rick claypool
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rick claypool writes absurdist horror

NOW AVAILABLE FROM ANXIETY PRESS
SKULL SLIME TENTACLE WITCH WAR
a new novel by Rick Claypool
buy now
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“Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War is unlike anything I’ve ever read, exuding a rare confidence I did not know still existed. Rick Claypool has single-handedly introduced a combo-breaker of a novel that’s absolutely going to inspire the next generation of weird writers. I know it. Mark my words. Please.”
-Mike Kleine, author of Third World Magicks

“Rick Claypool’s latest is a sort of mucosal fable. Dark, gloopy and hilarious, imagine 80s Verhoeven body horror meets the knife-sharp staccato prose of James Ellroy, with a dash of Beckett for absurd measure. A very funny and very weird book.”
-Oliver Zarandi, author of Soft Fruit In The Sun
"Nonstop insanity with a charming Bizarro family at its core. Claypool gets you emotionally invested in a guy that pukes knives and possibly the most disgusting baby ever. It's goop with heart."
-Lor Gislason, author of Inside Out

“Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War made me feel like a demented child listening to a disturbed uncle from outer space tell me bedtime stories intended to either keep me awake forever or convert me into an acolyte of his specific, absurd, and horrifically cartoonified madness. Heck of a book. I read it and survived.”
-Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands

“Abrasive, abrupt, and absurd, Claypool has crafted a well-oiled machine designed to sow mayhem and misanthropy throughout our diseased cosmos.”

- Andrew F. Sullivan, author of The Marigold
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TENTACLE HEAD (2022), free ebook now available.

“Tentacle Head is like if the Garbage Pail Kids got their own moon and then made you feel sorry for them. It’s weird, wild, gross, funny, and strangely moving -- a story about survival among things that aren’t supposed to survive.”
-Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You

"Like The Little Prince reimagined by David Cronenberg, Tentacle Head is a weird and wild beast. It's full of goo and gore, but beneath the ooze beats a great big human heart."
- Lincoln Michel, author of The Body Scout


"Equal parts grotesque and poignant, TENTACLE HEAD is a twisted story of family and friendship in a fungus-strewn nightmare world."
- Erica L. Satifka, author of How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters
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'A child’s imagination can be far more cruel and gloom-ridden than most would like to admit. In his nightmarish children’s book for adults, Claypool spins juvenile phantasmagoria into a parable with no moral; a striking and wholly unique tale of apocalypse and survivor’s guilt."
- B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space

Words by Rick Claypool, illustrations by Sarah Allen Reed

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THE MOLD FARMER (Six Gallery Press, 2020), available from Bookshop.org and everywhere books are sold.
 
"Fantastic" ... ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 
- Grimdark Magazine (full review)
 
"​deeply moving and empathetic ... an imaginative and gracious voice writing and struggling with the contradictions of our times. Long live The Mold Farmer in our pantheon of sci-fi horror classics."
-Vol. 1 Brooklyn (full review)
 
"​A wonderfully odd novella with a profoundly human core."
-Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World and The Warren
 
"a voice that held me in its grip ... fascinating, frightening"
-Aliya Whiteley, author of The Loosening Skin and The Beauty
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LEECH GIRL LIVES (Spaceboy Books, 2017), available from Bookshop.org and everywhere books are sold.

"A maximalist revolution in minimalist prose—if China Miéville wrote Saturday-morning cartoons."
– Nick Mamatas, author of The People's Republic of Everything
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“Wild and strange and endlessly entertaining; an epic post-apocalyptic cartoon dream-satire — like an Adult Swim version of Logan’s Run meets The Matrix in the world of Thundarr the Barbarian. One of a kind!”
​– Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying

"a deeply weird book and one that delights in its weirdness. It’s part old-school pulp and part new-school post-modernist playground"
-Locus Magazine (full review)

"Art world conspiracies at the warped twilight of civilization! Think Jonathan Lethem and Douglas Adams at a dinner party thrown by Judy Chicago. Leech Girl Lives offers an amped up vision of the reckless future."
-Tom Sweterlitsch, author of The Gone World

"a romp through B movie territory in the best way, full of sci-fi and horror and a nice throwback sensibility, too."
- Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World


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