Buddy Devine – författare

What if the greatest punk rock legend who ever lived never actually disappeared?When flamboyant music-history YouTuber Herb Bean uploads a documentary about the long-forgotten punk icon Mack Lasher, he expects a few thousand views—not a global obsession. Overnight, his video reignites decades-old conspiracies surrounding the outrageous frontman of the infamous band Gross Indecency, a queer rock revolutionary whose meteoric rise and mysterious disappearance left behind more questions than answers.Then Herb receives an email from Mack himself.What follows is the uncensored memoir of Lester Flatt—the man behind the myth. Raised in a deeply conservative New Jersey household, Lester fights against family, religion, homophobia, and the music industry to become one of the most controversial figures in underground rock. His journey through the explosive punk scenes of the 1980s and 1990s is filled with unforgettable characters, chaotic concerts, found family, disastrous romances, outrageous scandals, and a relentless determination to live authentically in a world determined to silence him.By turns hilarious, heartbreaking, profane, and deeply human, Lying Flatt is a sweeping queer coming-of-age epic, a love letter to punk rock, and a satirical exploration of fame, identity, history, and the stories we choose to believe.For readers who love sprawling character-driven novels, music history, unreliable narrators, and unapologetically queer storytelling, Lying Flatt delivers an unforgettable ride through sex, drugs, rebellion, heartbreak, and the enduring power of rock 'n' roll.Some legends are born. Others lie their way into history.

Kate's life runs like clockwork — and she's bored out of her mind.Every day in her New Jersey suburb follows the same script: school, bagels with her best friend Nikki, the park swing, Fahrenheit 451 for the seventy-first time, bed. Repeat. She's sixteen, restless, and convinced nothing unexpected will ever happen to her.Then Will shows up.The strange new kid at school barely speaks, never takes off his hood, and reads H.G. Wells alone on the front steps. He knows things he shouldn't. He moves like someone who learned to navigate the world by watching it rather than living in it. And when a blinding beam of blue light splits the sky over their small town, Kate realizes that Will isn't just hiding a secret.He's hiding a machine.Circle Back is a YA time travel adventure about a girl who finally gets the unexpected — and discovers that the past is a lot more complicated, dangerous, and alive than any history class prepared her for. Part coming-of-age story, part rock-and-roll odyssey through the decades, it's a novel about what we carry with us through time, what we'd risk to change, and why some things — and some people — are worth going back for.For fans of Back to the Future, The Time Machine, and Dazed and Confused — a time-travel story with genuine heart, sharp wit, and a protagonist you'll root for across every era.

I have a thorough sense of the novel now. Here's the Amazon paperback book description:It's 1983. Lester Flatt is fat, openly gay, and about to become the most electrifying frontman the New Jersey punk underground has ever seen.Lying Flatt: Book One — The Rise of Mack Lasher follows Lester — who performs under the outrageous stage name Mack Lasher — as he tears through the dive bars of New Jersey and the grimy legendary venues of New York City with his band, Gross Indecency. Playing a genre he calls "e;Church Punk,"e; Mack is louder, queerer, and more recklessly alive than anyone around him. He is also a compulsive liar, a magnet for chaos, and a man whose story will be buried for forty years.Until now.In the present day, nineteen-year-old YouTuber Herb Bean posts a deep-dive video on Mack Lasher — an unsung queer punk icon he's barely even heard of — and wakes up the next morning to find it has gone viral overnight. Suddenly, everyone wants to know: who was Mack Lasher, what really happened to him, and is he still alive?Lying Flatt is a dual-timeline literary novel about the punks history forgot, the fans who refuse to let them stay forgotten, and the gap between the legend you build and the life you actually live. It is a love letter to 1980s New York, to queerness as a form of survival, to rock 'n' roll as a religion — and to the loudmouths, dreamers, and beautiful disasters who never made it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.For fans of Just Kids, Please Kill Me, and anyone who ever wished they'd been there.