Latest Kindle Releases
All-Monster Action by Cody Goodfellow
This digital edition includes bonus short story “Wet Nurse” as well as “We Need to Make Things More Repulsive: The Early Sketches of Nick Gucker“! And as an added bonus, it STILL INCLUDES all of the original content, which means you’ve also got mind-melting art from maestro Mike Dubisch as well as the craziest Cody stories ever put to print!
IT’S THEIR WORLD… NOW GET THE FUCK OFF!
Whether on the sun-kissed beaches of a nameless South Pacific paradise or in the suffocating dungeons of retail Hell, the misfits of evolution and mistakes of misbegotten science are battling, breeding, and feeding. And they’re looking at you…
COMING ATTRACTIONS!
They came seeking cheap thrills and interspecies recreational sex, but they reaped a whirlwind of clusterfuckery when they toyed with the unspeakable forces of monster lust. From the idyllic nostalgia of WW2 to the thoroughly bat-shit future, witness the wages of sin and mutation as you’ve never seen them before (unless you read them previously in the periodicals or anthologies in which they first appeared)!
OUR MAIN FEATURE!
The world gave him a blank check and a demand: Create giant monsters to fight our wars. But Dr. Otaku was not satisfied with mere chaos and mass destruction…. Even as his subversively delicious kaiju creatures undermined the very fabric of American life, he hatched a scheme to animate the cities themselves and inaugurate a new dark age of mega-monster abominations who would finally give humanity the ass-whipping it deserved. Now only one man, riding inside the skull of a much larger man, stands between us and the planet-devastating madness of…
ALL-MONSTER ACTION!
Extinction Journals by Jeremy “Stabby” Johnson
Newly revised 2012 digital edition includes “The Sharp-Dressed Man at the End of the Line,” the classic short story explaining the origin of the world’s weirdest post-nuke survivor.
“Jeremy Robert Johnson’s novella of the apocalypse is a supremely weird reading experience, sitting somewhere between Chuck Palahniuk and John Wyndham. Extinction Journals is a hybrid, a mutant child of 1950′s paranoia and contemporary dystopia. Bleak, funny, apocalyptic and affecting, it stays with you long after you’ve finished it.”–THE ZONE (UK)
Unicorn Battle Squad by Kirsten Alene
Mutant unicorns. A palace with a thousand human legs. The most powerful army on the planet. A first world city on the verge of collapse.
In a city where teetering skyscrapers block out the sky, a city populated by lowly clerks, rumors have been circulating of a terror in the east. When Carl, the lowliest clerk on the negative twelfth floor, discovers that the city is indeed in grave danger, he sets out to warn the city’s protectors: the Unicorn Riders.
Although Carl’s missing father has left him a unicorn of his own, it is a small and sickly creature. Even worse, there is a crab claw growing from its side. But the Unicorn Riders need as much help as they can get, and soon every able rider sets out for the city’s flooded perimeter in a steam-powered Spanish galleon.
An epic journey that spans desert and sea, through the bedchambers of a fearsome Eastern queen, and into the devastation of a conquered city, Unicorn Battle Squad is the story of a boy and his unicorn at the end of the world.
Die You Doughnut Bastards by Cameron Pierce
In Die You Doughnut Bastards, amputees, lonely young people, and talking animals struggle for survival against the freakish whims of nature. A typewriter made of fetuses is the source of woe for an expecting couple. Tao Lin rewrites The Human Centipede 2. A girl with a glass jaw hides an otherworldly secret. A demonic loner goes to a birthday party in Hell. You’ll encounter a killer in a marsupial mask, a prison for anorexics, haunted pancakes, and a songwriter with a cult following.
Surreal prose poems give way to personal accounts of alienation and modern love. Vegetarian narwhals are sold at the supermarket. And in a city that might be your own, zombie doughnuts are rising up. Kill yourself before they kill you. Or just kill yourself.
Featuring original illustrations in the style of Daniel Johnston, Die You Doughnut Bastards is the latest way to drown, brought to you by Wonderland Book Award-winning author Cameron Pierce.
Art is the Devil by John Skipp
When two young badass women stop by an insane Charlie Sheen-based art exhibit, their night of mind-warping horror is only beginning. Splatterpunk legend John Skipp delivers the high-voltage hardcore thrills in this outrageous, bodacious short story.
Wonderland Book Award winners announced!
At BizarroCon, the winners of the Wonderland Book Award were announced. Congratulations to the winners and all of the finalists. This year’s winners are:
BEST NOVEL OF 2011: Haunt by Laura Lee Bahr
Haunt is a tripping-balls Los Angeles noir, where a mysterious dame drags you through a time-warping Bizarro hall of mirrors. She’s the girl of your dreams. Too bad she’s dead. OR IS SHE? In Haunt, “you” are the hapless corporate tool and rock star wannabe turned private Dick. Here, even your most inconsequential choices can make all the difference between a Hollywood ending on the beach and sucking cock for clues. This is genial lowbrow high lit weirdness: the funny, punchy cousin of Danielewski’s House of Leaves, a Vonnegut and Salinger paté on a choose-your-own cracker, with a lapdance from Nancy Drew. As much fun to make as it is to eat! Laura Lee Bahr is an award-winning indie actor/playwrite/screenwriter with a gift for the hilariously, tragically absurd. Haunt is her first novel.
BEST COLLECTION OF 2011: We Live Inside You by Jeremy Robert Johnson
“WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is fucking terrific. Jeremy Robert Johnson is dancing to a way different drummer. He loves language, he loves the edge, and he loves us people. These stories have range and style and wit. This is entertainment… and literature.”–JACK KETCHUM, author of Off Season, The Girl Next Door, and The Woman (w/Lucky McKee)
We are within you, and we are growing. Watching. Waiting for your empires to fall. It won’t be long now.
We are the fear of death that drives you and the terrible hunger that reshapes you in its name. We are the vengeance born from senseless slaughter and the pulsing reptile desire that negates your consciousness. We are the lie on your lips, the collapsing star in your heart, and the still-warm gun in your shaking hands. The illusion of control is all we’ll allow you, and no matter what you do…
WE LIVE INSIDE YOU
BOOKS AND BOOZE JRJ INTERVIEW & SWALLOWDOWN PRESS RE-DESIGN
JRJ gathered some Evan Williams, an Apocalypse IPA, and his cell phone last week for this very enjoyable interview for the BOOKS AND BOOZE podcast.
Per the site: “In Books and Booze episode 16 we sit down with Jeremy Robert Johnson to talk about good beer, good bourbon, experimental writing, and NaNoWriMo. We talk about our favorite stories from We Live Inside You and Jeremy serenades us with the hits of the Doobie Brothers.”
Also, the Swallowdown Press website has just undergone a masterful re-design courtesy of Presidential Net Aesthetician Matthew Revert.
p.s. I am buying knives.
21C Magazine Interview With Jeremy Robert Johnson
“Ashley Crawford talks with Jeremy Robert Johnson about Bizarro, David Cronenberg, parasites and, inevitably, the end of the world.”
JRJ has been interviewed for 21C Magazine, whose prior subjects have included folks like Burroughs, Gibson, Shirley, Ballard, Acker, Brian Evenson, Mark Z. Danielewski, and Jonathan Lethem. You can click on the logo above to jump to the sprawling Q&A.
Happy Birthday Jeremy Johnson!
Bizarro author Jeremy Robert Johnson turned older today despite all of our attempts to eliminate him. To celebrate his dedication to survival (we’ll get you one day, you bastard!), maybe check out one of his books. Click here for more information on his works, or here to see his super-duper-always-updated website.
-Sam
LitReactor May ’12 Book Club Discussion: WE LIVE INSIDE YOU
LitReactor, the net’s premier site for literary news, discussion, and writer’s workshops, has chosen Jeremy Robert Johnson’s WE LIVE INSIDE YOU as its May ’12 Book Club Selection. The discussion will run for the entire month and Jeremy will be participating (i.e. drinking heavily and posting nude manatee pics).
So, if you’ve already read one of Bizarro’s most popular and critically acclaimed titles and want to join the discussion, feel free to jump in!
And if you want to check out the book legendary horror author Jack Ketchum calls “Fucking terrific.” you can pick it up at Powell’s, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and for Kindle and Nook.
OUT NOW: ALL-MONSTER ACTION!
ALL-MONSTER ACTION! by Cody Goodfellow is now available at Amazon, featuring art from Mike Dubisch (cover and interiors) and Nick Gucker (interiors):
“A tour-de-force! Goodfellow’s latest is his best yet. Compulsive, breakneck reading!” —BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising and Ghoul
IT’S THEIR WORLD… NOW GET THE FUCK OFF!
Whether on the sun-kissed beaches of a nameless South Pacific paradise or in the suffocating dungeons of retail Hell, the misfits of evolution and mistakes of misbegotten science are battling, breeding, and feeding. And they’re looking at you…
COMING ATTRACTIONS!
They came seeking cheap thrills and interspecies recreational sex, but they reaped a whirlwind of clusterfuckery when they toyed with the unspeakable forces of monster lust. From the idyllic nostalgia of WW2 to the thoroughly bat-shit future, witness the wages of sin and mutation as you’ve never seen them before (unless you read them previously in the periodicals or anthologies in which they first appeared)!
OUR MAIN FEATURE!
The world gave him a blank check and a demand: Create giant monsters to fight our wars. But Dr. Otaku was not satisfied with mere chaos and mass destruction…. Even as his subversively delicious kaiju creatures undermined the very fabric of American life, he hatched a scheme to animate the cities themselves and inaugurate a new dark age of mega-monster abominations who would finally give humanity the ass-whipping it deserved. Now only one man, riding inside the skull of a much larger man, stands between us and the planet-devastating madness of…
ALL-MONSTER ACTION!
“ALL-MONSTER ACTION! is hilarious, action-packed, and way too much fun. Over-the-top and wild! Highly recommended.” — JONATHAN MABERRY, New York Times Bestselling author of Dust & Decay and Assassin’s Code
“This is your chance. You only think you’re hip—but you haven’t read this Cody Goodfellow book, so you’re not yet. Now you can be hip, and read something crazy entertaining too. You can’t go wrong, man, I’m telling you. You’ve got to read this thing. I mean, if a book rocks, it rocks, that’s all.” —JOHN SHIRLEY, author of A Song Called Youth
“Cody Goodfellow’s writing etches itself inside your eyelids and chases your brain back into the dark corners where you can’t escape. ALL-MONSTER ACTION! has more high concepts in a paragraph than a whole summer of blockbusters: a mad scientist who’s passed on like the flu; biotech mutants harvested for fun and profit; and a giant monster arms race that ends in a showdown on the moon. This book is a human’s-eye view of the future coming down hard on us, like a Tokyo resident gazing up at the sky and seeing only the outline of a giant foot.” —CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH, author of Blood Oath and The President’s Vampire
“ALL-MONSTER ACTION! is a dirty bomb right to the cerebral cortex—it’s sharp, smart, scary, scarring, sexy and brutally funny. And like any good bomb, it’s got specific targets in mind: Genre and gender, racism, colonialism, ageism and classism. ALL-MONSTER ACTION! demonstrates again that Cody Goodfellow is some kind of mad-ass genius.” —LISA MORTON, author of The Castle of Los Angeles and Monsters of L.A. and Four-Time Winner of the Bram Stoker Award
“One of the most unique and creative works I’ve ever read. The author is quite obviously insane, but like Colonel Kurtz, he’s got a plan. ALL-MONSTER ACTION! is packed with wild, driving energy that carries the reader along like an out-of-control Disney ride. Cody Goodfellow combines genres and crazed pop-cult tropes with finesse and style. Old Mr. Yeats kept bitchin’ about ‘the centre cannot hold.’ Bullshit. With ALL-MONSTER ACTION! Cody Goodfellow proves he can hold the center together and play lead guitar at the same time. Filled with crazed, strange characters drawn from pop-cult, z-grade cinema and zillions of comic books, the pace is frantic and the imagery often makes you laugh while you cringe. What impresses me most with ALL-MONSTER ACTION! is Cody’s ability to take cultural icons and clichés and turn them into a funny, intelligent, satiric story that perhaps Max Ernst would have written if he fronted Black Flag. ALL-MONSTER ACTION! made me remember those late nights as a kid, watching amazingly strange films and thrilling to every minute. Cody Goodfellow must have caught those films, too, because his fevered stories have one foot in the past and one foot in the present. Reading ALL-MONSTER ACTION! gave me the same pleasure as the first time I saw ‘The Navy vs. the Night Monsters.’ Brilliant!”—RICKY LEE GROVE, The Greatest Character Actor Ever (Army Of Darkness, Point Break, Scanner Cop) and the Pizza Delivery Man in Your Mom’s Recurring Wet Dreams
10 Personal Highlights of Bizarrocon 2011
By Sam Reeve
For those of you wondering why there has been such a lack of posts in the last few days, it’s because two of the three editors here at Bizarrocentral.com have been off in Troutdale, Oregon for the fourth annual Bizarrocon, as well as our fiction editor Kirsten.
This was my third year attending and here’s my list of highlights of Bizarrocon 2011. For those reading this who were also there, comment with your own favourite memories!
1. Watching Jeremy Johnson get a bunch of meat dumped on him by Cameron Pierce: Cameron, a fabulous performance artist, has a little show he likes to call Meat Magick. Imagine an attic filled with a ton of people, a lot of squid, eel and duck heads, and a crazy story to go with it. This was the second time I was lucky enough to witness Cameron’s Meat Magick, but this year it began with Jeremy being slapped by a dead eel while wearing an ape mask.
2. David Barbee’s birthday lap dance: Author of the recently published A Town Called Suckhole, David Barbee celebrated his birthday this Saturday while at Bizarrocon. His gift from our editor (and New Bizarro Author) Constance Fitzgerald was a lap dance – but it wasn’t her doing the dancing. A shirtless Troy Chambers appeared, along with Michael A. Rose, who ripped off his tear-away pants to reveal a leopard print Speedo, and they shook their shit for David on his special day.
3. Listening to Andersen Prunty talk about how beautiful Ohio is.
“Everyone needs to visit Dayton, Ohio. It’s such a nice place. Also, New Jersey. Check that shit out.” – Andersen Prunty, editor of Grindhouse Press.
4. Cody Goodfellow’s reading: I forget the title; I think it was something like “The Greedy Tree”. Cody read an awesome story that was illustrated by artist Nick Gucker as it was read. Very cool to see it visualized in that way as it was something I hadn’t seen before.
5. Open mic on Friday night: Andrew Goldfarb, aka The Slow Poisoner, performed for us on Friday night. He left his stuff set up and late in the night an impromptu open mic began, featuring songs sung by John Skipp, Garrett Cook, a Canadian tranny named Peter, and others. It was awesome, unexpected, and great to have more music appear at the con.
6. Bizarro Showdown: Duh. Bizarro Showdown is basically a bunch of weird fucked up people trying to be weirder and more fucked up than each other. Emceed by Jeremy Johnson and judged by bizarro-horror writers John Skipp, Robert Devereaux and Brian Keene, this is the event that everyone looks forward to all weekend. Your sides hurt from laughing near the end. One of my favourite pieces was Carlton Mellick’s. He played an orc basketball player trying to warn us of the dangers of unprotected sex with orcs.
Jeremy Johnson also entertained in between.
7. Dog Act: Saturday mornings at Bizarrocon there’s a raffle during breakfast. Lots of random prizes are donated, and this year Cody Goodfellow was generous to donate the book Dog Act. Apparently the entire book, right from the beginning, tells of a woman who likes to get fucked by dogs. My sister won the book, and here’s a picture of my wide-eyed dad taking a look at it.
8. I wasn’t the only Canadian/foreigner! Simon Ore came out from the other side of Canada, as well as Martin and Helen who came all the way from Britain. They were super cool people and it just shows how much Bizarrocon is growing with more people coming from outside the US.
9. Friday morning’s High Concept Workshop with Calrton: Friday morning, bright and early, many of us had to get up early to meet up with our groups, lead by either Jeff Burk or Carlton Mellick. Basically you have to create a title, pitch line and back cover description for a book that you actually haven’t written. Everyone reads the assignments days in advance and gives feedback when we all get together. The names aren’t on the assignments, so you don’t know whose is whose until the end. In the workshop we got a tally of how many other participants would have bought that book, based on the back cover description, if they had picked it up in a store. I almost peed myself a little when in this year’s workshop a few of my all-time favourite bizarro authors said they would want to buy my book if I wrote it. Definitely a good thing to attend for established and unpublished writers alike.
10. Participating in Kevin Shamel’s promotion for Island of the Super People: Friday night Kevin, always working in audience participation one way or another, had volunteers dress in capes and masks. Heroes (including myself) fought bad guys outside while everyone else watched, but out of nowhere some tinfoil robots joined in the chaos.
Well, this gives you an idea of what happened this weekend, and the beauty of it is that this is only the tip of the awesome iceburg that is BIZARROCON!
**Big thanks to those of you who took lots of pictures this weekend. I left my camera at home because it totally blows, so I stole these from Robert Brouhard’s facebook.
Now Available: WE LIVE INSIDE YOU by Jeremy Robert Johnson (Seriously!)
Received this press release from JRJ today along with a note- “Not a prank, you guys. I know I pulled a Malick for a while there, but this thing is real. All the best.
P.S. OF THIMBLE AND THREAT just dropped!? That book is amazing.
P.P.S. Dressing Bishop the Pug as J. Edgar Hoover this year, but I can’t get the stitching on the evening gown quite right…”
Available now from Jeremy Robert Johnson and Swallowdown Press (with book design by CM3 and amazing cover art by Alex Pardee):
We are within you, and we are growing. Watching. Waiting for your empires to fall. It won’t be long now.
We are the fear of death that drives you and the terrible hunger that reshapes you in its name. We are the vengeance born from senseless slaughter and the pulsing reptile desire that negates your consciousness. We are the lie on your lips, the collapsing star in your heart, and the still-warm gun in your shaking hands. The illusion of control is all we’ll allow you, and no matter what you do…
WE LIVE INSIDE YOU
“WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is fucking terrific. Jeremy Robert Johnson is dancing to a way different drummer. He loves language, he loves the edge, and he loves us people. These stories have range and style and wit. This is entertainment… and literature.”—JACK KETCHUM, author of Off Season, The Girl Next Door, and The Woman (w/Lucky McKee)
“A haunting collection from a wildly talented author, WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is composed of nineteen perfectly-wrought nightmares, every one of which will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading.”—PETER CRAIG, author of Hot Plastic and Blood Father, co-screenwriter of The Town
“The people populating these stories are real and vital and you WILL care, deeply, about what becomes of them… and in JRJ’s harsh universe, baaaaad things happen. Often. Prepare thyself.”—CRAIG DAVIDSON, author of Rust and Bone, The Fighter, and Sarah Court
“The guy’s a genius. Reminds me of William Gibson—the dark interest in altered states of consciousness, the unrelentingly furious forward movement, and the same kind of unlimited imagination.”—BEN LOORY, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
“Tongue-replacing isopods, brain-raping copepods and body-warping worms are far from the most insidious parasites that infest Jeremy Robert Johnson’s hapless literary victims. Though the squirmy bits elegantly pioneer new frontiers of sickness, WE LIVE INSIDE YOU is at its most twisted and mordantly revelatory when it drops the body-horror metaphors and digs into the real horror of all the parasitic drives that ride us––tapeworms of greed, lust like plagues of crab lice, and the lethal heartworms of true love. So tightly written and so fluidly brutal you’ll want to consume this psychosexual demolition derby in one sitting, but you’ll spend the rest of the night checking yourself under a microscope.”—CODY GOODFELLOW, author of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and Radiant Dawn/Ravenous Dusk
“Waaaay out at the deep end of the collective unconscious—where even the bravest of brain cells fear to tread—Jeremy Robert Johnson performs stand-up comedy for the gods. And their laughter is a marvelous, terrible thing. He’s the kind of post-Lovecraftian genius berserker who makes the Great Old Ones new again. As with Clive Barker, there is no glorious mutational eruption that Johnson can’t nail directly through your gawping mind’s eye.”—JOHN SKIPP, NY Times Bestselling author of Spore (w/Cody Goodfellow) and The Bridge (w/Craig Spector)
