Jamie Grefe's Blog, page 24

Three Reads w/ MP Johnson

You’ve brought a bag of Funyons and twenty-sided dies to the party, and we’re rolling 3.5 with homebrew solutions for the quirky death-traps our Dungeon Master likes to spring on us. I’m an aging bard, you’re an elven thief, but we’re both in this no-good town together. Our eternal watering hole is this tavern on the outskirts of nowhere. You pass me an ale, and we are beckoned by a wizard to a dark table in the corner. He lets us drink and we do and it’s good. Of course, there is a mission. There is always a mission. And it’s the third sip that sours my belly. Roll for initiative. Take seven damage. But I didn’t know, couldn’t count the sips. Not even a hint. Our Dungeon Master burps. The wizard is a warlock from the realm of Owlmoon–if only we would have known, but the Dungeon Master plays for keeps, keeps sending in hordes of nine-horned ork vixens armed with battle axes and enchanted bows for back-up. I can’t get out of my seat. It seems the tables have turned and you, MP Johnson, were busy all along nailing my cloak to the floor with invisible nails. And the wizard has sent poisonous were-bats to scuttle past my felt boots, and up to where the Vlorton Sun of Princess Mortiz does not shine. “I’m helping you,” you say. And I try to breathe, feel my chest tighten.

Yes, you are MP Johnson, author of Dungeons and Drag Queens, author of The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone. A kind of freak tension spreads through the tavern. The roof explodes in green fire. I roll to hit, just a punch if I can. I miss. I always miss, and those were-bats are going to town on my guts and you laugh at the effort. But you swig, too, don’t you? And both of the cups of ale are poisoned, my friend. Too much froth. One should never trust a wizard who beckons journeymen in the dark. “Shall we sing?” I say. “I have a lute to pluck, a lyre of doom.” But you’ve already figured out the antidote. It starts with slitting the wizard’s throat. He rolls for damage. He’s dead. No matter. He was already dead and unless your blade is enchanted in the slime of the Klimazonk mountains, we’re both dead men. It always ends this way. With our gruesome demise.

Won’t you tell me a story? Won’t you read me a spell? “I’ll do you one better,” you say. But the were-bats have blasted my ears to shreds and I cannot hear music. It’s all fading away. “I have stolen three spells from the greatest mage in the land.” Do tell, I say. And speak up. And is it true? Is it true what they say of you? “Well,” you say. “What lies do they spout, poor bard?”

And here is the song of the were-bats dancing down my throat:

“Absolutely disgusting. Why would anyone read this for fun?” – Goodreads reviewer on The Mutilation of Paris Hilton

“I felt like I was suffering from literary whiplash.” – Goodreads reviewer on The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone

“Not worth the time spent figuring this nonsense story out” – Amazon reviewer on The After-Life Story of Pork Knuckles Malone

So, it is true, I say, bat wings gurgling off my tongue. Roll for damage, the Dungeon Master says. How many hit points do I have left? I am unconscious and we know what that means. There is nothing below zero, nothing but the abyss. The Dungeon Master cracks open another Mountain Dew and I prepare for the worst. But it is you, in my hour of unticking time, who chooses to use those three stolen spells on a most unlucky bard. And, as the wizard laughs scorn at your feeble attempts, you speak a triple-dose of punk-magic that swirls mist on my wounds. Here, dear reader, are the three spell of MP Johnson:

I’ve Got A Time Bomb by Sybil Lamb
Topside Press is relatively new, but it put out one of my favorite books last year (Nevada by Imogen Binnie), so I’ve been keeping my eye on it. Sybil Lamb is a longtime zinester and a badass visual artist.

When I saw that Topside was putting out Sybil’s debut novel, I got excited. Then I read about how it was assembled from bits from her zines and it sort of reminded me of that scene in Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch where Kerouac and Ginsberg are piecing together Burroughs’ scattered bits to build something bigger. That made me even more excited.

Then I read the book and it blew my mind. It starts out sort of like Mad Max, if Mad Max had been written by an even more fucked up Kathy Acker. But it’s not post-apocalypse. It’s post-hurricane. And I feel like a lot of it is actually autobiographical. Like, if there was a 2014 equivalent to The Basketball Diaries, I’d say this was it, but I think it actually may be too wild to even fit that description. I’m comparing this book to a lot of shit, but it’s really a singular work with a singular style. Crucial reading 2014.

Jaguar God: Snake Brother’s Revenge by Glenn Danzig and Simon Bisley
Glenn Danzig’s ability to channel his inner 14-year-old boy is inspiring. This book doesn’t come near meeting any standard definition of “quality,” but I fucking love it anyway. Bisley’s art is magnificent, even though it’s all kind of half-finished, un-inked, un-colored pencil work. The art is displayed beside Danzig’s epic, long-form poem that tells the tale of Jaguar God as he axes his way through naked snake women and evil snake men. It’s clunky as fuck, but a blast nonetheless.

Nagging Wives, Foolish Husbands by Nathaniel Tower
I’m almost done with this one and I’m totally in love with it. I don’t think Tower considers himself a bizarro writer, but a lot of his stuff fits. For example, the opening story, “A Happy Family,” is about a couple that gives birth to a boot. My favorite of the bunch is “The Abortion Party.” A wife drags her husband to an abortion party, which is kind of like a baby shower, except not at all. The story deftly creates a sense of suburban unease that grows to full-blown disturbing. The ending is just the right kind of uncomfortable. This collection is notable in that it is centered thematically on husbands, wives and just mundane family shit, from which all sorts of weirdness blossoms.

—

And the were-bats explode in a puff of horrendous gas, a gas which floats from my bloated body and wraps the undead wizard in a death-wind-storm plus twenty-seven. It is the twenty-seven that does the trick, makes our Dungeon Master lose his cool. And the wizard blows open gore into a hundred bits of evil filth. The chair turns to mud. And the Dungeon Master is no longer our friend. But we lived, didn’t we? We ended up carving and singing that tavern into a blizzard of of ork vixen limbs and teeth. And we’ve only just begun, for the map was tucked behind your ear the entire time. You sly devil, you.

It’s dusk now. Let’s go.

Thank you, MP Johnson.

Now, roll for damage.

Three Reads w/ Chris Kelso

The pool in the backyard is full of black dogs and antique moosejaws frozen in sludge like lollipops. We swim all day, drink juice bags, sweat-shirted and sweat-panted to the hilt of our Bizarro dreams. It’s all lizards, all the way down and it’s time to hit the phones, check the calls for clues. It’s Saturday. You’ve brought a black telephone studded with dog teeth. It’s a tooth-phone, you say, made of geese, and we laugh for hours over blood loss and how the dog sleeps on your chest and snorts bugs up its snub nose and snores. That’s how she does things, you say. That’s how she eats cities, sneezes broken glass. I try to \m/ but I can’t. You tell me to \m/ and I cough guts, but my stubby fingers are plastic and we are not Dutch like the girls who keep calling you on the phone with those voices like crisp lines of dew.

And who are you? You are Chris Kelso, the author of many books as evidenced by your websites which you send me in the morning, just as the coffee spills on my blue velvet lounger by the television, books like Moosejaw Frontier and The Black Dog Eats the City. I am watching MacGruber and waiting for the sirloin soup to stop popping in the microwave. I really wanted to drink that coffee, truly needed that coffee to cultivate speed, so I compensate by downloading more Molina for Clementine and turn up the volume on the only speaker I own, the one that you bought me at Target. What do they say about you? I ask, sucking soup like college, spitting jelly on bread. Who? you say. I don’t care who, I say. I am losing my patience. This is not an interview. This is barely a conversation or a short story. It’s a log cabin. But the phone rings and you pass it to me as if I can speak with so much soup on my tongue. I chicken-cluck a greeting and hear what these others, these brothers of yours, have to say, Chris Kelso:

“I never thought I could use “aggro” for a novel, but Chris Kelso’s Transmatic is pure heat-white aggro in a new twisted way that will leave you breathless and wanting for more. Think Tarantino meets Ballard meets Burroughs, and you’re still in it for a surprise. A hard drug I sincerely recommend. I am now officially a craving Kelso addict.”
Seb Doubinsky, author of Goodbye, Babylon

‘Choke down a handful of magic mushrooms and hop inside a rocket ship trip to futuristic settings filled with pop culture, strange creatures and all manner of sexual deviance. The mundane becomes the bizarre, the standard evolves into the alien, and penises and vaginas are rarely what they seem. Buckle up. Shadenfruede is indeed pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.’
Richard Thomas, author of Staring into the Abyss

‘Chris Kelso is a fun writer. He is a daring writer. He is an experimental writer — but more importantly he is about to become an important writer. Read him with this book, so you can say you discovered shortly after Don Webb. I said it first, so I win.’
Don Webb, author of Overthrowing the Old Gods

But you’re gone the way of the Web and I check Facebook and there’s nothing left to read, no feed, no news, no shine-box, nothing trending at all since you’ve big-timed the frontier and the narrative flow. Isn’t this supposed to be about books? Let’s rap rock. Let’s boogie down your list and dive in the pool where the dogs are stacked like tables made of bacon and beef. Do you like bacon and beef? Let’s eat a city, no more telephones, none here, Chris. I’m with you on this one and the wind has picked up a nation of millions. It’s a trending wind. I feel you’re ready to begin, is that right? I’ll let you speak. I have to finish my soup, make some more coffee.

Chris Kelso speaks of books:

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip.K.Dick
I really love Philip.K.Dick. A lot of my friends don’t like Philip.K.Dick. Those who don’t like his work will say that all his characters are rubbish, half-rendered, one-dimensional sketches…there is undoubtedly truth to this argument; and I firmly believe that for the majority of other writers out there this would be a major bone of contention – but when you consider the sheer magnitude of PKD’s concepts, well, surely we can forgive him that one tiny foible (can’t we?). Maybe I’m too merciful.

I’m a sucker for a god paranoid brain bender.

All the familiar tropes are present in his opus ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’, but here Dick isn’t just concerned with blurred consensus reality or unreality, interplanetary colonisation or the effects of psychedelic drugs (mind you, you’ll still catch sight of those wacky PKD hallucinogen names like ‘Chew-Zee’ and ‘Can-D’), oh no – the philosophical undertones of ‘The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch’ echo more the transcendental idealism that would permeate his later work, like The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, like VALIS. The main esoteric question being probed here involves god and his relationship with mankind – more specifically Dick asks ‘what if God existed and he hated you?’ In spite of the small matter of Dick’s throw-away characters this is classic paranoid fiction, my favourite of the PKD novels.

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
Much like Philip.K.Dick, Paul Auster’s characters is a little pre-occupied with his own identity and reality. He attacks the subject in a different way – instead of placing his protagonists in a science fiction setting, Auster prefers to inhabit the crime detective genre. ‘The New York Trilogy’ is the single volume of sequentially published novels set in the Big Apple. They all have a common theme and involve men who intentionally strip down the conventional layers of their lives in order to move beyond their set reality. Often, more than one personality will frequent the body of a single man in one of Auster’s stories. When I was going through the Raymond Chandler chapter of my adolescent reading career I discovered Paul Auster towards the tail end of that phase. His prose is beautiful but succinct, his ideas challenge anything PKD tried and the NY Trilogy has that certain enigmatic quality that really appeals to me…

Lanark by Alasdair Gray
My favourite work of fiction EVER by a Scottish writer. ‘Lanark’ is a genre-spanning odyssey that gives the graphic account of dullard and chronic acne sufferer, Duncan Thaw, as he struggles to get women and generally bumbles through his menial existence while attending art school in Glasgow. Thaw wakes up in a bizarre and terrifying purgatorial world after drowning himself, a place where people grow thick layers of extra skin known as ‘dragon hide’ and mouths start appearing on the palms of their hands…it’s pretty insane stuff. Gray also illustrates all his novels and is a true polymath. I had the chance to meet him, here I am here…looking so happy I could tear my copy of ‘1982 Janine’ in half!

–

Thank you, Chris, I say. I make my way through the meat of the pool, lick my lips. I found a phone down there. We can call Iceland or Berlin and bake fish cakes in the palms of our hands. Let’s get drunk on ruined cities and voices, on stories that fill tubs with jelly and I promise I’ll let you go first. Is there more in store? you ask. There is always more, Chris, I say. And they sting like blades of pulp, brother. They really do. Read them HERE.

DECKER: Episode Two (An Adaptation)

Last week began my first foray into the world of adaptation with Tim Heidecker’s masterpiece of action-comedy, DECKER. This week, I present the second installment, a fictionalized adaptation of episode two. Things heat up when the pressure is cranked. Check it out and thank you for reading.

And now, I present to you:

DECKER: Episode Two (An Adaptation)

A Blackhawk cuts freedom trails of wind out over the Atlantic while a briefcase sits on the lap of Decker, our black-blazered American hero. His fingers drum the case as if purring it to keep calm for just a little longer. He shuts his eyes, entranced by the whirr of the chopper’s beat. And like a gunshot sandblasting the Afghanistan desert, his CIA-trained mind drifts, memory fisting him elbow-deep into a field of white flowers: a top secret burden of pleasure, or a flicker of the past. He breathes, stirs the image to blossom.  

Decker sees himself pluck one of those white flowers. A half-smile widens his mouth, allows just a moment to enjoy the rich complexity of life’s wonder. He sniffs. It’s the smell of back-alley dive bars with a Louisville Slugger after dark in a rotten part of Pittsburgh. It’s a scent Decker wishes he could forget. He inhales once more, to be sure of this poisonous fact. “Shit,” he says. “Taliban has started growing poppy seed again, which is the worst, because that’s for heroin.” He studies the flower’s intricate folds, the mysteries it holds. “That’s going to fund terrorist operations.” He takes one final smell. Decker feels duty mount. The poppy field extends for miles, unchecked. “Gotta destroy all this heroin.”

Like an eighteen wheeler clogging the piss trough, Decker stomps with American justice, crushing poppy after poppy to pulp under his boots. The more he flattens the budding drug, the more his teeth clench. If only, he thinks, our limp sock of a president would react with vigor, with strength, with the muffler-chug of a hog. But he won’t. And Decker has been muck deep in this desert swamp too many times to forget the only painful lesson a warrior must never let go of: there is no “we,” it’s only mono e mono in the fight for freedom.

He jerks awake. The poppy crushing fades as the chopper lands. He clears his eyes to salute a marching line of American troops who wait to greet him. It’s morning and stepping back onto Washington soil gives Decker relief. He nods to the air force pilot, clutches the briefcase tighter in his grip. If they only knew. His eyes narrow, lips curl to a sneer. He walks off. Alone.

We drift to late afternoon, zero four hundred, military hours. Time for a chat. Everything is in order and the president awaits. Another chance to lay the goods on the old politician, whether his frumpy suit likes it or not. And compliance will not be an issue. Decker’s been in tight spots before, spots tighter than a Kawasaki roof jump in Morocco. This’ll be a breeze.

Decker heads straight up to the White House main entrance, but is suddenly ambushed by a horde of protestors. It’s as if they were waiting for him. They chant, “Hey, hey, go away, treat those Arabs fair.” Sloppy hand-painted signs swoop, almost clip Decker in the jaw. He keeps his stride, takes in one sign in particular that says, “Keep USA Free.” You can bet your ass on it. But the mob looms, encroaches, crowds around him. “Hey,” Decker says, “hey, get out of my way.” He pushes past a zipper lips in a fake cowboy hat. ” I don’t have time for this.” He shoves an overweight grandpa in a ball cap, tips that hat off his head, says, “Why don’t you guys get a job?” And with that, Decker’s in. Clear security, brush off the men in black with a flick of his neck, a twist of his wrist. They’ve been briefed. They know the drill. Don’t ask.

Old hands tremble around a black telephone. A sweaty forehead wrinkled in panic, worn down with false promises and pressure. The president presses the phone harder to his ear says, “W-what do the polls say?”

With the force of a storm, the door to his office bursts open. A naked-eyed Decker strides in, briefcase in hand. The president quickly cuts the line, slaps the phone down. “Decker,” the president says, flustered, “that was fast.”

Decker, quiet as a lone poppy in the breeze, pulls a chair across from the president, takes a seat without asking. “I had a little help from the United States air force, some of the bravest men and women in America.” Decker slides the briefcase onto the table. “Unfortunately, I wish you understood how to support the troops.”

“Uh, what’s in the briefcase?” the president says.

“That’s the plan to destroy America,” Decker says.

“Well, let’s open it up, read the details so we can, uh, stop this madness.”

“I can’t,” Decker says. “There’s a three digit code preventing me from opening it. If I open it, it’s gonna blow.”

Tension blasts the room. The president’s palms clam up, his mouth frozen. He licks his lips. “Decker, you’re the strongest man that I know of.” A flash of intensity, impatience, and then he asks the fatal question: “Why don’t you just rip it open?”

Decker chuckles, three steps ahead and thirty miles over the speed limit. “Don’t you think I would have done that by now?” he says, squints. “Now, this is rigged to blow. Get it?  If I try to pry that open it’s gonna blow up the White House. Now, I don’t mind falling on the sword for my country and I sure as hell wouldn’t mind seeing you go, but there is no way that I’m going to blow up two hundred years of American history by blowing up the White House, not to mention the founding fathers.”

And this pounds the old president like the motherload. “How do we break the code?” he says, that sweat spreading to his neck, running down his red tie.

“I’ll need access to your top secret FBI agent,” Decker says, “or CIA agent, whoever—for code breaking.”

The president’s eyes narrow. He looks away, scoots forward in his seat. “It’s top secret.”

“Goddammit, you asshole,” Decker says, calling his bluff, a bullet of truth wetting his lips. He stands, black blazer fluttering like a cape. “Do you want to save this country, or not?”

The president opens his wet hands, wiggles those chubby fingers in front of Decker. “Look,” he says, “I’m sorry, Decker, but my hands are tied.”

Decker rounds the table to the president’s side. In the whip of a Wyoming second, Decker’s rage froths: the mushroom cloud, the flaming cities of freedom, the bullets ripping throats, striking hard-working American families in their sleep. This must end. “Alright, we’re gonna be doing this the hard way then.” Whoosh! Decker whips his pistol from inside his blazer, jams it to the president’s head, barrel first. “You want your brains splattered on the desk or are you gonna call that CIA guy?”

The president’s heart flutters, skips a beat like hot piss pattering a dog bowl.

“Access, Mr. President,” Decker says as he clicks off the safety. “Now!”

To Be Continued…

Three Reads w/ Pedro Proença

This must be us in Brazil on a beach in the summer. We watch the sharkmen in their chains and the women with their tan lines hit crashing waves, splash tubes of water into the air, into funnels of cold, dark, wetness. We breathe in the wet. It makes us tick. And you’ve brought your cooler filled with popsicles and cards, with kittens and strings. Shall we drink, I ask, to the droogs of misfortune? Not yet, you say. We are waiting for the fire to come hard. The fire? I say. To kill the heat, you say. And all of a sudden, more have arrived on the beach. These Brazilians come in waves of skin and legs and small mustaches glued to the top their lips, black beards on their chins or long hair down to their butts, with music and fangs that glisten. You are not listening. You are playing Magic in the sand, gathering spells in your hand that we cannot use. This is when the fire bubbles up from the water. It has come from your cards and I will call you Pedro Proença of the Fireside Popsicles, Master of the Vertigo Schism. Please pass me a blue popsicle, Pedro, for the fire is licking my toes and it smells like salsa, smells like bubbly toes.

Three cards, you tell me. There must only be three cards. I do not understand this gathering, nor do I understand why so many have flocked to us here on the beach. Are they not scared of fire? They want to be cooler, you say. They want to feel Magic, you say. And with that, you fling a card to the sand and eight men melt into goopy piles of bone-wraiths and tree demons. Your smile is wide, your belly is satisfied. You burp. Three cards, you repeat. Three cards for our tongues. Three cards to be read. These cards are books.

Please, Pedro. Share with us your reads. The fire has licked my lap and I can no longer suffer myself to move.

Go, Pedro, go:

1 – American Gods (Neil Gaiman)

This was the book that opened my eyes to fantastic literature. I wanted to be a writer since I’ve read it the first time (and I’ve read it lots of times after that). It’s just the perfect example of modern fantasy writing, and Gaiman has a gift for creating emotional moments, which is something I think is lacking in modern fantasy literature in general.

2 – Shatnerquake (Jeff Burk)

My gateway drug to Bizarro. It wasn’t exactly my first Bizarro book ever, but it was the one that made me fall in love with the genre, and in some sense, it was the book that re-ignited my writing spark. I’ll always be grateful to Jeff for this book, and for Shatnerquest, that I loved even more (perhaps because of its Magic: The Gathering).

3 – A Lightbulb’s Lament (Grant Wamack)

This book packs quite a punch! I’m a fan of the Theatre of the Absurd movement, and this book bears a strong resemblance to those plays. The protagonist, Mr. Watts, is the archetypal Absurd Hero. Of the books I’ve read of late, this one is the one that made the biggest impact on me, and I strongly recommend it to everyone.

And this is all it takes for the chaos to come, for the crowd is a mass of howling skin and torn bikini bits. The beach is shaking and the artificial lights in this Brazilian sky have gone off. You keep dropping cards like a God, like a Brazilian beast in a pummeling bass guitar prayer. Why can’t you see that the flames are now dancing across my chest, Pedro? Why can’t you see that the water has risen to a tidal wave of blood? Where are the women going? Where are the men going? What secret card do you hold in your hand, Pedro?

Why, Pedro?

But you do not answer, nor do you need to. Now I see the card you pull from your throat. It is yellow and wet and glows like a flame. Do not let the flames consume me, I beg. You do not listen. You rip the card into tiny pieces before me and laugh. I can still hear your laugh and it is the laugh of the entire beach being torn to mangled shreds by a dragon of your own invention. A Brazilian beach dragon if there ever was one. Lucky for me, it doesn’t like charred meat. Let me burn.

Shall we play again? I say. Of course, you say. The game never ends, you say.

–

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed today’s article, please consider reading more HERE.

 

Three Reads w/ Douglas Hackle

We are samurai of the post-apocalyptic zone, the coming of a new form of desert zen. We carry our samurai swords on our backs, black-caped and goggled to the hilt. The dust kills pain. We drink dust like milk. We ride hogs up mountains to the top where the fountains of dead clown tears gush a bizarre form of beauty for those who know how to read.

We read book after book. We keep the books glued to the inside of our goggles, use throwing stars when we have to. But the men are on the hunt. Of course, they’ll arrive with whips and spears, chains, planks of barbed-wired wood for the beating. We’ve been whipped before. We must read quick, scoop the words down our mind-holes, and bury them in the pit of our lung-cloaks.

I heard of a pool filled with dead clown tears, somewhere hidden on the other side of a mountain made of words. And we are thirsty, ever thirsty, at once satisfied and wanting more. Do drink, good brother, do drink, for I heard the tears taste like automobiles and venom, like being stranded in the Arctic, or like meeting a painting at a bar. Like screaming. There are no bars here in the desert. But we are close. Walk among the dogs and be close. Let them lead the way.

You say your name is Douglas Hackle and you say we are Clown Tear Junkies. You speak of the Rooster Republic. You speak tales that warp the world into a frenzy of snarls and belly laughs that twist the gut into knots. My world is a spangle of your short stories that still haunt my nights with glee and grand fright. Keep it bottled, you say. Wear it around your neck and sing, you say. And I do. I fall into a trance until the words of the others sing a river through my throat. They sing, Douglas. This is what they say about Douglas:

“Hackle may be the best absurdist story writer working today [...] I enjoyed this book [Clown Tear Junkies] more than any other book that I’ve read in a long time.” – Bradley Sands



“…he tells us the kind of tales we didn’t even know we were thirsty for in the first place. The kind of tales that matter, in their own weird way. The kind of tales that make reading a joy.” – Danger Slater

“What makes Hackle’s writing so much fun is his unpredictable wordplay and his juxtaposition of low brow fare and academic trivia. – Gary Arthur Brown

“You walk away [from Clown Tear Junkies] with a clear feeling of how odd Doug Hackle is. It’s almost like finding an anonymous notebook in the halls of a high school that was dropped by someone who wrote these twisted little things never intending anyone else to read them.” – Ray Fracalossy

And you’ve pulled my goggles from this scarred head, ground my face in this desert dirt. You tell me to make the first move. I take a step toward the east. The ancient east. There is a drowning clown with a bottle in hand. I see this image in the sand and you slap my face to listen for the squeak. You shove my face to the rock and it is there where the power of three is finally unleashed. There are three books. Three ways in. Three ways out of this mess.

Douglas speaks:

Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme

After I read this book and checked out some of its reviews, I discovered that it’s one of those books many people give up on. I suppose I can’t blame them. Many of the “stories” in this collection are confusing, recondite, tedious, and downright incomprehensible. I myself preferred the stories that more closely approached something like traditional narrative, the ones that were more graspable in terms of ideas, characters, settings, imagery, etc. But even in Barthelme’s more abstruse pieces, much inventive and imaginative manipulation of language and ideas can be found. (Translation: I tend to like it when motherfuckers fuck with the traditional short story form.)

Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti

Most horror fiction you find out there can usually be categorized into a standard subgenre or else some mashup of those subgenres: traditional supernatural, Lovecraftian, psychological, gothic, sci-fi horror, occult, splatterpunk, et al.

And then you have Ligotti.

The Driver’s Guide to Hitting Pedestrians by Andersen Prunty

One of my favorite collections of bizarro short stories. The tales contained herein are surreal, dreamlike, dark, sometimes sad, other times funny, and satisfyingly unpredictable.

–

I am alone now. I have no motorcycle now, no sword and no goggles. I find a pair of rollerblades for the samurai that I hope to be. My hair is longer now, mustache messier now. For some reason, you have gone, but your words linger loudly in the air. I can taste the tears in my eyes, smell the tears like the fog of a forgotten age. I know you’ll be there when I arrive.

I must go. And, like you, I must wander. Soon after, I find your clown shoes stuck to a cactus and I put them on.

–

If you enjoyed today’s contribution, please consider reading some of our other contributions, please click HERE. Thank you.

Three Reads w/ Danger Slater

Our door is chained shut in this hotel by the sea. We are watching a show about drunken volcanoes. There is a velvet bed in this room, a table and two steel chairs. Tangier is a haze of smoke this time of year, but we’re mind-juiced on coffee and plums. Outside, two saxophones twirl loops of clouds, draw birds out to mingle chaotic. We’re suited in neckties and black alligator skin. It’s almost time. Check your watch. Someone’s turning the knob on the door and I can hear three goons rasp gravel in the hall. Twist the silencer into place. It sounds like a fizzle, like fire.

We are not superheros, not cobras. No venom tonight. There are no bullets in the pistol, either. And my partner is in the bathroom, smearing pomade on his mustache. He tells me to prepare the texts for the hand-off, to signal the pigeon, to grab the motorcycle keys and prepare to burn rubber back to the airport. I ready the parachute and sit on the bed. The men bang on the door in steady fist beats. I try to shut it out. The saxophone sputters a series of seven shrill notes, blasts those notes red and green, different than the rest. My partner steps out of the bathroom, just stands there. He’s shaved his head and grown a beard. He nods like a goat.

“Who are you?” I say. “Who the hell are you?” 

“Danger Slater,” he says, but when he replies it’s not his voice. It’s that saxophone and it’s a stuffed water drum on fire. And my legs are paralyzed on the velvet. “Stranger Danger,” he says. “DangerRAMA.”

He pours two shots of gin and we drink them both. “Why are you doing this?” I say.

Suddenly, a fist slams through the door, leaves a ragged hole. Three faces in the hall, smoky and shadowed. We turn our heads. Bullets rattle in my pocket. The gun’s on the table.

The men speak in turn. I should have known they’d know. I should have seen it all coming. One at a time, I hear them explain the deal. One at a time, my skin bubbles on the bed.

“This stuff reads like Kurt Vonnegut meets Douglas Adams meets Tom Robbins meets Carlton Mellick III. Something like that.” – Douglas Hackle

“The existential ponderings and searches for self in DangerRAMA were so God damned deep that I was writing shit down like this was some kind of college literature assignment. Also, a dude fucks his finger-clone in space and who doesn’t love that?” – Eirik Gumeny

“Killing me won’t bring back your god damn honey!” –

This is when Danger slaps a gob of pomade in my ears and snaps his fingers. The pomade hardens and I fall back on the bed. This is how it happens. I am being tucked in and whispered to by a ghost. The men stand around me, but I can’t see Danger. I hear thunder. The room spins orange like Easter. Was it something in the pomade? A pill slipped in the gin? Maybe it’s just Tangier this time of year.

But, no. Danger has the texts in his hand and he’s shaking his fist at the television like a reverend. From where I lie, he’s full of static, no longer crisply human. Cage slaps my forehead and pulls me to a sitting position, sits down beside me and commands me to listen.

I do, Cage. I listen and Danger speaks those secrets we worked so hard to protect, but he’s unstoppable now, a monster with the voice of a saxophone. Listen, reader. These are the revelations he reveals: 

1. SAVAGE THUNDER by Johanna Lindsey
Okay. I didn’t actually read this book, but look how goddamn sexy Fabio is on that cover! His chest is so chiseled. Look at those pectoral muscles! Babes love him. My chest is all nippley and gross. I have to spend all this time pretending I’m this genius author to try and attract chicks, and even then, it barely works. If I were Fabio, I wouldn’t bother with any of this writing bullcrap. I’d be too busy scoring hot poontang like it’s going out of style! This book inspires me to be a dumber and better-looking person.
 

 
2. BIZARRO STARTER KIT (ORANGE)
Back in the days when bookstores still existed, I went searching for Carlton Mellick books over at my local Barnes & Noble. A month earlier, I had order a book for the very first time from this cool website called amazon.com (turns out, I thought I was buying the paperback of Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk, and I accidentally ordered the audiobook version of it…ON FREAKIN’ CASSETTE TAPE!) and it had suggested a few new authors I might enjoy. I started “clicking” down the rabbit hole. I made a list on a notepad of all the authors whose names would come up. Eventually, Mellick’s name popped up too. I was intrigued. Afraid I didn’t know how to work the goddamn internet properly, I drove to my brick and mortar to check his shit out. When the local B&N didn’t carry his stuff, I drove to the BIGGER Barnes & Noble over in Wayne. Still no Mellick. So then I drove to the EVEN BIGGER Barnes & Noble on Route 3 in Clifton. Still NOTHING! And so, finding the backbone I didn’t know I had and conquering all the fear that lurked within my heart, I logged back onto my laptop – and this waaaaaay back in 2009, so my laptop was a massive, hulking machine that took up 3/4ths of my bedroom and could easily have sucked me into it alá Tron – and ordered the Bizarro Starter Kit Orange along with a few of the other bizarro books that piqued my interest. Borders went out of business not too long after that. Coincidence? I think not!
 

 
3. SPOT’S FIRST EASTER by Eric Hill
I got this book from Brentano’s (BRENTANO’S!) in the Rockaway Mall when I was 7. The book was written for kids who were 3. My mom never let me read “baby” books when I was little. I think she thought they were stupid. Instead, I ended up reading a lot of teenager books when I was really young. I learned about what menstruation was before I even had my first period! 31-years-old and I’m still waiting for my first period. Some nights, I’m like “Are you there God? It’s me, Danger?” Anyway, my point is, at 7, I felt like I had been missing out on something by skipping the stage when I got read all these little baby books. So at Brentano’s I threw this huge temper tantrum, until my mom relented and bought me Spot’s First Easter to shut me up. As it turned out, she was right. The book was fucking stupid. It was, like, 20 pages long. And the plot sucked. They go looking for Easter eggs, they find them, and then it just kind of ends. A total waste of time. But I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t read that book 100 freakin’ times. Just to spite her.
 
–
 
My eyes are not shut. There is a lamp on the table beside me. They’ve pried my mouth open and left the television on. The window is still open. I feel the bullets in my pocket and someone passes me another drink. “Straighten that tie,” Cage says. “Danger’s waiting.” But I can’t see anyone else in the room.
 
And I hear that saxophone outside, the birds made of plums. I step onto the veranda and look down at the smoke and the people passing by. So small. They have no idea. I don’t even hear the bullet, didn’t know I could fly, become a note in the night.
 
But I do. It’s dangerous out there, dear reader. It’s stranger than you think.
 
–
 
If you enjoyed today’s contribution, be sure to read on: R.A. Harris, Grant Wamack, S.T. Cartledge, David C. Hayes, Bix Skahill, Dustin Reade, Amanda Billings, Daniel Vlasaty, Andy de Fonseca, Tiffany Scandal.
 

Three Reads w/ R.A. Harris

There is no credit sequence. We don’t need to run them tonight. Our viewers want the meat, they want the meat cubed or smoothed into a paste. We can do that. I’m going to quick run out this salad to table three, get ready for the rush. Don’t spill the water. Never neglect to salt your meat and keep your hands to yourself. They’ve got rope and chairs. We can feed them with their own forks, keep their mouths pried open to ingest the mango, the tuna, the halibut. It’s made of meat. The restaurant’s open and we’re rolling. This is our apparatus. This is our art. Let it stew. Stir the soup. Eat your meat.

Our guest has arrived. Show him to his table and give him a slice of spinach. Make him eat it. He’s brought some books to the table like a gentleman. He’s dressed in black. Don’t cut to a commercial, keep it close on his face. Ladies and brutes, allow me to introduce you to R.A. Harris, author of Apparatus of Capture (Dynatox Ministries) and the Bizarro Pulp Press release All Art is Junk. Pick up his napkin and give him another. Don’t let him soil the meat. See the way he smooths the pages, caresses the contents. He smashes the table with the books. And what shall we make of this table-smashing artist of words? Summon the chefs. Speak, chefs, speak rich praise to wet the tongue of tonight’s most honored guest:

(On Apparatus of Capture) “Lightning fast, short, chaotic, thought-provoking, mind-exploding art.” — Pedro Proença (connoisseur of all things awesome and all around good guy)

“All Art is Junk is a stunning debut novel from a unique voice in the Bizarro fiction genre, Mr. R.A. Harris.” — Jason Wayne Allen (Author of Rot Country Blues)

“Harris brings this world to life as if he were painting the pages rather than writing them.” — Vincenzo Bilof (Author of Mother, I’m not an Android)

Silence! The main course is making its way to Mr. Harris’ table. Make room. Don’t slip on the ice. Watch out for the noodles and tear the pages to shreds, stuff them down your greasy throat and fill your mind with fiction. That’s an order from on top, from the big shark. Excuse the flames. And the paper plates and plates of trout and bass, catfish-cake and lamprey nuggets, leeches and cobra-soup. We have it all. The man approves. He’s finished his plate and the piano is playing. It’s an old tune, Elvis or Sinatra. Now, for dessert, R.A. Harris will comment upon some books. He keeps these books close to his heart. Closer than his own ribs, they have made their way into his bones like worms.

R.A. Harris, please stand and speak. The world awaits. Thank you.

The Kyoto Man by D. Harlan Wilson
D. Harlan Wilson transcends fiction. His is the breath that gives it life. His is the shape that gives it form. He doesn’t write fiction, he writes beyond fiction. If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is. Wilson is a stupidly good writer. Read him at your own peril.

Oh yeah, this particular book concerns the woes of a man who literally and repeatedly turns into the Japanese city of Kyoto. Yep.

Beyond Apollo by Barry N. Malzberg
I can’t lay claim to being that clued up on sci-fi through the ages. My knowledge of it is sporadic at best. However, I can safely say that Beyond Apollo is one of the best books ever written. Once you have read this, you will most likely want to read more Barry Malzberg, and that is only a good thing.

Humanity is the Devil by Jordan Krall
Krall takes the essence of evil and distils it into anti-novel form in what amounts to one of the most powerful and visceral reading experiences you could hope to have. Humanity is the Devil pulls no punches. It creates a dread atmosphere that doesn’t let up until long after you’ve finished reading.

–

The entire restaurant smells like clams. There are clams in the noodles, clams in the burgers, clams dripping from the ceiling fan. I hear a hummingbird, a black telephone. I pass R.A. Harris his black leather gloves and shake his hand. It’s been a good night, a good feast. Your limo awaits, it’s time to go. New York or New Jersey is just a heartbeat out the door. Mind the rain. Thank you, R.A. Harris for sharing your literary choices with the chefs and the servants, for breaking the table and devouring the sloppy treats of our labor. We appreciate you being here. Please come again. We like to see you eat.

If you wish to spend more time with us, there are a few other minds out there who have been kind enough to be with us, including Grant Wamack, S.T. Cartledge, David C. Hayes, Bix Skahill, Dustin Reade, Amanda Billings, Daniel Vlasaty, Andy de Fonseca, and Tiffany Scandal. Be well.

Three Reads w/ Grant Wamack

New Mexico is a swirl of candy-colored clouds and evening storms this time of year. It makes the music sound just a little bit better, makes a person love the wind a little stronger. And there’s a song in that wind, a slight sadness that screams for me to pick up a book and read. You, too? Yeah, I thought so. Let’s dig in to something new.

Today’s “three reads” contributor is Grant Wamack, author of A Lightbulb’s Lament (2014, Bizarro Pulp Press). Besides penning slick Bizarro fiction, Grant is also in the business of spitting thunder and flamethrowers through your speakers in the guise of GS, a part of the Lowkey Collective (LWKY). And since we’re humming summer haunts under this New Mexico sky, let’s do a bit of conjuring, let the ghosts come in, and give a listen to GS’ track “Ghost.”

Is it getting dark yet? It’s dim. Let’s hit the lights, make this house come to life. Grant’s gearing up to give us three hot reads, but before we proceed, let’s preface his reads with some praise:

“I’ve never read anything quite like Wamack’s A Lightbulb’s Lament. It has the right combination of weirdness, comedy, violence, and existentialism. A uniquely fun read.”– Jordan Krall, author of False Magic Kingdom

“…a really cool writer and musical hip hopster”– Kris Saknussemm, author of Private Midnight

“Watching Wamack glow for a number of years now, and the Lightbulb book more than fulfills that promise. A disarmingly naïve treasure trove of ideas and words; mixing the freshness of truly brilliant SF, Horror visions with an aura of traditional European literary Absurdism.”– D.F. Lewis, author of Nemonymous Night

Thank you, gentlemen. I needed that. I’ve got my feet up now, still feeling the sway of this wind, the hum of the mountains and the trees in my hair. I hear that music creeping up again. It’s getting closer, commanding my feet to scuttle themselves around the kitchen for awhile. Grant, are you here? Let’s do this? I’m going to step outside on the porch, sniff some sage and let the night go to town on my sniffer. The mic’s in your court now. Take it away, Mr. Grant Wamack.

Made to Break by D. Foy

I heard a lot of hype about this book so it quickly moved up my to-be-read pile. Made to Break is about a bunch of assholes holed up in a cabin together during a terrible winter storm. The rich spiraling language is what drew me in and the weird atmosphere is what kept me there. The characterization is spot on and the ending is fucking beautiful. Seriously though, this guy is the real deal. You can keep your drugs, give me another hit of that gutter opera, bruh bruh.

Long Lost Dog of It by Michael Kazepis

I love crime fiction, but a lot of it comes off as cliché and reeks of a dive bar you’ve been to one too many times. Long Lost Dog of It resembles a cool gritty bar you overlooked, but is well worth your time. It takes place during the financial collapse in Greece and there’s a killer running rampant, a mad dangerous vagrant, and sexy ass lesbians. Kazepis’ prose is smooth and his characters are well drawn out. The violence is pretty devastating and the emotional moments shared between characters really resonated with me. Pick up this unorthodox crime fiction novel asap.

The Rotgut County Blues by Jason Wayne Allen

At first glance The Rotgut County Blues is a slim chapbook about two lovers stuck in a small town, but it’s so much more than that. It’s stark yet tender portrayal of the human condition and explores the weird nuances of a relationship through a neobeat lens and lyrical prose. Mainly, it reminds me of one of my exes—a passionate, heady no bullshit lover who’s a little rough around the edges but is always welcome to come haunt the corners of my psyche.

–

Thank you, good sir. Thank you for sharing. Now, the moon is out and we’re getting warmed up, right? What do you say we hit the road for awhile, take a drive? I know a spot out on the mesa. They’ve got sitars and flutes, a drum and a spot that sings the praise of the morning sun. Do you want to go? How about you, Internet friend? Maybe you’re already there with a book in hand and a smile on your face, dripping poetic. I hope so. I’ll meet you there. Let’s go, Grant. The night’s just begun.

(If you enjoyed today’s “Three Reads,” consider checking out some of our past contributors, including S.T. Cartledge, David C. Hayes, Bix Skahill, Dustin Reade, Daniel Vlasaty, Amanda Billings, Andy de Fonseca, and Tiffany Scandal)

Three Reads w/ S.T. Cartledge

Good day! As Lewis reminds us all, “It’s a New Day,” and that means a new THREE READS, my readerly fiends and foes. Are you ready to turn up the heat and get your book on? Pick your head up out of the toilet, put down your Taco Bell breakfast burrito, and let’s get into this. I’ve brought nachos to watch. And watch out for the centipedes. I squashed one last night who was trying to burrow his way under my dog’s fur. He got flushed and crushed and not in that order. I ate a banana and suddenly I imagined the entire house covered in creepy crawlers, nasty writhers, holy divers. But, as it goes, it’s a new day. Let’s make it count. We’ve got a special guest.

Today’s guest is none other than the Bizarro Pulp Press author of Day of the Milkman, the one and only S.T. Cartledge. He’s come armed to the hilt with moon-sized jugs of milk and he isn’t afraid to drink them up, make you want a sip, too. And, I heard his book is incredible. Heard he just finished another one, too. Why haven’t you? Time is running out. This man cannot be stopped, not by you, and most certainly not by your fantastic milk. Not on a ship. Not by nothing. Let’s leave YOUR milk out of this, okay? Calm down.Today, is about S.T. Cartledge and we’re going to milk this metaphor for all it’s worth, buddy.

Do you like to read? Do you like to read great books? Have you read S.T. Cartledge? Get on it! High praise don’t come easy in this dog slurp milk world, but Cartledge is drowning in it. Check out what some of these Bizarro barbarians of the written word have to say about his work:

“Cartledge’s genius lies in his ability to create surreal worlds
so immersive that you can’t be sure whether you are reading
them or dreaming them.”
—G Arthur Brown, author of Kitten

“I am totally comfortable calling S.T. a modern day Richard
Brautigan for his consistently playful and arresting imagery.
His word pictures are like Brom paintings.”
—Jeremy Maddux
author of Open Lines and editor at Surreal Grotesque

“S.T. Cartledge is one of those rare authors who seem to have
an innate understanding of how the bizarro genre works and
what needs to be done to deliver great stories. In Day of the
Milkman, he starts by reinventing the shipwreck genre and
ends up reinventing his own elegant prose. Sure, this is weird
and has touches of science fiction, but it’s also proof that
Cartledge will be a very relevant voice in strange fiction for a
long time to come.”
—Gabino Iglesias, author of Gutmouth

Sound appealing? Sound intriguing? Sound worth spending some mind-space with, friend? You bet it does. And wait until you see Cartledge’s reads. It’s a really unique mix we have for you today. Shane, are you ready? Hello? Shane? (He’s not here) (It’s only me as I’m writing this) (I can pretend, though) (Let’s make it be so). Oh, hi, Shane. So… You have three reads ready to go, yeah? Fantastic. Let’s do this…

Without further ado, S.T. Cartledge:

1) The Arrival, by Shaun Tan
Shaun Tan is a fierce and beautiful and imaginative storyteller. He is also a man of very few words. He tells his stories through art. His books read like children’s books, and for the most part, they are, but they’ve got this aesthetic quality about them. Think of how people talk about Pixar films. How they don’t just appeal to children, and how they tackle mature themes and how their films are remarkably accessible to people of all walks of life. Reading Shaun Tan is like that but it’s not just about making feature length films for children of all ages. It’s about redefining the way you tell stories. In about 30 pages of art, maybe a sentence or a few words on each page, you drink the stories in with your eyes. You can turn to them countless times and be moved by it for a different reason every single time. The Arrival is Shaun Tan’s ambitious story telling on a large scale. It’s a wordless graphic novel. It’s such a simple story of a struggling man trying to build a new life for himself and his family in a strange new place. There are no words. Until you hold this book in your hands and turn each page with a sense of wonder, you don’t understand its power or its beauty.

2) Biomega, by Tsutomu Nihei
Okay, so Biomega is a series. It’s six books. It’s another work heavily centered around art, rather than words. But it’s a pretty damn brilliant manga series, for what it’s worth. Tsutomu Nihei studied architecture before he became a manga artist, and it shows in his works. He’s got a thing for designing these crazy sprawling megastructures, giant crumbling towers in distant future civilisations, silicone-based lifeforms, grotesque monsters protecting long-since decayed civilisations. Biomega really gives an incredible sense of the sublime. The world is so big and empty. The people are violent. The dialogue is sparse. This guy has perhaps had the biggest influence on my own work. He crafts his own science fiction worlds so detailed and dystopian, it’s almost like Cormac McCarthy’s the Road set in outer space. But at the same time, it’s completely unlike that.

3) Quicksand House, by Carlton Mellick III
This here book is Carlton Mellick proving to the world that he can pump out books like there’s no tomorrow and still manage to bring his A game. Quicksand house is an apocalyptic science fiction masterpiece. I have not been so moved by a bizarro book as much as I have with this one. It’s so abstract and dark, ugly, haunting, and yet there’s this fragile quality about it. It’s alien, yet the themes it deals with are remarkably human. They hit so close to home. It’s about these children who live in a very small part of a very large house, never knowing their parents, until they venture out in search from them, only to find their world is not as expected, and that their childish optimism is washed over with cold realities, a bleak depression only the strongest determination can pull through. A beautifully imagined landscape and a carefully crafted plot.

–

Thank you, Mr. Cartledge. Thank you for your words, for your choices, for giving us something new to possibly sink out milky tongues into. Dear reader, it’s Saturday, which, when translated into Latin, means, “Day of reading many good books.” Let that be a lesson to you. While God may have rested on the sabbath, you better believe s/he was reading a book on the day before that heavenly rest. You should too, friend. Make it count.

If you’re still looking for hot reads, check out some of our past contributors, folks like David C. Hayes, Bix Skahill, Dustin Reade, Amanda Billings, Daniel Vlasaty, Andy de Fonseca, and Tiffany Scandal.

Thank you.

Three Reads w/ David C. Hayes

Hello, Friday! The curtains are drawn, sun already trying to find its way into my swollen eyeballs. “Wait, sun,” I say, but it won’t listen, never does, forge on we must. Yesterday concluded our New Bizarro Author Series “Three Reads” contributions–six very talented authors, each touting three worthy reads apiece. If my math is correct, that’s eighteen books for you to cram down your gullet.

But, we’re not stopping there, folks. Eighteen is not a satisfactory number. Its shape is not harmonious to the ear. I spit on eighteen, need to squeeze more digits out of it, dear. Thus, I have decided to continue “three reading” with a handful (or mouthful) of willing authors from around the globe. Are you ready? You better be, because today’s author is in the business of delivering literary piledrivers to your earholes, son. Get used to it.

Yes, I present, the mad scientist renaissance man himself, Mr. David C. Hayes, author of, among other things, the Bizarro Pulp Press book, Cherub.

(David approaches, proceeds to bash Grefe’s head in with a cheese grater, leaves him in a puddle of yellow goop)

(Cue applause, maybe some applesauce, too)

(Grefe tries to continue his monologue through mushed-up face, but Hayes already has him by the hair, whips his puny body across the room–hear it splat, crash, crumble)

And a voice-over (*would love to get Brad Dourif for this one*) says:

David C. Hayes is an author, performer and filmmaker that also teaches these subjects at the university level. His films, like A Man Called Nereus, Dark Places and The Frankenstein Syndrome (and approximately 70 more) can be seen worldwide. He is the author of several novels, collections and graphic novels including Cherub, Pegged, American Guignol, Scorn and Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Ed Wood, Jr. As a playwright, David’s full-length and one-act plays have been produced from coast to coast with a run Off-Broadway for the comedy Swamp Ho and sell-out performances in Phoenix for Dial P for Peanuts (winning a 2011 Ethingtony for Best Show). He is a voting member of The Dramatist’s Guild and the Horror Writers Association.

(But, Grefe can’t be stopped)

Moreover, yes, I just said “moreover,” here’s what some of our current taste-makers have to say about the work of the mighty David C. Hayes:

“Hayes is fast establishing himself as the new top drawer of hardcore horror.” – Edward Lee, author of Flesh Gothic, The Bighead and Goon.

“This book [Cannibal Fat Camp] is the twisted product of deranged minds. It’s sick, it’s evil and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read.” – Jim Dodge, Zero Signal Magazine

“David C. Hayes will gross you out with American Guignol. And disgust you. And appall you. And maybe even make your skin crawl. And that would please him immensely.” – Jerome Ludwig, The Chicago Reader

Meanwhile, back at the abattoir…

(Grefe tries to pick himself up from the floor, seems to be dragging himself back to the computer. Hayes leaps, elbow smashes Grefe’s arms off in one inhuman blow. Snap! We zoom in on Grefe as he struggles to pull himself up)

Grefe: And now, I present *spleeeeccchhh* *bleeeep* *gurgle* today’s author, David C. Hayes. Take it away, David.

1. The Strange Talents of Luther Strode
I’ve been avoiding prose fiction, lately, because it is what I do for the day job, the night job and the freelance jobs so… graphic novels, right? I find them to be the perfect medium. Working in film, stage and prose you have different limitations (budget, actors, no imagery, etc.). Not in the funny books. The Strange Talents of Luther Strode by Justin Jordan and Trad Moore is like an exploitation film on paper. It is hyper-violent, self referential and a product of forty years of pop culture. That speaks, uniquely, to my generation.
Oh, and it kicks ass. I wanted more the minute it was over.

2. Everyman
This is probably the only Medieval morality play on anyone’s three reads, but there is a method behind my madness. The early character archetypes and messaging we find in work from the Middle Ages (and this is, possibly, the earliest English-language play in existence) helps in refining our own messaging. Even in bizarro or hardcore horror or splatter punk or dark satire or whatever. Everyman by Anonymous still resonates and, language aside, has proven itself beneficial in shaping how I approach characters now.

3. Satan’s Mummy
I’m a fan of the garish. The lurid. The exploitative. Growing up in the 1970s and 80s with our minds filled with Corman and blaxploitation and all manners of sleaze made an impression. My work gravitates toward the lewd (if not outright awfulness) and this series by Henry Price is cool stuff. Mummies, Satanists, distressed damsels, free love… it has it all. I aspire to Mr. Price’s sense of bad taste.

(Grefe’s now been reduced to a soggy mess, just teeth and lips and cheeks, but forges on, regardless. To the end, folks, to the end)

There you have it, the ever-gracious David C. Hayes, ladies and gentle-dogs. Be sure to check out some of our past contributors, including: Bix Skahill, Dustin Reade, Amanda Billings, Daniel Vlasaty, Andy de Fonseca, and Tiffany Scandal.

Thank you for reading. Over and out.