The Story
Will Rafferty has three rules:
1. Never admit you're gay.
2. Never kiss the boy you’re in love with.
3. Run away if you break either rule.
Set in the 1980s—a decade shaped by pop music, conservatism, and the AIDS epidemic—Mixed Tape follows Will from high school to university, and through secret crushes and self-denial. At university, he navigates classes, friendships, his father’s expectations, and unspoken desire. When a coveted Parliamentary internship offers Will an escape from a situation he can’t face, he runs to Ottawa, where his struggle with relationships continues, and where he confronts a cynical political culture that treats AIDS and queer lives as expendable. At the centre of Will’s emotional world is a mixed tape made by classmate and secret crush, Chris. The tape represents a soundtrack that expresses feelings Will cannot name. Played during moments of loneliness, despair and hope, it is both refuge and reckoning as Will confronts the cost of silence, fractured family ties, and choices about who he wants to become. Mixed Tape is about coming out and about staying in. It’s about the cost of self-denial, finding love, and the long road toward telling the truth, especially to yourself.
The Author
Meet Geoffrey Wilson
Geoffrey Wilson is a first-time author. His debut novel, Mixed Tape, will be released soon.
Geoffrey has been writing stories for as long as he has been able to hold a pen and write complete sentences. In 1992 he won his university’s poetry prize and is a two-time survivor of the grueling 3 Day Novel Contest. There have been many writers who have inspired Geoffrey, including John Keats, John Dos Passos (Manhattan Transfer), James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), and H.G. Wells (Tono-Bungay), as well as some more contemporary Canadian authors such as Timothy Findlay, Michael Ondaatje, Douglas Coupland and Guy Gavriel Kay.
He recently retired from a long career in public affairs and communications, which began in 1986 as a legislative assistant to a Member of Parliament at the House of Commons in Ottawa. He is a proud alumnus of Dalhousie University, from which he holds degrees in English Literature and Public Administration.
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, his family moved to Nova Scotia when he was two years old. He has lived in four Canadian provinces during his life but has always returned to beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he resides today with his husband Jeff (yes, they share the same first name—and no, it’s not weird), and their cat Georgie.
Photo Credit: Evyeneia Dexter
Contact Me
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to send me a message or ask a general question using this form. I will do my best to get back to you soon regarding my upcoming novel. If you have any questions or inquiries about Mixed Tape, don’t hesitate to reach out.
