NEW RELEASE
Book Title: The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max
Author: Duncan Gaye
Cover Artist: Vaselina Georgieva
Release Date: May 12, 2026
Tense/POV: third person/past tense
Genres: Contemporary MM, magical realism
Tropes: Size difference, body worship, psychological, opposites attract, friends to lovers, small town, lumberjack
Themes: A meditation on how love, belief, and storytelling blur the line between imagination and reality—until the distinction no longer matters.
Length: 35 000 words/113 pages
Is it a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
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A weary writer falls for a literal tall tale and must decide what he's willing to sacrifice to keep that love breathing. Tender, wry, and quietly desperate, this is a book about belief, desire, and the work it takes to hold someone in the world.
Blurb
Brian Dunleavy comes to the North Woods to write a serious novel. Instead, he falls in love with a kitschy paper towel mascot.
It begins with a whistle in the trees and the unmistakable sense of being watched. A bootprint the size of a bathtub. Then a muscular, 43-foot-tall lumberjack steps out of the forest.
Mighty Max is handsome. He is kind. Broad-shouldered and blue-eyed, he lives in permanent flannel. He claims he was born from tall tales and campfire legends—back when giants were needed, and believed in. But giants fade when they are mocked. Legends disappear when they're forgotten.
As solitude turns to intimacy, myth turns warm and very, very tangible. Brian finds himself lifted in the careful palm of the colossal man whose shadow stretches across the meadow like dusk itself. Beneath cold stars and beside impossible bonfires, he discovers that loving a giant means choosing to believe in him even when belief bends reality.
Reality is definitely bending. And when Max is reclaimed by the forest, Brian may be the only one who can write him back into being. If stories invent their tellers, who is keeping whom alive?
Strange, tender, playful, and proudly queer, The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max is a mythic romance about loneliness, longing, and the radical act of loving something larger than life.
For readers who cherish the mythic queer devotion of The Song of Achilles, the tender whimsy of The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the wistful magic of Puff the Magic Dragon.
Excerpt
As Brian Dunleavy drove his green jeep under the thick canopy of jack pines and cedars, it felt like he was tunneling through time itself. The road disappeared behind him and shrank ahead of him, leading him into an untamed solitude. Even the digital gods of his GPS abandoned him as he ventured deeper into the vast Northwoods. Soon his path became little more than a trail, swallowed up by a thick carpet of fallen needles.
A brief glimpse of open sky was his first hint, and then he saw it: the tall, weathered A-frame cabin he had rented. It stood at the top edge of a peaceful, dewy meadow, slanted beams reaching up like arms towards the sky. He cut the engine, exhaling as forest sounds closed in, trying to shake the anxiety from his veins.
The cabin loomed like something out of a forgotten fable, the sun-bleached paint peeling in strips as though it were the surface of a strange, dying skin. Shadows danced across the wooden slats. They seemed timeless and eternal, like lost ghosts moving from one story to another. He sensed a mixed welcome in the landscape. It felt both lonely and watchful.
The distant pines stood like silent guards, seeming to take notice of him. They towered with the indifference of those who have seen many come and go. Beyond the cabin, the meadow shimmered. Its translucent grasses and scattered wildflowers set each other off like an Impressionist painting.
About the Author
Duncan Gaye lives in River Forest, Illinois. He believes magic can be found anywhere, even the suburbs. He writes the kind of love stories that sneak up on you—queer, tender, and just a little strange. His books are full of burly big-hearted men, tall tales, impossible odds, and the kind of endings that leave you wanting more.
When not writing, he likes to read, travel and relax with his adorable senior dogs, Spotty and French Fry.
The Long Shadow Series by Duncan Gaye is a thematic anthology series of stand-alone LGBTQ+ novellas and novels that tell love stories shaped by the extraordinary. Blending elements of speculative fiction, magical realism, tall tales, and literary drama, these are stories where intimacy and identity meet epic strength and emotional vulnerability.
From the mythical to the mundane, each book explores larger-than-life characters—strongmen, bodyguards, super soldiers, and other giants. For fans of emotional intensity, queer desire, and stories that stretch the boundaries of realism, this series offers a new kind of legend.
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