As a freelancer, I get a lot of publicity emails. But the press release for Midnight 99 is a standout, filled with breathlessly bizarre copy.

“Hilarious and Outrageous, Midnight 99 Marks the Debut of LGBTQ+ Writer Ashley Christine,” it begins. It describes the digital release from NeoText as “a classic hard-boiled whodunit novella… where the victim is a 7-foot reptilian overlord and the detective is a bisexual drug dealer who can’t find her pants.” The book centers on Tulsa Kalhoun, a disgraced former broadcast journalist who is now a dealer and user of a bizarre hallucinogenic cocktail known as Midnight 99. When she discovers Doug, a supposedly invincible reptilian overlord, dead on a toilet, she embarks on an odyssey involving “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.”

Full disclosure: I’ve been close friends with Ashley Christine since we met as freshmen at Emerson College a whopping 19 years ago, so I’m predisposed to dig this book. But if you knew Ashley, who uses they/them pronouns, you would probably find that summary as bracing, quirky, and thought-provoking as they are.

The plot also reflects Ashley’s own experiences with substance abuse and recovery. “In the Necronauts, I wanted to personify the inner demons of drug addiction,” they declare. “I think horror fans will really like [them]. In early drafts of the novella, they were basically carbon copies of Clive Barker's cenobites aka bondage demons. But that's been done, so I wanted to think of a new way to create scary haunting creatures. That's when I began thinking about the digital space, and how creepy it would be if digital distortions could chase us in real life. Like how creepy would it be if you were chased by a three dimensional pixelated fog made of the discordant colors and sharp angles you see on a broken computer screen?”

The book is the author’s response to a particularly strange and unsettling time in history. “It deals with very terrifying things like wealth inequality, drug addiction, global warming and heartbreak with a humorous and surreal tone,” Ashley states. “Also, as a genderqueer/non-binary woman and unabashed eccentric, I wanted to create a character that someone like me could relate to. Tulsa Kalhoun is loud, unapologetically herself and always just a little bit horny. Like me, she’s queer and a weirdo—a queerdo.”

The reptilians function as a satirical comment on both society and conspiracy theories about who’s “really” controlling the world. “We humans are so out of sync with our environment,” Ashley says. “When I couldn’t find a reason, I made up my own.” In Midnight 99, these lizard overlords are terraforming Earth, and are also responsible for the patriarchy and—horrors!—Eddie Murphy’s misbegotten ‘80s single “Party All the Time.” QAnon, eat your heart out.

Midnight 99 also features dynamic illustrations by artist collective WBYK (We Buy Your Kid$). Queerdos can download the novella now for $2.99 at Amazon.