourists, kinky gray aliens who are way too into butt stuff, Neckties, Necronauts, off-brand soda, her super-hot half-human half-Lizard ex-girlfriend, and her own self-destructive tendencies.

“Midnight 99 is a reaction to my frequent existential angst of living on a planet that my species is slowly destroying,” said author Ashley Christine. “When I couldn’t find an answer as to why we humans are so out of sync with our environment, I made up my own—which is that giant Reptilian space Lizards are using humans to terraform planet Earth to an ideal Lizard temperature. They also created the patriarchy, wealth inequality and were producers of Eddie Murphy’s 1985 hit ‘Party All The Time.’ Also, as a genderqueer/non-binary woman and unabashed eccentric, I wanted to create a character that someone like me could relate to. Enter Tulsa Kalhoun, a chaos-baiting, genderfluid, bisexual dumpster fire of a human being. She’s the unholy spawn of Hunter S. Thompson, Grace Jones, and Tank Girl. She is loud, unapologetically herself, and always just a little bit horny. Like me, she’s queer and a weirdo—a queerdo. Which is a word I just made up. And trademarked.”

While I’m not saying that cis straight people can’t write interesting queer stories with queer leads, I do appreciate publishers giving queer writers the platform to share their creativity. Here’s to hoping the upcoming debut is received well.

You can purchase Midnight 99 on October 6, 2020, for $2.99.

As for NeoText, you can keep up with the publisher via Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also visit the company’s official website (www.neotextcorp.com).

For those interested, Ashley Christine‘s currently living in Los Angeles. When not writing, Ashley enjoys boxing, yoga, and diving to the bottom of the ocean to hunt for clams.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us.

Author: Farid-ul-Haq

Farid has a Double Masters in Psychology and Biotechnology as well as an M.Phil in Molecular Genetics. He is the author of numerous books including Missing in Somerville, and The Game Master of Somerville. He gives us insight into comics, books, TV shows, anime/manga, video games, and movies.

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