Mixed Tape: A novel

Will Rafferty has three rules:
1. Never admit you're gay.
2. Never kiss the boy you’re in love with.
3. Run away if you break either rule.

Set in the 1980s—a decade shaped by pop music, conservatism, and the AIDS epidemic—Mixed Tape follows Will from high school to university, and through secret crushes and self-denial. At university, he navigates classes, friendships, his father’s expectations, and unspoken desire. When a coveted Parliamentary internship offers Will an escape from a situation he can’t face, he runs to Ottawa, where his struggle with relationships continues, and where he confronts a cynical political culture that treats AIDS and queer lives as expendable.

At the centre of Will’s emotional world is a mixed tape made by classmate and secret crush, Chris. The tape represents a soundtrack that expresses feelings Will cannot name. Played during moments of loneliness, despair and hope, it is both refuge and reckoning as Will confronts the cost of silence, fractured family ties, and choices about who he wants to become.

Mixed Tape is about coming out and about staying in. It’s about the cost of self-denial, finding love, and the long road toward telling the truth, especially to yourself.