An illustration from my upcoming book, The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2, which should be available within a couple of weeks.
Archive for the Bizarro Books Category
New EHP Book: “My Fake War” by Andersen Prunty
Posted in Bizarro Authors, Bizarro Books, Bizarro Fiction, Uncategorized on May 29, 2010 by carltonmellick
This is an Eraserhead Press book I highly recommend. It’s a quick bizarro read that just gets more absurd as it goes. I don’t throw around the term brilliant too often, but this is brilliant. Check it out.
The absurd tale of an unlikely soldier forced to fight a war that, quite possibly, does not exist.
Saul Dressing is a flabby middle-aged librarian who just wants to be left alone to listen to jazz, watch porn, and cultivate his toenails. All of this changes when a soldier in a camouflage sweat suit shows up to draft him into the army of the United States of Everything. His mission is simple: go to a foreign country no one has ever heard of and incite the opposition to strike first. All alone in the middle of a desert with no enemy in sight, Saul must come to terms with the absurdity of his situation. Thus begins a surreal journey into the politics of war, consumerism, and giant robots.
It’s Rambo meets Waiting for Godot in this subversive satire of American values and the scope of the human imagination.
Get it at: Amazon.com
Sex Toys for Furries
Posted in Bizarro Books, Random Shit on May 21, 2010 by carltonmellick
I wish this ad would have been in the back of my book Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland.
Cancer-cute auction – only time this book will ever be for sale
Posted in Bizarro Books, Bizarro Fiction on May 20, 2010 by carltonmellick
I donated a signed copy of my exclusive story collection CANCER-CUTE to a charity auction to help out author/publisher/friend Jerrod Balzer who is in need of medical/financial assistance. Cancer Cute is a collection of my early chapbooks, featuring long out of print stories and poems. Usually, it is only available if you earn 500 points in my street team, the Avant Punk Army. This is the first and only time you can actually pay for it.
The auction groups Cancer-cute with 5 other collectible novels by Bryan Smith and Mark McLaughlin (an author that every fan of bizarro fiction should read). There’s only three days left of the auction, so if you’re interested place your bids now. This is the only time you’ll ever be able to buy a copy of it. (Well, unless I decide to donate a copy to another worthy cause, but I’m not sure if that will happen). Remember, all profits go to help out a writer in need.
The auction is here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160435675931&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&afsrc=1
Good luck!
Swallowdown Press 2 books for 1 – HELL YEAH!
Posted in Bizarro Books, Uncategorized on May 13, 2010 by carltonmellick
Cody Goodfellow, one of the best new writers to come out in the past decade, is one of the flagship writers coming out through bizarro publishing house Swallowdown Press. Jeremy Robert Johnson, the editor of Swallowdown, knows good fiction when he sees it. For the next four weeks you can get a free Swallowdown Press book if you buy one of Cody Goodfellow’s books. I highly recommend Cody’s books. “Perfect Union” will flip your shit.
By the way, I’m the one who designed these books so that of course makes them double plus awesome.
This just in from Jeremy’s website:
It’s official, folks! May 13th-June 13th, 2010 will henceforth be known as Cody Goodfellow month (for at least a period of one month)!
In honor of this fine and lovely occasion, Swallowdown Press is offering an outstanding deal on weird shit!
Order either of Cody’s astonishing books (covers shown above) and receive another book for FREE.
This includes Extinction Journals, Siren Promised, Angel Dust Apocalypse, or the giant 37 author Falling From the Sky anthology (though this last is limited 5 copies). Just order one of Cody’s books, then indicate which FREE book you’d like in the Notes to Seller section.
Wait! You want more FREE books? Well, okay.
When you buy one of Cody’s books and love it, do us a favor and pop up an Amazon review. Doesn’t have to be epic; just 4 or 5 stars and a batch of friendly adjectives. Send me a link to the posted Amazon review and I’ll send you another FREE book.
So, that’s a potential 3 great books for the price of 1, and you’ll receive the good karma inherent in supporting the independent press.
Anybody who’s read this blog before knows that I think Cody Goodfellow is a stellar writer, one of the best in the business regardless of genre. But you don’t have to take my word for it…
Check out this great review of SWFQW from Dark Discoveries: “One can certainly see influences of Lovecraft, the New Wave of SF writers of the sixties, the Cyberpunks and Splatterpunks – and even surrealists like Kafka and Borges. Don’t get me wrong though, Cody Goodfellow is one of a kind. Highly Recommended!”
Or the recent acclaim for SWFQW from Black Static magazine: “[Short story] ‘Atwater’ is a tour de force of reckless invention, the prose pyrotechnics and in your face imagery that are a vital component of the other stories here bubbling over like the lava flow from a misbehaving volcano.”
It’s also worth noting that Cody racked up four (!) Honorable Mentions from Ellen Datlow in Best Horror of the Year Vol. 2.
So, Goodfellow Month is a great time to check out a brilliant writer and cop some free Bizarro swag!
Best wishes,
JRJ
p.s. New JRJ fiction dropping shortly. Just waiting to sign some contracts.
If interested, get a book at: Swallowdown Press website
COMING SOON: The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2
Posted in Bizarro Books, Uncategorized on May 4, 2010 by carltonmellick
If anyone out there is reading this, I need your help. I am trapped within a really terrible Dungeons and Dragons campaign and I can’t find my way out. My player is a horny 14 year old loser who won’t stop forcing me to have sex with slutty elf chicks instead of going on quests. The dungeon master has severe attention deficit disorder and skips large sections of description when it comes to the world I live within. Please find my character sheet and bring it to a better dungeon master, preferably a benevolent one with a vivid imagination who actually knows what he’s doing. Please, I beg of you to deliver me from this nightmare, before all of my hit points run out . . .
– Polo Pipefingers, level 3 Halfling Fighter
If you like spaghetti westerns and bizarro fiction, you need to read this book
Posted in Bizarro Authors, Bizarro Books, Publishing on April 16, 2010 by carltonmellick
Jordan Krall is a bizarro author who happens to be obsessed with the spaghetti western genre of film. When Eraserhead Press asked him to write a bizarro novel with a spaghetti western theme he jumped all over that. His work has always been crazy and one of a kind, but Fistful of feet is something special. I think it’s because his passion for spaghetti westerns really comes through in this book. People have said that it is not only one of the best weird westerns out there, but also one of the best bizarro books of last year (or perhaps even all time).
You owe it to yourself to check out this book. Here are some reasons why: Cthulhu-worshipping Indians, a woman with four feet, a Giallo-esque serial killer, a crazed gunman who is obsessed with sucking on candy, Syphilis-ridden mutants, ass juice, burping pistols, sexually transmitted tattoos, and a house devoted to the freakiest fetishes.
Check it out on amazon.com
Submission Call for “Christmas on Crack”
Posted in Bizarro Books, Bizarro Fiction, Fiction, Publishing, Writing Related on April 15, 2010 by carltonmellick
I’m looking for stories for an upcoming bizarro Christmas-themed anthology called “Christmas on Crack.”
What I’m looking for: very weird children’s Christmas stories for adults. I’m especially looking for fucked up versions of classic Christmas stories like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Twas the Night Before Christmas, a Christmas Carol, etc, but something completely original would also be welcome. I want these stories to be funny, imaginative, surreal, trashy, clever, and not at all appropriate for children. Think of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas meets Lloyd Kaufman’s Poultrygeist. The weirder the better, the trashier the better, the funnier the better. Surprise me.
Note: I would prefer if the stories were told in a narrative style similar to that of a children’s story. Think of The Faggiest Vampire meets Sausagey Santa. That’s the kind of thing I want to see, but better. But a good story is a good story no matter what style it’s written in.
Length: I’d like stories that are 3,000-12,000 words long.
How to submit: I actually don’t want you to write anything until after you contact me. Pitch me an idea for your story first. That way if I’m not interested then you don’t have to go through the trouble of writing it. I am only going to respond to story ideas that interest me, so if you never hear back from me it probably means that I think your story ideas are completely lame and you shouldn’t have even bothered to try. Well, either that or other pitches better caught my attention.
Send an idea (or three) for a bizarro Christmas story you’d like to write for me to: carltonmellick3@yahoo.com.
Deadline: I will be taking pitches until May 15th 2010 or sooner if I find enough ideas that I like.
Review of “Razor Wire Pubic Hair”
Posted in Bizarro Books on April 6, 2010 by carltonmellick
It’s pretty strange, but there seems to be a renewed interest in my book Razor Wire Pubic Hair. For a couple years, from 2003-2005, Razor Wire was a bestselling book that got a lot of attention. Of all my other books, only Satan Burger was ever as successful. Then for about 4 or 5 years people stopped buying it. My newer books sold much better and everyone had forgotten about this book. But as of late it’s again become one of my bestsellers. I’m not sure why.
Razor Wire is one that I rarely recommend to people. It’s more about style and theme than character or plotting and would normally appeal less to bizarro readers and more to experimental literary readers if it weren’t for all the sex and violence. It’s also my most minimalistic yet least accessible book out there. Because of this and because it’s so much different from my other work, I rarely recommend it. But, even though it is far from my best work, it still holds a special place in my heart. It is the only book that feels perfectly solid to me. The only book where I wouldn’t change a thing if I had to write it all over again.
Anyway, I found this review of the book on Pod People today, and wanted to share it:
Reviewed by: Emily Veinglory
In a post-Apocalyptic style future a hermaphroditic living sex-toy is purchased by a warrior woman to sire a child. They live in an isolated house with a mutant warrior woman called Sister whose body is covered in vaginas. The surrounding land is populated by perverse creatures, hungry zombies and a gang of violent rapists is approaching threatening to wipe out the entire household. And other that our sex-doll protagonists, all of these characters are women, because in this world men are extinct.
Razor Wire Public Hair is a book that is predominantly about sex, but it is not erotica. It is very surreal, but has a linear plot and characters with clear motivations and relationships. It explored violent sexual acts but is not gratuitous. Even on of the central rather nihilistic ideas (that the only point of life is sex) are not particularly depressing given the sincere love that the sex doll has for his/it’s owner/lover.
This is, in brief, a bizarre but eminently readable short novel. I sat down and read it on one evening, the short scenes, direct language, easy-reading format and even the lack of page numbers seem to propel the reader through the book. The only banal things about it is the cover–which could not conceivably be said to represent any character in the book and belongs in a world of sexually available cyber-barbies that is almost diametrically opposed to this story full of aggressively modified, tattooed and armored self-obsessed sadistic amazons and devouring monster vaginas with eyes.
Do not read this book if you are offended by (or actively disinterested in) fiction containing graphic language, sacrilegious acts, torture, promiscuity, murder or thoughtful perversity in any of its forms.
Rating: 8/10
“Sunset with a Beard” re-release now available
Posted in Bizarro Books on March 31, 2010 by carltonmellick
SUNSET WITH A BEARD
A girl who can bring any object to life with her kiss, a disease that causes people to melt into rainbow-swirling liquids, a world where people need to carry their souls around in little jars, a farmer with nails for eyes who grows a crop of human hands, a war against aliens from the afterlife, a girl who has living worlds tattooed on her arms, and a man who arrives in New York City to discover that all of the inhabitants are missing their mouths.
“Sunset with a Beard” is Carlton Mellick III’s first collection of short stories. This edition features the original 14 stories of surreal science-fiction, with five bonus stories that were cut from the original release.
Now available at amazon.com
Carlton Mellick III 