The Boy From Elsewhere is the first in a new series called Reality Quake. Think contemporary mystery with sci-fi and fantasy elements. This will be Kestral’s fifth book and second YA.
Kestral was kind enough to tell QX more about their book, as we posed the question:
Did you ever feel like you were from elsewhere?
I did. When I was fifteen, being queer was considered so dangerous the government legislated against it.
Which is wild, really, because at fifteen I could barely be trusted with my house keys, let alone the power to dismantle society via my fabulous homosexuality.
If you’re of a similar vintage, you’ll remember this era well. Queer people existed mostly by implication. A knowing look. A tragic subplot. A character who didn’t make it to the final act. Joy, if it appeared at all, was brief and usually followed by consequences.
We weren’t the heroes in our own stories. Heck, we weren’t he heroes in any story. And that’s partly what led me to write The Boy From Elsewhere.
It begins with a boy washing up on a beach in a quiet seaside town. We’ve all been there, right? But in Joshua’s case, everything feels… not quite right. Not quite real.
That’s when he meeds David – and the unlikely duo very quickly find themselves tangled up in something far more deep, and far more mysterious, than either of them ever expected.
What follows is a story about parallel worlds, secret histories, and people finding themselves – and each other – even when the world around them is literally falling apart. It’s a thriller, a mystery, and a speculative puzzle all at once.
It’s also unapologetically queer.
At its heart, this is a story about people. About the quiet, world-altering relief of getting to know someone who doesn’t ask you to explain yourself first. About the way queer people build intimacy and loyalty when the world doesn’t provide a ready-made script. About how connection can become an anchor when everything around us starts to wobble.
If you want a shorthand, I sometimes call it “sci-fi Heartstopper”.
Not because the stories are the same, but because Heartstopper proved something important. That queer joy is not niche. That softness can be compelling. That audiences, including very mainstream ones, are perfectly happy to fall in love with stories where queer people get to be tender, hopeful, and centred.
If the recent spate of Netflix adaptions like Heated Rivalry are anything to go by, people are actually hungry for them.
And here’s what’s so cool about all of that: it proves that young adult fiction isn’t kids’ stuff.
It’s where a lot of us go back to retrieve something we didn’t get the first time around. Sometimes we read these books to support the next generation. Sometimes we read them because we’re quietly handing something to our younger selves. A mirror. A map. Proof that things could have been different.
And that they still can be.
So yes, this is an article politely encouraging you to buy my book. I would love you to do that. Preferably in paperback, so you can slap it down on a café table in Soho and make it everyone’s business. But more than that, I want you to think about who you might pass it on to.
Your kids. Your niece. Your nephew. Your godchild. A friend’s kid who “just really likes musical theatre”. A teenager who is trying on versions of themselves, hoping one will finally feel like home.
Let them have stories where the universe might fracture, villains might monologue, and reality might come apart at the seams.
But, through all of that, queerness is simply allowed to be. Real, true, and never in question.
We deserved that. They deserve that too.
Oh, I guess I do know how to dismantle society via my fabulous homosexuality after all.
Kestral Gaian
