Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for sharing this ARC with me!

I've followed Tingle for several years and love his web presence and cultural impact; he seems like an excellent person, and I'm thrilled he's delving into horror. His style of lulling you into a sense of normalcy tinged with unease before slapping you with The Horrors was delightful, and I'm excited to read his other horror work (just one other novella that I know of, so far) as well as some of his romance/erotica in the near future. Highly recommend picking this up, even if it's your first foray into the Tingleverse!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley and am voluntarily posting a review. All opinions are my own.
I’ve long been a follower of Chuck Tingle’s, as while I’m not a huge fan of niche erotica, I love his unapologetic approach to the genre (and life) with the main goal of proving love is real. And while Camp Damascus is not the first long-form work he’s produced (Harriet Porber and Straight both sound awesome!), it is the first work of his I’ve had the pleasure of reading. And even in the realm of horror, he finds a roundabout way of fulfilling his mission to prove love as he captures a darkly satirical and relevant portrayal of a conversion therapy and the other ways in which the queer community have long been targeted by fundamentalist evangelical Christians.
Rose makes for a hyper-realistic portrayal of a queer and autistic (this is revealed at a later point in the text) young person who was raised within evangelical Christian circles, growing in her awareness of her queerness and simultaneously discovering her church’s more sinister undertones. She’s very easy to root for, and I loved following her as her disillusionment with her environment grew, and grew into an even more pervasive discomfort, before coming to a head.
The story takes its time at first to set the scene, but it soon ramps up. The sense of danger is real, and I respect how Tingle was able to keep his story grounded in the stark realities of the issues he was discussing, even while incorporating these supernatural elements.
This was a delightfully gritty mainstream debut from Chuck Tingle, and I’m now curious to check out some of his other work, particularly his other longer works. I’d recommend this to readers looking for satirical horror, but I’d especially recommend it to someone who has been interested in Chuck Tingle based on his Internet persona, but who has yet to try one of his books. You won’t be disappointed.

Neverton, Montana is a God-fearing community near Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Their success is anything but holy, however.

Opening the novel from Rose's point of view, we see the extreme conservatism of the Kingdom of the Pines, the tight-knit religious community whose leaders run the conversion camp. Strange things happen to her from the start of the novel, from seeing an old woman in uniform to coughing up a mass of flies. Her wishes and perceptions are ignored from the start, and she is expected to fall in line with what others want for her. Of course, she can't; we wouldn't have a novel if she did. The strange occurrences and misperception continues, with flashes of memory that she doesn't completely recognize; once she realizes what it means, her analytical mind turns to understanding what happened to her, and then to saving others caught in the same trap. She moves quickly to do so, even at risk to herself.

Chuck Tingle is an internet icon for the many books he's written, and this is his first foray into horror and traditional publishing circles. From his own biography, "Chuck writes to prove love is real because love is the most important tool we have when resisting the endless cosmic void." Rose begins as a God-fearing girl with autistic quirks and special interests her parents want her to stop doing, and they quickly condemn her when she doesn't fall into line with what they want. But as she realizes over the course of the book, love isn't a horrible thing, no matter what form it takes. It's the hatred that leads to torture, isolation, and betrayals that is evil. Hypocrisy couched as faith is a terrible thing, and it's only by revealing the truth that the children at Camp Damascus can be free.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC!

Did not finish this one, mainly due to the pacing and the characters, I couldnt get invested in it.

IT'S SO GOOD OMG READ IT!! So, for everyone who has been listening to me talk up Camp Damascus for the last several months, now is the time to get your hands on this amazing book. Written by the always excellent Chuck Tingle, the infamously humorous romance writer digs into horror in a book about a gay conversion camp that employs literal demons to "scare kids straight". Rose loves her family and she loves God, but she also knows she isn't interested in dating men and has begun to notice just how beautiful her female friend is. When she begins coughing up flies and her friend is brutally murdered, Rose knows something is wrong, no matter what her parents and Church-appointed therapist say. She begins to investigate, and discovers the horrors behind her community. Rose is possibly the best-written autistic person I've ever read- curious and logical, with a different way of seeing the world and an inability to lie to herself. Rather than a disability, she is just different, in a way her parents claim to tolerate but more often try to push down. Rose's relationship with her parents is beautiful and heartbreaking because of its reality - they do love her, but are willing to hurt her in horrific ways because she isn't exactly who they want her to be. Many books about queer kids dealing with familial rejection make those parents cartoonishly evil, while Tingle draws then as lovingly cruel. Rose's fight and triumph will likely speak to lots of queer readers, and the hope she brings is beautiful. Must read isn't a strong enough descriptor, in my view - check it out or risk missing out on a work of Earth-shattering importance that also happens to be intriguing and entertaining.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for allowing me to read an ARC of Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle!

I have never read a book by Tingle before and having heard of his other works I wasn’t sure if this book would be something I would enjoy. I do enjoy horror and I’m glad I read this book. I really liked it. The main character Rose is being chased by demons and vomiting up flies. What’s not to love?

It may be triggering for some as this book does deal with conversion camps and religion. The horror was more on the YA side, so even if you’re not a huge horror fan, you should’ve still be able to enjoy this book.

Thank you to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

For fans of Hell Followed with Us and Monday’s Not Coming, this book is for you.

I was extremely captivated by Rose’s journey into her own understanding of rediscovering herself and unpacking the truth of the religion that she has been raised in her entire life.

“God is infallible; man is not.” The heart of this story is the horrors commuted under the guise of “God’s will.” It explores what it means to accept a queer identity despite judgement from family and the community, especially when that judgement devolves into abuse and violence. It speaks to the journey of losing the faith you’ve been given and picking up a faith you choose. In Rose’s case, this means losing her family, her friends, and her community, but it means gaining so much more. As a Christian myself, parts of this book were hard to read, but I think it landed in a place that both respects and challenges the concepts of faith and religion. My main criticism would be that sometimes scenes felt as though they were jumping from one thing to the next with little explanation, but even this has a plus side of making the story feel fast paced and interesting.

By now, I think that just about anyone who spends time in literary circles on the internet has heard of the legendary Chuck Tingle. While the pseudonymous author is probably best known for his short erotica works (aka “Tinglers”) like Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt, Tingle has been making forays into longer stories in other genres. The one that caught my attention most was Camp Damascus, a horror novel about a gay conversion camp in Montana. Needless to say I leapt at the opportunity to read it as soon as I could.

Camp Damascus is the story of Rose Darling, a twenty year-old autistic woman living in Neverton, Montana. Rose and her family are members of The Kingdom of the Pine, a close-knit ultra-conservative Christian community that runs the titular camp. Unlike any other such camp, Camp Damascus boasts an unheard-of 100% success rate for kids who are sent there by parents who don’t want them to be gay. Rose’s life (and life at the Darling house in general) seems perfect. She’s about to finish high school (all Kingdom kids spend two years on church activities in between years of school, and so by senior year are older than any of their non-Kingdom or secular classmates). She loves volunteering for the church, and she loves her parents. She also loves research, and memorizing scientific facts alongside bible verses.

When Rose is out with her friends at the local swimming hole trying to build up the confidence to dive off the little cliff, she takes the hand of her classmate, Martina, and they leap together. It’s an exhilarating experience, and the first time that Rose has dared to do something so brave. However, when she returns to the top of the cliff to test her newfound courage and jump again, she sees something horrifying. An old, drowned-looking woman with unnaturally long fingers and white eyes appears to be staring at her, and no one else can see her. Later that night, in the middle of dinner with her parents, Rose coughs out a large mass that turns out to be a swarm of insects. Something is very, very wrong.

Soon, Rose’s investigative mind begins racing, trying to understand what she has seen and felt. Memories begin to surface, and she finds herself questioning everything that she has ever known about herself, her parents, The Kingdom of the Pine, and Camp Damascus. In Neverton, trying to uncover the truth is going to be impossible to do alone, but it’s the right thing to do, even if it means casting aside everything that she knew that made her Rose Darling.

Camp Damascus is a pitch-perfect horror novel. It’s a quick read, and it’s delightfully discomforting to a former member of a Christian community. This book is going to be absolutely life-changing for so many people. Tingle’s writing is tight, packing a solid story into under 300 pages. There are loads of little nods to his particular turns of phrase throughout as well. If you’ve ever given his Twitter feed a read, you’ll find yourself chuckling (ha) at some familiar wording. My utmost thanks to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. Camp Damascus is out this Tuesday, July 18th. Go get yourself a copy and help to prove that love is real.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2023/07/13/camp-damascus-a-review/

Thank you for the advanced copy. This book is hard hitting, gritty, and enjoyable. May be featured on an upcoming episode of Your Rainbow Reads podcast.

Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus is a masterpiece of Horror. As a fan of the genre, I don’t say that lightly or use the term indiscriminately. This book examines grooming and indoctrination from the point of view of the incurious, those who fear to interrogate the world around them outside the purview of an ancient mythology that repeatedly contradicts itself, a mythology that was conceived many millennia before man had the capacity to conceptualize the vastness of life and its multitudes. The book isn’t anti-religion, though; it’s an examination of a distorted version of faith, of love, of imposing beliefs on others without their consent, and what that means for Rose Darling.

Rose’s memories of Camp Damascus are beginning to resurface while her strictly forbidden capacity for secular curiosity begins to outgain her religious training. Rose is the child of two parents who believed it would be better to have an obedient husk of a daughter than a gay one. They not only agreed to but participated in the extreme measures the camp, its counsellors, and its religious leader went to to suppress the nature of the children who are tortured there. Tough love is what they call it, but it’s a bastardization of the word love in every way. Their methods do not follow the directive that “love does not insist on its own way,” and it’s here that Tingle gives readers some delicious chills.

For as chilling as Camp Damascus is, it’s also triumphant and my heart soared in the end, as Rose discovers an untapped well of strength and courage and, best of all, love and acceptance. Not only the love of the girl she’d lost to the blankness left from her time at the camp but the love of a best friend and found family as well as acceptance within a faith that had abandoned her. Rose becomes the champion of her own story, and I rooted for her every step of the way.

Chuck Tingle poured a lot of feeling into this novel, and it resonates. He materializes the transformative power of compassion and kindness through a story that is meant to ask pointed questions about obedience and submission to a flawed extremist. Rose’s autism is also displayed early in the story as stimming before it’s named; it’s simply another facet of who she is and a testament to her parents’ inadequacies at the one job they were required to be good at. Camp Damascus is a story about a young woman growing up and growing away from her childhood, becoming her own person, told in the most extreme of ways. Horror fans should grab it.

Summer camp is one of the last places you want to find yourself if you’re living inside a horror novel. But the scariest thing about Camp Damascus? Rose can’t even remember attending it. Internet-famous erotica author Chuck Tingle deftly pivots to serious horror in his first traditionally published novel Camp Damascus, out tomorrow, July 18.
Twenty-year-old Rose is as devoted to Kingdom of the Pine—an insular sect that combines fundamentalist Christianity with worship of capitalism and their business-savvy Prophet—as her parents or pastor could hope. Despite her tendency to overindulge her curiosity with internet research rabbit holes, her oft-criticized habit of counting out patterns with her fingertips, and her confusing feelings toward her classmate Martina, Rose is trying her best to live a life guided by the Bible passages she’s memorized and the Prophet’s Four Tenets. But with just weeks to go before high school graduation (Kingdom of the Pine Kids take two gap years, and so are older than their peers), Rose’s life is thrown of course by a series of disturbing occurrences. Rose vomits up flies during family dinner one night, she’s being haunted by a demonic apparition wearing a red polo shirt like a camp counselor, and the infomercials for Camp Damascus—Kingdom of the Pine’s famously successful ex-gay conversion camp—start to feel alarmingly familiar. Even more concerning is the way her parents and church-appointed psychologist react, as though they have something to hide. When Rose’s demonic encounters take a deadly turn, she realizes the only way to get answers is to seek them out herself. As Rose fights to unlock her buried memories, reconnects with people from her clouded past, and sheds the worldview she’s been raised with, she discovers that the secret Kingdom of the Pine harbors is far bigger and more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.
Camp Damascus deftly mixes real-world and fictional horrors. This book is not for the faint of heart and hits just about every avenue of horror: On the body horror side are detailed descriptions of vomiting up flies and several limb-twisting injuries and gruesome deaths. On the psychological end, there’s Rose’s inability to trust her own memories and her fear that certain lines of thought will trigger supernatural apparitions. The supernatural horror here packs a punch: the unsettling demons with their lank, stringy hair and incongruous polo shirts are paired with brief glimpses into an almost Clive Barker-esque hell. But the true horrors at the heart of this story are dangers that plague our own world: religious fundamentalism and cults, homophobia and bigotry, conversion therapy and the abuse or abandonment of LGBTQ youth. Despite all these different forms of horror, however, the book also manages to include some moments of lighthearted humor and an ultimately uplifting message of empowerment.
I also love the way that this book plays with a classic slasher movie trope: summer camp. The most iconic example of this trope is the 1980 box office hit Friday the 13th, in which a group of carefree and sex-obsessed teens are picked off one by one by an unseen assailant. The mere existence of a summer camp in a horror novel is already priming us to be thinking about young folks being punished for their sexuality. In one twist on this trope, the sexuality being punished is not necessarily the engaging in sexual acts but rather sexual orientation—Camp Damascus is a camp devoted to “converting” gay youth back into Kingdom of the Pine’s conception of properly behaved Christians. In another twist, the majority of this book does is not actually spent at camp. Instead, Rose spends most of the novel unable to remember attending Camp Damascus or whatever horrors took place there. She has to slowly build her mental image of the camp back up, at first merely from infomercials, then by plumbing the brief flashes of memory that resurface, questioning fellow attendees, and reconnecting with her former camp counselor. Only once Rose has sketched in an outline of the horrors she experienced at Camp Damascus does she actually return to the camp grounds for a climactic confrontation. In this case, however, the villain isn’t one lone slasher out for revenge, but rather the whole power structure that has put the camp in place.
If you’re seeking a good summertime horror novel to send shivers down your spine while you read by the pool, Camp Damascus may be just what you’re looking for!

Before this book I would have said a heart-warming horror novel was an oxymoron and not something you could accomplish, but I'll be damned if Chuck Tingle didn't prove me wrong. I was blown away by his first foray into traditional publishing, finding it full of both fantastical and realistic horror, but also at its core a story about love. I LOVED the main character, she was exactly the kind of person a story like this needed to become even better, and her transformation as the book goes on was wonderful to behold. There's also a great message in here about the toxicity of Christianity, and how so often it portrays itself as a religion of love when it's more likely to spew hate. (Please note this is not the chase for all Christians, but the major sects seem to fall into this category). This book is honestly what I was hoping Hell Followed With Us was going to be; horrifying, gory, but ultimately hopeful. I have to say that going into this book I wasn't sure what I was going to get, but coming out of it I think I've found one of my favorite books of the year. I've already put up a shelf-talker for it at work and can't wait until I can get out on the floor to hand-sell it to customers. Chuck Tingle has proven that he's a new voice to watch in the horror genre, and I certainly hope he will be writing more books in the years to come. I'm also just gonna say that I think this could make a really great movie, if it was picked up by the right director, and now I'm kind of hoping someone is in talks for the film rights. GET ON THAT HOLLYWOOD!

This book was not exactly what I was expecting. I thought I knew exactly where this was going and is someways I did but in others I was absolutely shocked.
This was a really fun and creepy book. I really liked the characters and having grown up in a extrem religious background this is definitely something I understand and relate too. This is one of those books that I don't think is for everyone but the people it is for will absolutely adore it!

Chuck Tingle’s long been known to the romance crowd for writing, well, very interesting stories called Tinglers. Part-satire, part… I don’t even know what, they’re fun if somewhat bewildering. Underlying everything, though, has been the author’s unwavering “LOVE IS REAL” devotion to acceptance and love in all its forms. When I heard he was coming out with a horror novel? Yeah, I could totally see that – and I also knew I had to get my hands on it as soon as possible. While I was expecting to be thoroughly creeped out and amused by some dark satire, I had not expected the kick in the feels that ultimately brought the book together for me.

Rose Darling has been raised as a faithful follower of the Kingdom of the Pine church, known mostly for Camp Damascus, a gay conversion camp with a 100% success rate. With the end of high school approaching, Rose is troubled by new feelings for her best friend and her lack of feelings for the guy who wants to be her boyfriend. Plus, she keeps catching glimpses of a strange ghastly woman. But one crack reveals even more issues within the church and secrets that everyone has been keeping from Rose.

“I love Jesus, I really do, but Jesus would want me to be cool.”


It’s hard to understand Rose without first understanding her faith. The Kingdom of the Pine is a Christian pretty-much-a-cult sect founded during the Industrial Revolution by their prophet who lost his hand machinery accident, then “pulled himself up by his bootstraps.” It’s Jesus but with capitalism, complete with church-sanctioned MLMs. It’s both the funniest and most true skewering of American Evangelical culture I’ve seen. It shows how every moment of Rose’s life is tied to the church, from frequent biblical quotes to how long she goes to school to family structure. Bonding with her mother means going for walks and coming up with imaginary sins for the houses they pass, while Rose suggests the biblical passages to “save” them. In other words, all the law and none of the compassion.

“I was taught the importance of perseverance by Kingdom of the Pine, so I suppose they brought this upon themselves.
I was also educated on vengeance.”


And then we have Rose. Rose has tried so hard to be the perfect daughter her parents want her to be. But Rose is something that is antithetical to their faith – curious. She’s also neurodivergent, so once she gets a path of research into her head, she can’t let it go. I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that Rose is forced to separate from her faith community. The tangle of emotions she feels – betrayal, relief, painful – is well described. But most of all? Rose is angry. Coming from a culture where women aren’t allowed to be angry, where “niceness” is valued over justice, it was so refreshing to see Rose come into her own.

Rose’s last name is Darling and there’s no missing the Peter Pan references. In the first chapter, a side character – and Rose’s crush – points out that Rose has no shadow, just like Peter Pan. In Peter Pan, and in this book, the shadow can be viewed as an absence of light, as a loss of memories, as a lack of grounding. There’s several other references to the play – including a point where Rose climbs throw a window, one that’s basically been dismantled by her friends to fool a security system – but most are too spoilery. Suffice it to say that it’s another added layer of meaning to the book.

There’s a lot to unpack about the various ways (real and imagined) LGTBQ+ people are persecuted and how they respond. The author carefully handles two extremely divergent reactions to religious abuse – atheism and seeking out a more accepting religious sect – and shows how friendship and acceptance can bridge that divide. Rose is also somewhere on the autism spectrum, and her family scolds her for her single-minded focus on subjects and her stimming. To Rose and to her friends? She’s just curious, a trait that’s to be admired. Simply put, I was not expecting this much sweetness in the middle of this horror book but rather than break me out of the book it only made me care about the characters more.

Of course, the book’s not perfect. While it quickly jumps into the action and the tempo remains mostly brisk, there’s some pacing issues in the middle that bog it down. But on the whole, the characters redeem that.

“We haven’t been blessed by some incredible superpower from the great beyond, we’re just curious.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.”


Overall, ok, wow, Chuck Tingle can really write horror, too – and without losing some of his trademark vibe. Highly recommended to any fan of LGBTQ+ horror!

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Camp Damascus is a fight for queer love wrapped up in a very good horror novel. I'm not trying to elevator pitch it, but while I was reading I was getting Goosebumps vibes (in the pretty much anything can happen in a Goosebumps book), I was getting Hellraiser vibes (early Hellraiser). It's just a good, unsettling horror book that shows that queer love is important and right and I'm very glad this book exists.

This may well be the most difficult review I’ve ever tried to write.

If *Camp Damascus* were written by any other author, I’d probably give it 3.5 stars. It’s got a great premise for a horror novel: a conversion therapy camp that boasts of a 100% success rate, but achieves this through the use of literal demons. But the execution wasn’t great. Not terrible, but not great. The protagonist’s character growth was faster and more complete than the story could support; the bad guys felt very flat. But the story picked up at the end, and overall I was satisfied with it.

But here’s where this review gets challenging. By every objective measure, *Camp Damascus* is a FAR better written book than the rest of Dr. Tingle’s extensive bibliography. And saying something like “Chuck Tingle should stick to what he’s good at: being intentionally and ironically bad” makes no sense at all.

Here’s the thing. Even though this book isn’t *trying* to be cheesy and terrible, I still could tell it was a Tingler. Part of this is in the criticisms I mentioned above; it felt like Dr. Tingle has spent so long in his usual groove that he wasn’t able to shake it off quite as much as he could have; hence we get flat villains talking about Jesus and sin that don’t have the depth of the protagonist.

But I could *also* tell it was a Tingler because of the depth and empathy that always lies behind the Bigfoots and biker unicorn bad boys and velociraptors and well-endowed abstract concepts. Everything Dr. Tingle writes has a message of acceptance of people as they, and an intolerance for bigotry and hatred, and that shone through here. It would have been so easy for the protagonist to end up hostile to religion; she isn’t. One of the good guys, at the ultimate climax of the book when it seems certain they’re all about to die, starts praying. Despite going through Camp Damascus, this character remains a devout Christian. And the protagonist accepts and respects his faith, even if she no longer has hers.

So, Buckaroos, here’s my final takeaway. This isn’t a *great* book, but the person who wrote it is a great *person*, and I hope they write more.

Creepy and weird and moving and affirming. Full of body horror along with the horror that can be wrought in the name of faith and religion.

So while I've heard of Chuck Tingle many times in the past (and had loads of giggles from his inventive titles and book concepts), I've never read any of his books. I've been meaning to give one a try, but just never got around to it. However, when I saw his post on Twitter about this book and read the synopsis, I figured this was as good a time as any to give him a try. Obviously this book is different from a lot of his other tinglers, but not in a bad way. In fact, I now want to try out some of his other books more than before, just because his writing style is super interesting and engaging.

Okay, now on to Camp Damascus itself. So I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Even though I'd read the synopsis and had a general idea of what the book was about (a Christian conversion camp with even more sinister intentions than usual), the beginning of the book really threw me for a loop. The creepy figure watching as Rose was out having fun with her friends, enjoying the last moments of her high school life, helped set the mood. But the extra creepy body horror during dinner with her parents, oof, I'm glad I wasn't actually eating while reading that. And it all seemed to happen so suddenly that I went back and reread it to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped some pages (I hadn't, and it was still amazingly gross the second read). And the creeps just kept on coming, getting progressively weirder and creepier until the big inciting event that changed Rose's point of view (sorry I'm being vague but I don't want to give away what happened because it made my jaw drop and I want other people to get that experience, too).
While some plot points were sorta easy to suss out (partly due to knowing about the conversion camp from the synopsis while Rose is slowly learning about it and partly due to having grown up in evangelical culture and being able to see some of the machinations and manipulations going on), I thoroughly enjoyed being along for the ride and finding out how Chuck was going to put all this together. I loved Rose finding out more about herself, finding new friends and family, and finding her own sense of power that they had tried to take from her. I liked that, though Rose was somewhat stumbling into discoveries thanks to her manipulated memories, through sheer determination and grit she was able to persevere and even win against forces so much bigger than herself. Rose refused to give up, on herself as well as the people she cared about.
There are some definite hard topics in this book, especially from any LGBTQ+ readers who might have grown up in evangelical circles, but seeing Rose and her friends defeat and overcome the forces arrayed against them was nicely cathartic for me (also seeing the final fate of some of the perpetrators of the camp's evil was...well horrifying but also vindicating).

All this to say that Camp Damascus is a creepy, weird, moving, affirming, wonderful book that I thoroughly enjoyed reading at the beginning of Pride month and I really hope Chuck writes more horror like this (seriously his grasp of body horror was top notch in my book. I mean, I'm sort of a baby when it comes to horror so if you're a reader who loves the super crazy, visceral, terrifying body horror, this might be a bit tame for you, but for a baby horror fan like me it was just creepy and gross enough). Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me access to an e-Arc copy to read and review.

This is my first time reading Chuck Tingle, so I honestly went into it with zero expectations. I was impressed and hooked into the story the first moment things seem to feel off for our main character.

Camp Damascus follows strict religion following young woman Rose, as she realizes something is off with both herself and those close to her. She starts seeing an unsettling figure, starts doubting her own feelings, second guesses the motives of her parents , and starts digging for answer to things she can't remember. What she uncovers is a conspiracy that stems from the gay conversion camp that she grew up around. Can she believe in a God when those around her are uses his word to destroy a part of who she is and will she stand by while others suffer as she has or put a stop to it.

This is definitely a lot different from what I have been reading, but I was captivated by the story nonetheless. It's a Queer small town horror story filled with conspiracies, religious trauma, cults, demons, and a satisfying ending for our heroine.

‘Camp Damascus’ is the horror debut for eccentric erotica author Chuck Tingle. A religious, queer, sci-fi horror set in Montana, the story took off from page one and didn’t stop. The visuals in this book were horrific and terrifying, but at times lent itself to a bit of dark humor; and blended with the main characters logical, yet sometimes innocent, inner turmoil of her own beliefs and sexuality made for such a great read. I hope we see more horror from Tingle!