“Beautiful, mysterious, and surreal, Kirsten Alene’s MOON SNAKE is a perfect gem of a book. Luminous and sublime.” – Jeff VanderMeer
Eraserhead Press is proud to announce the release of MOON SNAKE by Kirsten Alene. In this two-novella collection, you will be transported through surreal landscapes of avocado houses, talking mastiffs and dream ships and fall in love with the fairytale-like characters. Like nothing you’ve seen from this author before, MOON SNAKE is Alene’s strongest and most poetic work to date.
My mother always said, “Nothing as sad as a moth that thinks it’s found the moon in a candle flame.”
And that is who I am, or who I am meant to have been.
I whisper under my breath, “Moon in a candle flame, moon in a candle flame.”
And it’s true. It’s sad but also beautiful.
From the author of Dungeons & Drag Queens comes a fierce bizarro tale of dinosaur-riding realness.
Ivanna Deflower’s chance at drag superstardom passed her by long ago. She has resigned herself to a normal life raising her son with her ex-wife while occasionally hosting Sunday morning drag queen bingo. And she’s fine with that. She really is.
Until her life is turned upside down by the one thing that’s guaranteed to give a past-her-prime drag queen another shot at the big time: a baby triceratops that can out-dance even the youngest and most sickening divas in Los Angeles.
But the climb to the top isn’t going to be easy. Not only does she have to contend with her shade-throwing former friends, there’s a certain big game-hunting drag king with a vendetta and access to cybernetic technology. And what about all those bright lights in the sky and the shaking ground? Even if she can sashay around all of these obstacles, what is she going to do about her own family?
Drag Queen Dino Fighters is a fun and fabulous high-heeled adventure story that further proves why Wonderland Book Award winner MP Johnson is considered one of the most exciting rising stars in the bizarro fiction genre.
Last year, for the first time in a decade, Eraserhead Press opened its doors to unsolicited submissions. It was an overwhelming success! We discovered superb work from writers who were new to us as well as authors who we’ve loved for a long time. So, we’ve decided to do it again! If you have written a bizarro book you think belongs in our catalog, we want to hear from you!
Our reading period is April 1 – June 30, 2017.
From the submissions page:
What we are looking for:
Eraserhead Press is seeking original novellas and novels of 20,000 to 100,000 words in length that fit into the Bizarro Fiction category.
We want surprising, unique, well-crafted weird stories with compelling plots, eccentric characters, and never-before-seen concepts.
We want a balance of both plot and character – we love weird characters with weird problems in weird places. We are looking for exciting concepts that make people say “I have to read that!” and well-developed characters they can fall in love with along the way.
We’re most drawn to darkly absurd tales that are addictive to read and contain a strong emotional core. We love fiction that is both heart-rending and fun. While it may or may not be funny, we are interested in more than just a joke. If you can make us laugh and cry at the same time or if you can both gross us out and turn us on, we will love your book.
We are looking for entertaining and accessible stories that speak to a specific audience. Will your book appeal to vegan punks? Riot grrls? Overworked airline pilots? Cos-players? Fans of 80s New Wave? If you’ve identified the audience for your work, please tell us in your book description.
Multiple submissions are okay – during our open submission period we are open to reading as many manuscripts as you feel would meet our criteria but we are only interested in your best work. Bring it on!
We have high standards – we have been the leading publisher of Bizarro Fiction since 1999 and have worked with everyone from brand new authors to established heavy hitters. We have gained a cult following for our high-quality boundary-pushing weird fiction and are looking for books that will top everything else we’ve ever published. The best way to understand what we are looking for is to familiarize yourself with our catalog. If you feel you’ve written something completely unique that stands apart from everything being published today, then we want to see it!
Carlton Mellick III, the godfather of bizarro fiction, is back with a tribute to the unintentionally terrifying children’s commercials of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
Only Petey remembers the Fruit Fun cereal commercials of the 1980s. He remembers how warped and disturbing they were. He remembers the lumpy-shaped cartoon children sitting around a breakfast table, eating puffy pink cereal brought to them by the distortedly animated mascot, Berry Bunny. The characters were creepier than the Sesame Street Humpty Dumpty, freakier than Mr. Noseybonk from the old BBC show Jigsaw. They used to give him nightmares as a child. Nightmares where Berry Bunny would reach out of the television and grab him, pulling him into her cereal bowl to be eaten by the demented cartoon children.
When Petey brings up Fruit Fun to his friends, none of them have any idea what he’s talking about. They’ve never heard of the cereal or seen the commercials before. And they’re not the only ones. Nobody has ever heard of it. There’s not even any information about Fruit Fun on google or wikipedia. At first, Petey thinks he’s going crazy. He wonders if all of those commercials were real or just false memories. But then he starts seeing them again. Berry Bunny appears on his television, promoting Fruit Fun cereal in her squeaky unsettling voice. And the next thing Petey knows, he and his friends are sucked into the cereal commercial and forced to survive in a surreal world populated by cartoon characters made flesh.
From the cult author of Cuddly Holocaust, Cannibals of Candyland, and I Knocked Up Satan’s Daughter, comes an absurd horror tale that pulls you in and never lets go.
This spring, we are hatching a unique hard-boiled crime story by Michael Allen Rose, Embry: Hard-boiled.
A darkly comic noir about a chicken living in a world of anthropomorphic eggs who’s wanted for a murder he didn’t commit.
Life’s tough for an “embry.” Considered a vestigial organ at best and a parasite at worst, chicken embryos are usually aborted by the egg folk early in life. Once in a while one survives and slips through, hatching into an embry, an ostracized, lower caste anthropomorphic chicken. They have their own ghettos, and are barely tolerated by polite society. Our hero wakes up one day to find that some upstanding citizens have been scrambled. The king, his horses and his men are now after our hero for a crime he didn’t commit and proving his innocence is going to be nearly impossible. Thank goodness he’s armed with spurs, or the rotten eggs prowling the alleys of this strange grocery item city would fry him good. Delving deeper and deeper into the mystery, Embry uncovers his own bizarre background and finds he is hunted by a secret society who revere the most famous egg of all time, the very egg he himself emerged from during the great fall.
From the author of Boiled Americans and Party Wolves in My Skull comes a dystopian crime story that will have you asking: Which comes first, the chicken or egg?
The Orphanarium is a surreal dystopian novel reminiscent of early bizarro works like Lost in Cat Brain Land by Cameron Pierce and Sea of the Patchwork Cats by Carlton Mellick III, as well as the poetic dreamscapes of Richard Brautigan and Hayao Miyazaki.
Here is us. We are here in the Orphanarium. Think: a city in a massive box, vacuum-sealed tight. No one is allowed outside. Here, people are born out of the air or made like computers and put together. Daff is me and Dil is you and together we are twins pulled from the same vacuum of space. Cyberia is our friend android and she has a window in her head, a sphere like a crystal mind monitor. Our pet is called Killy, a cyborg dog who was born out of the air like you and me, but has since been built up with robot parts so she can live longer.
This is the way things are. And the way things are right now is all about the situation with the Elementals. Some people are calling it a war. For others, it’s more of a slaughter. Us or them, it’s never specified. We try so hard to stay alive but the chaos spills through the walls onto us. There is no control. But there’s always talk of what’s going on outside the Orphanarium. Whispers of what’s happening out there, while we’re over here surrounded by candylions grazing on their holographic grass. Truth is we don’t know until we find out.
We are thrilled to announce that this year Eraserhead Press will be releasing a new book every month! Stay tuned for more details on our full 2017 release schedule and get the new year started off right with EXERCISE BIKE by Carlton Mellick III. This book is a dark and twisted body horror comedy set in a health food dystopia. If you enjoyed Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes and The Terrible Thing That Happens, this is the third release in the line of new “manga sized” novellas that you’ll want to add to your collection.
There is something wrong with Tori Manetti’s new exercise bike. It is made from flesh and bone. It eats and breathes and poops. It was once a billionaire named Darren Oscarson who underwent years of cosmetic surgery to be transformed into a human exercise bike so that he could live out his deepest sexual fantasy. Now Tori is forced to ride him, use him as a normal piece of exercise equipment, no matter how grotesque his appearance.
Set in a health food dystopia, “Exerice Bike” is an absurd horror tale of domination and submission, power and obedience, desire and desperation, from Wonderland Book Award winner Carlton Mellick III. Buy now!
Are you a writer looking to improve your craft in 2017? Here are five writing classes recommended by our owner/publisher Rose O’Keefe. (Plus one bonus class for people interested in cover design).
Lit Reactor is one of my favorite sites for online classes, so I’ll start with a few classes that they have coming up in January 2017:
“There’s an art to action fiction. And SEAL TEAM 666 author Weston Ochse—a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier—will show you how it’s done.”
I have been a fan of Weston Ochse’s writing for nearly 20 years. His prose is tight and riveting. If you are interested in improving the action in your work, this is the guy to learn from.
Short Story Mechanics: Find the Framework with Richard Thomas “In two weeks, Richard Thomas will help you nail the mechanics of the short story. Perfect if you’re a beginner, but anyone who wants to do some serious, fast-and-furious writing is welcome.“
Another excellent writer to learn from, Richard Thomas is offering a class on the essential elements needed to craft a good story. The focus of this class is short story writing, but the principles can easily be applied to novel writing, as well.
“In this four-week workshop, you’ll work with J.S. Breukelaar to create characters, structures, and settings that defy convention and push you into unfamiliar—and daring—territory.”
American Monster was published by Lazy Fascist Press and was a finalist for the Wonderland Book Award last year. If you are interested in stretching conventional boundaries and exploring ways to make your writing more weird, I would trust J.S. Breukelaar to show you how!
This is a 10-week class for experienced authors, including professional writers, who are revising their work and for beginning writers hoping to jump start a novel (or even a poetry cycle, short story collection, memoir). Email francesca.block@gmail.com.
Another writer whose work I have been a fan of since my early twenties. I can not recommend her highly enough! If you do not take this class, you should at the very least be reading her books which are filled with magic, whimsy and love!
Synopsis and Queries: How Do They Work? with Curtis C. Chen
Summarizing your work can be a daunting task, and it’s an essential skill required for getting your work published. Eraserhead Press will be open to submissions again in April 2017, so if you want some help preparing your synopsis and query, I highly recommend this one.
I’ve been a supporter of the Clarion West workshop for years and several of the top authors that we publish have been through their phenomenal six-week residential workshop which is also now open for applications, here.
Not writing related, but equally noteworthy I’d also like to recommend a BONUS WORKSHOP for people interested in cover design:
“Learn the basics of graphic design as they apply to the publishing industry with acclaimed graphic designer Matthew Revert in this four-week workshop.”
Matthew Revert has designed hundreds of book covers for work published in the Bizarro Fiction scene and is one of the top designers working in the small press industry. I love his work and am very excited to see him teaching. I recommend this class for anyone artistically inclined who wants to have some fun.
CRAZY EBOOK SALE! TODAY only, over 200 titles in our catalog are just $0.99 each. Find books from all imprints and popular authors!
Here’s a complete list:
It’s getting on the most Bizarro time of year! November brings not only BizarroCon, the biggest gathering of Bizarro authors in the world but also brand new Bizarro books for the discriminating weirdo. This year, we have not just another book by Southern fried pulpmaster David W Barbee but also a bizarro dark comedy by skillful Tiffany Scandal! You could order them when they come out next week (Nov 18th) or, if you’re really excited (which you should be), you can preorder them now!
He was just another man with a drinking problem. Only, alcohol transformed this man into a beastly hulk named Piggly Swiggly. And since he’s always drunk, big and brutal Piggly has drowned his human half in a sea of booze.
After yet another rampaging bender, Piggly Swiggly awakes in a sprawling metropolis full of crocodile zeppelins, greasy bacon addicts, and worse: prohibition. Trapped in this strange tee-totaled town, he must keep his buzz going or else revert to his weak and vulnerable human form. But even then, Piggly Swiggly’s depraved existence may prove his undoing, especially when gangsters are plotting to cut off his snout, a pig-loving princess is looking to steal his heart, and he must face the worst torture of all…sobriety.
“One of the most exciting new voices to emerge in years. A deft, masterful mix of both bizarro and horror.”–Brian Keene, author of The Rising and Ghoul
“Dark and grim and surreal.” —Electric Literature
Mondays suck. You get mugged, your car won’t start, you miss the bus, and your stylist burns a bald spot into your head. Suddenly you’re single and unemployed, and the only friend you have left is a cat. By Tuesday, you’ve been murdered. But death isn’t the end. You find yourself on an odyssey between weird worlds, reborn each time you die, stalked obsessively by the man who killed you.
Even in death, you just can’t seem to catch a break. Call it Mercury in retrograde, call it Murphy’s law, call it . . .SHIT LUCK
***
And of course, bizarro fans know that November also brings something else to look forward to: The New Bizarro Author Series. Every year, Eraserhead Press seeks out the best new talent in bizarro fiction. This year, we bring you four wild, weird and unique new bizarro books for your reading pleasure and you can be the first kid on your block to own ’em! The books don’t come out until the 17th but you can make sure you get them as soon as humanly possible. How? By preordering them now.
The Sky hates Kyle. He’s not sure exactly what he did to anger The Sky, but now, Kyle’s life is a nightmare. He loses his job, his girlfriend leaves him, not to mention he’s assaulted by hail, rain, flying condoms and anything the sky can possibly throw at him. Trees fall on his house, and hurricanes are sent after him. And that’s just the beginning. Enigmatic emissaries of The Sky come and lend their brand of aid, which only succeeds in sending Kyle on a journey into madness, crime, redemption, sexual indiscretions and despair. Can Kyle make peace with The Sky, or will the entire world always conspire against him?
How much longer can I live like this, if one can call this living?
The question haunts Bill Vine, an adipose junkie with a mean McRecycling habit, as he goes about the business of resupplying his dwindling stores of body fat. But then one day he has an intimate encounter with the deadly but alluring black goo and crosses over into the neo-reality of Tetraminion. In this new world, a degenerate species of enslaved mutants serve as the primary source for gringe, an unspeakable substance distributed by a faceless cabal known as The System. Intent on more than controlling the supply of gringe, The System will exploit Bill’s innermost secrets and fears.
Being a teenager is awkward. Being a teenager when you’re attracted to your aunt is even more awkward. Being a teenager when you’re attracted to your aunt who happens to be a seventies pin-up poster hanging in your uncle’s bathroom is almost unbearable. Aunt Poster is a coming of age story like you’ve never seen before, a tale of guilt, lust and obsession with no easy answers. Can love conquer all this awkwardness? Probably not.
A wolf with guitar strings. A turtle turned into drum. An alligator girl transformed into a synthesizer. A golden retriever converted into a theremin. These animals are the lifeblood of prog/noise group 2666. The beasts live in slavery until a sentient golden ax teaches them that they can be free. Their human masters are ruthless, cruel and desperate for fame but for these creatures, life and freedom is at stake. The instruments of 2666 will fight and die for it.
