The Shapes of Our Screams, Tt Madden

Description

The Shapes of Our Screams
Paperback – January 15, 2026
by Tt Madden

The Shapes of Our Screams is a ferocious, genre-bending paperback novel that fuses queer rage, live music, and supernatural horror into a blood-soaked rock opera. Indie rock band Darrow Foroi is on the road to Florida to play an illegal show in protest of newly enacted anti-drag laws, determined to make noise where silence has been demanded.

At the center of the band is Lo, a genderfluid lead singer preparing to step publicly into their identity for the first time. The venue is a local renaissance festival, a place of pageantry, performance, and chosen selves. What should be a defiant night of music and visibility becomes something far darker when the faire is attacked by sentient, neofascist music that feeds on fear, conformity, and control.

As sound itself turns hostile, Darrow Foroi and the performers, workers, and attendees of the faire are forced into a brutal fight for survival. Identity becomes both weapon and shield as the characters confront not only external violence, but the internal question of who they are willing to become in order to survive.

Visceral, political, and unapologetically loud, The Shapes of Our Screams blends body horror, queer resistance, and musical obsession into a story that asks how art can save us—and how it can destroy us. Think Green Room with a supernatural edge and a distinctly queer heartbeat.