by Cedar Warner
Rob Costello (he/him) is a writer and teacher based in upstate New York. He writes for and about queer young people. His debut short story collection, The Dancing Bear: Queer Fables for the End Times, came out in 2024, shortly followed by We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels and Other Creatures, which Costello was the contributing editor for. His debut novel, An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys, is forthcoming in April 2025.
Costello’s work speaks to the complexity of queer young adulthood, and even more so to a queer young adulthood experienced under difficult circumstances. Whether these circumstances come from an individual or something larger these stories are important now more than ever, allowing the reader to glimpse even the smallest glimmers of hope through dark times.
More information can be found at Rob Costello’s website https://www.cloudbusterpress.com
You have published a short story collection and an anthology, both focusing on queer teens facing the monstrous and the horrifying. Can you talk about the difference between these two processes, writing and collecting your own stories verses editing and curating other writers takes on this theme?
This is a great question because the process was very different for each book. With my short story collection, The Dancing Bears: Queer Fables for the End Times, it was pretty straightforward. The book is essentially a collection of pieces I wrote over the past decade or so. Many of them were previously published in various literary journals and genre magazines, but they all share certain key themes and ideas related to queerness, desire, and loneliness that recur throughout my work—all through the lens of queer horror and dark fantasy, which is what I enjoy writing the most. When the opportunity came along to publish a collection, it was mostly a matter of picking and choosing among these stories for those that I thought would work best together.
With my anthology, We Mostly Come Out at Night: 15 Queer Tales of Monsters, Angels and Other Creatures, I started with the concept first. The book explores the connection between queerness and the monstrous, with stories that feature monsters as positive and empowering metaphors for the otherness of being queer. As editor, my first job was to create a pitch that would entice a publisher to acquire the book. My second job was to invite other writers to be a part of the project. Once the pitch was sold and everyone was signed on, I worked with the contributors to identify their monsters and to flesh out the concepts behind their stories to ensure they stayed within the parameters of the anthology. Then they got to work. Next, my acquiring editor at Running Press Teens, Britny Perilli, and I partnered with each writer on revisions, with the ultimate result being the finished book that was published this May.
Overall, the anthology was a much more collaborative process. It was tremendously gratifying working with other writers and seeing how each interpreted the theme of the anthology. Some of their stories are creepy, some are romantic, some are contemplative, some are funny. (I wanted to challenge myself to write something outside my comfort zone, so my own contribution to the book is probably the lightest, funniest story I’ve ever written.) The concept of the monster means many things to different people, and it was great fun to see what the contributors came up with!
Your novel will be a divergence from the connecting genre of horror shared by your first two books, but can you talk about any overlap that there is? How has thinking about the horror genre and how it relates to queerness in literature influenced the way you wrote your novel?
I think for me, the link between my previous books and my forthcoming YA novel, An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys, has to do with the connection between queerness and trauma. Horror for me is typically centered in the experience of trauma (through a queer lens). Virtually every piece in my short story collection involves characters grappling with the nightmare of existing in a world that rejects and marginalizes kids who are different.
In contrast, my anthology is a kind or reaction against the queer trauma narratives that I typically write. As I said, I wanted that book to be empowering for young queer readers, and so even though there are stories about characters coping with some pretty heavy stuff, they always overcome it in positive and inspiring ways.
In my novel, these themes and goals merge. The book is a contemporary realistic story set in a fictional MAGA-pilled small town in the summer of 2016. (Okay, maybe that makes it historical fiction… sigh.) It’s about a seventeen-year-old named Toby Ryerson who, in a fit of anger, outs a boy named Dylan that he’s been secretly hooking up with. This one mistake sets off a chain reaction of disasters that quickly spiral out of Toby’s control, setting him on a collision course with the overbearing older brother who raised him.
I describe the book as a gritty and harrowing queer coming-of-age novel as well as a love story between two mismatched brothers coping with the burden of secrets and a legacy of shame. But at its core it’s really about one boy’s struggle to overcome the overlapping traumas of his life. Toby’s experience of the horrific overdose of his mother when he was a little boy, combined with the lifelong trauma of growing up under the shadow of homophobia, sets him on a path of self-destruction that begins when he outs Dylan and ends in a nightmare scenario in a seedy Manhattan nightclub. Toby’s journey is very much rooted in the real-life horrors that too many queer kids face, but he ultimately survives them thanks to the abiding love of his brother. Thus, I hope readers will find the book to be both dark and hopeful, horrific and uplifting.
When your novel comes out in 2025 you will have had three different types of debuts in a period of just a couple years. What have those different experiences been like?
As I think any writer will tell you, the experience of each new book is unique.
The publication of my short story collection was a much quieter affair than my anthology, largely because debut short story collections from new/unknown writers like me typically don’t generate a ton interest. I did a couple of events (online and in person) which were a lot of fun, and I participated in a wonderful group reading that my publisher organized at Readercon this past July.
With my anthology, there’s been a lot more publicity, in large part because I have a dedicated and talented publicist at Running Press Teens who has put in a ton of work to get the word out. I’ve done a bunch of print and podcast interviews, participated in several readings/events, and have generally seen more buzz for the book, which has felt tremendously gratifying.
We’ll see what happens with my novel. It doesn’t come out until April of 2025, but my publisher is already lining up events for me to do, so I am hopeful. In general, novels are easier to promote than short story collections or anthologies, so I expect it will be a vastly different experience from what I’ve seen so far. I’m excited!
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