COVER REVEAL FOR THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE, MY NEW BOOK FROM BIZARRO PULP PRESS!

 

Isn't that a thing of great beauty? Special thanks to Don Noble who designed this cover! For all the details click here.

HORROR AND BIZARRO BOOKS FOR SALE!

After the Printer's Row show in Chicago this year, there were a few Rooster Republic and StrangeHouse books left over. Rather than ship them back to the publishers, I offered to try to sell them at Flashback Weekend and Days of the Dead. Unfortunately, it turns out that I can't get into Days of the Dead as a seller. I'm told there's not even a waiting list for the show. So I'm going to sell them here if I can. What follows is a list of books I'm selling, some on my own behalf, some on behalf of the publishers. If you see anything you like, contact me in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you follow me. If all else fails, contact tabardinnedgewoodent@yahoo.com. If you're buying one of my books, let me know if/how you want it inscribed.


-5 copies of TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE by John Bruni

-2 copies of POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS by John Bruni

-1 copy of SLAUGHTERTOWN CIRCUS by KM Tepe

-1 copy of THE FARROWING by Jesse Wheeler

-1 copy of STRANGER DANGER by Kevin Strange and Danger_Slater (these are signed by Danger! Plus, this is no longer a StrangeHouse Book. This is going to be a collector's item!)

-1 copy of TALL TALES WITH SHORT COCKS vol. 3

-1 copy of I AM GENGHIS CUM by Violet LeVoit (because I got a second copy by being a part of the Fungasm crowdsourcing thing)

To sweeten the pot, I'm offering the usual convention deal: each book is $10, or 3 for $25. If you live close enough to me to pick them up yourself, that's it. If I'm shipping these out to you, add a dollar for each book you want. Cool?

HEY FUCKERS #22: THE WORLD NEEDS A BIZARRO SOAP OPERA

My hero

When I was a kid, I envied George Newman, Weird Al's character in UHF. I wanted to have my own TV station where I could play shows about whatever the fuck paraded through my mind. Hell, I would have filmed me playing war games with my GI Joes, because I thought my adventures were rad. I wish I could be a programmer for my very own station.


Yesterday I saw my grandmother watching a compilation of popular scenes from DAYS OF OUR LIVES, except there was some weird storyline about a demon or a vampire or I don't know what the fuck. I could have sworn it was PASSIONS, I asked her if DAYS OF OUR LIVES really had a horror story arc. She said it had happened in the 'Eighties. I guess they were trying to capture the interest of people who missed DARK SHADOWS . . . ?


And then it occurred to me that there should be a bizarro soap opera. Why the fuck not? I thought I should write that book, but it wouldn't appeal to me much in book form. No, I would want it to be a TV show, for sure.


I started thinking about the characters, and I'm pretty sure I have a few winners. Obviously, the show has to revolve around a wealthy family. Husband, wife, two kids (one boy, one girl) and a pet. I'm thinking the husband is a Batman type of superhero, and none of the family knows about the secret headquarters their mansion hides. The wife is a serial killer, and she's being hunted by her husband, but neither one of them knows the other's identity. And she's just brutal. Cannibalism. Sex torture. You name it. Their girl, the older of the siblings, is incredibly hot, but she's got an insane, Monk-type list of phobias that keeps her confined to her bedroom where she spends her days eating spiders because spiders are the one thing she's not afraid of. Their boy tries to run an Encyclopedia Brown kind of detective agency, except he's profoundly stupid and can't do the job. Their pet is a dragon who routinely burns down neighbors' houses and constantly gets the family in trouble. Speaking of the neighbors, one of them thinks he's the action star version of Liam Neeson, but he's a clumsy motherfucker, and he never knows what his prostitute daughter is up to for real.


And then there's the extended family. A vampire uncle who tries to hide the fact that he's a vampire, even though EVERYONE knows he's a vampire, and his pedophile caretaker. Their wacky grandfather is Charlie Manson. A cousin is a writer who, instead of spending his time writing, is obsessed with his Twitter numbers and all the fights he gets into with people online. Another uncle is a deformed guy who has a normal sized head, but the rest of his body is super-tiny, like, the size of an ice cube, and he constantly tries to hatch I-shall-rule-the-world schemes which are usually foiled by his tendency to over-think things.


I think their neighborhood needs an Irish cop walking the beat. Nothing fancy, just the stereotype times a thousand.


What do you think? Do any of my readers have the kind of money and connections necessary to make this happen? I'd do a Kickstarter, but what network would give me the chance to air this show?


Maybe we could get Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln in there. What's he doing these days?

[EDIT: Ah, fuck. Looks like Rex Hamilton is dead. Never mind, then.]

THE BIZARRO HOUR! THIS SATURDAY!

Do you live in the Chicago area? Do you like bizarro fiction? Are you looking for something to do on Saturday, March 28th at 8:00 pm? Then I have a brilliant suggestion for you. Come on down to G-Mart Comics and listen to a bunch of weird fuckers, myself included, reading crazy shit for what is likely to be more than the stated hour! I'll have copies of my new book, POOR BASTARDS AND RICH FUCKS, if you're interested in buying a copy. I'll also have a few copies of TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE. More importantly, I'm giving away a bunch of free shit! No strings attached! Plus, I'll be reading a hard-to-find story of mine that is sure to turn stomachs! It will at least give you that weird feeling you get behind your knees when someone runs their fingernails across a blackboard. I hope to see you all there!

HEY FUCKERS #15: SURREPTITIOUS READING

From Lamebook

I love Lamebook, but at the same time, I'm glad no one I know has been posted there. I think that shows I have great taste in friends. Anyway, I was hanging around Lamebook when I found this post of a guy who just couldn't wait to get home to watch some porn. He thought he was being clever by turning his device away from everyone, not realizing that the window would show the reflection of what he's watching. I thought, "What a stupid thing to do. Just wait until you're in the privacy of your own home before you watch people fucking." And then I realized that I was kinda-sorta guilty of the same thing back in November.


I'd gone out to Vegas to visit my father, step-mom, sister and brother, and since it's a long flight, I brought plenty of reading material to keep me sane. The perfect reading material for a flight? Bizarro fiction. The books tend to be short, and they always tend to be interesting, so I can usually knock out a couple of them on the way out and a few more on the way back.


This time, I had brought Carlton Mellick III's THE BABY JESUS BUTT PLUG. I have no problem with reading nasty, crazy books in public. I proudly read RICO SLADE WILL FUCKING KILL YOU by Bradley Sands with the cover facing the entire world, so I figured tBJBP wouldn't be a problem. And then I discovered that there were illustrations in the book. Very questionable illustrations. I have no problem with them, of course, but the people who had to sit next to me? I kind of worried about them. The thought of being jailed for public indecency got to me, and while I read the book, I covered the illustrations with my hand if they were on the right side of the page (I was at the window seat on the left side of the plane). If they were on the left side, I turned the book slightly, so they wouldn't be able to see. (And I closed the blind to the window to avoid any reflection.)


I loved the book, and I discovered something odd about the people sitting next to me: THEY DIDN'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ME. They never even glanced in my direction because they were too involved in their own boredom-killing attempts. I was paranoid for nothing. Even now, as I write this months later, I don't even remember their faces, and I'm sure they haven't given me a second thought since getting off the plane.


So fuck it. Next time I'm on a plane, I'm going to watch A SERBIAN FILM.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #61: IDENTITY

A lot of people know me as a bizarro writer. I've written bizarro a few times, but I don't consider myself a bizarro writer. (Maybe this caused me to lose votes for the Wonderland final ballot in regards to TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE. That would suck, but I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it. The fact that anyone read that book is balm in Gilead to me.)


A ton of people know me as a horror writer. I've written horror more times than anything else I've ever written, but I don't consider myself a horror writer.


A smattering of people know me as a crime writer. I've written crime a few times, but I don't consider myself a crime writer.


I consider myself a writer. Period. Anything that pops up in my head? I'll write it. Even if it's a gothic romance. (And believe you me, I have a gothic romance idea in my head. I've had it for at least twenty years. I just don't know how to write it yet.)


I've said it many times: Joe R. Lansdale is my favorite living writer. Notice I didn't clarify the term "writer." The guy has written in so many different genres, I couldn't modify the term if I had ten million years. I wouldn't want to, either. Since I was a kid, I wrote mysteries. Secondary to that were horror stories. After that, I wrote just about everything, including straight-up literary stories that might have caught the attention of the Paris Review, if I'd been more mature at the time.


This isn't to say I'm a snob. I'm far from it. I just don't get the need to classify everything. I get the desire to fit a story into a particular box, at least when it comes to marketing (for one), and finding an audience (for another). But to label the person who created that story? That's insane.


And honestly? Labeling a reader is kind of crazy, too.


I love horror stories. I also love bizarro. I love SF tales and on occasion, I get a kick out of those supposedly straight-up literary works, at least the ones that don't involve a parent dying of cancer just so the protagonist can learn something about him/herself. I would never call myself a horror reader. Or a bizarro reader. Etc. I'm a reader. Period.


It seems kind of silly, but a lot of writers and readers seem bent on making their various genres EXCLUSIVE instead of INCLUSIVE. This baffles me so much, I can't get my head around it. As a writer, I try to see things from EVERYONE's POV, but this one? It's too crazy for me to figure it out, aside from the fact that those who seek exclusivity are those who want to feel like they're in a club that no one else is allowed into. I get people wanting to feel special, but I don't get people wanting to push like-minded people away.


A bizarro writer recently said something reprehensible. I get why this person said it, because I understand a desire to not be pigeonholed. Yet at the same time, he said it in such a way that is inexcusable. It was poorly thought out. He caught a lot of heat, and he should have.


I generally like the guy. I've enjoyed his books. I can't speak for personal involvement, because I personally don't know him. I've never had a single exchange with him. But he went off on a particular genre, saying things that aren't true to make himself seem more important. Again, I get the desire to transcend, but to shit on something for self-important reasons is crazy.


I'm not a horror writer. I'm not a bizarro writer. I'm not a crime writer. But I love horror. I love bizarro. I love crime. And I love everyone who writes and reads in these genres because I want to spread word about the things I enjoy.


When I was in college, I started writing reviews for the local newspaper. Here's the thing, though: I only wrote reviews of things I enjoyed. Why? Because I wanted to spread word about a work of art that turned me on. I didn't want to be the lone voice shouting in the wilderness. I wanted someone to discuss these things with. It took a great deal of stupidity and/or evil to get me to write a bad review. In my two years of writing for a biweekly paper, I wrote only ONE bad review. (I don't have the numbers for after that, but I know that bad reviews from me were very rare in that time.)


I love a lot of things, and I want more people to love those things, so I have something to talk about with them. If a stranger comes up to me and professes a love for those things, I accept them immediately without question. It doesn't matter if they're a different color or GOD FORBID a different sex. I love talking about this shit with EVERYONE.


I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't get the hate getting thrown about in particular genres. I get the egotistical need to be better than others, but I don't understand why anyone would apply it to readers and writers and other people who experience pop culture. To those who bitch about women "pretending" to be into comics? Fuck you. To those who hate a black Spider-Man? Fuck you. To those who dismiss an entire genre because you think its practitioners are focused on bullshit? Fuck you.


Try to think things through. Try to think about what "the more, the merrier" means. Try to decide if it's better to have a conversation with no one (hint: that sucks) or someone (hint: that's cool).


Let love in, fuckers. Stop being obstinate. You hated on popular authors for stepping up and helping unpopular genres, and for what? Are you so bent on your too-cool-for-the-room persona that you're OK with sacrificing genuine readers for people who will merely reaffirm your so-called independence?


If you really love the genre of your choice, be it horror, bizarro, SF or whatever, you would want to share it with others. When you get down to it, I think our various interests intersect quite nicely. Those of us who genuinely love these things are willing to share. Those of us who aren't? Those of us who think you have to earn love of certain things? Those of us who think you have to exhibit appreciation of certain things from an early age?


I think you're missing the point.