Posted in Bizarro Books on June 20, 2009 by carltonmellick
After Wil Weaton (you know, Wesley Crusher from Star Trek the Next Generation) twittered about Jeff Burk’s Shatnerquake, there have been lots of ideas coming in for sequels to the book.
Here are some that I found:
Spockalypse
AfterSpocks (after the Shatnerquake, there are AfterSpocks)
Tsunimoy
Uhuracane
DeForestfire
Shatnerquake 2: Electric BoogSulu
Although I prefer the sequel “Shatnerquest,” these are some funny ideas for book titles.
Here are some fan created covers for said sequels:
(created by Ian Watson)
Posted in Bizarro Authors on June 19, 2009 by carltonmellick
In Kevin Donihe’s book, Washer Mouth: The Man Who Was a Washing Machine, we meet great villain: the Dark Washer. It is an evil washing machine who learned what it was to be human by watching snuff films. Once it becomes human, he becomes a sadistic killer who destroys everything he comes into contact with. Today Donihe has found a real-life Dark Washer. A washing machine filled with pure evil. Let’s pray it does not become human.
Posted in Bizarro Authors on June 17, 2009 by carltonmellick
This is a continuation of the Andre Duza story I mentioned yesterday. It features the absolute worst pitch I have ever read in my life. You’ve got to check it out.
In Andre’s words:
Mark Holdom offered me an option for the script, but John got a hold of it first and, thinking that MUF owned the script/movie rights, changed everything around giving them complete (and I mean complete) control. If you want an idea of what giving complete control to these guys would lead to, I offer Exhibit A. Just to give you a bit of backstory, Devil’s Due owns the rights (along with Universal) to the Chucky comic series based on the Child’s Play movies. When we met at San Diego ComiCon this past August, they (Devil’s Due) asked me if I’d be interested in pitching them a few ideas for a four- or-five story Chucky arc. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I sent them a few pitches anyway. John got wind of this and, since he owns me (in his mind), he went behind my back and offered up his own Chucky pitch that included characters from Hollow-Eyed Mary and other characters and real people associated with Devil’s Due. Now, John has never written a piece of fiction in his life. He runs a restaurant (that his family owns) along with his older brother, Jack. So, John then got a place out in LA and went to Devil’s Due’s LA office to ask for a job working on some of their titles and creating his own since he created Hollow-Eyed Mary. They, of course, shot him down.
Exhibit A is the pitch that John sent to Devil’s Due once he found out about the Chucky offer. I cut and pasted it verbatim from the original Word doc. I’m almost embarrassed to post this, but it’ll give everyone an idea about the kind of people I’m dealing with here.
Exhibit A:
THE HALLOWEEN HORROR HOTEL
It starts off on Halloween Night at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in NYC, A secret train comes onto the scene underground and underneath the Hotel, tracks were laid down years ago for secret transport of ex presidents to and from the Hotel. It’s been sealed and closed off for years but a super hacker and wizard (someone who is recognized in the underground hacker community) who works with Edward/Robert Banks aka Banksy, a graffiti artist entity, or Shepard Fairey, (whom ever attaches to the project) uses his skills to open up the tracks without Amtrak finding out. The train is full of clandestine style taggers who are movin in to graffiti bomb the hotel inside and out. Little do they know Hollow Eyed Mary is on top of the train car catching a ride in to do her own personal damage. In the Lobby of the Hotel there is a huge masquerade ball for all the high profile, political, buorgie and artsy types of our nation, with secret service all over the place and top level security cameras and posts all over the hotel except for the train station basement which was sealed years ago and is now supposedly abandoned. The super hacker gets into the camera system and allows the taggers to move around without being seen as they infiltrate to spread their political propaganda graffiti. Everytime u see a scene there is more and more graffiti like in the bathrooms or elevators, outside they hang from the roof on ropes, in hotel rooms and the lobby etc. The hacker loops the cameras in the elevators and such so that they can move around freely. In the Lobby, the dj is a high profile type like Mark Farina, Dj Tiesto, or even possibly the Beastie Boys, Who ever is doing the music is twisted and sinister like vampire bad boy and has somebody all gimped out and gagged in a cage underneath the dj booth and a crow is eating away at the poor tied up chump, he is the masters of ceremony and announces and gives shout outs to famous people and politicians dancing and he is working his magic on the mic to the crowds. On the dance floor and at the bar cool shit is goin on and politicians and all types are mingling and are doin drugs together in the bathrooms and the suicide girls seduce a guy and take him up to their room for a threesome and end up sucking the blood out of him. Clive Barker (Or someone prominent like him) is sweating and frieking out at the party, getting all claustrophobic and he goes up to his room , and there is a tagger outside the window looking in on him without bein seen and Clive turns into this crazy werewolf cause of the full moon and rips his own arm off starts beating himself with it and eats himself to death. All the while Hollow Eyed Mary is slayin secret service guys and politician types at the party . Then you could even have chuckie runnin around doin damage.There can even be a famous tattoo artist or an art or fashion show tied in to the party in the lobby. In the end the hotel is tagged up head to toe w political propaganda and most every body is dead and hollow eyed mary walks away hand in hand w chuckie and the suicide girls are strollin out w the dj vampire. And the train strolls away w the graffiti artists and news broadcast tell the world of the terror that occurred and life just goes on like it was just another day…
Posted in Bizarro Authors on June 16, 2009 by carltonmellick
If you don’t know Andre Duza, you should. He’s a bizarro author who writes very interesting books. Unlike many bizarro writers who write short minimalistic simplistic prose, Andre is a maximalist. His books are for readers who like epics with lush prose and intricate plots. They also usually involve zombies. His novels are Dead Bitch Army, Jesus Freaks, and Necro Sex Machine.
He also has a graphic novel version of Dead Bitch Army:
Here is the pretty awesome preview of the graphic novel:
(Starring Andre Duza himself)
So a graphic novel of Andre’s Dead Bitch Army sounds cool, right? Well, unfortunately, Andre went through a nightmare trying to get this book out there. Not because the comic industry is tough (though it is), but because he ended up doing business with a couple of crooked idiots. For those of you interested in getting involved with the comic industry (or even the publishing or film industry), you’ll probably be interested in reading this horror story.
Andre’s story in Andre’s words:
This all started when a friend of mine (we’ll call him Joe), who had just come into some money through his commercial mortgage business, approached me about investing money in the then titled Dead Bitch Army graphic novel project. He knew that I was trying to salvage the project after my original deal with now defunct Indie Godz Publishing died when the company went under back in ’05. The arrangement was that Joe would give me creative control to do things the way I wanted. He would get his money back on the back-end, and that would be that. Being a comic geek himself, he could say that he contributed to a graphic novel, and it would help to move my career forward. Then he brought this complete idiot (a restaurant owner who we’ll call John) onboard. John started pressuring Joe and behind my back they created MakeUFamous Productions (MUF). Trust me, the name makes me cringe too. Their new goal (fantasy) was to now put together graphic novels out of existing books with the intention of getting some kind of movie deal in the end. Now, their only part in creating the Hollow-Eyed Mary graphic novel was to sign checks. I adapted and wrote the script, hired all the artists (penciller/inker, colorist, letterer, pinups and cover-artist, and editor), and directed the entire project from start to finish. Since they had no knowledge of or experience with the publishing, or movie industries, they wanted me to help them do this. I balked (nicely) about this from the beginning, starting first with the ridiculous name (MakeUFamous) that I, as a serious writer, didn’t want to be associated with. This was only supposed to be a financial contribution on their end for which I was grateful, and did my best to produce a quality product that would hopefully ensure that they made their money back. Secondly, I had already written a screenplay for Dead Bitch Army (which they all knew about and were fine with at first) that I planned to try and sell once the GN was released and hopefully made some noise. John sort of blew off the graphic novel until we started to get positive feedback based on the finished pages.
Joe and I met with a rep from Devil’s Due Publishing in NY and struck a deal (it was he and I who made the initial contact with most of the interested parties, mind you). Suddenly there was interest from producers, first Tony DiDio (Toolbox Murders), then Riyoko Tanaka (The Ring remake & The Uninvited), and finally Mark Holdom (Brown Bunny). Now, all of a sudden John’s brother (who we’ll call Jack) is involved. Then they bring another “money person” (who we’ll call Sue) to the table, who also has no experience in publishing, but did produce a documentary a few years ago that I never heard of.
Next, they tricked Joe so that now he only owns a 25% share of the company and once that happened they started making all sorts of ridiculous demands. They then tried to tie me up with contracts and strong-arm tactics to pressure me into signing over my script, and to give MUF (which is now John, Jack, and Sue) complete creative control over all of my work. When I said “no,” and (again nicely) stated my reasons why, John and crew took it personally and retaliated by first trying to cut off my communications with any potential producers/publishers, then by trying to circumvent the development process with Devil’s Due (which is why the GN didn’t actually come out when it was supposed to) and finally by putting pressure on Devil’s Due to ban me from signing at ComiCon.
John then tried to have my name taken off the book, and was actually planning to go to ComiCon and sign as the author until the attorney that I was forced to hire put him and the rest of MUF in their place. Unfortunately, they’re so drunk on “Hollywood Wannabe” juice that they can’t let go of the fantasy.
So, there you go. John and Jack are still going to ComiCon to act like they created the book by themselves. I had already reserved a room at the Park Central Hotel back when I was discussing the signing schedule with Devil’s Due and I’ll lose the deposit if I don’t go, so the wife and I are just going to enjoy two nights (Fri & Sat) away from the kids in NY. If anyone here makes it to the con, be sure to stop by the Devil’s Due booth and ask MUF, “Hey, where’s Andre?” I’m sure that the bullshit story they’ll give you would make for a great piece of fiction.
For more recent and indepth information on this story, check out the interview with Andre Duza at: Ain’t It Cool News.
Posted in Writing Related on June 14, 2009 by carltonmellick
Recently, somebody online said that Jeff Burk’s bizarro novel “Shatnerquake” walks the fine line between genius and retarded. I don’t know how Jeff feels about that, but I think it’s a big compliment. Most of my favorite movies and books are pretty retarded works of genius.
Although it’s not a definitive element of bizarro, I do think a lot of bizarro walks the fine line between genius and retarded…as well as the fine line between garbage and art, or scary and funny, or simplistic and complex. In other words, bizarro is low brow entertainment and high brow entertainment at the same time.
That’s something I really like about bizarro fiction.
Here are some other examples of genius/retarded works of art/entertainment:
Posted in Random Shit on June 13, 2009 by carltonmellick
If you haven’t seen this before, you must see it now. The glorious meat ship. Of course, it would be much cooler if it were the size of a real ship. And it actually floated. And the cannons actually worked. And I was able to sail around in it and fire meatballs at hungry people hanging out along the Oregon coast. And if it ever got boring I could just eat it and then swim home.
Posted in Writing Related on June 11, 2009 by carltonmellick
Rich Ristow asked me this question last week:
What separates Bizarro from run-of-the-mill new surrealism? Or, the difference between bizarro and the older, more “classical” sense of surrealism?
I’ll start with classical surrealism. While classical surrealism seems weird, it is not bizarro at all. Classical surrealism was all about examining the subconscious human mind. Through the process of automatic writing, the early surrealists would just let language flow out of them at random. Andre Breton, who started the surrealist movement, was a Freudian psychiatrist who studied the subconsciousness of his patients during WWI. He believed that automatic writing was the purest way to study the subconscious. He turned this into an artform. A lot of early surrealism read like dreams.
While bizarro can be considered dream-like at times, it is not like surrealism. Bizarro is the genre of the weird. Dreams and the subconscious are not weird. They are incredibly common. Weirdness caused through dreams, insanity, or drug trips cannot be bizarro because those things are far too normal. Other differences between bizarro and classical surrealism is that the surrealists were politically motivated and took themselves far too seriously. If a writer didn’t share the same political views as Breton he wouldn’t let that writer get involved with the movement. In other words, he was a complete douchebag.
New surrealism is harder to define. There’s no new surrealist manifesto, there’s no new surrealist movement, and most people who are considered new surrealists never use the term “surrealism” to describe their work. There is actually a lot of confusion over what surrealism is these days. Some people think that all surrealism is just the old style of surrealism, some people think that anything that takes place outside of reality is surrealism (including sci-fi/fantasy), some people think that surrealism is just weird fiction. Personally, I think if anybody is writing surrealism these days they need to get rid of the “ism” part unless they are doing automatic writing or a Breton tribute. Just call it surreal fiction. Or better yet, call it irreal fiction. Very few people know about the term irrealism, but what most people are calling surrealism these days is actually irrealism…which can be defined as “a style that features an estrangement from our generally accepted sense of reality.” I would put Russell Edson in the category of irrealism.
Irrealism is definitely weird. Bizarro is the genre of the weird. So bizarro does include the irreal, (a lot of bizarro is irreal). But bizarro cannot include surrealism… because dreams/subconscious are not weird. Also, bizarro is mostly about weird plots and weird characters, and the automatic writing of surrealism has no plots or characters (unless by accident) so it cannot be bizarro.
Posted in Bizarro Events on June 9, 2009 by carltonmellick
Just got back from Crypticon. Of the bizarro crew, there were twelve of us: Rose O’Keefe, Jeremy Robert Johnson, me, Jeff Burk, Cameron Pierce, Forrest Armstrong, Angie Molinar, Kevin Shamel, Gina Ranalli, Karen Townsend, Bruce Taylor and Mykle Hansen. It was a great time. Here are some highlights.
The Eraserhead Press crew on the way to Seattle:
The Eraserhead Press table:
(Tabling is a pain in the ass, but Eraserhead always tends to sell a ton of books at every convention, even when the turnout isn’t as good as expected)
Me and Forrest Armstrong:
(my head against my head)
Mykle Hansen being attacked by Angie in a bear suit:
(To promote his book “Help! A Bear is Eating Me!” Mykle did this impromptu comedy sketch in the lobby.)
Jeremy, me, John Skipp, and Cody Goodfellow at the Elysian Brewery:
(Drinking at a local brewery is usually my favorite part of doing conventions)
Rose with shirts of my head on them:
(These shirts might be on sale soon)
Rose with Lloyd Kaufman:
(Rose hung out with Lloyd quite a bit over the weekend. He’s a cool guy, of course, and was really
supportive of bizarro fiction and Eraserhead Press. He seemed genuinely interested in what we were all about and perhaps some bizarro writers might even be writing for Troma at some point. We’ll have to see.)
The Brutally Evil Satan Show:
(So this is my retarded satan performance.)
My book signing session:
The bizarro hour:
(Picture of the audience for the Bizarro Hour. Too many people came to see this event to have it in the reading room, so it had to be moved to the lobby.)
(Cameron Pierce the banana man doing Lloyd the Centipede during his performance.)
Posted in Random Shit on June 4, 2009 by carltonmellick
I love the really cheesy electro-funk music from ’70s Italian horror films, most commonly written by Goblin. They bring me back to a time when only keyboards and bass guitars mattered. I’m getting ready to go to Seattle tomorrow for Crypticon and decided to make myself a road music CD filled with nothing but these electro-funk theme songs to hopefully piss off everyone in the car.
Here is a sampling of some of the songs that are going on the CD:
"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."
(Cameron Pierce the banana man doing Lloyd the Centipede during his performance.)
Carlton Mellick III 