Dear Reader,
You’re looking at the back flap of my book right now, seeking
fresh LGBTQ YA books or spy novels for teens, and thinking “I want something
kind, like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, or
thoughtful like Code Name Verity. This doesn’t look right.”
You are astute, dear reader. It doesn’t.
Maybe you’re a parent looking for something uplifting for your
child who feels out-of-place, or a librarian hoping to influence the next
generation of readers with positive values written by authors who speak to our
current political moment. The tattered, pulpy cover of my LGBT coming-of-age
spy novel, No Good About Goodbye, is comparatively indecent. The first
two chapters read less like Casey McQuiston and more like the Nelson DeMille
books your nasty, conservative uncle reads with his cheaters by the light of an
over-the-shoulder lamp.
Ultimately, my book is kind, but you’ll have to get through
some broken teeth, triggering dialogue, and crude boy talk to get there. Will
you want to? Will anybody?
The past ten years have yielded an embarrassment of riches in
critically acclaimed, award-winning, quality LGBTQIA content: Mackenzi Lee,
Adam Silvera, Emery Lee, Kacen Callender, Becky Albertalli—good writers with
their fingers on the pulse of what’s trending in the world of inclusive
literature for young people. Me? I’m a tired, rusted-out GenX shell. I had a
provisional offer of employment from the State Department when the Trump
administration upended my dreams of a mid-life career in diplomacy. I absorb
too many articles from Foreign Affairs and write LGBTQ+ young adult
adventure novels to humor myself.
I wrote No Good About Goodbye as a story to my 14-year-old
self—an homage to the potboilers and pulps I enjoyed as a kid, only with the
gay hero I always needed but never encountered. I finished the first draft in
2015, having explored neither the YA landscape, the industry, or YA Twitter. This
was fortuitous. If I had, I wouldn’t have written a word. I thought a gay teen
adventure might be a tough sell, unaware the winds were already blowing past me
and toward books far more progressive than mine.
In a matter of months I went from believing myself inventive to
feeling old, retrograde, and out-of-touch with an industry and readership far
more progressive than me.
I had a series of early missteps. On Twitter, several prominent YA
agents blocked me before I realized it wasn’t a place for discussion or
disagreement, and that I was to either support their opinions or say nothing at
all. They were tired, after all, of people with avatars like mine
disagreeing with avatars like theirs. Oh well.
I shut up and kept my head down after burning my bridges. I
re-tooled and re-wrote my manuscript, trying to bring things more in line with
the zeitgeist. It gathered some interest from agents but went nowhere. Boy-hero
spy novels just aren’t a thing after mid-grade, especially when tied into a
queer love story.
In 2017, with my career plans in shambles and my novel going
nowhere, I found my stride in a Highlands Coffee in Hanoi near the preserved
cadaver of Ho Chi Minh. Dizzy from the tropical heat, I scanned both YA Twitter
and Joshua Kurlantzick’s book about the CIA’s secret war in Laos.
What a strange, brutal dichotomy. On Twitter, oxygen-rich people
with liberal arts degrees battled from their keyboards about who should have
permission to write made-up stories about marginalized people. Meanwhile, less
than 300 kilometers from where I sat, the CIA deliberately exploited
marginalized people in unknown battles that decimated the Laotian Hmong people
before abandoning them to the Pathet Lao.
I retooled my novel. I would not tailor it to YA sensibilities, or
care about who would read it or who it offended or what lessons it telegraphed
or perpetuated. It would, in part, be about how all of us, good and bad,
leverage whatever power and privilege we have to advance our goals, preserve
our status, and save our family and friends. It was already a YA spy novel. The
thing spy novels do best is measure how deep people will rot in service of
their ideals and goals.
I didn’t have my laptop - only a pad and pen - and scribbled 90
minutes of notes.
My main character, 15 year-old Ian Racalmuto, would be ruthless
and dispassionate like an agent running in the field, using whatever resources
he had to bulldoze anyone who came between him and his goal of saving his
brother and stopping war. Only, he’d fall in love with his best friend, a
Chinese kid with no papers living in poverty in urban Philadelphia. Being gay
wouldn’t horrify Ian, but the thought of his friend finding out about his crush
would. Only recently, the same thing wrecked the only true friendship he’d ever
had.
When I returned to the states, I sent it to a wonderful
developmental editor and a micropress. The rest is history.
I think there’s a real and continued need for LGBTQ YA books, and
specifically those that center boys. When I was 15, I had a sense of who I was
- a gay kid in rural West Virginia. I never thought there was something wrong
with me, but little else made me as cynical about humanity as the idea that
everyone else could be their authentic self while I would have to navigate the
world in disguise. Why wouldn’t I? Everything gay I knew about the world was in
code.
Things have changed, but not as much as we want to think. We
continue to ship characters and kpop stars who are never formally gay, based on
hints and innuendo. As author Adam Sass noted, all we often have is allegory.
Today, women write tons of mm highschool romance books for each
other in gentle, thoughtful, emotional ways. They’re a fit for gentle,
thoughtful, emotional boys who never felt comfortable in a hyper-masculine
culture. There remains precious little out there, however, for kids like me who
wanted to drive fast, fly planes and blow stuff up with firecrackers.
So, I have a YA LGBT spy adventure novel for whoever wants it. I love the way it turned out. It’s fun and funny and a little absurd. Some readers might be better off not considering what it takes to maintain influence in the world, and best off thinking the greatest problems in society revolve around who is writing young adult books. They might believe change is coming and a round world can have a level playing field. I prefer to consider contingencies. How can we best adapt so we can live good lives if our best wishes never become reality? And who can we bring with us in the lifeboat?
CT Liotta was born and raised in West Virginia before moving to Ohio for college, where he majored in Biology. He now uses Philadelphia as his base of operations. You can find him backpacking all over the world.
Liotta takes interest in writing, travel, personal finance, and sociology. He likes vintage airlines and aircraft, politics, news, foreign affairs, '40s pulp and film noir. He doesn't fear math or science, and is always up for Indian food. His favorite candy bar used to be Snickers, but lately it's been 3 Musketeers. He isn't sure why.
He is author of Relic of the Damned!, Death in the City of Dreams and Treason on the Barbary Coast!
No Good About Goodbye is his latest book.
Visit him on the web at https://www.ctliotta.com.
Sign up for Liotta’s newsletter at https://ctliotta.substack.com.
Fifteen-year-old Ian Racalmuto’s life is in ruins after an embassy raid in Algiers. His mother, a vodka-drunk spy, is dead. His brother, a diplomat, has vanished. And, he’s
lost a cremation urn containing a smartphone that could destroy the world.
Forced to live with his cantankerous grandfather in Philadelphia, Ian has seven days to find his brother and secure the phone—all while adjusting to life in a troubled urban school and dodging assassins sent to kill him.
Ian finds an ally in William Xiang, an undocumented immigrant grappling with poverty, a strict family, and abusive classmates. They make a formidable team, but when Ian’s feelings toward Will grow, bombs, bullets and crazed bounty hunters don’t hold a candle to his fear of his friend finding out. Will it wreck their relationship, roll up their mission, and derail a heist they’ve planned at the State Department?
Like a dime store pulp adventure of the past, No Good About Goodbye is an incautious, funny, coming-of-age tale for mature teens and adult readers. 308p.
“So many treats are in store for the discerning reader of CT Liotta’s brilliant YA novel NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE. There’s a diverse array of multi-racial/cultural characters, organized criminals with complex political goals underway, and keystone-cop humor/blunders often sparking from the evergreen enchantment of a push-pull romance between two young people, neither of whom have yet decided to identify as ‘gay.’ Rich with often realistically crude boy lingo, NO GOOD ABOUT GOODBYE is an utterly charming teenage LGBTQ falling-in-love adventure while simultaneously rocking an international crime storyline.” – C.S. Holmes, IndieReader
★★★★★ “Sharply observed and sarcastic as hell, CT Liotta’s debut is the gay teenage spy thriller we have long needed.” -Matt Harry, author of Superkid and Sorcery for Beginners.
★★★★★ I found this YA spy novel to be an utter delight! Fast-paced and witty, we traverse the globe with Ian, who just lost his mother and is charged with stopping a war with China. All the while he’s 15, enrolled in a High School from hell in Philadelphia and struggling with his identity. The author offers his own particular take on the importance of friendship and found family. He also very cleverly features different viewpoints, so the reading experience never feels stale. Honestly, I did not know what to expect going into this story – I however finished it converted into a fan! – Thomas S., Netgalley
