NEW RELEASE: Bachelorx: a Nonbinary Memoir by Skylar Lyralen Kaye (Excerpt + Q&A with Author)

NEW RELEASE 

Book Title: Bachelorx: a Nonbinary Memoir

Author and Publisher: Skylar Lyralen Kaye

Cover Artist: 100 Covers

Release Date: April 1, 2026

Pairing: Nonbinary protagonist/lesbian and trans love interests

Tense/POV: present tense/alternating POV.

Genres: Literary memoir with graphic and autofiction elements

Tropes: Friends to lovers

Themes: Coming out, Dating and sex, search for love, queer divorce, neurodiversity

Heat Rating: 3 flames  

Length: 319 pages

It is a standalone book.

Goodreads

Buy Links – Pre-Order Now

Amazon US  |  Amazon UK

A 60-something nonbinary queer abruptly leaves a 35-year sexless marriage to go on the apps and date, bringing along all their very vocal personalities.

Style

Worth noting that Bachelorx contains both graphic elements and fictional/mythopoetic elements. It’s intentionally outside the box, aiming for a true representation of neurodiversity while including comedy.

Blurb 

When nonbinary Orpheus leaves their much-loved asexual partner Tobi after 35 years, they have never dated sober, never had a casual girlfriend and never had sober sex. At the age of sixty-two, they’re good at marriage and not at anything casual.

They’ve been living out and proud not only as nonbinary, but also as plural, filming a queer web series.

They’re completely unprepared for middle aged lesbians and their complicated desires. Romance, flirting, love-bombing, control, seduction, desire roll into Orpheus’ life and wake up every possible opinion among their many vocal and vulnerable personalities.

Their very painful history gets woken up in all their inner people, too.

As teenager personalities revel in the “queer prom that never was,” as Orpheus experiences a first kiss with a much younger trans person and then goes on to make out with a woman who confesses trauma in between flicks of her tongue, as child personalities run for cover and the wise inner yoga teacher Kaye warns that none of them are ready to date, Orpheus dog paddles through the waves of dysfunctional urge-to-merge dating.

Then two friends die and their landlord sells their building. Their now ex Tobi totals their car and breaks their own back. 

Will a Eurydice appear, Orpheus wonders, as they search the apps.

Then she does, with a lump in her breast, heart problems, a live-in mother, disabled son and a need for a partner who will hold on, listen and take care of her no matter what comes, as they touch in a rush of a second adolescent joy.

At week six, Eurydice’s at passion. At week seven, she’s talking about adding an addition to her house.

And Orpheus, who will say that they’re plural but won’t show it, who resists commitment only in their silences, goes to every medical appointment, every work occasion, every family party, as their personalities argue about whether to stay, whether to go, whether anything could possibly be right with this woman they can’t get enough of touching.

Every hero must journey to Hades. In the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, innocence is sacrificed to experience. Life walks in when you open the door. No matter your age or circumstances.

Excerpt 

Chapter 1: Becoming Everything

The child Orpheus comes forward in a memory of sunlight. Walking the long line of the green painted two by fours that top posts connecting a chain link fence, they follow its border behind the suburban homes of their Ohio neighborhood. They balance easily, their 1960’s striped t-shirt warmed by the light. Around them insects and birds raise voices for them to listen. They never fall. Held to the earth by tentacles of energy they send to every living being, they ask Gaia to become one with all life, just for a while, just until the pain eases and they can rise alone into a liminal sky, turning poems into songs.

Not boy, not girl, not feminine, not masculine, not straight, not cisgender, not singular, not a member of any tribe that will lay claim to them, Orpheus learns early to become everything. 

* * *

That pandemic spring, I slump over my computer late into the evening with colleagues in California, figuring out how to get actors to film themselves while crew observes on Zoom. Outside the window, the moon hovers over treetops and telephone poles. At the far end of the street the commuter rails screeches by, empty of people. Staring forward into the computer screen, I compare lighting between sets in San Francisco and Pottstown, Pennsylvania. My director of photography assesses eyelines as I give notes to actors before calling for one last take to wrap the day. A multicolored collage of queer bodies appears on the screen as close Zoom. Androgynous nonbinary bodies like mine, trans masc like my spouse, cisgender women, old, young, BIPOC, full-bodied, thin, allo and asexual, appear with a background of pink, people like the ones I interviewed and whose stories I tell. 

I stagger into the bedroom. Pull off my jeans and fall onto the bed in boxer shorts. My spouse Tobi stands near the entrance to the kitchen, tapping a foot on the floor, a stained green button down over their full belly. They stare, deep-set brown eyes burning toward me, toes pointed out, just a little bowlegged.

“Five minutes, Orpheus,” they say. “You could at least give me five minutes.”

“I have to sleep.”

“Then in the morning.”

“I have to work. You know I have to work.”

“Get up five minutes early.”

“I can’t. I’m too tired.” 

They stomp into the kitchen, bang some cabinets. I cover my head with a pillow. 

The next day, Tobi, now wearing a stained brown shirt—their ability to spill food on themself still confounds me after three decades—turns on the Biden-Trump debate at full volume. Stomping over the hardwood floors into the bedroom, I grab the clicker from where it lies on the bed.

“Everyone on Zoom can hear you.” I turn the television off.

They grab the clicker and turn it back on.

I turn it off.

They turn it on.

I turn it off.

“Watch on your computer or somewhere else,” I tell them. “I am WORKING!”

Abandonment issues meet workaholic artist.

Two days later, Tobi leaves to stay in an Airbnb so I can work in peace. Sleep in peace. Not be triggered. 

They stay away for a month. 

When they come home, I bring up polyamory.

Q&A with Skylar Lyralen Kaye

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a fanatic paddle boarder, gender fluid, plural person who worships at the altar of funny. Seriously. I adore comedy.

In twenty words or less, what is your book about?

Bachelorx is a queer dating romp about a nonbinary plural sex-deprived Orpheus in search of their Eurydice.

What was it that led you to write your book? 

Dating on the apps after a 35-year marriage was like this tornado that interrupted everything I knew or thought I knew about myself in relationships. After the third dating relationship, I had to figure out what had actually happened to me in throwing myself into dating.

Do you write full time or part-time?  If the latter, what else do you do?

I write part-time. I’m also an actor, yoga instructor, paddle boarder, theatre and filmmaker. So sometimes I’m just writing, and sometimes I’m writing to perform something, and sometimes I’m writing something I’ll end up directing…and sometimes I’m curating the stories of communities to help them be more visible.

What is your favourite part of the writing process?

I love when I find the crazy wild heart of a story and totally surprise myself. I mean, I actually sit at my computer and laugh out loud. Those moments are the best.

What is your least favourite part of the writing process?

Getting feedback. I always tense up. It’s probably a trauma reaction to getting a degree with writing workshops taught by white cis straight me and the white cis het students hitting on me or over-criticizing.

Tell us about your writing style. 

I mix styles within each work. I am an expressionist writer, which means that I lean toward the mythopoetic and use of archetype or even magical realism. But I also always have seriocomic dialogue and fun in my work. I like the odd juxtaposition of these things.

What was the most difficult part of writing this book? Why?

I’ve written a bit of devised theatre, where I’m hired to interview members of a community and then write a theatre piece they can perform, and I wrote a web series using this technique. I always had collaboration and consent. It was hard to think about writing about real people I’m no longer in relationship with, protecting their identities and how I feel about how they might feel if they happened to read the book…and to work through to knowing that this is my story and my truth to tell.

What did you edit out of this book?

I edited out a lot of the Tobi scenes. Tobi is the ex in the story, and I had to make sure that the depth of that 35-year marriage didn’t undermine the protagonist’s new exploration of dating. Everyone always wants to know about 35 years!

Describe a scene in your writing that has made you laugh or cry?

There are 100 very short chapters and one of those chapters is a rant from the point-of-view of a five-year old which I find hysterically funny. Five-year olds share anger with so little inhibition.

What has been one of your most rewarding experiences as an author?

I really love giving readings. It’s part of why I’m an actor—that 3d experience of connecting with people is amazing. I read an essay about my mother’s relationship with a woman and the way people talked to me about it afterward was very moving.

Do you prefer using pen and paper or a computer when writing?

Computer.

What else have you written/published?

I am very prolific. On the page, Priest Kid and Leaving Winter for a Desert Sky.

In theatre: Many Trump Refugees in One Body, They Named Us Mary, Saint John the Divine in Iowa, Ladders to God, Rescue…

In film: Assigned Female at Birth, Run from Fire, Saint John the Divine in Iowa.

 What kind of books do you read? 

Queer literature, queer or feminist sci fi and fantasy, sometimes thrillers. YA queer anything.

What book is currently in your e-reader?

The Italian Adventure by Gaia Amman.

Where’s the best place for new readers to find you?

Books.by is my new home for my work.

About the Author  

Skylar Lyralen Kaye, fae/they is a queer, neurodivergent, social justice and award-winning writer as well as a lifelong activist. They have a BA in English from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Theater fromSarah Lawrence College.

Kaye was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Fiction in 1997 and was a finalist for the 2005 Massachusetts Cultural Council of thebArts Awards in Playwriting. They have published in literary journals such as Calyx, Persona, Phoebe, Girlfriends, Happy Magazine and the

anthology Out of the Ordinary, Children of LGT Parents as well having published the novella Priest Kid and most recently the novel Leaving Winter for a Desert Sky. Skye has had multiple theatrical productions of their plays as well as performing as a solo artist and running the theater company Another Country Productions. Their most recent awards include the 2021 NE Film Star Award as well as 13 film festival awards for the web series Assigned Female at Birth. In 2018 they won Best in Fringe at the San Francisco Fringe for the one person show My Preferred Pronoun Is We, in 2017 the Moth Story Slam and in 2018 the Boston Story Slam. Some other awards include: the 2015 Meryl Streep Writers Lab for Screenwriters and the 2002

Stanley and Eleanor Lipkin Prize in Playwriting.

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