Hi, I'm David Gearing
Some of you may have met me as Cameron Stone. Yeah, that's still me.
I tell stories for the ones who never got a happily-ever-after. The misfits. The weird kids. The ones who grew up too fast — or are still catching up.
My work lives somewhere between horror and heartache, between coming-of-age and coming apart. You’ll find queer characters who fight, fail, love, and screw up. You’ll find humor in uncomfortable places and tenderness where you least expect it. And you’ll find a refusal to look away from the hard stuff — because pretending it’s not there doesn’t make it go away.
If you’re into Chuck Palahniuk but wish he was more queer-affirming, or John Green with sharper teeth, you’ll probably feel at home here. My stories blur the lines between genre fiction and literary depth; where supernatural elements become metaphors for the very real monsters we carry inside.
I’ve been writing queer, horror, and darker YA fiction for over a decade, and my goal is the same with every book: to make you feel something. Even if it’s messy. Even if it hurts.
Stick around. Bring your weird. Bring your wounds. I’ll bring the stories.
What We Believe
You’ll notice that a lot of my novels have LGBTQ characters. My experiences as a gay white boy growing up in a military family has really defined how I see the world. In a time when our only role models were to be Jack or Will from Will and Grace or be hyper-sexualized like the boys in Queer as Folk, I had no idea who–or what–I was supposed to be.
And this got me thinking. We live in a world of stereotypes. And I wanted to read characters who happened to be gay. Real and gay. And that was a problem. There are (and, if you ask me, still are) too many attempts at having gay characters with destroyed family lives or mental issues somehow lingering underneath. It’s unfair to characterize us all that way.
This is why I helped to start a GSA (Gay-Straight-Alliance) in the middle school I worked at, and why my husband and I continually support the LGBTQ community in the Seattle area and do what we can to support LGBTQ youth. There are so, so many kids who need the support coming out, being who they are, or being allowed to live in a place that doesn’t label as this or that simply because, let’s be honest here, that’s not them.
That’s not any of us.
So I wanted to add in a link to some of the places and things I care about as a way to get you to maybe think about what and who you support.
An old friend of mine used to have a poster up in his room that said, “No one can do everything, but everyone can do something.” He then crossed out the “can” and wrote over it “should”.
And he’s right. And for that, I say “Thank you, Hank.”
Here are some links to some fabulous groups that helped some of the causes I care about. Check them out and show them some love:
GLSEN – the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. A great resource for LGBTQ youth and adults, straight or gay. Check them out here: https://www.glsen.org/.
GLAAD – The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. They have helped to lead the way to change the public’s view of the LGBTQ community, as well as changing the way that the LGBTQ community looks at itself. Check them out here: http://www.glaad.org/
The Trevor Project - The Trevor Project is a suicide-prevention and mental health hotline for queer youth. I know first-hand through the young people I work with that this group's work is vital to our community's survival. Check them out here: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/
