Found Family and Dirty Jokes: Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight

I actually wasn't planning to review Cocktails at Seven, Apocalypse at Eight [Don Bassingthwaite]. It's fairly niche (I got it in a Storybundle) and a google search proves that it's tricky to track down... but oh boy is it worth it. My face hurt at the end, because I'd been grinning for hours.

This collection of interconnected short stories takes place across the year, covering Christmas, Hannukah, Mardi Gras, Pride, and St Patrick's Day. I read it during my December Reading challenge but the largest story in the collection is based around St Patrick's Day. I think it works best then. Besides, how many St. Patrick's Day books are there?

Derby Cavendish is a just your average gay man, with a strong sense of queer community and a healthy desire to attend camp, themed events. Unfortunately he attracts magical mayhem wherever he goes. The poor guy can't even buy a Christmas tree without being pursued through the woods by an generously proportioned Minotaur.

Throughout the stories, we meet his friends, who cross the queer and mystical spectrum. Eldery lesbians, Jewish werewolf drag queens, and a bear vampire poly throuple. As each short story introduces new friends and enemies, by the time we get to the longest, final story, it achieves a novel's worth of action in no more than eighty pages.

This isn't a sanitised gay love story, but instead a love letter to an open and welcoming community. There are jokes about dildos and dicks right alongside touching Hannukah-themed coming out stories. When demons attack the LGBTQ+ quarter and turn innocent bystanders into zombies, the heroes feel the attack personally. Derby is quick to remind his friends to avoid truly hurting the 'zombies' because 'they are still our brothers and sisters'. This feels like it was written by someone long established in that world, with a sense of its history.

If I had a quibble it's that the female characters are often the bad guys (demonic cheerleaders, a witchy burlesque dancer, even a female spirit possessing an old organ). I think the author is going for evil-diva vibes rather than misogyny, but it would have been nice to see more variety.

It's a real shame that this book isn't more generally available. At the time of writing you can still snag a paperback on Amazon, but I can't make any promises as to how long that will last. I really hope someone reading this tries, because this isn't just a book, it's a piece of queer history.

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