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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Tall Tales with Short Cocks

by Bizarro Press

Giveaway ends May 25, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Available on Kindle & Paperback!

Tall Tales with Short Cocks: A Bizarro Press Anthology

Featuring:

Zietgeist
by
Arthur Graham

The Night of the Walrus 
by
Gabino Iglesias

HELP! MY ASS HAS RABIES!
by
 Adam Millard

The Zombies of Kilimanjaro
by
Jon Konrath

I am a Whale
by
Robin Wyatt Dunn

Yappy the Happy Squirrel
by
Dominic O'Reilly

In The Flesh
by
John McNee

Mouse Trap
by
Wol-vriey

Regressive
by
Nathan J.D.L. Rowark

A collection of Bizarro Fiction that will have you thinking “WTF? I gotta read what happens next!”

Interview with Adam Millard


Recently we had our own Arthur Graham sit down and email Adam Millard about his D-Level celebrity and Dead Cells series. Oh, and his contribution to the Bizarro Fiction Anthology: Tall Tales with Short Cocks "HELP, MY ASS HAS RABIES!" by Bizarro Press.

AG: You are the founder/owner of Crowded Quarantine Publications. Based on the name, I would imagine that everyone there is quite sick.

AM: Yeah, we're all pretty sick all of the time. I don't know how we manage to get anything done. We have good medicine, and try not to infect the rest of the population by not biting, bleeding on, or having sex with them. I run a tight ship, making sure that everyone is tucked up in their solitary-confinement units by nine at night. It's worked so far. Though medicine is becoming more expensive, thanks to the British government, so I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it contained.

AG: Is a nation's probability of experiencing a zombie epidemic proportional to its rejection of universal healthcare? Will world governments provide access to the vaccine, or will they cynically withhold it as a means of population control?

AM: I believe that we are only months, if not days, away from experiencing the Zompocalypse. The warning signs are all there: mass coronal ejections, governmental disharmony, Snookie and Kim Kardashian. Anyone can see we are all doomed. And when it happens, the government will snipe Stephen Hawking from whatever he's up to - probably playing a nice game of chess or something, against himself - and have him tied in a basement until a vaccine is created. Then, Hawking will take a bullet to the back of the head, the President, the PM and their cronies will all get vaccines, and sell the rest to the wealthy. The poor will succumb to the infection, the rich will live on massive boats built by the second-coming of Noah, and that will be that.

AG: Many of your books reference the word "dead" in their titles -- Dead West, Dead Cells, Dead Frost... CQP recently published an anthology entitled Wake Up Dead. I take it you're a bit of a necrophiliac?

AM: I used to be. Then I got dumped by a pretty nasty bitch of a zombie, and decided to try something new. It's amazing how much more responsive a living woman is in comparison to a dead one. I'm not so self-conscious now. It can be a bit embarrassing being unable to bring a body to climax. Thankfully I met my wife - though she wasn't my wife when I met her - and I'm much happier now.

AG: Tell us about your experience at the 2012 Cardiff Comic Expo. You served as a panelist back in February?

AM: Cardiff was a fantastic weekend. The amount of fans that turned up specifically for my books was overwhelming. And the panel was so much fun. It was "Horror Is Dead", and we tried for an hour not so slate the Twilight Phenomenon. It was tough. It was an honour appearing on a panel with Robin Furth (Stephen King's researcher) and Wayne Simmons (Fellow horror hack). It was the first panel I've done, and I will be trying to recreate the magic at the upcoming Bristol Comic Expo, where we will be doing another panel, this time with Wayne Simmons, Scot Stanford (The Darker Side Of Oz) and Ryan Brown (Berserker Studios).

AG: Aside from the current YA craze, zombie fiction seems to be one of the most popular genres around today. How do you explain this mainstream appeal when, only a decade ago, zombies were still much more of a niche thing?

AM: It appears to have come from nowhere. I think it might be a counter-attack on the copious amounts of sparkly-vampire bullshit currently doing the rounds. I've been made aware of several upcoming publications/movies, though, where it's just fine to fall in love with a zombie, and have - in the words of Bill Clinton - "sexual relations" with them. Romance has no place in mainstream horror, as far as I'm concerned. How would Mills and Boon fans like it if suddenly the heroine bit off a man's cock? I expect there would be uproar. Zombies should not be capable of love, and having sex with one would infect the rest of the population in a relatively short amount of time. So, yeah, I think it's something of a rebellion that the genre is doing so well. Everyone loves a bit of gore. I bet Mary Whitehouse loved The Evil Dead, really, and was just trying to get on TV.

AG: Give us an example of a genre-bender that has actually worked, or one that you think would work.

AM: I think From Dusk Till Dawn worked so well. The first hour are trademark Tarantino - wisecracking gangsters and witty banter - and then BOOM! Stripper vampires everywhere. When I first watched that movie, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was just perfect, and remains one of my favourite movies of all time. Not the sequels, though. Piss-poor.

AG: I recently read your "HELP! MY ASS HAS RABIES!" in Tall Tales with Short Cocks, the upcoming anthology from Bizarro Press. Would it be fair to describe it as "Dead Alive meets X-Files at McDonald's"? Or are such comparisons unwarranted?

AM: That's a very good description. When I started to write it, I knew that it had to be over-the-top and ridiculous. Those films were a heavy influence on me as a kid. Dead Alive, Evil Dead, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama; I love good, wholesome films like that. Setting the story in a fast-food restaurant was something I knew had to be done. Everyone is familiar with the surroundings, and can relate to them. They may have to suspend belief, however, with the rest of the story, as it could be described as "a little far-fetched." I had a lot of fun writing "Help! My Ass Has Rabies!" and hope that people enjoy it.

AG: I generally find it harder to suspend my disbelief when watching/reading mainstream news. Aren't stories written without corporate sponsorship easier to swallow, fictional or otherwise?

AM: I agree. We have a newspaper here called The Daily Sport, and it only has one page of sport in it. The rest is photographs of the female form in all its splendour, and stories that even I would struggle to come up with. I find those stories - Elvis found hiding in a hole in a Chester garden, El-Chupacabra is actually Bill Gates in a costume - a lot easier to believe than our national newspapers' stories. I don't believe half of the shit that's apparently true, such is the state of our country and its current affairs. If someone had told me a few years ago that we would be in this mess, I would have laughed, asked for a large order of whatever they were smoking, and yet here we are, struggling to put petrol in the car, being charged air-tax and given fart-penalties. It's craziness.

AG: Who would win in a fist fight between Margaret Thatcher (circa 1980) and Hilary Clinton (circa 2001)?

AM: Thatcher. Without a doubt. If Denis Thatcher had pulled that shit on Margaret she'd have been wearing his balls for earrings for months after. I think, even now, Clinton wouldn't stand much of a chance. Thatcher was called The Iron Lady for a reason, and that reason is this: She is actually constructed from scrap-iron, and was built in Chuck Norris's garage as a little side-project.

AG: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, Adam. Anything else you'd care to mention?

AM: Thanks for having me, and Tall Tales With Short Cocks is out now from Bizarro Press.

About the Author

Arthur Graham is a professional editor and part time novella-ist. He also has a crappy cell phone and still has to pay for texts because he hasn't updated his plan since 2005.

His first book, "Editorial", was self-published in 2010 and was warmly embraced by critics. Unfortunately it never seemed to catch the general public's attention, probably because they never knew it existed.

Bizarro Press is pleased to bring a reworked and streamlined version of "Editorial" to the marketplace. With more pictures and some rewrites, this edition is even better than the first edition, which was already some pretty fucking good bizarro fiction.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Bad Ass Bible

by Harry F. Kane

Giveaway ends May 15, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Available now on Kindle!!!

We get a lot of submissions, and most of them SUCK! So when I first started reading this, I was relieved that it was un-sucky. As I began to get into the story, the author kept doing this thing where he would repeat a phrase. The first time it happened it was unexpected, and it really just sent a quiver down my spine that sucky shit tends to do. But, I gave him the benefit of the doubt until he did it again.

Then I got PISSED! I couldn’t believe that he was doing this! It was so well written, but he kept doing this THING. My mind SCREAMED “Why does he keep fucking doing that!” Until I got to the first time God talks, and I laughed so hard my neighbors probably thought I was drunk on Sunday at 11 am again.

I got it. IT WAS A JOKE! And it was the most original joke I’d ever heard! (Well, read actually.) The author does this “word loop” thing throughout the book, almost like a DJ loops in phrases to a song. I realized I was reading the literary equivalent of Andy Warhol’s “Campbell Soup”. The “word loops” add a beat to the flow of the book like a chorus to a song. It’s AMAZING! And just when it starts to get old he remixes it on you.

The book is a mashup of your favorite Sunday School hits and pop culture. From Hunter Thompson, to Tolkien, to “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and more. The book is FUCKING AWESOME, and Bizarro Press is proud to be publishing it.

Interview With Jon Konrath


Recently we sat down with Jon Konrath and talked about a bunch of nerd shit as well as his submission to the Bizarro Fiction Anthology: Tall Tales with Short Cocks "The Zombies of Kilimanjaro" by Bizarro Press.

BP: Soooo, what are you wearing? (I never know how to start these things off right.)

JK: I work from home these days, so I'm almost always wearing the same exact thing: jeans and a t-shirt, tennis shoes.  The shirt is one of those old-school Milwaukee Brewers shirts, the one with the logo that's a glove with a ball in it.  (Milwaukee's not my favorite team; I just buy most of my clothes in airport gift shops, and I end up at Mitchell airport a lot.)

BP: Ya, but they're named after beer.... Anyways, sounds like a tough commute. So what's your "real" job?

JK: I work as a technical writer for a big software company that nobody's heard of.  I had a programming background in college, but hit the wall when it came to math.  I started writing around then, and totally lucked into tech writing, right around the time the internet really exploded in the mid-90s.

There's not too much crossover between my job and writing fiction.  I think people expect me to eventually write some Office Space thing about corporate culture.  Maybe some of my need to write absurdist fiction comes from that.  And I guess I learned a lot about the tools I used to self-publish, page layout programs and distilling PDFs and that kind of junk.

BP: I could tell that you did some form of editing or writing when I read "The Zombies of Kilmanjaroo". You didn't make a lot of the mistakes most people do. So are you one of those formatting Nazi's that gets all pissed off when you see a ";" or a ":" used incorrectly?

JK: Nah, I don't get that pissed off about formatting, although it's hard to avoid sometimes.  Like I grew up in Indiana, and although there are plenty of people who can spell there, every time I go back, I see some incredibly illiterate hand-painted signs that make me want to stop the car, get out a can of spray-paint, and do some quick edits.

That said, I probably have tons of typos in my books that I've stared at so many times, I don't notice them.  I am thinking of doing what Cory Doctorow did, and asking everyone to email me their corrections, in exchange for a thank you footnote in a future version of the book.

BP: Whenever I picture Indiana in my head all I see is a bunch of white guys in short shorts playing basketball. Is that an accurate description?

JK: Well, there's meth labs, too.  I actually went to high school with NBA all-star Shawn Kemp, so between that, being a hundred miles down the road from the Bulls during the Michael Jordan era, and then going to college at Indiana University during the Bobby Knight era, there was a hell of a lot of basketball.

I wasn't exactly a star athlete when I was a kid -- spent most of my time obsessed with Star Wars and Commodore computers and Dungeons and Dragons.  I guess all of that's cool now, but back then, it was like wearing an Obama t-shirt to a Klan rally.  So my time in Indiana was pretty depressing, and I spent every second of it trying to figure out how to get the hell out.

I wrote a lot about Indiana when I was still writing "straight" literary fiction, before really getting into the absurd stuff.  My first book, Summer Rain, was about spending a summer at a college campus, trying to figure out what to do in life.  I also wrote a lot of short stories about that era, but now that stuff bores me.  Indiana still comes up a lot in my newer stuff, but mostly when I need a setting that verges on the post-apocalyptic, which is pretty much what the state looks like, now that all of the manufacturing jobs have vanished.

BP: Do you still get all boned-up when you see a 20 sided die?

JK: There's still a certain nostalgia to it.  Maybe every year or so, I'll fall down this k-hole and start googling Gary Gygax, or looking for those old books on eBay.  (I think I sold mine off for pennies on the dollar for beer money back in college.)  But I haven't seriously tried to get into playing again.  I think part of it is when you're a kid, it's so easy to focus large amounts of time on stuff like that, and it would be easier for me to build a functioning helicopter than it would be to get four or five adults in a room for three hours straight every week.  Like, I've got a nephew that's 14, and is really into that game Minecraft.  It looks awesome, so I installed it, thinking I'd build an aircraft carrier or a scale Astrodome or something, and about seven minutes later, I'm thinking, "I've got shit to do - there is no way in hell I can make 347 more mortgage payments and focus on this thing."

I also wonder if D&D would lose its allure in the internet age.  I think half of the fun for me was we could only get the books and figures at one store in our town, a Kay-Bee Toys, and they only had the most popular stuff, so we had to really search to find the rare stuff, like drive to Chicago or mail away for a xeroxed catalog to a PO box somewhere. So when I did run across a copy of some rare module at a garage sale, it was a huge win.  Now, you could just google that shit, buy it from Amazon, or find it on eBay.  It's probably not as rewarding.

BP: I think your right man, I'm pretty sure all those kids play WOW now or something. It really is amazing how fast the internet changed everything. 

You talk about a lot of hard drug use in "The Earworm Inception". Soooo, do you like to party?

JK: I'm too old for that shit.  I wake up every day feeling like it was new year's the night before, even when I'm stone cold sober.  I think my days of drinking a gallon of rum and puking in the middle of a high-end steakhouse are behind me.

I think most of the drug use in "The Earworm Inception" was self-medication, along the theme of how to make life complete or finding your place in the modern world.  There's this recurring character that's introduced in "The Chapman Protocol Conundrum"  that's a prescription-happy shrink, and that's something I constantly ponder, because I can't go to a podiatrist for a hangnail without someone trying to write me a prescription for Lipitor.  Between allergies and mood, I'm taking more pills per day than my grandparents were taking on their deathbed, but I also am fascinated by the idea that there could be medications that somehow unlock parts of your brain that would completely change your world.

BP: Who's going to the World Series this year?

JK: I don't know, because they changed the way the postseason works this year, and there will be two wildcard teams per league.  I think they only did this to guarantee that the Yankees and Red Sox will always go to the postseason, because those TV executives have boat payments to make.

I think for the AL, it's pretty much locked down to Rangers, Tigers, Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, in that order, with a chance of Tampa making the fifth spot if New York or Boston really screws something up.  For the NL, it's harder to predict, and there will be a close race in the NL West.  I'm still a Rockies fan from when I lived in Denver, but they have to get past the Giants and D'Backs, which would take some kind of Buster Posey in 2011 broken leg injuries on those teams, plus a lot of luck with their pitching.

I'd ultimately like to see a couple of teams that don't normally go to make it, like a Rays-Brewers matchup, but it will probably be something boring like a Phillies-Yankees matchup, which is like watching a demolition derby where everyone's driving indestructible armored cars.

BP: It pisses me off that the Rangers magically got good. I used to be able to walk around in my Tigers shit and not get shit about it. Dallas fans are assholes.

Well, any closing thoughts?

JK: Thanks for the interview, and I'm looking forward to seeing the anthology get in the hands of the readers.  Make sure to check me out over at my home on rumored.com, or on twitter over at @jkonrath.  Also, that answer about how to make your own full-auto AK-47 from stuff you can get at Home Depot was just a joke, so make sure to cut that question out of the final interview.  Thanks!

BP: No problem, thanks for contributing to our anthology of Bizarro Fiction: Tall Tales with Short Cocks.

New Releases
Editorial: Bizarro Press Edition