

My 2007 YA mystery, Project Pay Day, is much lighter, and has also been adapted as feature film (which I wrote), to be released in 2020. My 2016 gay teen puzzle box thriller Three Truths and a Lie was nominated for an Edgar Award (this, and my 2005 novel Grand & Humble, are real mind-benders, trust me). In 2017, I released a new, stand-alone series starring Russel’s gay disabled friend Otto Digmore, called The Otto Digmore Series. These books are “new adult” (making Russel one of very few literary characters to “jump” genres in projects created by the same author). In 2013, I continued Russel’s story as he grew up, into his twenties, in a new, stand-alone series called Russel Middlebook: The Futon Years. I tried to give these books a lot of humor and heart. I subsequently wrote three more books about Russel, calling them The Russel Middlebrook Series. It was one of the first in a new wave of break-out LGBTQ young adult fiction, and it was adapted as a feature film in 2013. My first novel, Geography Club (2003), is the story of a gay teen named Russel Middlebrook. I’ve published fourteen novels, had nine screenplays optioned, and had two of my projects turned into feature films. I am Brent Hartinger, a novelist and screenwriter.
