Carlton Mellick III

How can I contact Carlton Mellick III?

Send email to carltonmellick3@yahoo.com

How can I contact your publisher?

Contact Rose O’Keefe at publisher@eraserheadpress.com. I have other publishers but she is the only one whose contact I can give out.

How can I get your books?

All online booksellers (amazon.com, powells.com, shocklines.com). Special order through bookstores. Some bookstores carry them. Some libraries have them. This website. If your libraries and bookstores don’t carry CM3 books please ask them to.

How can I help promote Carlton Mellick III and his books?

I definitely appreciate the support! As a small press author my books are only promoted by myself and my readers, so anything you can do to help will be excellent!

1) Tell your friends (online and offline) about CM3 books.
2) Ask libraries and bookstores to order CM3 books.
3) Review CM3 books at amazon.com or wherever you can
4) Create listmania lists with CM3 books and your other favorite books at amazon.com
5) Lend CM3 books out to your friends.
6) Mention CM3 books on message boards whenever you can.
7) Show off your CM3 stickers, t-shirts, bookmarks, etc in public
8 ) Come out and support CM3 whenever he comes to your town for an event. Bring friends.
9) Breakdance as much as possible.
10) If you REALLY want to help out, join the Avant Punk Army.

What is the Avant Punk Army?

The Avant Punk Army is the fan-driven street team to help promote the bizarro genre and authors such as Carlton Mellick III, Kevin L. Donihe, D. Harlan Wilson, among others. You earn points for the work you do and you can trade points in for free books, including exclusive releases that are only available to members of the Avant Punk Army.

Can I get my book published through Avant Punk Books?

Probably not. Avant Punk Books is mostly for my own side-project books and some books by friends.

“Why do you mainly focus on short novels?”

Maybe it’s because I love books that can easily be read in one sitting, like watching a movie. Maybe it’s because I think my style of fiction works better in the 100 page range. Maybe it’s because I want my books to have more of a juvenile/young adult lit feel to them. Whatever the reason, I really like short/slender books and since they are practically extinct in the big publishing industry I feel it’s good to be bringing them back.

“Why is the font so big in Menstruating Mall and Fishyfleshed?”

I admit now that I regret using large font in those books. My reason, at the time, was that the big font gave the books more of that juvenile, child-like, minimalistic feel that I strive for in my work. But these days I realize that it cheats readers who think they’re getting a longer read… so no more 14 point font unless it’s really meant to resemble a children’s book, like The Baby Jesus Butt Plug.

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was 10. I didn’t fiddle around with writing. I didn’t just write stories for fun. I set out to become a serious bestselling novelist at the age of ten. So I wrote novels. I completed 12 by the time I turned 18. Some of these were major 1,000 page epics, but none of them would become bestsellers. I was never satisfied with them so I never even tried to get them published. These days, I’m still never satisfied with any of my books. None of them are bestsellers (not that I need them to be). But I am where I am because of that arrogant 10 year old kid who seriously thought a kid could accomplish anything if he tried hard enough.

You said you wrote 12 books by the time you turned 18. What are they? Will they ever be published?

No, they will never be published. They were good practice, but that’s all they were. They certainly weren’t well written or worth reading, but some of them were conceptually decent. This is what they were about:

1) THE GHOSTLY – my first book written at age 10/11. It’s a fairly traditional ghost story on the surface, but it toyed with the idea that a person sometimes inhales a wandering ghost by accident and that ghost becomes trapped in the living person’s body. Over time the ghost melds with the person’s consciousness and can influence the way he thinks. It was about 100 pages handwritten. I drew the cover and stapled the pages together. I lost the only copy a couple years after it was written.

2) STEAM OF THE DAY – written at age 12. It was a story about a family in a summer cabin that get attacked by rabid wolves. Some kind of supernatural mist would go through the woods every day at twilight and cause emotions to intensify. Not only does the wildlife attack them, but the family members get infected by the mist and begin attacking each other mentally, physically, and even sexually. Probably one of the more disturbing books I have ever written. It was also 100 pages, only written on paper, and has been lost. I’ve considered re-writing this book but would probably have to change 90% of the plot (the whole cabin and wolves thing is pretty lame).

3) SKY GRAY – written at age 13. This book was about a lonely old redneck who was abducted by a UFO as a kid that has a second encounter with the bug-eyed aliens. But this time he captures one of them, but instead of showing the townfolk to prove that he wasn’t crazy he decides to lock it in his basement and torment it as they tormented him. Eventually he finds solace in raping the alien. He puts a wig on it, lipstick, a dress and pretends it is a woman. He eventually falls in love with the creature and he descends further and further into madness until he dies of some kind of infectious disease. About 150 pages. It has also been lost to time.

4) KISS THE SUN – written at age 13. A book about a girl who had the power to bring inanimate objects to life if she kissed them. Eventually this 100 page book was rewritten into a more condensed story with the same name that was published in my collection “Sunset with a Beard.”

5) MEGADEATHS – written at age 14. For some reason I didn’t think anyone would notice that I named the book after the band of the same name, but it was a pretty decent (though horribly written) 100 page post apocalypse book about what life would be like if the world was turned inside-out… literally. The surface of the earth becomes an ocean of lava and the core of the planet becomes a maze of upside-down cities. Kind of an absurd post-apocalypse complete with 2-dimensional survivors trying to rebuild civilization in the dark center of the planet.

6) THE WIND AND THE CLOUD – written at age 14/15. Although I thought my fiction was getting better the ideas were getting worse. I started getting into drugs and philosophy and wrote this 1,000 page epic about a bunch of teenagers, each one addicted to a different kind of drug, that start their own religion and try to take over the universe. They become gods and battle each other in metaphysical realms for supremacy. It was the worst book ever written by anyone.

7) MIDNIGHT FALLS – written at age 15. An epic book about a cult of shape-shifting people living under ground that invade a small town. Probably 600 pages too long. Too many characters. Too many subplots. The first book I actually typed up and still have stored on an old computer somewhere.

8 ) THE EMANATION FACTOR – written at age 15. This was actually a stage play, but it was about 400 pages long. More like an epic novel. It follows the lives of three generations of men during the course of one day. However, in this book one day lasts 100 years rather than 24 hours. I believe I still have this one even though the giant tome was only written on paper.

9) THE DREAM PEOPLE – written at age 16. A 500 page book about aliens who live in the dimension of thought. When the aliens visit Earth, they see the world only as what is inside of our minds. They attempt to terraform our brainscapes to be suitable for their survival. This causes mental breakdowns, severe shifts in personalities, and strokes in some individuals. When people dream they enter the surreal alien world and interract with the creatures that live there. The more their society flourishes the more ours plunges into mindless chaos. I thought it was an okay book, but I was never satisfied with it. I created a short story and a webzine in 1999 based off of the title of this book.

10) ROLLING WORLD – written at age 16. An unfinished 100 or so page book about a guy who has rolling vision (or acid ocean eyes). Eventually his hallucinatory vision becomes real and the entire world begins to shift and roll and distort around him. In college, I turned this book into a screenplay and changed the plot around quite a bit. Eventually, I renamed the screenplay Satan Burger and eventually reworked that screenplay into the novel of the same name.

11) THE SYMPHONY OF EXISTENCE – written at age 16/17. This was the most pretentious piece of crap I have ever written, but it was pretty much the most creative in its details. I have gutted this book for ideas for many of my future books. Most of it was used in my book Skinhead Girls. It was about as good as Electric Jesus Corpse but twice as long. The basic premise was that the world took place in a symphony. Every character represented a different instrument player in the symphony. The blue women first appeared in this book. It took place in a dystopian future where everyone was forced to wear smiley face masks all the time and forced to be homosexual. There was a lot to this book. I created a whole mythology that was later used in books like Satan Burger and especially Electric Jesus Corpse. I thought of getting this book published before under a pen name as a joke, because it is hilariously self-indulgent, but I decided it was more pathetic and embarrassing than it was funny.

12) ELECTRIC JESUS CORPE – written at age 17/18. This is the only of my early books that made it to print. I believe it never should have been published, though. It was the masterpiece of the books I wrote as a teenager, but I think it’s still too imperfect for publication and should have been majorly reworked. Still, some people seem to really like it despite its many flaws so it’s still in print. No book can really be perfect anyway. After this book I said goodbye to epics and tried to focus on shorter, more compact books.