PRETEND IT'S MY BODY Launch Party!

Informed by the author’s experience in and between genders, this debut story collection blurs fantasy and reality, excavating new meanings from our varied dysphorias.

Misfit mothers, prodigal "undaughters," con artists, and middle-aged runaways populate these ten short stories that blur the lives we wish for with the ones we actually lead. A tornado survivor grapples with a new identity, a trans teen psychic can read only indecisive minds, and a woman informs her family of her plans to upload her consciousness and abandon her body.

Luke Dani Blue invites the reader into a world of outlier lives made central and magical thinking made real. Surreal, darkly humorous, and always deeply felt, Pretend It’s My Body is bound together by the act of searching—for a spark of recognition and a story of one's own.

A Kirkus Best Book of 2022

"Groundbreaking." —Kirkus 

“Luke Dani Blue seamlessly incorporates elements of fantasy, sci fi, and literary fiction, defying genres—or, if you will, living between them.” —them.

“New, intense and remarkable.” —Ms. Magazine

LUKE DANI BLUE's stories have appeared in the Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, and have been included on the list of the year's most distinguished stories in Best American Short Stories 2016. Originally from Michigan, Luke Dani Blue (they/them) is a two-time college dropout and time-traveling Victorian invalid who resides most reliably on the internet. They are also an astrologer. This is their first book.