Here’s a complete list of Italian editions of my books published through Vaporteppa Publishing. They include: Cannibals of Candyland, Armadillo Fists, Cuddly Holocaust, The Handsome Squirm, Village of the Mermaids, Kill Ball, The Haunted Vagina, The Morbidly Obese Ninja and War Slut.
My new book, CLOWNFELLAS, is now available from Random House Hydra. I had a blast writing this book. I hope you check it out.
In a topsy-turvy world where clowns are killers and crooks, Little Bigtop is a three-ring circus of crime, and no syndicate is more dangerous than the Bozo family. From the wildly original mind of Carlton Mellick III comes the short-story collection ClownFellas—an epic mob saga where life is cheap and the gags will slay you.
For years, the hard-boiled capos of the Bozo family have run all of the funny business in Little Bigtop, from the clown brothels to the illegal comedy trade. But hard times have befallen the Bozos now that Le Mystère, the French clown Mafia, has started moving in and trying to take over the city. If that weren’t enough, they’ve got to deal with the cops, the Feds, the snitches, the carnies, the mysterious hit man Mr. Pogo, and the mutant clowns over in the Sideshow district. With the odds stacked against them, the Bozos must fight to survive . . . or die laughing.
Praise for ClownFellas
“Mario Puzo meets Barnum & Bailey . . . You just can’t look away as the ridiculousness escalates.” —Publishers Weekly
“The most original novelist working today? The most outrageous? The most unpredictable? These aren’t easy superlatives to make; however, Carlton Mellick may well be all of those things, behind a canon of books that all irreverently depart from the form and concepts of traditional novels, and adventure the reader into a howling, dark fantasyland of the most bizarre, over-the-top, and mind-warping inventiveness. In my opinion, ClownFellas is his best work to date.” —Edward Lee, author of City Infernal and Header
“Carlton Mellick III goes past silly, through weird, detours around dumb, blasts through bizarre, and gets to a place where the normal physics of narrative no longer apply. You will never be the same.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother and Homeland.
“I rarely enjoy clowns—which is ironic since I’ve been one for over four decades—but ClownFellas is great on so many levels, irony being one of them. What can I say besides I love it! Great read, and funny as hell . . . I have been accused of being unfunny before, and after the trial I had to enter the Witless Protection Program. This is funny!”—Barry Lubin, aka Grandma, longtime Big Apple Circus clown
“If Martin Scorsese and Ronald McDonald had a baby, this would be it . . . Each story is clever, multi-layered, and filled with witty dialogue . . . A must-read.” —This Is Horror
“Mellick’s writing is wonderfully descriptive and wildly imaginative . . . I was utterly delighted, amused, and engrossed. . . ClownFellas is a gem!” —The Qwillery
“A rollercoaster ride through a strange world that borders on our own reality . . . a story that is just as difficult to define as it is to put down.” —Examiner.com
“Mellick has created another amazing read . . . Highly recommended.” —Kitty Horror
My new serial killer book, As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face, is now available. I hope you check it out.
AS SHE STABBED ME GENTLY IN THE FACE
Oksana Maslovskiy is an award-winning artist, an internationally adored fashion model, and one of the most infamous serial killers this country has ever known. She enjoys murdering pretty young men with a nine-inch blade, cutting them open and admiring their delicate insides. It’s the only way she knows how to be intimate with another human being. But one day she meets a victim who cannot be killed. His name is Gabriel–a mysterious immortal being with a deep desire to save Oksana’s soul. He makes her a deal: if she promises to never kill another person again, he’ll become her eternal murder victim.
What at first seems like the perfect relationship for Oksana quickly devolves into a living nightmare when she discovers that Gabriel enjoys being killed by her just a little too much. He turns out to be obsessive, possessive, and paranoid that she might be murdering other men behind his back. And because he is unkillable, it’s not going to be easy for Oksana to get rid of him.
As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face is a metaphor for a bad relationship, told in the form of a sociopathic killer’s affair with an even more sociopathic victim. From the mind of Wonderland Book Award winner Carlton Mellick III, author of Hungry Bug and Quicksand House, comes one of the strangest and most gruesome love stories ever put to print.
Now available at amazon.com
My new book, Sweet Story, is now available. Although it’s on the short side, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written this year. I hope you check it out.
Sally is an odd little girl. It’s not because she dresses as if she’s from the Edwardian era or spends most of her time playing with creepy talking dolls. It’s because she chases rainbows as if they were butterflies. She believes that if she finds the end of the rainbow then magical things will happen to her–leprechauns will shower her with gold and fairies will grant her every wish. But when she actually does find the end of a rainbow one day, and is given the opportunity to wish for whatever she wants, Sally asks for something that she believes will bring joy to children all over the world. She wishes that it would rain candy forever. She had no idea that her innocent wish would lead to the extinction of all life on earth.
Sweet Story is a children’s book gone horribly wrong. What starts as a cute, charming tale of rainbows and wishes soon becomes a vicious, unrelenting tale of survival in an inhospitable world full of cannibals and rapists. The result is one of the darkest comedies you’ll read all year, told with the wit and style you’ve come to expect from a Mellick novel.
Now available at amazon.com
I’m happy to announce that my 44th book is now available. Unlike my last few books, this is a short quick read and somewhat similar in tone to my early bizarro novellas like Teeth and Tongue Landscape, Steel Breakfast Era or Ugly Heaven. I hope you check it out.
They call it Gloom Town, but that isn’t its real name. It is a sad city, the saddest of cities, a place so utterly depressing that even their ales are brewed with the most sorrow-filled tears. They built it on the back of a colossal mountain-sized animal, where its woeful citizens live like human fleas within the hairy, pulsing landscape. And those tasked with keeping the city in a state of constant melancholy are the Stressmen-a team of professional sadness-makers who are perpetually striving to invent new ways of causing absolute misery.
But for the Stressman known as Fernando Mendez, creating grief hasn’t been so easy as of late. His ideas aren’t effective anymore. His treatments are more likely to induce happiness than sadness. And if he wants to get back in the game, he’s going to have to relearn the true meaning of despair.
Like James and the Giant Peach combined with one of David Cronenberg’s early body horror films, The Tick People is a charming children’s fable that quickly devolves into a grotesque sexual nightmare.
AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM
My latest book is now available. Hungry Bug was loosely inspired by Frank Miller’s Sin City and Neil Gaiman’s urban fantasy work. Think Pulp Fiction with wizards. It’s one of my longest books and I personally think it’s one of my best yet. I hope you check it out.
In a world where magic exists, spell-casting has become a serious addiction. It ruins lives, tears families apart, and eats away at the fabric of society. Those who cast too much are taken from our world, never to be heard from again. They are sent to a realm known as Hell’s Bottom — a sorcerer ghetto where everyday life is a harsh struggle for survival. Porcelain dolls crawl through the alleys like rats, arcane scientists abduct people from the streets to use in their ungodly experiments, and everyone lives in fear of the aristocratic race of spider people who prey on citizens like vampires.
Told in a series of interconnected stories reminiscent of Frank Miller’s Sin City and David Lapham’s Stray Bullets, Carlton Mellick III’s Hungry Bug is an urban fairy tale that focuses on the real life problems that arise within a fantastic world of magic.
Get it at amazon.com
John Skipp, master of horror and a huge inspiration on my writing when I was young, has just written up an article about three of my hardcore horror novels, Clusterfuck, Apeshit, and Zombies and Shit. It’s published at Fangoria — a magazine I read obsessively around the same time I was reading Skipp. My teenaged self is so jealous of me right now.
Click to read it:
2013 was a good year for me. I released 3 novels (including Clusterfuck, the sequel to my cabin in the woods parody Apeshit, and new fan favorite Quicksand House), 1 novella, 1 short story collection, and five older books were reissued. A total of 10 books! I’m not sure what 2014 will bring (aside from Hungry Bug, which will be available soon), but I hope it will be even better.
Here’s the full list:
Apeshit fans rejoice. Clusterfuck is now available!
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 . . .
From master of bizarro fiction Carlton Mellick III, author of the international cult hits Satan Burger and Adolf in Wonderland, comes a violent and hilarious B movie in book form. Set in the same woods as Mellick’s splatterpunk satire Apeshit, Clusterfuck follows Trent Chesterton, alpha bro, who has come up with what he thinks is a flawless plan to get laid. He invites three hot chicks and his three best bros on a weekend of extreme cave diving in a remote area known as Turtle Mountain, hoping to impress the ladies with his expert caving skills.
But things don’t quite go as Trent planned. For starters, only one of the three chicks turns out to be remotely hot and she has no interest in him for some inexplicable reason. Then he ends up looking like a total dumbass when everyone learns he’s never actually gone caving in his entire life. And to top it all off, he’s the one to get blamed once they find themselves lost and trapped deep underground with no way to turn back and no possible chance of rescue. What’s a bro to do? Sure he could win some points if he actually tried to save the ladies from the family of unkillable subterranean cannibal mutants hunting them for their flesh, but fuck that. No slam piece is worth that amount of effort. He’d much rather just use them as bait so that he can save himself.
It’s Tucker Max versus The Descent in this gore-filled comedy for the camp horror fan.
Now available at amazon.com
Praise for Apeshit, prequel to Clusterfuck
“The new gold standard in unstoppable fetus-fucking killfreakomania, Mellick’s APESHIT both earns and transcends its awesome title. Genuine all-meat hardcore horror meets unadulterated Bizarro brainwarp strangeness. The results are beyond jaw-dropping, and fill me with pure, unforgivable joy.”
— JOHN SKIPP, New York Times Bestselling author and splatterpunk superstar
“Hilarious, insightful and absolutely over-the-fucking-top, Apeshit will appeal to both traditional slasher fans and readers who want something a bit heavier.”
–BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising
“An electrifying read, Apeshit successfully combines an exciting, blood-splattering slasher story with unexpected social commentary.”
— THE DREAM PEOPLE
“With undead necrophilia, monster-rape sodomy, abortion porn, more spilled guts than your average Fulci film, and so many more grotesqueries you’d need a notebook to remember them all, APESHIT just may be the extreme gorehound’s dream come true.”
— THE HORROR FICTION REVIEW
“Apeshit begins with a typical dead teenager setup. Three cheerleaders and three football players head out to a cabin in the woods. Yawn. But, this is a Carlton Mellick book. Each of the characters is funny and scary in their own way, a far cry from the cannon fodder Freddy and Jason types usually encounter. There’s Desdemona the punk cheerleader who wants to cover herself completely with tattoos, her former best friend Crystal who has an extremely disturbing fetish, dysfunctional Stephanie with her vagina dentata and horrible past and Rick and Kevin who are both with Desdemona, but would rather be with one another. The six are pitted against a horrific urban legend with crab claws and a particularly hideous mutation, and from there it all goes…well, look at the title. Gorehounds who like the scatology of South Park, the weirdness of Peter Jackson gore flicks and the confrontational brutality of Last House on the Left will all relish this loving homage to a genre that once looked this sick and exciting to Americans.”
— DOC FAUSTUS
My 41st book is now available. This is a book I’ve had in my head for over 15 years, but I didn’t feel I was ready to write it until now. It’s a bit longer than my most recent books and perhaps one of my best. This is for those who prefer my darker and more serious work (like The Egg Man) over my campy/trashy comical stuff (like Morbidly Obese Ninja).
“You must never leave the nursery. If you leave, you will certainly die.”
Tick and Polly have never met their parents before. They live in the same house with them, they dream about them every night, they share the same flesh and blood, yet for some reason their parents have never found the time to visit them even once since they were born. Living in a dark corner of their parents’ vast crumbling mansion, the children long for the day when they will finally be held in their mother’s loving arms for the first time… But that day seems to never come. They worry their parents have long since forgotten about them.
When the machines that provide them with food and water stop functioning, the children are forced to venture out of the nursery to find their parents on their own. But the rest of the house is much larger and stranger than they ever could have imagined. The maze-like hallways are dark and seem to go on forever, deranged creatures lurk in every shadow, and the bodies of long-dead children litter the abandoned storerooms. Every minute out of the nursery is a constant battle for survival. And the deeper into the house they go, the more they must unravel the mysteries surrounding their past and the world they’ve grown up in, if they ever hope to meet the parents they’ve always longed to see.
Like a survival horror rendition of Flowers in the Attic, Carlton Mellick III’s Quicksand House is his most gripping and sincere work to date.
AVAILABLE AT WWW.AMAZON.COM
"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.
You Always Try to Kill Me In Your Dreams
A man struggles to survive in the hellish dream worlds of his college crush.
Dark and surreal.
The Girl with the Barbed Wire Hair
A boy is stalked by a dead girl that’s fallen desperately in love with him.
Dark and creepy.
Goblins on the Other Side
A girl visits her dead grandmother in Heaven.
Creepy and surreal.
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.
Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes
A tale of childhood love and spontaneous face explosions.
Cute and disturbing.
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.
As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face
A sociopathic killer meets an even more sociopathic victim
Dark and strange.
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.
Hammer Wives
Six novellas and short stories.
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.
Fantastic Orgy
One novella plus four short stories.
Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands
The sequel to Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland.
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.
The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2
A group of adventurers learn they are actually fictional characters trapped in the worst Dungeons & Dragons campaign of all time.
Satirical and dumb.
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.
Carlton Mellick III
Carlton Mellick III 