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Carlton Mellick III Forum

This board is part of a bigger community called The Slaughter House, which brings together cult horror authors and publishers. There are also boards for Robert Devereaux, Edward Lee, Brian Keene, Wrath James White and others.

Check out more images here:

T-2000 at figurerealm.com

PS – This is just a fan made custom. It’s not actually for sale.

Anyway, if you only read one of my books published this year, make it this one…

ARMADILLO FISTS

A weird-as-hell gangster story set in a world where people drive giant mechanical dinosaurs instead of cars.

Her name is Psycho June Howard, aka Armadillo Fists, a woman who replaced both of her hands with living armadillos. She was once the most bloodthirsty fighter in the world of illegal underground boxing. But now she is on the run from a group of psychotic gangsters who believe she’s responsible for the death of their boss.

With the help of a stegosaurus driver named Mr. Fast Awesome–who thinks he is God’s gift to women even though he doesn’t have any arms or legs–June must do whatever it takes to escape her pursuers, even if she has to kill each and every one of them in the process.

Strange, engaging characters, breakneck pacing, and jam-packed with more brilliantly weird concepts than you’ll know what to do with–this is cult author Carlton Mellick III at his best.

Available at amazon.com

In addition to Armadillo Fists, two more bizarro books have just been released:

As I have said in the past, I mentor new authors from time to time. Cameron Pierce and Athena Villaverde are two authors I work with regularly. I put a lot of love and attention into these authors and highly recommend their work to those who enjoy my books. They have just released books that I consider must-reads. So if you plan on getting Armadillo Fists, I recommend also adding these two books to your amazon.com shopping cart.

CLOCKWORK GIRL
BY ATHENA VILLAVERDE

Athena writes strange urban fairy tales. If urban fairy tales are your thing then she is a must read. Think of her as the bizarro equivalent to alternative young adult authors like Francesca Lia Block, Kathe Koja, and Charles de Lint. Fans of Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, or any Studio Ghibli/Japanese animation films would also love her work.

Athena’s 2nd book is the real deal. If you thought she couldn’t possibly beat her awesome debut effort, Starfish Girl, then you’ll be happy to hear her second book not only surpasses her first but blows it completely out of the water. Clockwork Girl is a collection of three short novellas, including the title story which you might have already read in the Bizarro Starter Kit (purple). It also includes “Caterpillar Girl” which is basically a high school drama set in a world of bug people and “Beehive Girl” which is a poetic story about a dancer with living beehive skin who demands the best of her dance partners or else they will be stung to death.

This book is designed to be an introduction to Athena’s work. It proves that she will soon become a major female voice . . . not just in the world of bizarro fiction, but in the world of literature as a whole.

Available at
amazon.com

GARGOYLE GIRLS OF SPIDER ISLAND
BY CAMERON PIERCE

If you follow bizarro fiction you probably already know about the work of Cameron Pierce. When it comes to strange imagery, Cameron is king. Nobody can make you visualize the surreal quite like Cameron can. His stories take place in weird worlds that go beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. As I often say, he is best described as Dr. Seuss meets David Cronenberg (and by Cronenberg, I mean early squishy “Videodrome” Cronenberg).

His latest book, Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island, is in my top three favorite Cameron books next to Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and the novella “No Children” published in Abortion Arcade. This book is bizarro pulp trash at its best. It is fast-paced, goofy, gory, low-brow fun yet despite all of that it’s also perhaps Cameron’s most finely-crafted story yet. This one really surprised me.

An excellent young author who will only get better with each book he writes, Cameron Pierce is obviously a must read for bizarro fiction fans.

Available at amazon.com

By the way: at amazon.com, shipping is free on book orders of $25 or more, so you might want to get all three of these books together to save a bit of money.

It might not be for a year or more before this one comes out, but for fans of the Warrior Wolf Women world I wanted to announce that I will in fact be writing the third book in the series. “Pippi of the Apocalypse” will explore the character of Pippi: the bratty self-centered evil little bitch from the first book. It will go back and forth between her life as a child growing up in the werewolf tribe and her life years after the events of Warrior Wolf Women, where she has to deal with raising a family in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. What I hope to achieve with this book is to turn Pippi into a likeable character without having to change her. She will still be the vile, malicious, bloodthirsty little shit that she was in the first novel, but I hope to show that she can be just as beautiful as she can be horrible. She is still human, after all.

Pippi is one of my favorite characters I’ve ever created. I think it’s because she was the first character I’ve ever written that came alive on the page. By that I mean I no longer felt in control of what she was doing in my story. She took on a life of her own. She was originally created just to be killed off early on in the story, but she just wouldn’t die. She went from being the character most likely to die first to a good source of conflict that proved useful to keep around to the main villain of the story to finally the main love interest. It was like she was changing roles in my story in order to survive.

In any case, this is a book I need to write, so it will be written. I really doubt I will do another book in this series, but I do have an idea for a fourth book called “Dog Destroyers of the Deadlands.” This one would bring the two sequels (Pippi of the Apocalypse and Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands) together into one final story. But we’ll see. I’ll probably base my decision on reader feedback after Pippi of the Apocalypse has been out for a while.

For those of you who haven’t read them, here are the first two books in the series:

Armadillo Fists will be out in a week or two, Handsome Squirm will be out in a month, and after that will be this book which has the working title TUMOR FRUIT. This one is an island survival story, kind of like a bizarro version of Castaway. I’ve always been a fan of wilderness survival stories so this is one I’m really excited about.

BizarroCon was about a week or so ago and I’m still riding the high caused by this awesome event. For those of you who don’t know, BizarroCon is an annual four day meetup of about 80 writers and artists involved in the Bizarro Fiction genre. We get together at Edgefield Manor outside of Portland, OR, which is also a brewery, winery, distillery. It’s four days full of parties, workshops, crazy performances, readings, networking, brainstorming, and planning the future of the bizarro fiction genre. If you’re a writer of bizarro fiction, it’s something you should be going to every single year.

I didn’t write a con report for this year’s bizarrocon, but I recommend checking out these con reports from other attendees:

Sam Reeve’s Top 10 Highlights of Bizarrocon 2011

David W Barbee’s Fast Times at BizarroCon ’11

Brian Keene’s BizarroCon report

Spike Marlowe’s report

Aramdillo Fists is due out soon, but probably not until after Christmas. Then Handsome Squirm will likely come out soon after that. However, these two are not yet available.

It’s been a productive year. 7 are new titles, 5 are reprints. Next year will likely be just as productive.

Sea of the Patchwork Cats

Everyone in the world committed suicide at the same time . . .

Thus begins the surreal tale of an old man living alone in an empty world after everyone else on Earth killed themselves for no particular reason at all. In search for other survivors, he drifts in a floating house out to sea until he comes to a mysterious structure in the middle of the ocean. It is a building shaped like two giant nude women conjoined at the back. And issuing from a lighted window, echoing on the ghostly wind, is the sound of hundreds of meowing patchwork cats.

Sea of the Patchwork Cats is a sad dreamlike tale set in the quiet ashes of the human race. A must-read for Mellick enthusiasts who also adore The Twilight Zone.

Available at amazon.com