There's a small drag queen bar on the edge of the gay district in Tokyo that I like to watch the live streams from. They have a lot of drag queens performing and there's so much talent. I was watching one of these one night, and thought I'd love to write a book about it. I'm Japanese myself, and a femme gay man who loves to "dress up", so I understand the perspective of a queen. At the time, my queer neighborhood was dying due to corporate greed gentrifying us and in particular all of our queer little coffee shops were going away due to this. They were our community spaces. So, I was mad about that. Then the Karens started yelling about drag queens and drag queen storybook hours at libraries and wanting to ban drag, so I was like, "that's it I'm going to protest". The best way to get people engaged is to make them laugh. So, I set out to write a comedy book about Karens trying to gentrify a queer neighborhood, and drag queens were at the center as the main characters. It takes place in Japan, in a satellite town that's still technically part of Tokyo. I decided to make it the most ridiculous thing you've ever read, with the wildest things happening. A lot of things in the book are actually based on my real life, including most of the Karen interactions word for word. Many of the characters are based on real people I knew, too, from my queer community.
