The Dream People is the ORIGINAL bizarro fiction webzine, debuting back in 1999 (when I was the head editor). It’s now on issue #37. An excerpt from my book Armadillo Fists has been published there. There are also novel excerpts and short stories from Michael A. Arnzen, Blake Butler, Sean Kilpatrick, William Pauley III, Andersen Prunty, Donna Fleck and Gary J. Shipley. And an essay from Lance Olsen.
Check it out here: http://www.dreampeople.org/
Just showing off cover art for books that won’t be coming out for quite a while. There’s “Wonka” which is kind of like a retelling of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the world of Beyond Thunderdome, “Quicksand House” a quiet surreal story about children in search of their parents inside a mansion the size of a country, and the super-sized 10 year anniversary edition of Satan Burger which will feature a lot of bonus material like illustrations, new intros, and perhaps even new bonus chapters. (Note: this version won’t be replacing the original edition with the butt on the cover.)
My novelette “Red World” has just been released by White belly Press. It is a 30 page trade paperback with a very limited run of 100 copies. If you want a copy I suggest you get it right away.
This story tells the tale of a recovering junky trying to save his 8-year-old brother from a life of prostitution in a surreal version of New York City — a place where street kids mutate into fish-like creatures, the homeless stilt-walk through oceans of insects, and the only colors left visible to the human eye are shades of red.
For those of you who like darker urban bizarro tales similar to my novellas Egg Man or Crab Town, this is a story I recommend.
To reserve a copy contact Matthew Humphrey at:
whitebellypress@gmail.com
A tale of marriage, child-rearing, and vaginas that eat people.
A man is arrested in the middle of the night. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t remember committing any crime. The cops drop him off in a small community in the middle of the woods where a wedding is about to begin. It is his wedding. He doesn’t recognize the bride, but she’s allegedly pregnant with his children. All twelve of them. And by law, he must marry her or go to prison for the next two decades.
But who is this strange woman he is to spend the rest of his life with? She doesn’t seem quite human. Her expressions are cold and emotionless. Her movements are like that of a spider. She is Usagi, a creature who feeds on her human mate during pregnancy. Now this man has to find a way to terminate the marriage if he is to survive. But it’s not going to be easy. His friends, his family, and his country are all against him. They believe a father should be willing to give up anything for the sake of his family. Even his life.
Like Franz Kafka’s The Trial meets an erotic body horror version of The Blob, this darkly absurd tale is classic Mellick.
AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.COM
Tickets for BizarroCon are now on sale. If you are involved or want to be involved in the bizarro fiction scene this is a must-attend event.
Go to the website for more info.
I now have a new message board. Come by and say hi.
It is here:
This board is part of a bigger community called The Slaughter House, which brings together cult horror authors and publishers. There are also boards for Robert Devereaux, Edward Lee, Brian Keene, Wrath James White and others.
For those of you who have read my book Zombies and Shit, you know that Mr. T is featured in the story as a zombie-smashing cyborg called the T-2000. Here’s a T-2000 action figure made by Warhorse Customs.
Check out more images here:
PS – This is just a fan made custom. It’s not actually for sale.
My new novel, Armadillo Fists, is now available at amazon.com. In my opinion, this is probably the best book I’ve written yet. A lot of my books have been released this year, but this is the one I most recommend. Stylistically, it is similar to Zombies and Shit or Crab Town (It has the epic pacing and character development of Zombies and Shit, but with the crime-drama-set-in-a-surreal-world flavor of Crab Town.)
Anyway, if you only read one of my books published this year, make it this one…
A weird-as-hell gangster story set in a world where people drive giant mechanical dinosaurs instead of cars.
Her name is Psycho June Howard, aka Armadillo Fists, a woman who replaced both of her hands with living armadillos. She was once the most bloodthirsty fighter in the world of illegal underground boxing. But now she is on the run from a group of psychotic gangsters who believe she’s responsible for the death of their boss.
With the help of a stegosaurus driver named Mr. Fast Awesome–who thinks he is God’s gift to women even though he doesn’t have any arms or legs–June must do whatever it takes to escape her pursuers, even if she has to kill each and every one of them in the process.
Strange, engaging characters, breakneck pacing, and jam-packed with more brilliantly weird concepts than you’ll know what to do with–this is cult author Carlton Mellick III at his best.
Available at amazon.com
In addition to Armadillo Fists, two more bizarro books have just been released:
As I have said in the past, I mentor new authors from time to time. Cameron Pierce and Athena Villaverde are two authors I work with regularly. I put a lot of love and attention into these authors and highly recommend their work to those who enjoy my books. They have just released books that I consider must-reads. So if you plan on getting Armadillo Fists, I recommend also adding these two books to your amazon.com shopping cart.
CLOCKWORK GIRL
BY ATHENA VILLAVERDE
Athena writes strange urban fairy tales. If urban fairy tales are your thing then she is a must read. Think of her as the bizarro equivalent to alternative young adult authors like Francesca Lia Block, Kathe Koja, and Charles de Lint. Fans of Tim Burton, Hayao Miyazaki, or any Studio Ghibli/Japanese animation films would also love her work.
Athena’s 2nd book is the real deal. If you thought she couldn’t possibly beat her awesome debut effort, Starfish Girl, then you’ll be happy to hear her second book not only surpasses her first but blows it completely out of the water. Clockwork Girl is a collection of three short novellas, including the title story which you might have already read in the Bizarro Starter Kit (purple). It also includes “Caterpillar Girl” which is basically a high school drama set in a world of bug people and “Beehive Girl” which is a poetic story about a dancer with living beehive skin who demands the best of her dance partners or else they will be stung to death.
This book is designed to be an introduction to Athena’s work. It proves that she will soon become a major female voice . . . not just in the world of bizarro fiction, but in the world of literature as a whole.
Available at
amazon.com
GARGOYLE GIRLS OF SPIDER ISLAND
BY CAMERON PIERCE
If you follow bizarro fiction you probably already know about the work of Cameron Pierce. When it comes to strange imagery, Cameron is king. Nobody can make you visualize the surreal quite like Cameron can. His stories take place in weird worlds that go beyond anything you’ve ever imagined. As I often say, he is best described as Dr. Seuss meets David Cronenberg (and by Cronenberg, I mean early squishy “Videodrome” Cronenberg).
His latest book, Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island, is in my top three favorite Cameron books next to Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and the novella “No Children” published in Abortion Arcade. This book is bizarro pulp trash at its best. It is fast-paced, goofy, gory, low-brow fun yet despite all of that it’s also perhaps Cameron’s most finely-crafted story yet. This one really surprised me.
An excellent young author who will only get better with each book he writes, Cameron Pierce is obviously a must read for bizarro fiction fans.
Available at amazon.com
By the way: at amazon.com, shipping is free on book orders of $25 or more, so you might want to get all three of these books together to save a bit of money.
It might not be for a year or more before this one comes out, but for fans of the Warrior Wolf Women world I wanted to announce that I will in fact be writing the third book in the series. “Pippi of the Apocalypse” will explore the character of Pippi: the bratty self-centered evil little bitch from the first book. It will go back and forth between her life as a child growing up in the werewolf tribe and her life years after the events of Warrior Wolf Women, where she has to deal with raising a family in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. What I hope to achieve with this book is to turn Pippi into a likeable character without having to change her. She will still be the vile, malicious, bloodthirsty little shit that she was in the first novel, but I hope to show that she can be just as beautiful as she can be horrible. She is still human, after all.
Pippi is one of my favorite characters I’ve ever created. I think it’s because she was the first character I’ve ever written that came alive on the page. By that I mean I no longer felt in control of what she was doing in my story. She took on a life of her own. She was originally created just to be killed off early on in the story, but she just wouldn’t die. She went from being the character most likely to die first to a good source of conflict that proved useful to keep around to the main villain of the story to finally the main love interest. It was like she was changing roles in my story in order to survive.
In any case, this is a book I need to write, so it will be written. I really doubt I will do another book in this series, but I do have an idea for a fourth book called “Dog Destroyers of the Deadlands.” This one would bring the two sequels (Pippi of the Apocalypse and Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands) together into one final story. But we’ll see. I’ll probably base my decision on reader feedback after Pippi of the Apocalypse has been out for a while.
For those of you who haven’t read them, here are the first two books in the series:
Armadillo Fists will be out in a week or two, Handsome Squirm will be out in a month, and after that will be this book which has the working title TUMOR FRUIT. This one is an island survival story, kind of like a bizarro version of Castaway. I’ve always been a fan of wilderness survival stories so this is one I’m really excited about.
"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.
Apeship
Six people are stranded at sea on a derelict cruise ship filled with immortal cannibal mutants.
Splatterpunk satire.
Why I Married a Clown Girl From the Dimension of Death
An man who is scared of clowns marries one and instantly regrets it.
Creepy and fun.
Glass Children
An old man is forced to get a job at a daycare center for children made of glass.
Absurd and dark.
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 