It’s here! We’re queer! Get USED to it, darlings!

Kittens, it brings us tremendous pleasure to present to you the picture that’s served as both our desktop backgrounds for several months now, taunting us with the seemingly far-off day when we could finally show you our beautiful baby. It’s the cover of our upcoming book and it’s (appropriately enough) an eye-popper:

Reader, we cried.

Oh, have you not heard about our book? Is that even possible, what with all the endless droning on and on we’ve been doing about it ever since we first announced it? Doesn’t seem likely, but the lovely folks at Penguin, being like a majorly important publisher and all, have provided you with all the information you need:

A definitive deep-dive into queer history and culture with hit reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race as a touchstone, by the creators of the pop culture blog Tom and Lorenzo

From the singular voices behind Tom and Lorenzo comes the ultimate guide to all-things RuPaul’s Drag Race and its influence on modern LGBTQ culture.Legendary Children centers itself around the idea that not only is RuPaul’s Drag Race the queerest show in the history of television, but that RuPaul and company devised a show that serves as an actual museum of queer cultural and social history, drawing on queer traditions and the work of legendary figures going back nearly a century. In doing so, Drag Race became not only a repository of queer history and culture, but also an examination and illustration of queer life in the modern age. It is a snapshot of how LGBTQ folks live, struggle, work, and reach out to one another–and how they always have–and every bit of it is tied directly to Drag Race. Each chapter is an examination of a specific aspect of the show–the Werk Room, the Library, the Pit Crew, the runway, the Untucked lounge, the Snatch Game–that ties to a specific aspect of queer cultural history and/or the work of certain legendary figures in queer cultural history.

Thank you, Miss Press Release! Oh, also:

“Using Drag Race‘s prominence as a mirror to reflect drag brilliance through the ages, this must-read book articulately celebrates the icons—both well-known and under-appreciated—who made magic with a mascara wand and whose finely glossed lips were always worth reading. Like this book!”

—Michael Musto

Reader, we passed out.

Michael Musto is like THE person to go to on matters of queer cultural history, drag history, LGBT entertainers, and nightlife. The man has seen it, done it, met all the players and passed on buying a t-shirt because that’s for the posers and the latecomers. To have someone like him, whose career we respect like crazy, say something nice about our little dragbook is dizzying to us. We’re beyond honored.

Okay, back to that cover. We’re going to make you look at it again because we want you to love it as much as we do:

That little Penguin logo on our work gives us little chills every time we see it.

First, we should note and thank the artist Cheyne Gallard, who is ridiculously talented at boiling drag queens and queer performers down to their essence. You can check out his hilarious, gorgeous, and incredibly creative aesthetic melding of drag and superhero comics at his Instagram. Plus he’s cute. Tell him T Lo said so.

Second: Can you name every Queen and King on this cover? Every one of them (along with about 50 others) are profiled in the book, explaining how their lives and work had bomb-dropping impacts on the lives of queer people all over the world. When we tell you we fell in love with these people as we researched and wrote about their lives, we don’t think we’ve even come close to explaining the depth of our feelings toward them. At a recent social gathering, with a couple of glasses of wine under his belt, Tom started regaling folks with the tales inside this book and promptly burst into tears. Not because they’re sad but because, well… we just love them all so much. There are STILL portions of the book we can’t read out loud because our voices get too overcome with emotion – not because we’re such stunning writers, but because they lived such amazing lives of bravery and creativity.

So, can you name them? We’ll start you off: that’s RuPaul top and center (obvs). Now do the rest. If you want some help, you could click on the LEGENDARY tag and read some of the profiles we’ve been writing about seminal figures in drag and queer history as a companion to the book (and which we will be updating continuously throughout the year).

But most important of all, our beautiful, colorful, vibrant, fabulous baby is now available for pre-order and we CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH how important it is for new books to come out strong in the pre-orders. How the book is ordered now, 6 months before release, will determine so much of the fate of the book within its first few weeks post-release, including how well it lands on sales lists. Please, if you are planning on buying the book or intrigued by the idea of it, or if you just want to make your ol’ pals T Lo very happy, PLEASE GO HERE AND PRE-ORDER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You can click on either the paperback or ebook options, which should open up a menu of retailers to choose from. As we said, this stuff is tracked early and how it does now will have a tremendous effect on how it is sold and marketed in the months to come. Show our publisher that this one has legs, darlings. In return, you’ll get the very best, most passionate and most informative thing we’ve ever written. Promise.