I am currently seeking cover artists for The CM3 Library collector’s edition hardcover series. Submission guidelines are below.
COVER ART
I am looking to commission cover images in a variety of styles from horror to science-fiction to surrealism to erotica and everything in between. I am only interested in traditional art or digital paintings that are of professional quality. ABSOLUTELY NO AI-GENERATED ARTWORK. I am also not interested in photography or photo-manipulations.
PAYMENT: $500-1000 (depending on complexity and popularity of the book)
Send a link to your online portfolio to cm3library@eraserheadpress.com. If I think you’re a good fit for the series I’ll email you back.
Timothy is terrified of clowns. He’s always found them disturbing and creepy and weird. But now that our world is besieged by clown-like invaders from another dimension, his phobia is spiraling out of control. Timothy has no idea how to handle living in a world full of these cartoonish creatures until he meets a clown girl named Puppy Caterpillars who happens to be the cutest, sweetest girl he’s ever encountered. They fall in love and Timothy believes his phobia has finally been cured. But after they get married, Timothy discovers his phobia might have been the only thing keeping him alive. Because the clowns from the dimension of death are even more terrifying and dangerous than he ever imagined and the woman that he married might just be the most horrifying creature to ever crawl out of his deepest, darkest nightmares.
Starting in 2024, there will be a new subscription service for obtaining special edition hardcovers of my books. Three to four books will be published each year. They will be signed and numbered, limit to 500 copies. Click here for more.
The children of the glass generation are the most sensitive, fragile, entitled, spoiled, lazy, selfish little brats that human society has ever produced. Part of this is due to overprotective parenting, but it is mostly due to the fact that these children are literally made out of glass. Nobody knows why, but one day the human species went through a surreal mutation where babies started being born with delicate hollow glass bodies with no flesh or bones or anything holding them together but their thin delicate exoskeleton. They shatter whenever they fall down or are touched too firmly. Even a mother’s embrace will cause them to crack open like eggshells. And they are emotionally just as fragile as they are physically, breaking to pieces whenever they become upset or offended or don’t get exactly what they want at all times. They expect the world to revolve entirely around their safety and happiness. They demand that our culture adjust to meet their expectations. And it seems as though the rest of human society is more than willing to go to every extreme imaginable in order to accommodate them.
Dreams shouldn’t kill you. If you die in a dream you should be fine in real life. But that’s not what Elias learns once he moves in with a girl named Roe who has the terrible habit of pulling people into her dreams with her whenever she falls asleep. Although she’s the nicest, coolest, most attractive woman Elias has ever known while she’s awake, Roe is a complete psychopath in her dreams. She will stop at nothing to kill anyone who finds their way into her subconscious worlds. But Elias has no choice but to survive her crazy dreams every night if he ever hopes to make it in a world that has been torn apart by a global pandemic and economic collapse.
There is a girl who lives in the alley behind the old, abandoned fire station. She is always covered in ash and grime, cuts and bruises on her arms and legs, the skirt of her school uniform caked in dirt and ripped into tatters. Her hair is a mess of dreadlocks the color of rusted metal, growing like vines all the way down to her ankles. She was once human, but not anymore. She’s become a feral creature with an undying thirst for blood and revenge. Everyone at school knows to stay away from her. There are rumors that anyone who crosses her path will be murdered and never heard from again, their throats torn out by the long strands of barbed wire that grow from her head like hair.
But when she meets a young boy named Yusuke, the first person to ever show her an ounce of human kindness, her desire for revenge turns to feelings of love. And she will do whatever it takes to win his heart, even if she has to rip it from his chest in order to obtain it.
There are no mistakes in Heaven. There are no flaws, no worries, no ugliness. Everything is perfect. Everyone is nice to each other and happy all of the time. Nobody is selfish or spiteful or mean. It is a place of peace and harmony. A place of love and hope and friendship. Nothing bad ever happens there.
But if you plan to visit, be sure to follow all of the rules. Stay inside your family’s designated area at all times. Do not venture off the beaten path. Always wear your goblin mask when looking out of the windows. And, most importantly, refrain from thinking unhappy thoughts. Negativity in Heaven is prohibited. You must never, ever be negative in any way whatsoever. If you whine or pout or criticize or complain, you do so at your own risk. We will not be held responsible for anything that happens to you.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of my first novel, Satan Burger. To celebrate, a new edition has been released with a new cover by Ed Mironuik and introduction by John Skipp.
Satan Burger explores a new kind of apocalypse. Not an apocalypse caused by disease or nuclear war, but an apocalypse of boredom. A plague of monotony has spread across the countryside, sucking all passion and inspiration out of everyone over the age of twenty-five, leaving only the disenfranchised youth to fend for themselves in a society crumbling around them. Featuring a narrator who sees his body from a third-person perspective, a man whose flesh is dead but his body parts are alive and running amok, an overweight messiah, the personal life of the Grim Reaper, a race of women who feed on male orgasms, and a group of squatter punks that team up with the devil to find their place in a world that doesn’t want them anymore.
Welcome to Grub Town, the most corrupt city in America. A place where gutter punk mermaids swim in sewage-filled canals, fairy prostitutes hang in birdcages on every street corner, and yakuza elves run everything behind the scenes.
Eliot is the most beautiful fairy in all of the city with his dazzling emerald green butterfly wings that make everyone who sees them fall instantly in lust with him. But it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Forced to hide his wings in public in order to avoid the constant sexual harassment, Eliot only finds solace when visiting his friends at the Snake Pit lamia strip club or getting tattooed by the dark and mysterious half-octopus woman named Oona.
Oona is the best tattooist in the city, but she is a frightening woman three times Eliot’s size with nine-foot tentacles that could choke a man to death in seconds. But despite this fact, Eliot is desperately in love with her. He’s so infatuated with the octomaid that he gets new tattoos from her each and every week just to be closer to her, addicted to having her artwork permanently embedded into his skin. But when Eliot accidentally murders the only heir to the elf yakuza crime family in Oona’s tattoo shop, they are forced to go on the run together, hoping to avoid the wrath of the most dangerous man in town. With everyone in the city out to get them, they can only rely on each other if they have any hope for survival.
Little Benny isn’t very good at taking tests. It’s not that he’s a stupid kid or doesn’t pay attention in class. It’s just that he’s absolutely terrified of failure. It doesn’t matter how hard he studies. He gets so nervous that he freezes up and his mind goes blank, rarely even answering a single question before the time is up. This is especially difficult now that he’s in Mrs. Gustafson’s fifth grade class, where the punishment for failure is to draw a curse from the bad box—a magical device that permanently mutates children into horrific monsters.
"Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!"
—Christopher Moore
"Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale."
—Cory Doctorow
CARLTON MELLICK III is the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of over 45 novels, including Quicksand House, Bio Melt, Cuddly Holocaust and Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland. In 2013, he was named one of the top 20 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian UK. His work has appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, and Vice Magazine.
Featured Titles
Apeship
Six people are stranded at sea on a derelict cruise ship filled with immortal cannibal mutants.
Splatterpunk satire.
Full Metal Octopus
A fairy and an octomaid go on the run from the elf yakuza.
Pulpy and sexual.
The Bad Box
A class of fifth grade students find themselves at the mercy of a malicious godlike teacher.
Dark and absurd.
Snuggle Club
A short horror comedy that takes the art of communal snuggling to a whole new extreme.
Awkward and creepy.
Mouse Trap
A group of school children try to survive an alien invasion within an abandoned amusement park.
Dark and pulpy.
The Boy with the Chainsaw Heart
A Bio-Mech pilot drafted into Hell’s army must fight his way through a surreal afterlife in order to save his wife from slavery.
Dark and pulpy.
Neverday
The story of what happens to society after everyone in the world gets trapped in a never-ending time loop.
Dark and dystopian.
Stacking Doll
The story of a man who falls in love with a Russian nesting doll.
Dark and surreal.
Parasite MIlk
A travel show producer is infected with deadly sexually transmitted parasites after visiting a brothel on an alien planet.
Body horror science-fiction comedy.
The Big Meat
A kaiju tribute novel that explores the surreal aftermath of a giant monster attack.
Dark and gritty.
Spider Bunny
A group of college kids get trapped inside a deranged children’s cereal commercial from the 1980’s.
Creepy and absurd.
Exercise Bike
The story of a man who transformed himself into a human exercise bike and the woman who is forced to ride him.
Absurd body horror.
The Terrible Thing That Happens
In a post-apocalypse world, a small community of scavengers must survive by looting a grocery store that’s stuck in a time loop.
Dark and surreal.
Bio Melt
Within a toxic wasteland, six strangers find themselves trapped in an abandoned hotel, surrounded by a mysterious black ooze.
Dark and surreal.
ClownFellas
Six interconnected novellas revolving around the Bozo clown crime family
Surreal and Pulpy.
Sweet Story
A children’s book gone horribly wrong.
Dark humor.
The Tick People
In a city where people live like parasites on the back of a giant animal, a professional sadness-maker discovers that his soul mate is a hideous mutant.
Dark and surreal.
Hungry Bug
In a world where magic exists, spell-casting has become a serious addiction.
Gritty and pulpy.
Clusterfuck
A bunch of douchebag frat boys get trapped in a cave with subterranean cannibal mutants and try to survive not by using their wits but by following the bro code.
Comical and violent.
Quicksand House
Two children who have never met their parents before, even though they live in the same house with them, must fight for survival once their nursery becomes uninhabitable.
Dark and Dystopian.
Village of the Mermaids
An eccentric doctor travels to an isolated village of carnivorous mermaids to investigate a new disease spreading through the herd of human livestock.
Dark and Dystopian.
Cuddly Holocaust
A tale of survival set in a world where most of the human race has been exterminated by vicious stuffed animals.
Apocalyptic and brutal.
Kill Ball
A slasher thriller set in a city where everyone lives in plastic bubbles.
Dystopian and surreal.
Tumor Fruit
Seven castaways stranded on a bizarre deserted island must go to extremes in order to survive.
Surreal and disturbing.
The Handsome Squirm
It’s Franz Kafka’s The Trial meets an erotic horror version of The Blob when a man is forced by law to marry an alien woman who devours her mates.
Absurd and dystopian.
Armadillo Fists
Set in a world where people drive mechanical dinosaurs instead of cars, a female boxer with armadillo hands is on the run from deranged mobsters.
Pulpy and fun.
I Knocked Up Satan’s Daughter
A parody of romantic comedies about a man who finds himself engaged to a succubus who’s pregnant with his child.
Light and satirical.
The Morbidly Obese Ninja
A 700 pound killing machine must go against his corporate employers in order to save a terminal child.
Pulpy and fun.
Crab Town
A bizarre bank heist set in a radioactive post-nuke ghetto.
Dystopian and relevant.
Zombies and Shit
It’s Battle Royale meets Return of the Living dead in a fight to the death game of survival where twenty contestants are put against each other in the middle of the zombie wasteland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland
A Wonderland Book Award-winning novel about a three-armed man who finds himself in the middle of a war between a gang of road warrior werewolves and mutants from a dystopian version of McDonaldland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.
The Cannibals of Candyland
A man finds himself imprisoned in an under ground world populated by child-eating mutants made of candy.
Erotic and horrific.
A parody of cabin in the woods horror stories where the victims turn out to be far more deranged than the mutant killers who hunt them.
Campy and fucked up.
The Egg Man
It is a survival of the fittest world where humans reproduce like insects, children are the property of corporations, and having a ten-foot tall brain is a grotesque sexual fetish.
Dark, dystopian, and ugly.
Cybernetrix
A dark and bizarre parody of the movie Tron where a game world and our world bleed together into one reality.
Pulpy and awesome.
The Faggiest Vampire
A bizarro children’s book about two vampire rivals competing in a mustache contest to determine which one is the faggiest.
Cute and relevant.
The Ultra Fuckers
A landscaper and a trio of Japanese punks find themselves stranded in a suburban gated community that seems to go on forever.
Nightmarish and absurd.
Adolf in Wonderland
Nazis from an alternate world of absolute perfection go down the rabbit hole into a dark surreal world of chaos and imperfection.
Absurd and horrific.
Sausagey Santa
A bizarro Christmas story… filled with sex and violence.
Satirical and pulpy.
The Haunted Vagina
It’s difficult to love a woman whose vagina is a gateway to the world of the dead.
Satirical and absurd.
Praise for Carlton Mellick III
"If you like satires which are highly imaginative, subversive, gory, funny as hell and completely surreal CM3 may be your literary messiah."
—Ricardo Gonzalez Del Valle
"CM3 is the most imaginative writer since Lethem and Vonnegut. Different, and absolutely thought provoking..."
—Daniel McCreary
"Carlton Mellick creates fascinating and intricate worlds out of meat, slime, sexuality, wire, and the kind of nightmares that make you laugh when you wake up."
—Jemiah Jefferson
"Brilliant writing that oozes into your skull and melts your brain like a box of a zillion crayons."
—Idiot Alien Thought Creature
"His books are from another universe."
—Cameron Pierce
"Mellick is smarter than the dumbness he tries to coat his writing in; you feel like you're reading a comic or watching MTV - but that underneath there is something deeper and smarter than the cartoonish presentation before your eyes."
—Euchrid
"Through childlike narration Mr. Mellick can present to his reader some of the most curious and knee-slapingly hysterical blaspheme."
—Ian David McGowen
"There is depth behind his simplistic prose, and humor all around it. What at first seems unsophisticated quickly becomes a firm identity to the characters, and you realize the intelligence behind the naivety. Yes, it's all on purpose, and you've just been had!"
—Schtinky
"Mellick has definitely joined the ranks of the bizarre literary geniuses such as Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, and Vonnegut."
—Charles Glover
"Mellick's imagination is boundless, and his writing truly shows this. His characters, plot, and writing style are original, enjoyable, and inspiring."
Carlton Mellick III 