Category Archives: Bizarro
Think YOU’RE My Weirdest Reader? Compete in WeirdBowl 2011!
As you may know, I recently announced a short story contest to promote my new book How To Eat Fried Furries. Good news for writers who read this blog.
But what about the readers?
Ahh, don’t think that you’re being left out. This month I have a contest for you. I call it the “WeirdBowl”, and the idea is to determine who my weirdest reader is. Here’s how it works.
1. Take a photo of yourself with a copy of How To Eat Fried Furries. (note: for this contest, it doesn’t make a difference if you purchased it on Amazon.com or at BizarroCon, or anywhere else. You are eligible either way). However, you do have to be 18 years of age or older to participate.
2. Stage the photo to be as bizarre as possible. Keep in mind I want to actually show these photos online…so there are some common sense limits prohibiting nudity. In other words, I am not interested in seeing your junk (or other personal body part). For legal reasons, it probably would be best if you also steered clear of sending me photos of yourself robbing a bank, shooting up heroin, urinating in public, well…you get the idea. Understood?
Now that I’ve made that disclaimer…let me just say this. I want you to show off your strange. The world may not appreciate it, but I do. Grotesque facial expressions (with or without teeth), haircuts or dye jobs gone awry, strange tattoos and piercings, body modifications, unusual, anachronistic clothing, fetish outfits that keep enough to the imagination,and odd visual backgrounds are all the sort of things I’m talking about. For this contest, if you’re an actual furry and want to show yourself reading the book while in costume, that would make my day, too.
But that’s not the point, really. Anyone weird enough can win this contest. Make me laugh. Make me cringe. But most of all, convince me that you’re weird enough to handle my stories. Weird enough to be a Cushingista!
3. Email the photo to furryfarmers (at) gmail (dot) com. Deadline is January 29th, 2011 at 11:59 p.m.
4. I will select two finalists. Then, from January 30th through February 6th (around the same time as the Big Game) visitors to NicoleCushing.com will vote on which reader is the weirdest, based on the photo alone. The winner will be announced Monday, February 7th.
5. PRIZES! Of course, I wouldn’t ask my readers to do any of this without the possibility of reward. The winner of WeirdBowl 2011 will receive the following:
A. A signed manuscript of “Eating Disorders Of The Living Dead” (the unpublished Dr. Seuss style poem that won 3rd Place at the 2010 Ultimate Bizarro Showdown).
B. A “re-gifting” collection of some of the very same prizes I won at BizarroCon, including
The “Hellina” dominatrix action figure…
a huge (foot high?) baby bottle inscribed with the messages “Self-Loathing Tastes Like Booze” and “I Am Your Lesser”…
a big yard waste bag scrawled with verbal abuse (“I am a lackluster human!”; “I am human refuse”)…
the book Alice Cooper, Golf Monster (enhanced by occasional, strange phrases written on top of the pages with magic marker).
C. An interview here on NicoleCushing.com
So what’s not to love about this, folks? You can start sending in your photos…NOW!
Party With Me This Saturday (Nov. 20th) At LAIR OF THE YAK
Couldn’t make it to the BizarroCon festivities celebrating the release of How To Eat Fried Furries?
No worries.
Blogstar’s LAIR OF THE YAK will be hosting an ONLINE book release party this Saturday, November 20th, at 9:00 p.m.
I’m putting this out there early in hopes that we’ll be able to get a full house of Cushingistas in the LAIR on Saturday. So SAVE THE DATE and TIME.
HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES Goes International! (First UK Sale)
The Sun (Almost) Never Sets On HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES
According to Amazon.co.uk, How To Eat Fried Furries has sold at least one copy overseas. I wonder who bought it. Prince Charles?
And The Winners Of Free FRIED FURRIES Are…
Congratulations to “dan” and “nmallen” for each winning a free copy of How To Eat Fried Furries in the I READ ODD BOOKS drawing.
I also want to take a moment to thank reviewer Anita Dalton, who thought up this whole promotion and purchased the books herself from Amazon so that they could be given away. Anita believes in the book, and in her review makes a compelling case why you should, too.
Didn’t win one of the free copies? Luckily, Fried Furries (and, really, all the Eraserhead Press titles) are priced with affordability in mind. It’s only $9.95 at Amazon.
Clock Ticks On FRIED FURRIES Give-A-Way At I READ ODD BOOKS
You have until 7:00 p.m. Pacific time to enter a drawing to win one of two FREE copies of my new book, How To Eat Fried Furries at the book review site I READ ODD BOOKS.
To enter the drawing, either post something in the comments section of today’s post (which, not coincidentally, happens to be a review of Fried Furries) OR retweet any of reviewer Anita Dalton’s tweets bearing the hashtag “bizarroweek”.
“What’s the occasion?”, you might ask.
This is Bizarro Week at I READ ODD BOOKS. Five Bizarro book reviews, and two drawings for free books (the second book being given away, on Thursday, is David W. Barbee’s Carnageland.)
Best of luck to all the contestants!
Check Out My Author Page At Amazon
The Mother of FRIED FURRIES Kisses The Father of Fried Chicken
Amazon.com now has a Nicole Cushing author’s page. Go visit it by clicking on the link, so that you, too, can join in the fun. Discover more about books that I’m in, and take part in cool discussions like “What is the future of Bizarro fiction?”
HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES Available For Pre-Order At Amazon
If you’re one of those readers who wants to be among the first to get a book in their hands, now might be a good time to pre-order HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES up at Amazon.com.
I really wasn’t expecting this one to be available for order at all until November 11th, but late last week I noticed that a few orders have been placed.
What can I say? Obviously the world is hungry for furries (or at the very least, furry-centric satire).
My guess is that copies will be in stock at Amazon fairly soon, before the book’s debut at BizarroCon. For more information on this one, check out my HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES F.A.Q. Page
What People More Famous Than I Am Are Saying About Me & HOW TO EAT FRIED FURRIES…
“Nicole Cushing is one of my faves in the new wave of Bizarro authors. There’s a focused intelligence and clarity at play throughout even the deepest patches of delirium — a genuine method to the unadulterated madness — that makes it so much more than merely weird.”
– New York Times Bestselling Author John Skipp
“Nicole Cushing may be a new name on the scene, but she is a pro who possesses the sharp wit of Donihe, Strand and Skipp…There is no doubt that her name will be popping up quite a bit more in fine bizarro publications. Check this one out!”
– Esteban Silvani, “Esteban’s House of Bizarro”, Dark Recesses Press
“Personally, I enjoyed every f***ed-up page of it.”
– Jeff Strand, author of Benjamin’s Parasite and Pressure
– Garrett Cook; author of Archelon Ranch, Jimmy Plush: Teddy Bear Detective and winner of the 1st Annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown
Skipp: “Nicole Cushing Is One Of My Faves In The New Wave Of Bizarro Authors”
Groovy Fact #1: My short story “All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Piggy Class” appears in the John Skipp mass market anthology Werewolves and Shape Shifters: Encounters With The Beast Within.
Groovy Fact #2: My story is in-between the same covers as work by H.P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Joe Lansdale, Chuck Palahniuk; as well as my bizarro buds Carlton Mellick III and Jeremy Robert Johnson.
Groovy Fact #3: The book is available at stores everywhere. In big box stores to little indie stores. And on Amazon.com.
Groovy Fact #4: Skipp has some complimentary things to say about my writing. Check this out (from Skipp’s intro to my story):
“Nicole Cushing is one of my faves in the new wave of Bizarro authors. There’s a focused intelligence and clarity at play throughout even the deepest patches of delirium — a genuine method to the unadulterated madness — that makes it so much more than merely weird.”
Huzzah!
Is Carlton Mellick III The New Isaac Asimov?
President Martin Van Buren: Like both Asimov and Mellick, he was bald, accomplished, and sideburned. Coincidence? I think not.
These days, I find it pretty easy to slip into thinking that science fiction has been around forever, and that it’s always been commercially successful (to varying degrees). There’s an entire subculture of fandom (or, if you prefer, “geekdom”), which has sprung up and become a second home for many readers who never found acceptance anywhere else. You can find SF published in hardback (even in Library of America editions). There is a Science Fiction Museum & Hall of Fame. There are multiple awards honoring high quality science fiction, in several different countries around the world.
You get my drift. SF is taken seriously. It must have always been that way. Right?
Well, no.
I’ve been reading (and re-reading) some fun essays by Isaac Asimov, collected in the early-80s (apparently out of print) volume Asimov On Science Fiction. And to hear the late Dr. Asimov tell it (in the essay “The Brotherhood of Science Fiction”), the authors in the late 1920s and 30s experienced a sense of “isolation” and “pariahhood” from the rest of fiction.
Asimov describes the Depression-Era SF scene as “the most disregarded portion of the pulp magazine field”. Woah…take a close look at that quote. Pulps were the least-respected, most disposable form of fiction around at the time. And even in that arena, early SF was looked down on. Asimov goes on to give us the gory details, referring to early SF as “the corner with the fewest opportunities and the smallest pay — the least of the least, so to speak.”
At this point in the essay it’s tempting to blow off Asimov as a cranky old codger who probably regaled the neighborhood kids with tales of how he walked uphill both ways through a blizzard to get to school. But then you take a look at some of the positives he identifies, and you realize he’s probably completely on the up-and-up.
You can almost see the gleam in Asimov’s eye as he recalls the “warmth and friendship” of the early SF community with transparent fondness. The way he describes the SF community back in the day sounds a little like how I hear long-time members of the Bizarro tribe talk about the easy-going friendliness among our own. He recalls how the SF community came to his assistance after a heart attack in the late 70s. He enthusiastically recalled “how our sense of union rises above any feeling of ‘competition’!” It was a tribe that hung together if for no other reason than self-defense. “And,” writes Asimov, “it followed that those who actually strove to write for the medium had to know that they did it for love and not for money, and they had to feel themselves to be a band of brothers (note: alas, no — or at least, very few, “sisters” back in those days). How could there be competition when there was neither money nor renown to compete for?”
Asimov, in fact, grieves for those who came to write in the genre it its later, fatter years because they missed out on the tight-knit community formed during the time of SF’s relative obscurity.
As a newer Bizarro author, Asimov’s essay gives me hope. Why? Do I literally believe that Carlton Mellick III is the next Isaac Asimov? That writing “for the love” (or for relatively low pay) is how I want to spend the entirety of my career? Or, to the contrary, that Bizarro is destined to become as great a commercial success as SF-proper? That answer to all of these questions is no.
Or at least, not yet.
But, for me, Asimov’s essay points out that respect (and, ultimately, profits) can come to those authors who follow the call of their muse no matter where it leads, the obvious commercial consequences at the time be damned. That literary evolution (like its biological counterpart) is constantly producing mutations that look like burdens in one era, but become adaptations in the next.
Litgressive 