Kevin Strange's Blog: Strange Sayings - Posts Tagged "kevin-strange"
New interview
Hey Gang! Check out this brand new interview I did with Mike over at (Re)Searchmytrash.com!
http://www.searchmytrash.com/cgi-bin/...
http://www.searchmytrash.com/cgi-bin/...
Being a prolific Artist
I'm not sure when being prolific became a goal for me. Growing up, even after high school when I first fell in love with cinema while managing a chain of porn shops, I never paid attention to the fact that some of those filmmakers had made dozens of films over long decades.
Sometimes my partner, D.F. Noble, jokes about writing some shitty young adult novel so we can retire.
I have no interest in retiring.
So when did that become a thing for me? When did the idea of creating continuously until my body breaks down and prevents me from creating anymore come about?
I'd been aware of Stephen King's long career. Of Woody Allen's insane work rate. Of Bob Dylan. But none of that meant anything to me until I sat down and wrote my first script.
I hated it.
I sucked. I felt like a kid trying to draw a full color comic with crayons. So I bought a bunch of books on writing. I learned what everybody learns. To be good at writing, you have to write. A lot. All the time. And you have to read. Everything. So I wrote another short film script and actually produced a short film. Hated it. So I made another. Sucked, but not as bad. So I wrote a feature film script. God awful.
As of today, I've written and directed nearly 20 short films. I've written and directed 5 feature length films with another half-dozen film scripts that remain un-produced. I've written a short story collection, three novellas and two novels. And I still learn every single time I sit down at my computer and start a new story.
My friends who grew up with me --the blue collar, small town folk who think people like me are just stubborn idiots who won't grow up and get a real job-- slowly started to notice there was something special going on when month after month, year after year, I was still churning this shit out.
I've never had writer's block. My biggest enemy is staying focused on one project to completion before the next movie or book jams its way into my brain and takes over my focus. And I had no forethought or intention of creating in this way.
I know filmmakers who are still selling a movie they'd made five or six years prior. I know authors who wrote one book, one time, and that was it. They were done. That's crazy to me. Maybe it's about self doubt. The idea that I still haven't made “The Movie” or written “The Novel” that defines me as an artist, that will live on beyond my natural lifetime. Maybe these folks have and did.
But I don't think that's the case.
I think George Carlin wrote a new comedy album every year because he was always endlessly trying to find new ways to communicate his ideas to people. The whole notion of quitting any form of work once you've acquired a certain amount of money is a nasty idea to me. It's loathsome, it's the product of lazy minds, or of people who choose to do work they hate, just for a paycheck.
Carlin didn't need the money, Steve Jobs didn't need money at all when he was dying and still worked at Apple until three days before his death. Stephen King has famously sold the movie rights to his manuscripts for a dollar. That's not wealth motivation. That's a personal yearning for communication.
And somehow, completely unbeknownst to me, I possess it.
As I push forward through my third novel, I'm already outlining a fourth and fifth. I've already come up with a title to a new short story collection that may not see the light of day for another year. I'm bouncing ideas for new anthologies off my partners. I have unfinished business in my film making life that keeps me up at night. There are still scripts that beg me, deep into the long dark hours, to be shot and edited into real movies.
When does that stop? Does it ever? I hope not. I hope that overwhelming monetary success (should I ever be fortunate and lucky enough to see such a thing) doesn't kill the hunger inside me to create better, stronger art, faster and faster.
The list of prolific authors is endless. There's no way that, at 32 years old, I'll ever catch up to, or match the output of authors who've been at this for twenty years longer than me.
But I can work every day, every month, every year at becoming a better author, at putting out more books than the previous year, of topping my fastest novel turnaround. These things drive me, they excite me, and they exist inside me without my permission.
Being prolific isn't a choice. You either are, or you are not.
Sometimes my partner, D.F. Noble, jokes about writing some shitty young adult novel so we can retire.
I have no interest in retiring.
So when did that become a thing for me? When did the idea of creating continuously until my body breaks down and prevents me from creating anymore come about?
I'd been aware of Stephen King's long career. Of Woody Allen's insane work rate. Of Bob Dylan. But none of that meant anything to me until I sat down and wrote my first script.
I hated it.
I sucked. I felt like a kid trying to draw a full color comic with crayons. So I bought a bunch of books on writing. I learned what everybody learns. To be good at writing, you have to write. A lot. All the time. And you have to read. Everything. So I wrote another short film script and actually produced a short film. Hated it. So I made another. Sucked, but not as bad. So I wrote a feature film script. God awful.
As of today, I've written and directed nearly 20 short films. I've written and directed 5 feature length films with another half-dozen film scripts that remain un-produced. I've written a short story collection, three novellas and two novels. And I still learn every single time I sit down at my computer and start a new story.
My friends who grew up with me --the blue collar, small town folk who think people like me are just stubborn idiots who won't grow up and get a real job-- slowly started to notice there was something special going on when month after month, year after year, I was still churning this shit out.
I've never had writer's block. My biggest enemy is staying focused on one project to completion before the next movie or book jams its way into my brain and takes over my focus. And I had no forethought or intention of creating in this way.
I know filmmakers who are still selling a movie they'd made five or six years prior. I know authors who wrote one book, one time, and that was it. They were done. That's crazy to me. Maybe it's about self doubt. The idea that I still haven't made “The Movie” or written “The Novel” that defines me as an artist, that will live on beyond my natural lifetime. Maybe these folks have and did.
But I don't think that's the case.
I think George Carlin wrote a new comedy album every year because he was always endlessly trying to find new ways to communicate his ideas to people. The whole notion of quitting any form of work once you've acquired a certain amount of money is a nasty idea to me. It's loathsome, it's the product of lazy minds, or of people who choose to do work they hate, just for a paycheck.
Carlin didn't need the money, Steve Jobs didn't need money at all when he was dying and still worked at Apple until three days before his death. Stephen King has famously sold the movie rights to his manuscripts for a dollar. That's not wealth motivation. That's a personal yearning for communication.
And somehow, completely unbeknownst to me, I possess it.
As I push forward through my third novel, I'm already outlining a fourth and fifth. I've already come up with a title to a new short story collection that may not see the light of day for another year. I'm bouncing ideas for new anthologies off my partners. I have unfinished business in my film making life that keeps me up at night. There are still scripts that beg me, deep into the long dark hours, to be shot and edited into real movies.
When does that stop? Does it ever? I hope not. I hope that overwhelming monetary success (should I ever be fortunate and lucky enough to see such a thing) doesn't kill the hunger inside me to create better, stronger art, faster and faster.
The list of prolific authors is endless. There's no way that, at 32 years old, I'll ever catch up to, or match the output of authors who've been at this for twenty years longer than me.
But I can work every day, every month, every year at becoming a better author, at putting out more books than the previous year, of topping my fastest novel turnaround. These things drive me, they excite me, and they exist inside me without my permission.
Being prolific isn't a choice. You either are, or you are not.
How NOT to write a novel
So, it's National Write a Novel in a month, month. I've been seeing this thing posted all over the internet. Basically, a bunch of amateur, non-writers attempt and mostly fail to write a novel in 30 days. There are widgets and social networking plug-ins to allow you to show all your buddies your progress as you race against the clock to write a book.
This is not how you write a book.
I understand the sentiment. Why should anyone nay-say a fun exercise in writing that can only lead to more literacy and awareness of reading and writing?
Because it's a fucking stupid way to promote literacy.
I tend to liken everything to fighting or building. Disciplined skills practiced over time lead to meaningful results. You don't say, “I can't win a kickboxing fight” without first training kickboxing. You can say you WON'T or don't want to win a kickboxing fight, but not that you can't. You are just as capable as any other healthy human, if you're willing to master the discipline.
Same goes for building a house, which is the more appropriate metaphor for writing a novel. Both writing your own novel, and building your own dream home are American Dreams. Things any self-respecting American plans to do at some point in their lives.
Only most Americans don't have clue one how to do either, and will fail miserably when and if they finally muster up the gumption to give it a go. And here's why:
We're a group of self-entitled, nancy-pants, adult children who believe that things are just supposed to happen for us, without any hint of discipline or craftsmanship on our part.
I used to say, back in my film days, that 80% of indie films die in production. Every horror fan wants to direct a horror movie. And with digital technology, any horror fan can. A lot try, most fail. Why? Because they don't know how to build a movie.
And most of these people who participate in this nonsense novel writing month thing, they don't have clue one how to build a book. If you decided tomorrow that you were going to build a house, just cause Grandpa built the one you grew up in, and whatever grandpa can do, you can too, just because—well, you're gonna fail miserably.
Before you build a whole freakin house, you've got to remodel your basement. Add a few rooms down there. Learn how to build door frames, lay carpet, run wiring, add a bathroom and learn plumbing. Maybe turn your garage into an extended family room. Then build a nice work-shed out back. It wouldn't hurt to hang out with some carpenters and help them build a few houses, too, before you decide to tackle the job yourself.
Sounds like common sense, right? Well then why don't people use this same basic logic when it comes to writing a novel? I think the answer is two fold. First, the markets for short stories have all but evaporated, and most adults that now want to write a novel, have rarely, if ever, seen a short story collection or anthology in a bookstore, and therefore don't understand that any novel writer worth his/her weight in words, started off writing butt-loads of short fiction first.
Secondly, much like indie film making, the advent of Kindle/eBook self-publishing allows for any dim-wit with a word processor on their laptop to think they're the next Charles Dickens.
All of my fellow writers out there understand exactly what I'm saying. In a lot of ways, I'm preaching to the choir, and regurgitating what's been written thousands of times in self help how-to-write-for-dummies books. But I'm not writing this blog for you guys. I'm writing it for all the people out there who struggle, and fail, time and time again, to write their first novel.
I've only just now become aware of just how MANY of you there are out there, as posts about national novel month spring up all over the social networking sites. I'm seeing things like, “I don't know what kind of book I'm writing. Suspense maybe? We'll see as I get further along.” And, “I've been planning my novel for 6 months, I don't want to just puke it all up in one month!”
What? What?
Just like kickboxing, or house building, there are disciplined elements that go into novel writing that must first be recognized, then learned, then mastered. Elements like plot, pacing, character development, subplots, climaxes, conclusions. These elements don't just appear as you write. They must be understood in advance.
I don't outline to the extreme that some people do. I think over-outlining can lead to writer's block, or just a general loss of enthusiasm for a project, if all the fun has already been laid out clinically before you've even put your first paragraph to paper. But some form of outlined structure has to be present before your book can become anything except another 75,000 word rant left to fester and die in an obscure folder on your desktop.
Everyone writes differently. There is no “right” way to write a novel, just as there is no “right” way to build your house. It's art. Take liberties. Think outside the box of tradition. But if you're failing over and over again, year after year while playing Hemingway for National Write a Novel Month, then you need to really think about learning the rules before you decide to break them.
For me, I like to know my title, my first line, and my ending before I'm comfortable digging in to a book. You may write completely differently. But if you don't even understand what kind of conflict your main character is facing,--or how they will change as people because of it--before you start your book, you're destined for failure. And for you over-planners who are afraid to write too fast? You can't master a breath-taking spinning back kick by sitting around thinking about doing it for 6 months. You have to kick that bag every single day. Over and over again until you're throwing kicks in your sleep.
A good writer who writes every day will know what I'm talking about when I say that after a really good day of writing maybe 5k or more, I'll dream in prose. I'll narrate my own dreams in paragraph form. You'll never be a good writer, or probably ever finish a book, for that matter, without practicing every single day.
The best way to do that, to learn these elements, to recognize plot structure and the elements of good fiction is to write short stories. Instead of trying to write a novel in one month, try writing ten short stories in ten months. Make them no longer than 10 thousand words. Then, by the end of the ten months, you'll have 100,000 words. A novel's worth of characters, plots, antagonists, beautiful landscapes and shocking conclusions. Do that for two years. Get yourself 20 shorts stories written and you might find a weird thing happening.
Your stories will start to bust out of that 10 thousand word cage. Now your stories are pushing 15k, then topping 25k. Your plots are becoming more intricate, your characters are practically jumping to life, right off your page, and best yet, you're actually getting good at this! You go back and read some of your most recent shorts and you realize that they're not half bad. Somewhere along the way, you've become a pretty decent fiction writer.
What's that? It's National Novel Writing Month again? You only have to have 50 thousand words? Well your last short was 27k. You can do that. Hell, you've already got an idea in your head for a great story. This time? This time you're going to finish.
This is not how you write a book.
I understand the sentiment. Why should anyone nay-say a fun exercise in writing that can only lead to more literacy and awareness of reading and writing?
Because it's a fucking stupid way to promote literacy.
I tend to liken everything to fighting or building. Disciplined skills practiced over time lead to meaningful results. You don't say, “I can't win a kickboxing fight” without first training kickboxing. You can say you WON'T or don't want to win a kickboxing fight, but not that you can't. You are just as capable as any other healthy human, if you're willing to master the discipline.
Same goes for building a house, which is the more appropriate metaphor for writing a novel. Both writing your own novel, and building your own dream home are American Dreams. Things any self-respecting American plans to do at some point in their lives.
Only most Americans don't have clue one how to do either, and will fail miserably when and if they finally muster up the gumption to give it a go. And here's why:
We're a group of self-entitled, nancy-pants, adult children who believe that things are just supposed to happen for us, without any hint of discipline or craftsmanship on our part.
I used to say, back in my film days, that 80% of indie films die in production. Every horror fan wants to direct a horror movie. And with digital technology, any horror fan can. A lot try, most fail. Why? Because they don't know how to build a movie.
And most of these people who participate in this nonsense novel writing month thing, they don't have clue one how to build a book. If you decided tomorrow that you were going to build a house, just cause Grandpa built the one you grew up in, and whatever grandpa can do, you can too, just because—well, you're gonna fail miserably.
Before you build a whole freakin house, you've got to remodel your basement. Add a few rooms down there. Learn how to build door frames, lay carpet, run wiring, add a bathroom and learn plumbing. Maybe turn your garage into an extended family room. Then build a nice work-shed out back. It wouldn't hurt to hang out with some carpenters and help them build a few houses, too, before you decide to tackle the job yourself.
Sounds like common sense, right? Well then why don't people use this same basic logic when it comes to writing a novel? I think the answer is two fold. First, the markets for short stories have all but evaporated, and most adults that now want to write a novel, have rarely, if ever, seen a short story collection or anthology in a bookstore, and therefore don't understand that any novel writer worth his/her weight in words, started off writing butt-loads of short fiction first.
Secondly, much like indie film making, the advent of Kindle/eBook self-publishing allows for any dim-wit with a word processor on their laptop to think they're the next Charles Dickens.
All of my fellow writers out there understand exactly what I'm saying. In a lot of ways, I'm preaching to the choir, and regurgitating what's been written thousands of times in self help how-to-write-for-dummies books. But I'm not writing this blog for you guys. I'm writing it for all the people out there who struggle, and fail, time and time again, to write their first novel.
I've only just now become aware of just how MANY of you there are out there, as posts about national novel month spring up all over the social networking sites. I'm seeing things like, “I don't know what kind of book I'm writing. Suspense maybe? We'll see as I get further along.” And, “I've been planning my novel for 6 months, I don't want to just puke it all up in one month!”
What? What?
Just like kickboxing, or house building, there are disciplined elements that go into novel writing that must first be recognized, then learned, then mastered. Elements like plot, pacing, character development, subplots, climaxes, conclusions. These elements don't just appear as you write. They must be understood in advance.
I don't outline to the extreme that some people do. I think over-outlining can lead to writer's block, or just a general loss of enthusiasm for a project, if all the fun has already been laid out clinically before you've even put your first paragraph to paper. But some form of outlined structure has to be present before your book can become anything except another 75,000 word rant left to fester and die in an obscure folder on your desktop.
Everyone writes differently. There is no “right” way to write a novel, just as there is no “right” way to build your house. It's art. Take liberties. Think outside the box of tradition. But if you're failing over and over again, year after year while playing Hemingway for National Write a Novel Month, then you need to really think about learning the rules before you decide to break them.
For me, I like to know my title, my first line, and my ending before I'm comfortable digging in to a book. You may write completely differently. But if you don't even understand what kind of conflict your main character is facing,--or how they will change as people because of it--before you start your book, you're destined for failure. And for you over-planners who are afraid to write too fast? You can't master a breath-taking spinning back kick by sitting around thinking about doing it for 6 months. You have to kick that bag every single day. Over and over again until you're throwing kicks in your sleep.
A good writer who writes every day will know what I'm talking about when I say that after a really good day of writing maybe 5k or more, I'll dream in prose. I'll narrate my own dreams in paragraph form. You'll never be a good writer, or probably ever finish a book, for that matter, without practicing every single day.
The best way to do that, to learn these elements, to recognize plot structure and the elements of good fiction is to write short stories. Instead of trying to write a novel in one month, try writing ten short stories in ten months. Make them no longer than 10 thousand words. Then, by the end of the ten months, you'll have 100,000 words. A novel's worth of characters, plots, antagonists, beautiful landscapes and shocking conclusions. Do that for two years. Get yourself 20 shorts stories written and you might find a weird thing happening.
Your stories will start to bust out of that 10 thousand word cage. Now your stories are pushing 15k, then topping 25k. Your plots are becoming more intricate, your characters are practically jumping to life, right off your page, and best yet, you're actually getting good at this! You go back and read some of your most recent shorts and you realize that they're not half bad. Somewhere along the way, you've become a pretty decent fiction writer.
What's that? It's National Novel Writing Month again? You only have to have 50 thousand words? Well your last short was 27k. You can do that. Hell, you've already got an idea in your head for a great story. This time? This time you're going to finish.
McHumans *A story excerpt*
Hey Gang, I'm writing a new story for an upcoming Lovecraftian Anthology for StrangeHouse and I wanted to share the first thousand words with you because I think it's a pretty hilarious little tale. I'm excited as hell to put this out early next year. So here we go, the first thousand words of "McHumans":
Synopsis: After Cthulhu awakens and destroys civilization as we know it, humans are used as slaves and food by their new slimy, submerged masters. One such young man, Ricky, works at an undersea fast food joint where he's forced to kill and cook other humans for the Deep Ones to eat. But he has a plan. His restaurant caters to the Big Man himself, and if Ricky's plan works, he could pull off the unthinkable: Killing Cthulhu.
McHumans
by
Kevin Strange
An Excerpt
I'm Ricky. I'm a human being. A slave. Food for my watery masters. How those masters came into power is anybody's guess. All I know is, one day I was jacking off to videos of the pink Power Ranger, and the next, the whole planet was flooded, and giant monsters were dragging those of us lucky (unlucky?) enough not to die in the initial onslaught down into the icy depths below.
They call themselves the Deep Ones. No two of them look exactly the same. They're evil, vile things, but they can talk and think just like you or me. I guess because they're aliens from another dimension—at least that's what people say. But people say all kinds of crazy shit now, and it's not like we have an internet down here or anything to fact check. So you just sort of take people's word for it most of the time. These aliens hate us and want us all dead. Why they hate us so much, I'll never know. But they do. They love to torture us and eat us. They're real sadistic fuckers.
Take my job, for example. I work in one of their subterranean cities beneath the ocean. How these cities existed without our knowledge before the great flood? Another question I can't answer. There's a lot of those now. Questions. And not many answers. We're all too busy surviving...
Oh yeah, my job. I work at a fast food restaurant that specializes in fresh flesh. Fresh human flesh. As in people are butchered here and then we garnish their meat with little pieces of seaweed and coral and shit. As a joke, those of us who work here call it McHumans. And guess who they make kill people? That's right. Me.
Last week I had to kill my buddy Sam. He used to work here, too. In fact, he was the first person I met after I was dragged down into the murky depths. Everybody else that works here told us not to get emotionally attached to anyone cause this sort of shit happens all the time, but we didn't listen. We both liked comic books and death metal. And what else is there to do but talk to each other when you're living in a waterlogged death camp just waiting for your number to come up, anyway?
Three other people work with us on the night shift in the kitchen. Karen, a smokin' hot little redhead who tells the best poop jokes in the joint. She has Cerebral Palsy, or whatever. It's not that bad. It doesn't fuck up her face or the way she talks. Her hands are kind of curled up and one of her legs bows in when she walks. Her spine and neck are curved all funky, but other than that? Top shelf pussy. Sometimes when the others think we're off having a smoke break, I fuck Karen in the walk-in cooler. It's kinda weird, fucking a crippled girl, the whole cooler full of dead bodies, but hey, you take what you can get in this hellhole.
Then there's the huge, fat, black dude we call Chef. You know, like the dude from South Park? Only this Chef isn't all full of inspirational speeches and joy, no this guy is a miserable, hate-filled racist. He's got a gigantic, oily nose that looks like a brown pickle and he's missing one of his front teeth. He's worked here the longest and he says he loves it. Says he couldn't think of a better place to be than in a kitchen chopping up white people all day. But we know he's lying. He was a preacher in Detroit before all this happened. He just puts on the angry black man routine to keep from losing his shit. We all have our ways of dealing with the stress of death and misery hanging over our heads every second of every day.
Like Ty, the final member of our crew. He deals with our living nightmare by dressing up like a woman—wigs, makeup, the whole thing. But the weird part is, he's still got a big brown beard and doesn't talk with an effeminate voice or try to make us call him by a woman's name. No, he just dresses like a chick. He's called a Transvestite. I only know this because my sister used to be in a Rocky Horror troupe. Now my sister's dead.
So anyway, one minute me and Sam are swapping stories about fucking chicks back in our other life while we strip the skin off a pair of arms in the kitchen with the rest of the gang, and then bam! In comes our boss, a really funky looking crab-thing with a huge white spiral shell covered in nasty barnacles. The way his big eyes sit on top of their stalks, Boss Crab, as we call him, always looks like he's surprised or in a state of shock. He has a name, hell, they all have names, but fuck trying to pronounce those multi-syllable, too many consonant things. We have nicknames for all of them.
Well, he storms right up to us, gives us both the once over with a look of astonishment, the whole time his little crab mouth parts moving a mile a minute—his disgustingly long, thin tentacle whiskers waving around, tasting the air, or whatever it is they're used for—when he reaches out with his enormous red claw, grabs poor Sam by the neck, and drags him into the back room. The killing room.
A couple seconds later, Boss Crab screams for us to come back there, too.
Click Here to read part 2!
Synopsis: After Cthulhu awakens and destroys civilization as we know it, humans are used as slaves and food by their new slimy, submerged masters. One such young man, Ricky, works at an undersea fast food joint where he's forced to kill and cook other humans for the Deep Ones to eat. But he has a plan. His restaurant caters to the Big Man himself, and if Ricky's plan works, he could pull off the unthinkable: Killing Cthulhu.
McHumans
by
Kevin Strange
An Excerpt
I'm Ricky. I'm a human being. A slave. Food for my watery masters. How those masters came into power is anybody's guess. All I know is, one day I was jacking off to videos of the pink Power Ranger, and the next, the whole planet was flooded, and giant monsters were dragging those of us lucky (unlucky?) enough not to die in the initial onslaught down into the icy depths below.
They call themselves the Deep Ones. No two of them look exactly the same. They're evil, vile things, but they can talk and think just like you or me. I guess because they're aliens from another dimension—at least that's what people say. But people say all kinds of crazy shit now, and it's not like we have an internet down here or anything to fact check. So you just sort of take people's word for it most of the time. These aliens hate us and want us all dead. Why they hate us so much, I'll never know. But they do. They love to torture us and eat us. They're real sadistic fuckers.
Take my job, for example. I work in one of their subterranean cities beneath the ocean. How these cities existed without our knowledge before the great flood? Another question I can't answer. There's a lot of those now. Questions. And not many answers. We're all too busy surviving...
Oh yeah, my job. I work at a fast food restaurant that specializes in fresh flesh. Fresh human flesh. As in people are butchered here and then we garnish their meat with little pieces of seaweed and coral and shit. As a joke, those of us who work here call it McHumans. And guess who they make kill people? That's right. Me.
Last week I had to kill my buddy Sam. He used to work here, too. In fact, he was the first person I met after I was dragged down into the murky depths. Everybody else that works here told us not to get emotionally attached to anyone cause this sort of shit happens all the time, but we didn't listen. We both liked comic books and death metal. And what else is there to do but talk to each other when you're living in a waterlogged death camp just waiting for your number to come up, anyway?
Three other people work with us on the night shift in the kitchen. Karen, a smokin' hot little redhead who tells the best poop jokes in the joint. She has Cerebral Palsy, or whatever. It's not that bad. It doesn't fuck up her face or the way she talks. Her hands are kind of curled up and one of her legs bows in when she walks. Her spine and neck are curved all funky, but other than that? Top shelf pussy. Sometimes when the others think we're off having a smoke break, I fuck Karen in the walk-in cooler. It's kinda weird, fucking a crippled girl, the whole cooler full of dead bodies, but hey, you take what you can get in this hellhole.
Then there's the huge, fat, black dude we call Chef. You know, like the dude from South Park? Only this Chef isn't all full of inspirational speeches and joy, no this guy is a miserable, hate-filled racist. He's got a gigantic, oily nose that looks like a brown pickle and he's missing one of his front teeth. He's worked here the longest and he says he loves it. Says he couldn't think of a better place to be than in a kitchen chopping up white people all day. But we know he's lying. He was a preacher in Detroit before all this happened. He just puts on the angry black man routine to keep from losing his shit. We all have our ways of dealing with the stress of death and misery hanging over our heads every second of every day.
Like Ty, the final member of our crew. He deals with our living nightmare by dressing up like a woman—wigs, makeup, the whole thing. But the weird part is, he's still got a big brown beard and doesn't talk with an effeminate voice or try to make us call him by a woman's name. No, he just dresses like a chick. He's called a Transvestite. I only know this because my sister used to be in a Rocky Horror troupe. Now my sister's dead.
So anyway, one minute me and Sam are swapping stories about fucking chicks back in our other life while we strip the skin off a pair of arms in the kitchen with the rest of the gang, and then bam! In comes our boss, a really funky looking crab-thing with a huge white spiral shell covered in nasty barnacles. The way his big eyes sit on top of their stalks, Boss Crab, as we call him, always looks like he's surprised or in a state of shock. He has a name, hell, they all have names, but fuck trying to pronounce those multi-syllable, too many consonant things. We have nicknames for all of them.
Well, he storms right up to us, gives us both the once over with a look of astonishment, the whole time his little crab mouth parts moving a mile a minute—his disgustingly long, thin tentacle whiskers waving around, tasting the air, or whatever it is they're used for—when he reaches out with his enormous red claw, grabs poor Sam by the neck, and drags him into the back room. The killing room.
A couple seconds later, Boss Crab screams for us to come back there, too.
Click Here to read part 2!
How heartbreak leads to great fiction
I, and many authors before me have chosen, after enough time and reflection have taken place, to roll the events and personalities of extremely traumatic experiences, such as a bad breakup, into their fiction. Giving your work that little bit of spice, or oomph by using difficult and emotionally challenging truths can sometimes mean the difference between writing a cool story, and writing a story that just connects perfectly with your audience.
The last time I went through a bad split, I wrote what I still consider to be my most emotionally profound piece. When people read this story, a lot of times they come back to me and tell me they've dated a girl JUST like Jessica, or know someone who has. The character has the life and the vividness she does because I took dialogue straight out of real conversations and situations between myself and my ex girlfriend, and transplanted them into the story. Jessica is the fictional version of a very real girl that I loved very much.
It was extremely cathartic for me to get these emotions down on paper—to use allegory and create monsters out of my fears and insecurities for my main character to do physical battle with. The satisfaction I felt after finishing this story is something I'm still chasing to this day.
Here are the first few pages of “I Killed Jessica Again” for you to enjoy. It's the cover story for my upcoming short story collection “Murder Stories for your Face Meat”. I'll include a link to the entire story as a downloadable PDF. If you like the excerpt, please download the story. If you like the story, please leave me some comments here or on my FB or Twitter. It's a powerful piece. I'd like to know how it affects you.
I killed Jessica Again
by Kevin Strange
I didn't mean to kill Jessica that night, not the first time, anyway. It just sort of happened. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it's the truth. Let me explain how it all went down.
Jessica and I dated for over a year. She was quite a score, let me tell you. I'm not what most people would consider an attractive man. I'm about 5'9", heavyset, bald, and pushing 30.
Jessica, on the other hand, was a platinum blonde, 5'0", hundred pound beauty. She had sky blue eyes and the kind of voice that would melt any man's heart. Toss in a killer bubble butt and a wicked smile, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster, my friend.
What she saw in me, I'll never know. My friends, her friends, they all flipped out when we hooked up, but not nearly as much as I did. I couldn't believe I was fucking that woman.
I wouldn't say that things went downhill quickly. I mean, we had some great times. Jessica was always up for an adventure. Our favorite thing was to pick a random campground from the internet and just drive to it to spend the weekend fucking, sucking, canoeing, hiking, cooking meals over the camp fire, swimming in lakes...you get the idea. Man, those were good times. Too bad good times don't last forever.
Things started going bad for us when I began to talk about marriage and kids. I was ready to settle down, but Jessica was still right in the middle of her twenties, still wanting to party, flirt, and raise hell. She started lying to me about where she was going and who she was going with. I got jealous. Really jealous. We fought all the time. I caught her cheating on me. Twice. But was I going to do? Leave her? I'll never land another piece of ass like that. Not with my glory days behind me. So instead, she left me.
I'd be foolish to say I wasn't devastated. One day she was there, cooking dinner, talking about bills, and the next she was gone. She had all of her stuff moved out while I was at work one day. Just like that. Within a week, I heard she was hooked up with some hot shit bartender from the city who was 6 years younger than me. I, on the other hand, was hooked up with a fifth of Jack in each fist and a stack of pictures of Jess and me.
I don't think I came out of the apartment for a month. I lost my job, 20 pounds, and most of my friends, who got sick of my near-hysterical drunken phone calls at 3am begging them to call Jessica for me and talk some sense into her.
My life sucked for about 6 months, for real. But, like most heartbroken losers, I eventually picked myself back up, burned all those pictures, and started to put my life back together again.
That's when Jessica came back. It started as a phone call. She wanted to tell me that the bartender had hit her and that she'd left him, but he wouldn't leave her alone. She asked me if she could crash at my place for a few days until it blew over. Like the chump I am, I agreed. I, of course, thought she missed me, missed us, wanted me back, wanted to come back to my place to make up...I was wrong.
The first night, I tried to talk about what went wrong with our relationship, but she told me she just wanted to take a hot bath and relax after the fight she'd had with Mark (that's the bartender). The second night, before I could even get a word in edgewise, she asked if she could borrow some money from me, then went out all night. She didn't come back 'til the next morning. The third night, I killed her.
I had no intention of doing it, I want to be clear on that point. By now you should understand that I loved Jessica. I was captivated by her. Under her spell. That morning, when she came in, I was angry. I started yelling at her, but she ignored me and went to bed in my room. In my bed. She looked like she'd been rode hard and put away wet. She probably had. Sometime after dark, she got up and took a shower. After that, I guess, is where it all started to go to shit.
Jessica came out of the bathroom looking ravishing. Rare is a woman who can look that stunning with no makeup whatsoever. But that's Jess. The smell of her cherry shampoo reminded me of better times. My heart ached for her as much as my cock did. She stood in the doorway, letting me stare at her, with that half-smirk, half-grin on her face that she always had when she was getting what she wanted (in this case, my lustful, heartbroken gaze). She was eating this up.
She got dressed and, a short time later, joined me on the couch. She flopped down next to me, tossing her thick, juicy thighs up over mine.
"I'm bored!" She whined in that sing-song little voice she always used when she was in a playful mood.
I resisted the urge to ask her what "Mark" would do to entertain her. Instead I said, "Uh, well, there's a new zombie flick playing right now down at the Drive-In. You wanna check it out?"
She rolled her eyes. "Zombies are fucking boring." Then she smiled. "There's supposed to be some super rare lunar eclipse tonight. I guess there hasn't been an eclipse on the summer solstice in hundreds of years or something. The Drive-In would be the perfect place to watch it! Let's get some booze on the way and trip out on that shit while we get hammered!"
It was a fight, instantly. I said, "Jessica, you know damn well I don't drink. I'm seven years sober."
She didn't buy it. "Then what are all those empty bottles of Jack under the kitchen counter, Chris?"
She'd gone through my shit. Typical Jessica, probably looking for something to get fucked up on while I was asleep. "I just don't think it's a good idea, Jess. I just want a relaxing night out, just the two of us, OK?"
She made her annoyed face. "Ugh! You're no fun, Chris. That's why I dumped-" She stopped, looking at me to see if I'd react. I didn't. "That's why we broke up." She finished.
I looked at her for a few moments before responding. "Fine, Jess. Let's get fucked up and go to the Drive-In. Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll get a car full of college girls to flash you again."
She grinned at me. "That sounds fucking fun!"
We never made it to the Drive-In.
********
If you liked that, read the rest at http://www.strangehousebooks.com/file... Again, if you enjoy the story, please return here and post some comments about it. I'd love to know what you think.
The last time I went through a bad split, I wrote what I still consider to be my most emotionally profound piece. When people read this story, a lot of times they come back to me and tell me they've dated a girl JUST like Jessica, or know someone who has. The character has the life and the vividness she does because I took dialogue straight out of real conversations and situations between myself and my ex girlfriend, and transplanted them into the story. Jessica is the fictional version of a very real girl that I loved very much.
It was extremely cathartic for me to get these emotions down on paper—to use allegory and create monsters out of my fears and insecurities for my main character to do physical battle with. The satisfaction I felt after finishing this story is something I'm still chasing to this day.
Here are the first few pages of “I Killed Jessica Again” for you to enjoy. It's the cover story for my upcoming short story collection “Murder Stories for your Face Meat”. I'll include a link to the entire story as a downloadable PDF. If you like the excerpt, please download the story. If you like the story, please leave me some comments here or on my FB or Twitter. It's a powerful piece. I'd like to know how it affects you.
I killed Jessica Again
by Kevin Strange
I didn't mean to kill Jessica that night, not the first time, anyway. It just sort of happened. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it's the truth. Let me explain how it all went down.
Jessica and I dated for over a year. She was quite a score, let me tell you. I'm not what most people would consider an attractive man. I'm about 5'9", heavyset, bald, and pushing 30.
Jessica, on the other hand, was a platinum blonde, 5'0", hundred pound beauty. She had sky blue eyes and the kind of voice that would melt any man's heart. Toss in a killer bubble butt and a wicked smile, and you have yourself a recipe for disaster, my friend.
What she saw in me, I'll never know. My friends, her friends, they all flipped out when we hooked up, but not nearly as much as I did. I couldn't believe I was fucking that woman.
I wouldn't say that things went downhill quickly. I mean, we had some great times. Jessica was always up for an adventure. Our favorite thing was to pick a random campground from the internet and just drive to it to spend the weekend fucking, sucking, canoeing, hiking, cooking meals over the camp fire, swimming in lakes...you get the idea. Man, those were good times. Too bad good times don't last forever.
Things started going bad for us when I began to talk about marriage and kids. I was ready to settle down, but Jessica was still right in the middle of her twenties, still wanting to party, flirt, and raise hell. She started lying to me about where she was going and who she was going with. I got jealous. Really jealous. We fought all the time. I caught her cheating on me. Twice. But was I going to do? Leave her? I'll never land another piece of ass like that. Not with my glory days behind me. So instead, she left me.
I'd be foolish to say I wasn't devastated. One day she was there, cooking dinner, talking about bills, and the next she was gone. She had all of her stuff moved out while I was at work one day. Just like that. Within a week, I heard she was hooked up with some hot shit bartender from the city who was 6 years younger than me. I, on the other hand, was hooked up with a fifth of Jack in each fist and a stack of pictures of Jess and me.
I don't think I came out of the apartment for a month. I lost my job, 20 pounds, and most of my friends, who got sick of my near-hysterical drunken phone calls at 3am begging them to call Jessica for me and talk some sense into her.
My life sucked for about 6 months, for real. But, like most heartbroken losers, I eventually picked myself back up, burned all those pictures, and started to put my life back together again.
That's when Jessica came back. It started as a phone call. She wanted to tell me that the bartender had hit her and that she'd left him, but he wouldn't leave her alone. She asked me if she could crash at my place for a few days until it blew over. Like the chump I am, I agreed. I, of course, thought she missed me, missed us, wanted me back, wanted to come back to my place to make up...I was wrong.
The first night, I tried to talk about what went wrong with our relationship, but she told me she just wanted to take a hot bath and relax after the fight she'd had with Mark (that's the bartender). The second night, before I could even get a word in edgewise, she asked if she could borrow some money from me, then went out all night. She didn't come back 'til the next morning. The third night, I killed her.
I had no intention of doing it, I want to be clear on that point. By now you should understand that I loved Jessica. I was captivated by her. Under her spell. That morning, when she came in, I was angry. I started yelling at her, but she ignored me and went to bed in my room. In my bed. She looked like she'd been rode hard and put away wet. She probably had. Sometime after dark, she got up and took a shower. After that, I guess, is where it all started to go to shit.
Jessica came out of the bathroom looking ravishing. Rare is a woman who can look that stunning with no makeup whatsoever. But that's Jess. The smell of her cherry shampoo reminded me of better times. My heart ached for her as much as my cock did. She stood in the doorway, letting me stare at her, with that half-smirk, half-grin on her face that she always had when she was getting what she wanted (in this case, my lustful, heartbroken gaze). She was eating this up.
She got dressed and, a short time later, joined me on the couch. She flopped down next to me, tossing her thick, juicy thighs up over mine.
"I'm bored!" She whined in that sing-song little voice she always used when she was in a playful mood.
I resisted the urge to ask her what "Mark" would do to entertain her. Instead I said, "Uh, well, there's a new zombie flick playing right now down at the Drive-In. You wanna check it out?"
She rolled her eyes. "Zombies are fucking boring." Then she smiled. "There's supposed to be some super rare lunar eclipse tonight. I guess there hasn't been an eclipse on the summer solstice in hundreds of years or something. The Drive-In would be the perfect place to watch it! Let's get some booze on the way and trip out on that shit while we get hammered!"
It was a fight, instantly. I said, "Jessica, you know damn well I don't drink. I'm seven years sober."
She didn't buy it. "Then what are all those empty bottles of Jack under the kitchen counter, Chris?"
She'd gone through my shit. Typical Jessica, probably looking for something to get fucked up on while I was asleep. "I just don't think it's a good idea, Jess. I just want a relaxing night out, just the two of us, OK?"
She made her annoyed face. "Ugh! You're no fun, Chris. That's why I dumped-" She stopped, looking at me to see if I'd react. I didn't. "That's why we broke up." She finished.
I looked at her for a few moments before responding. "Fine, Jess. Let's get fucked up and go to the Drive-In. Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll get a car full of college girls to flash you again."
She grinned at me. "That sounds fucking fun!"
We never made it to the Drive-In.
********
If you liked that, read the rest at http://www.strangehousebooks.com/file... Again, if you enjoy the story, please return here and post some comments about it. I'd love to know what you think.
Do you self-publish your own books?
Ok, self publishing author buddies, check it out. I'm now offering cheap, fast publishing solutions for your new ebook or print book. This is NOT a publishing contract for SHB. This is me offering my services as a layout designer. You provide the COMPLETED manuscript and cover art, I provide you with a print ready layout PDF or .DOC ready for kindle conversion. Prices are: print ready PDF for hardcopy book 50 bucks, add the eBook for just 25 dollars more. Please direct all serious inquiries to strangehouseonline@gmail.com
My name is Kevin Strange
My name is Kevin Strange. I'm a director, a producer, an actor, a film editor, an author. I've written, produced, directed, and starred in more than a dozen feature and short films. I created a production company in 2005 called Hack Movies with no money, no skill and no professional help whatsoever. By 2010 I produced and directed 7 films that saw DVD release, only one of which was ever picked up by a legitimate distributor in a very limited release.
In 2012 I created a publishing house called Strangehouse Books with no money, no skill and no professional help. By 2013 I've overseen the publication of 6 full length books with another dozen to be released before the end of the year. This includes the editing, formatting, typesetting and graphic presentation including the layout, design and commission of art for each and every book.
Not a single one of these movies or books was created to exploit a trend, cash in on a fad, or enter a hot market. In nearly a decade of devoting the majority of my time and effort to the creation of art, I have never ever made a single dime.
I've felt like a god, usually right after a project has been completed and all of the pieces have fallen into place, when my vision has finally come to fruition and is ready for its audience to see it. I've had moments of crushing doubt that made me want to quit and regret every second I've spent doing this. I've felt like nothing, zero, a loser, a bum, an overgrown child, a helpless man-baby. Usually after a project has been released and fails to capture the attention of the millions of fans I know it deserves.
I'm a 5 time college dropout. On paper I don't have the skills to even operate a forklift. I work jobs far below my intellectual level, am managed by kids barely more than half my age without a tenth of the management and organizational skills I possess. I've never once made over 30 thousand dollars in a single year, sometimes not even that much in two years. I've lived with family and friends until they resented me. I've lost more friends than I can count due to my controlling nature and unwillingness to choose human loyalty over my art.
My parents either don't know or don't care what I do with my life. My high school friends think I'm a child who refuses to grow up. I don't own a home. I've never owned a car younger than 15 years old. I'm 33 years old this year and if I get sick with something serious like cancer, I will die. Guaranteed. The number of people in my life that would actually be at my side if this were to happen are few enough in number to count on one hand. Truth be told, that number might be zero.
Yet, I have never compromised my artistic vision, no matter how many people pressured me to do so. I have no children, But I have no debt. Not a single solitary penny of it. I will never be a commercial artist. I will probably never have any money. I will almost assuredly die scared and alone. But every single one my creations was brought into this world with no filter, no compromise, no fear of social stigma. Love them or hate them, they are REAL art, the way art should be produced.
Should I never make another film or write another book, I've left my mark on this world. My identity, my hopes, my dreams, my fears, my passion, my lust, all lay within the contents of those dvds and between the pages of those books for as long as there are content devices to view movies and read books. I will live on and maybe one day enough people will see my movies and read my books that all of this will have been worth it. Maybe enough already have. What's the difference between affecting and inspiring one person or one million people. Is there a difference?
Even if I make another dozen movies and write another 50 books, I will never change my process, filter my beliefs, change my attitude or bow down to a corporate master for the sake of trends or fads. Money, fame, professional accolades, nor societal pressure will ever take precedence over the pure, unfiltered creation of my art, no matter the consequence. My name is Kevin Strange, and this is my life.
New book: VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKE TOWN
Gang! Kevin Strange's newest book, VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKE TOWN just went LIVE on Kindle! The sexy paperback edition will be available no later than next week, but for now, you can snag this sucker in all its digital glory for just $2.99 at Amazon.com!
Check out the details below:
"Guts is a bad motherfucker in a bad, bad world. The government nuked the sky seven years ago to combat a super fast spreading virus that turns humans into blood thirsty, ravenous killing machines that look more like giant, mutated bats than people. The new sky kills these "vampires" instantly, but at a cost. The entire planet is slammed with mega-high doses of radiation every time the sun comes up, completely changing life on earth as we know it, and completely decimating what little civilization there is left.
In Nuke Town, Guts wakes up in a strange motel with no memory of how he got there. A brother and sister duo are the only two humans in sight, but are they friend or foe? As the paranoia sets in, and Guts begins to understand the true implications of a nest of sophisticated, mutated vampires, he must use all the cunning and skills that his years in the wasteland have taught him if he hopes to survive the horror that awaits him in ... VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKETOWN!"
NUKE TOWN is Ultra Gore Porn for your Brain Balls, gang. Grab your copy now and see what all the fuss is about! Click here to buy VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKE TOWN!
Check out the details below:
"Guts is a bad motherfucker in a bad, bad world. The government nuked the sky seven years ago to combat a super fast spreading virus that turns humans into blood thirsty, ravenous killing machines that look more like giant, mutated bats than people. The new sky kills these "vampires" instantly, but at a cost. The entire planet is slammed with mega-high doses of radiation every time the sun comes up, completely changing life on earth as we know it, and completely decimating what little civilization there is left.
In Nuke Town, Guts wakes up in a strange motel with no memory of how he got there. A brother and sister duo are the only two humans in sight, but are they friend or foe? As the paranoia sets in, and Guts begins to understand the true implications of a nest of sophisticated, mutated vampires, he must use all the cunning and skills that his years in the wasteland have taught him if he hopes to survive the horror that awaits him in ... VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKETOWN!"
NUKE TOWN is Ultra Gore Porn for your Brain Balls, gang. Grab your copy now and see what all the fuss is about! Click here to buy VAMPIRE GUTS IN NUKE TOWN!
McHumans part 5
Last month I said I'd posted my final serialized excerpt from my Bizarro Lovecraftian story from the upcoming STRANGE VS LOVECRAFT anthology. I lied. I'm posting one more that leaves off on a major cliffhanger. Here's parts 1-4 if you need to catch up:
Here's part One
part Two
part Three
and part Four
Now for part 5. You're going to have to buy the anthology to see how this awful shit turns out for Ricky and the gang. ;)
***
Everyone remains quiet as we creep our way through the cyclopean caverns. The only sounds coming from our group are the clomp, clomp, clomp of Karen's twisted right foot as she bounce-limps along, doing her best to keep up with the rest of us, and the ragged breathing of our cross dressing companion, Ty.
He looks worse for the wear. He's pale and pouring sweat. We're all sweating under the hollowed out heads-come-helmets of the Sniffers, but Ty is sweating so badly, it runs from his monster helmet like drool out of the dead beast's mouth. He clutches his swollen arm. Even through the armor, I can see it has continued to swell. The swelling has made its way into his neck, as well. Now it pulses in time with his breathing. Before long, he starts to sway back and forth, clearly in bad shape.
I take a drink from a small bottle I have hidden under my carpace-armor. Karen eyes it, motioning for me to give her a sip.
“You don't want this,” I say, stowing it back under my armor.
She pulls me close, looking over her shoulder at Ty. “He's not gonna make it, we're gonna have to cut him loose.”
She's right, of course. Whatever poison resides in the sniffers' stingers is killing him, but I still feel obligated to mount some kind of protest in his defense. It is, after all, my crazy plan that got him into this mess to begin with. But before I can form even the most half-hearted argument in Ty's favor, we hear noise from around a turn in the corridor just in front of us... or is it behind us? God damn R'lyeh.
“Get back,” Chef hisses. We all freeze, letting the fat cook handle the danger. He pulls out his weird stone with the hand not covered in alien sea monster armor. He creeps forward as the noise around the corner grows louder. It sounds like a pair of children giggling underwater.
Karen and I take defensive posture while Ty quietly vomits behind us. Chef turns to us as if to whisper some sort of command, when suddenly he vanishes. One second he's staring me in the face, the next he's gone. Karen looks at me, puzzled. I run forward as the giggling, gurgling sound gets even louder. Whatever the creatures are, they are almost on top of us.
That's when I see him. Below me. Somehow the corner of the wall and the floor don't meet the way walls and floors are supposed to, and Chef has fallen into a chasm. He picks himself up off the sticky floor, seemingly unhurt, just as the horrors round the bend into full view.
Why do they all have to be so... ugly? These god damn things look like giant cockroaches, but standing upright as tall as a man. They're slightly hunched over, and their backs are covered by a slick, black carapace. Their awful roach legs wave out in front of them, each ending with a patch of thick, black hairs. Down near the bottom of their disgusting bodies is what looks like a huge, barbed penis, at least two foot in length, maybe three. I don't get a chance to look at them for long because the worst part of these roach creatures are the heads.
Their heads are all jittering, twitching mandibles, waving antenna, and huge shiny eyes, the color of rotted blood. Those are their roach heads. They've also got these... baby heads, like, human baby heads jutting up from either side of their roach heads. These heads constantly ooze some kind of clear fluid or mucus out of their baby mouths. They're what are making the awful crying, cooing and gurgling noises.
There are at least ten roach men racing around the bend, but its taking them forever to actually get to us. Fucking dimensions in this place, the angles are all fucked up. I lay down on my belly and reach my exposed hand down toward Chef. He reaches up, but there's too much distance between us.
“Go! Get the fuck outta here!” Chef screams. “You do not want to get caught by those things!”
“What are they?” I ask, disgusted, still trying to will my arm to be just a little longer, as though I'd be able to haul up 350 pounds of cook even if I could reach him. Still, I had to try.
“Berserkers.” Chef says, looking terrified for the first time today. “They're like sentries. They roam these halls eating, fucking and killing anything they come across. Not always in that order.” Chef backs away, pulling out his yellow star stone. “Now, kid. Go, I'm not tellin' you again.”
I stand back up. “We'll hold em off, you find a way out of there,” I say, preparing to engage the roach things as they finally get close enough to smell. I take a deep breath through my nose and wish I hadn't. They smelled like cat piss covered in fish guts after it's been left in the sun all day to rot. It should have made me gag, but by now, I'm used to all these twisted monsters and their shitty smells.
“Like hell!” Chef yells back. You and the crippled girl's gonna hold off ten of those things? You best grab her and run, boy, 'for those monsters fuck you to death!”
“I'm not leaving you-” I start, but Chef blurts out a short chant and points the star-thing at me, knocking me back a dozen feet. I land on my ass, right in front of Karen and Ty, just as the roach creatures reach the corner Chef is stuck in.
My armor is smoking and smells like burned hair and shit, but it's still intact. I'm gasping, trying to catch my breath. My chest feels like I've been shot. Several of the roach monsters are already clamoring into the chasm, trying to get to our big black companion.
“Get up!” Karen yells. “We can't leave him down there. They'll kill him!”
Chef starts hollering and jumping up and down, attracting the attention of all but one of them. He fires off a chant, blasting the head clean off the first roach monster, plastering its companions in thick white goop. Its corpse falls into the weird chasm. Chef blasts two more, each landing on top of the last.
“Come on!” Karen yells.
“Wait, look. He's building a goddamn ramp out of their bodies! He's gonna get out!” My celebration is cut short as the roach-thing not distracted by Chef's yelling reaches us, flailing its hairy legs, and jutting its giant penis.
I jump forward and prepare to attack. A hairy leg slashes at my face. If it weren't for my Sniffer helmet, my head would have been sliced clean off. The hairs covering its multi-segmented legs is razor sharp. My helmet falls away in several pieces. I stumble backward as the big roach charges forward, intent on finishing the job, its baby heads sobbing all the while.
Just as it rears back to attack again, a huge sniffer stinger strikes from the right, outside my peripheral vision, impaling the left baby head and the roach head, while barely missing the baby head on the right, covering me in noxious white roach guts that smell like rotten milk. The blow is enough to cripple the disgusting monster though, as it now hangs limp off Karen's makeshift weapon, its remaining head bawling like a newborn being drown in a wash basin.
The weight of the giant bug is too much for her skinny, atrophied legs. She drops to one knee, threatening to topple over altogether.
“A little help here!” She pants, using all her strength to keep from being crushed by the monster.
I run up to the disgusting thing and try to yank it free from Karen's weapon, but it won't budge. I crawl underneath it and lay on my back, hoping I can push it free with my leg strength.
“Push!” I grunt. But it's no use. The limp creature just hangs there, crushing down on top of us. It must weigh 300 pounds.
“Ricky,” Karen says. She's got a weird look in her eye. “I-I have something to I have to tell you.”
Oh, brother, like I need more of this shit right now. “I know,” I say, breathlessly, still shoving against the dead weight above me. “You're in love with me. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before. Listen, I hate to break it to ya, babe but-”
“What?” She asks, confused, even sounding a little offended.
I start to speak, when the remaining baby head attached to the paralyzed roach body vomits a torrent of vile, fetid sea water onto my face for my troubles. I choke and gag simultaneously, as I try to blow the rancid water out of my nose. And still, I can't budge the hulking roach's body. That's when I hear Ty cry out from behind us.
“Ty!” I cough out. “Get this thing off us!”
I look back to see if he hears me. He's just standing there, a few feet away. His eyes are glazed over and he's shivering. He looks like he's got a fever. The swelling in his arm and throat are somehow even worse. His face even looks fat, now.
“Ty!” I yell again. This time I get his attention.
His eyes focus, he looks at me, and opens his mouth to speak. Instead of words, dozens of mice sized sniffers pour from between his lips. He tries to scream, but more and more of the little bugs are fighting their way out his mouth. When his throat constricts, they start to sting him from inside. He drops to his knees. His throat swells to the size of a watermelon right before my eyes. He starts to stab at it with the full sized stinger attached to his arm, to try to let the tiny monsters out so he can breathe. Blood and sniffers rush from the wound. He stuffs his free hand into the gash and pulls out hand fulls of the writhing little beasts. He takes two ragged, wet breaths from the gaping wound before his breath hitches and he freezes, eyes wide.
A moment later he shrieks and his eyeballs roll into the back of his head. He rips at them with his fingers as some unseen force bursts them from their moorings Blood and brains pour from his ears. After his eyeballs are gone, his hands grope at a small crack in his forehead. Little writhing tentacles dart in and out of the crack, fighting their way free. Using the stinger attached to his hand, he tries to bore into the crack, to let the baby monsters out of his skull. He screams all the while.
Finally, after far too many moments, his entire head explodes, sending baby sniffers, brains and gore five feet into the air. Only then does the screaming stop.
As Ty's headless body thumps lifelessly to the floor, I do my best to cover Karen from the rain of bug monsters and gore that splatters over us while still trying to hold up the paralyzed body of the roach-thing threatening to crush us.
In no time I feel the sniffers' little squirming bodies start to crawl through the cracks in my armor. “Get this fucking thing off me!” I scream, redoubling my efforts to push away the roach monster. I'm starting to freak out pretty hard.
The baby sniffers are already crawling up Karen's legs, too. They're all over us. They'll start to sting us any moment, and we'll end up like Ty, too. Karen knows this as well as I do, and that's all the incentive she needs.
I feel the sniffers rooting around on my clothes, under my armor, trying to find exposed skin. Panicking, I start to hyperventilate as I look down and see a little sniffer poke out from my chest plate and make its way up toward my bare neck.
“Come on, come on!” I whine.
Karen glances over and sees the baby sniffer prodding around my neck, slowly crawling up to my face. She curses under he breath. Using her free hand to pull the slack out of the sniffer tendons that hold the armor to her body, she uses her teeth to tear the knots out of the binding. Within seconds she's free of her stinger weapon still lodged in the roach heads. Able to use both hands and put her whole body weight behind her, she's able to topple the monster over, freeing us both just as the baby sniffer pries open my pursed lips with its fore-tentacles and tries to make its way inside.
I bite its head off and climb to my feet, tossing the decapitated little body away before it can sting me. Karen and I both dance out of our armor as fast as we can, knocking little bug monsters off each others' backs as fast as we can, then stomping them flat before they can crawl up our shoes again.
Satisfied that we're bug free, I point at the corner, still infested with giant cockroaches. “We've got to get Chef out of that pit!” We take off running, leaving the paralyzed roach monster to wail as the baby sniffers sting its face over and over until it's so swollen, it can no longer make its hideous noise.
I almost trip over the edge and pitch myself down into the chasm when we run up to it. My brain still can't comprehend the angles in this fucking place. Karen catches me and we both gasp as we look down into the pit and see what lies down there. I finally do throw up, and Karen starts to cry.
Dead roach monsters litter the chasm. Their bodies lay exploded, in all manner of dismemberment. Some still twitch, some still bleed. Cooked white goo, turned a nasty yellow steams up from the floor, covering it as well as most of the surface of the walls. There are enough corpses piled up in the corner for Chef to climb out. Unfortunately, Chef won't be doing any more climbing.
The Berserkers, as he called them, are literally fucking the shit out of him. And then eating it. Chef's stomach is torn open. He's laying on his back. His guts are all messed up and looped out across his wounded belly and chest. There are two Berserkers left alive. The roaches' huge cocks are thrusting in and out of Chef's steaming entrails, their baby heads gurgle-crying the whole time. Worse, when one of Chef's intestines bursts open, the Roaches are use their fore-limbs to scoop up the bloody shit into their jittering, chomping little mouth parts.
I think he's dead at first. Till he lifts his head up and looks at me with his one good eye, the other having presumably been fucked out of his skull.
“Come on,” Karen sobs. “Let's go. Let's just get the fuck out of this awful place.” She grabs me by the arm and tries to pull me away.
“No!” I yank free and start to stumble down the roach corpses.
“Ricky, there's nothing you can do for him, we've got to go before something else tries to kill us.”
“This is all my fault,” I say. The callous prick who so easily dropped an ax into his best friend's head no where to be found. All I can think about is Chef's robust laughter as he stood at the grill station at Mchumans making fun of us white people. Seeing him down in that death pit, his body being so heinously violated... Something inside me snaps.
I'm shaking all over, probably in shock as I try to make my way down the bodies of the dead Berserkers. Chef raises his hand to stop me. He closes his eye and slowly shakes his head at me. “Fuck outta....here... boy. Take that... white girl and... get as far away from R'lyeh as you can. This... ain't no place... for good... people.”
With that, Chef raises his star-thing up to his own face and barks out one final chant, blasting his own head into pink mush.
I stumble up out of the pit, numb. The remaining Berserkers are already pulling their dicks free of Chef's corpse. They'll be on us in moments. Without armor or weapons, Karen and I are defenseless. I can't bring myself to care, the weight of the events inside this monstrous tomb crushing down on top of me, obliterating my ability to think rationally. When I get back up to the floor, Karen stands stiff, looking past me with wide eyes.
I turn to see what she's looking at. Fishbowl stands just a few yards away, the hands of its wet suit clenched into fists. I step in front of Karen, instinctively.
“What-what are you doing up here?” I ask, confused. I take one last swig from my bottle, draining its contents before discarding it onto the stone floor. “You're supposed to be at the banquet with the food...”
With Fishbowl stalking toward me, and Berserkers about to attack from the rear, I'm surprisingly calm, resigned to my fate. I'm ready to die, so it comes as a shock when I hear Karen say, in a small voice from behind me, “I'm sorry, Ricky.”
And that's the last thing I remember. I guess Karen hit me in the head with something and knocked me out, cause the next thing I knew, I was hanging here, upside down, staring at your rotten, ugly fucking face, Mr. Cthulhu...
Here's part One
part Two
part Three
and part Four
Now for part 5. You're going to have to buy the anthology to see how this awful shit turns out for Ricky and the gang. ;)
***
Everyone remains quiet as we creep our way through the cyclopean caverns. The only sounds coming from our group are the clomp, clomp, clomp of Karen's twisted right foot as she bounce-limps along, doing her best to keep up with the rest of us, and the ragged breathing of our cross dressing companion, Ty.
He looks worse for the wear. He's pale and pouring sweat. We're all sweating under the hollowed out heads-come-helmets of the Sniffers, but Ty is sweating so badly, it runs from his monster helmet like drool out of the dead beast's mouth. He clutches his swollen arm. Even through the armor, I can see it has continued to swell. The swelling has made its way into his neck, as well. Now it pulses in time with his breathing. Before long, he starts to sway back and forth, clearly in bad shape.
I take a drink from a small bottle I have hidden under my carpace-armor. Karen eyes it, motioning for me to give her a sip.
“You don't want this,” I say, stowing it back under my armor.
She pulls me close, looking over her shoulder at Ty. “He's not gonna make it, we're gonna have to cut him loose.”
She's right, of course. Whatever poison resides in the sniffers' stingers is killing him, but I still feel obligated to mount some kind of protest in his defense. It is, after all, my crazy plan that got him into this mess to begin with. But before I can form even the most half-hearted argument in Ty's favor, we hear noise from around a turn in the corridor just in front of us... or is it behind us? God damn R'lyeh.
“Get back,” Chef hisses. We all freeze, letting the fat cook handle the danger. He pulls out his weird stone with the hand not covered in alien sea monster armor. He creeps forward as the noise around the corner grows louder. It sounds like a pair of children giggling underwater.
Karen and I take defensive posture while Ty quietly vomits behind us. Chef turns to us as if to whisper some sort of command, when suddenly he vanishes. One second he's staring me in the face, the next he's gone. Karen looks at me, puzzled. I run forward as the giggling, gurgling sound gets even louder. Whatever the creatures are, they are almost on top of us.
That's when I see him. Below me. Somehow the corner of the wall and the floor don't meet the way walls and floors are supposed to, and Chef has fallen into a chasm. He picks himself up off the sticky floor, seemingly unhurt, just as the horrors round the bend into full view.
Why do they all have to be so... ugly? These god damn things look like giant cockroaches, but standing upright as tall as a man. They're slightly hunched over, and their backs are covered by a slick, black carapace. Their awful roach legs wave out in front of them, each ending with a patch of thick, black hairs. Down near the bottom of their disgusting bodies is what looks like a huge, barbed penis, at least two foot in length, maybe three. I don't get a chance to look at them for long because the worst part of these roach creatures are the heads.
Their heads are all jittering, twitching mandibles, waving antenna, and huge shiny eyes, the color of rotted blood. Those are their roach heads. They've also got these... baby heads, like, human baby heads jutting up from either side of their roach heads. These heads constantly ooze some kind of clear fluid or mucus out of their baby mouths. They're what are making the awful crying, cooing and gurgling noises.
There are at least ten roach men racing around the bend, but its taking them forever to actually get to us. Fucking dimensions in this place, the angles are all fucked up. I lay down on my belly and reach my exposed hand down toward Chef. He reaches up, but there's too much distance between us.
“Go! Get the fuck outta here!” Chef screams. “You do not want to get caught by those things!”
“What are they?” I ask, disgusted, still trying to will my arm to be just a little longer, as though I'd be able to haul up 350 pounds of cook even if I could reach him. Still, I had to try.
“Berserkers.” Chef says, looking terrified for the first time today. “They're like sentries. They roam these halls eating, fucking and killing anything they come across. Not always in that order.” Chef backs away, pulling out his yellow star stone. “Now, kid. Go, I'm not tellin' you again.”
I stand back up. “We'll hold em off, you find a way out of there,” I say, preparing to engage the roach things as they finally get close enough to smell. I take a deep breath through my nose and wish I hadn't. They smelled like cat piss covered in fish guts after it's been left in the sun all day to rot. It should have made me gag, but by now, I'm used to all these twisted monsters and their shitty smells.
“Like hell!” Chef yells back. You and the crippled girl's gonna hold off ten of those things? You best grab her and run, boy, 'for those monsters fuck you to death!”
“I'm not leaving you-” I start, but Chef blurts out a short chant and points the star-thing at me, knocking me back a dozen feet. I land on my ass, right in front of Karen and Ty, just as the roach creatures reach the corner Chef is stuck in.
My armor is smoking and smells like burned hair and shit, but it's still intact. I'm gasping, trying to catch my breath. My chest feels like I've been shot. Several of the roach monsters are already clamoring into the chasm, trying to get to our big black companion.
“Get up!” Karen yells. “We can't leave him down there. They'll kill him!”
Chef starts hollering and jumping up and down, attracting the attention of all but one of them. He fires off a chant, blasting the head clean off the first roach monster, plastering its companions in thick white goop. Its corpse falls into the weird chasm. Chef blasts two more, each landing on top of the last.
“Come on!” Karen yells.
“Wait, look. He's building a goddamn ramp out of their bodies! He's gonna get out!” My celebration is cut short as the roach-thing not distracted by Chef's yelling reaches us, flailing its hairy legs, and jutting its giant penis.
I jump forward and prepare to attack. A hairy leg slashes at my face. If it weren't for my Sniffer helmet, my head would have been sliced clean off. The hairs covering its multi-segmented legs is razor sharp. My helmet falls away in several pieces. I stumble backward as the big roach charges forward, intent on finishing the job, its baby heads sobbing all the while.
Just as it rears back to attack again, a huge sniffer stinger strikes from the right, outside my peripheral vision, impaling the left baby head and the roach head, while barely missing the baby head on the right, covering me in noxious white roach guts that smell like rotten milk. The blow is enough to cripple the disgusting monster though, as it now hangs limp off Karen's makeshift weapon, its remaining head bawling like a newborn being drown in a wash basin.
The weight of the giant bug is too much for her skinny, atrophied legs. She drops to one knee, threatening to topple over altogether.
“A little help here!” She pants, using all her strength to keep from being crushed by the monster.
I run up to the disgusting thing and try to yank it free from Karen's weapon, but it won't budge. I crawl underneath it and lay on my back, hoping I can push it free with my leg strength.
“Push!” I grunt. But it's no use. The limp creature just hangs there, crushing down on top of us. It must weigh 300 pounds.
“Ricky,” Karen says. She's got a weird look in her eye. “I-I have something to I have to tell you.”
Oh, brother, like I need more of this shit right now. “I know,” I say, breathlessly, still shoving against the dead weight above me. “You're in love with me. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it before. Listen, I hate to break it to ya, babe but-”
“What?” She asks, confused, even sounding a little offended.
I start to speak, when the remaining baby head attached to the paralyzed roach body vomits a torrent of vile, fetid sea water onto my face for my troubles. I choke and gag simultaneously, as I try to blow the rancid water out of my nose. And still, I can't budge the hulking roach's body. That's when I hear Ty cry out from behind us.
“Ty!” I cough out. “Get this thing off us!”
I look back to see if he hears me. He's just standing there, a few feet away. His eyes are glazed over and he's shivering. He looks like he's got a fever. The swelling in his arm and throat are somehow even worse. His face even looks fat, now.
“Ty!” I yell again. This time I get his attention.
His eyes focus, he looks at me, and opens his mouth to speak. Instead of words, dozens of mice sized sniffers pour from between his lips. He tries to scream, but more and more of the little bugs are fighting their way out his mouth. When his throat constricts, they start to sting him from inside. He drops to his knees. His throat swells to the size of a watermelon right before my eyes. He starts to stab at it with the full sized stinger attached to his arm, to try to let the tiny monsters out so he can breathe. Blood and sniffers rush from the wound. He stuffs his free hand into the gash and pulls out hand fulls of the writhing little beasts. He takes two ragged, wet breaths from the gaping wound before his breath hitches and he freezes, eyes wide.
A moment later he shrieks and his eyeballs roll into the back of his head. He rips at them with his fingers as some unseen force bursts them from their moorings Blood and brains pour from his ears. After his eyeballs are gone, his hands grope at a small crack in his forehead. Little writhing tentacles dart in and out of the crack, fighting their way free. Using the stinger attached to his hand, he tries to bore into the crack, to let the baby monsters out of his skull. He screams all the while.
Finally, after far too many moments, his entire head explodes, sending baby sniffers, brains and gore five feet into the air. Only then does the screaming stop.
As Ty's headless body thumps lifelessly to the floor, I do my best to cover Karen from the rain of bug monsters and gore that splatters over us while still trying to hold up the paralyzed body of the roach-thing threatening to crush us.
In no time I feel the sniffers' little squirming bodies start to crawl through the cracks in my armor. “Get this fucking thing off me!” I scream, redoubling my efforts to push away the roach monster. I'm starting to freak out pretty hard.
The baby sniffers are already crawling up Karen's legs, too. They're all over us. They'll start to sting us any moment, and we'll end up like Ty, too. Karen knows this as well as I do, and that's all the incentive she needs.
I feel the sniffers rooting around on my clothes, under my armor, trying to find exposed skin. Panicking, I start to hyperventilate as I look down and see a little sniffer poke out from my chest plate and make its way up toward my bare neck.
“Come on, come on!” I whine.
Karen glances over and sees the baby sniffer prodding around my neck, slowly crawling up to my face. She curses under he breath. Using her free hand to pull the slack out of the sniffer tendons that hold the armor to her body, she uses her teeth to tear the knots out of the binding. Within seconds she's free of her stinger weapon still lodged in the roach heads. Able to use both hands and put her whole body weight behind her, she's able to topple the monster over, freeing us both just as the baby sniffer pries open my pursed lips with its fore-tentacles and tries to make its way inside.
I bite its head off and climb to my feet, tossing the decapitated little body away before it can sting me. Karen and I both dance out of our armor as fast as we can, knocking little bug monsters off each others' backs as fast as we can, then stomping them flat before they can crawl up our shoes again.
Satisfied that we're bug free, I point at the corner, still infested with giant cockroaches. “We've got to get Chef out of that pit!” We take off running, leaving the paralyzed roach monster to wail as the baby sniffers sting its face over and over until it's so swollen, it can no longer make its hideous noise.
I almost trip over the edge and pitch myself down into the chasm when we run up to it. My brain still can't comprehend the angles in this fucking place. Karen catches me and we both gasp as we look down into the pit and see what lies down there. I finally do throw up, and Karen starts to cry.
Dead roach monsters litter the chasm. Their bodies lay exploded, in all manner of dismemberment. Some still twitch, some still bleed. Cooked white goo, turned a nasty yellow steams up from the floor, covering it as well as most of the surface of the walls. There are enough corpses piled up in the corner for Chef to climb out. Unfortunately, Chef won't be doing any more climbing.
The Berserkers, as he called them, are literally fucking the shit out of him. And then eating it. Chef's stomach is torn open. He's laying on his back. His guts are all messed up and looped out across his wounded belly and chest. There are two Berserkers left alive. The roaches' huge cocks are thrusting in and out of Chef's steaming entrails, their baby heads gurgle-crying the whole time. Worse, when one of Chef's intestines bursts open, the Roaches are use their fore-limbs to scoop up the bloody shit into their jittering, chomping little mouth parts.
I think he's dead at first. Till he lifts his head up and looks at me with his one good eye, the other having presumably been fucked out of his skull.
“Come on,” Karen sobs. “Let's go. Let's just get the fuck out of this awful place.” She grabs me by the arm and tries to pull me away.
“No!” I yank free and start to stumble down the roach corpses.
“Ricky, there's nothing you can do for him, we've got to go before something else tries to kill us.”
“This is all my fault,” I say. The callous prick who so easily dropped an ax into his best friend's head no where to be found. All I can think about is Chef's robust laughter as he stood at the grill station at Mchumans making fun of us white people. Seeing him down in that death pit, his body being so heinously violated... Something inside me snaps.
I'm shaking all over, probably in shock as I try to make my way down the bodies of the dead Berserkers. Chef raises his hand to stop me. He closes his eye and slowly shakes his head at me. “Fuck outta....here... boy. Take that... white girl and... get as far away from R'lyeh as you can. This... ain't no place... for good... people.”
With that, Chef raises his star-thing up to his own face and barks out one final chant, blasting his own head into pink mush.
I stumble up out of the pit, numb. The remaining Berserkers are already pulling their dicks free of Chef's corpse. They'll be on us in moments. Without armor or weapons, Karen and I are defenseless. I can't bring myself to care, the weight of the events inside this monstrous tomb crushing down on top of me, obliterating my ability to think rationally. When I get back up to the floor, Karen stands stiff, looking past me with wide eyes.
I turn to see what she's looking at. Fishbowl stands just a few yards away, the hands of its wet suit clenched into fists. I step in front of Karen, instinctively.
“What-what are you doing up here?” I ask, confused. I take one last swig from my bottle, draining its contents before discarding it onto the stone floor. “You're supposed to be at the banquet with the food...”
With Fishbowl stalking toward me, and Berserkers about to attack from the rear, I'm surprisingly calm, resigned to my fate. I'm ready to die, so it comes as a shock when I hear Karen say, in a small voice from behind me, “I'm sorry, Ricky.”
And that's the last thing I remember. I guess Karen hit me in the head with something and knocked me out, cause the next thing I knew, I was hanging here, upside down, staring at your rotten, ugly fucking face, Mr. Cthulhu...
Why Bizarro?
A lot of authors are obsessed with realism, even when they write fiction, which is, essentially, the art of making shit up for a living. Many authors do meticulous research or draw inspiration from backgrounds that allow them to write socially or scientifically accurate fiction.
My question? Why the fuck are you trying to be accurate about telling made up stories? Because your readers demand that a book about the FBI be as true to the real FBI as possible? Ok, that's fair, I guess. But why don't those readers just read true crime magazines or the newspaper? They are, after all, going in to this thing understanding that the story they're about to read is completely fictional, totally made up. A big ole lie.
Cult author Chuck Palahniuk makes a living describing unusual jobs or hobbies in meticulous detail. He spends more time researching for his books than actually writing them.
Why?
Why not make shit up, since, you know, you're already making shit up. Who gives a shit if there REALLY was a cult that employed all of their members as housekeepers? I certainly don't give a shit, and would never base my enjoyment of entertainment on the historical accuracy of housekeeping.
Telling me about some obscure explosion in Russia that ACTUALLY HAPPENED, MAN! Isn't going to sway me one way or the other about your Russian alien 6 book saga. Either it's going to be cool or it's going to be a piece of shit. The anecdote about the real explosion is trivial at best, and at worst leaves me wondering why you chose to take a fact and turn it into bullshit in your book. Why not write an essay about the actual events if they intrigued you so much?
Let's not even get started on the ridiculous scientific accuracy of something like Star Trek or someone like Isaac Asimov.
That's why I love Bizarro. In Bizarro fiction, authors who make shit up for a living, reaaallly fucking make shit up for a living. Almost all Bizarro fiction takes place in some weird post apocalyptic world or alternate universe where nobody gives a shit about its plausibility or the accuracy of its inhabitants' physiology. Everything from the environment to the characters to the plots have a type of hyper creativity that makes Tom Clancy's stringent adherence to realistic gun play seem almost satirically obnoxious.
Seriously, I want to put 7 bullets from a 6 shot revolver in my brain pan every time I hear someone complain about reloading guns on THE WALKING DEAD. It's a TV show about zombies! You're willing to accept the living dead, but not that a character may have reloaded his weapon OFF SCREEN???
Fuck that shit. Give me Carlton Mellick's TUMOR FRUIT featuring a planet called Barack with acid oceans and homicidal aliens, or MP Johnson's floating psychic ham in PORK KNUCKLES MALLONE.
With Bizarro, I can make up a giant Robot Barack Obama to fight a giant zombie made of zombies built by a guy from the future but piloted by his present self who doesn't have a clue how to operate it. With Bizarro I can create a biological virtual reality using the hallucination causing blood of pig-frogs used by a nest of nuclear mutated vampires. I don't need to have seen an obscure newspaper article about frogs raining from the sky for that shit to be cool.
Why Bizarro? Because with Bizarro, my readers have no expectation that I'll limit myself to what is scientifically possible on Earth, or that my story will even take place on Earth, or anything remotely resembling Earth.
Why Bizarro? Because fuck reality. I see reality every time I step outside my door or turn on the evening news. Don't give me half-assed fiction. I like my asses big and full. Give me full assed fiction. Give me Bizarro.
My question? Why the fuck are you trying to be accurate about telling made up stories? Because your readers demand that a book about the FBI be as true to the real FBI as possible? Ok, that's fair, I guess. But why don't those readers just read true crime magazines or the newspaper? They are, after all, going in to this thing understanding that the story they're about to read is completely fictional, totally made up. A big ole lie.
Cult author Chuck Palahniuk makes a living describing unusual jobs or hobbies in meticulous detail. He spends more time researching for his books than actually writing them.
Why?
Why not make shit up, since, you know, you're already making shit up. Who gives a shit if there REALLY was a cult that employed all of their members as housekeepers? I certainly don't give a shit, and would never base my enjoyment of entertainment on the historical accuracy of housekeeping.
Telling me about some obscure explosion in Russia that ACTUALLY HAPPENED, MAN! Isn't going to sway me one way or the other about your Russian alien 6 book saga. Either it's going to be cool or it's going to be a piece of shit. The anecdote about the real explosion is trivial at best, and at worst leaves me wondering why you chose to take a fact and turn it into bullshit in your book. Why not write an essay about the actual events if they intrigued you so much?
Let's not even get started on the ridiculous scientific accuracy of something like Star Trek or someone like Isaac Asimov.
That's why I love Bizarro. In Bizarro fiction, authors who make shit up for a living, reaaallly fucking make shit up for a living. Almost all Bizarro fiction takes place in some weird post apocalyptic world or alternate universe where nobody gives a shit about its plausibility or the accuracy of its inhabitants' physiology. Everything from the environment to the characters to the plots have a type of hyper creativity that makes Tom Clancy's stringent adherence to realistic gun play seem almost satirically obnoxious.
Seriously, I want to put 7 bullets from a 6 shot revolver in my brain pan every time I hear someone complain about reloading guns on THE WALKING DEAD. It's a TV show about zombies! You're willing to accept the living dead, but not that a character may have reloaded his weapon OFF SCREEN???
Fuck that shit. Give me Carlton Mellick's TUMOR FRUIT featuring a planet called Barack with acid oceans and homicidal aliens, or MP Johnson's floating psychic ham in PORK KNUCKLES MALLONE.
With Bizarro, I can make up a giant Robot Barack Obama to fight a giant zombie made of zombies built by a guy from the future but piloted by his present self who doesn't have a clue how to operate it. With Bizarro I can create a biological virtual reality using the hallucination causing blood of pig-frogs used by a nest of nuclear mutated vampires. I don't need to have seen an obscure newspaper article about frogs raining from the sky for that shit to be cool.
Why Bizarro? Because with Bizarro, my readers have no expectation that I'll limit myself to what is scientifically possible on Earth, or that my story will even take place on Earth, or anything remotely resembling Earth.
Why Bizarro? Because fuck reality. I see reality every time I step outside my door or turn on the evening news. Don't give me half-assed fiction. I like my asses big and full. Give me full assed fiction. Give me Bizarro.
Strange Sayings
Pontifications of one Kevin Strange, cult film director come Hardcore-Bizarro author.
- Kevin Strange's profile
- 188 followers
