Best Collection: The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook by Robert Guffey (Madness Heart Press)
“Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly.“-James Morrow, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape
The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It’s academic research that’s shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers. Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity.
In the pages of this handbook, you will learn about such chimerical illnesses as the Quantum Singularity Syndrome, Symmetrical Child Syndrome, Involuntary Dimensional Transits, Spontaneous Infant Combustion Syndrome, Black Hole Syndrome, Polyinfantalia, Shrinking Brain Syndrome, Muppetitis, Midwich Disease, and Oneirokyesis (known to some pediatricians as “Dream Baby Disease”). But fatal diseases are not the only purview of The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook. You’ll find out about the dangers of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, how to use your child as an assassin, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, in utero phone sex, the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, the mystery of the fetus-abducting Comprachicos, and a rare in-depth interview with Dracula about his attitudes regarding child raising, among many other illuminating tidbits of obscure but vital historical data.
Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.
Robert Guffey is a lecturer in the Department of English at California State University – Long Beach. His most recent books are THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORAMTION HANDBOOK (Madness Heart Press, 2024), CRYPTOPOLIS AND OTHER STORIES (Lethe Press, 2024), DEAD MONKEY RUM (Planet Bizarro Press, 2023), and OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON AND THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP (OR Books, 2022), which Alan Moore described as “jaw-dropping and essential.” His other books include the Wonderland Award-nominated collection, WIDOW OF THE AMPUTATION AND OTHER WEIRD CRIMES (Eraserhead Press, 2021), the Rondo Award-nominated novel, BELA LUGOSI’S DEAD (Crossroad Press, 2021), the darkly satirical, apocalyptic novel UNTIL THE LAST DOG DIES (Night Shade/Skyhorse, 2017), which award-winning novelist Adam-Troy Castro called “one of the great books of the year,” the journalistic memoir CHAMELEO: A STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF INVISIBLE SPIES, HEROIN ADDICTION, AND HOMELAND SECURITY (OR Books, 2015), which Flavorwire called, “By many miles, the weirdest and funniest book of [the year],” the novella collection SPIES AND SAUCERS (PS Publishing, 2014), and CRYPTOSCATOLOGY: CONSPIRACY THEORY AS ART FORM (TrineDay, 2012). A graduate of the famed Clarion Writers Workshop in Seattle, he has written for numerous publications, among them The Believer, The Evergreen Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Mailer Review, Phantom Drift, Postscripts, Rosebud, and Salon.
Best Novel: Nympho Shark Fuck Frenzy by Christine Morgan & Susan Snyder (Madness Heart Press)
He is RIPTIDE.
The only great white shark successfully raised in captivity. The star attraction of Oceanview Aquarium. Feared and revered by adoring fans, he is king of his solitary realm, master of his domain.
He has no knowledge of the wild, the open seas, the hunt and the kill, or others of his own kind. For him, there is only the One. Who feeds him has cared for him since he was a pup.
The One. So different, but so beautiful. He yearns for her to fulfill his new needs, urges he’s just beginning to understand. Then a tragic disaster leads to him being torn from his known, safe world and hurtled into another. A strange world of hungers and desires and unfamiliar touch. A world from which not even the One may be able to save him.
“The title alone says it all and demonstrates the most brazen horror title since Ant Farm Dick-Hole. Being provocative is any author’s duty, and this Bible-length story is an exhibition of sheer originality and wanton outrage. Indeed, Morgan and Snyder show that they carry bigger BALLS than anyone else in the genre with Nympho Shark Fuck Frenzy!” – Edward Lee, Author of The Bighead
Christine Morgan divides her writing time among many genres, from horror to historical, from superheroes to smut, anything in between and combinations thereof. She’s a future crazy-cat-lady and a longtime gamer, who enjoys British television, cheesy action/disaster movies, cooking, and crafts. Which latter two led the Bizzong! podcast to refer to her as “The Martha Stewart of extreme horror,” so make of that what you will!
She is the author of multiple novels, including the Splatterpunk Award-winning LAKEHOUSE INFERNAL. Her short stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, as well as several collections. An active member of the extreme horror and bizarro communities, she also reviews, and takes on the occasional editing/proofreading gig.
The past few years have seen her through many life-upheavals, including leaving her 30-year residential psych career, moving out of state, serving as her mother’s full-time caregiver, and attempting to manage a tangled mess of family estate and probate. She’s currently hiding out in the high desert with her quirky recluse father, waiting to see what happens next. She is always glad to hear from readers, as well as other authors (and hey, agents, publishers, movie people, it’s all good!)
Susan Snyder is a two-time Splatterpunk award nominee and writer of extreme horror fiction and horror poetry. She has two raw and personal poetry collections, Broken Nails and Picking Scabs. Educated as a marine biologist, her non-fiction book Encyclopedia Sharksploitanica is a tongue-in-cheek love letter to shark movies. Her new collaborative novel Nympho Shark Fuck Frenzy was released in 2024. New in 2025, Ten Words for a Wicked Woman explores her own personal struggle as a woman with Gonzo-style self-deprecating humor and a sharp eye toward hypocrisy.
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Congratulations to the winners, runners-up, honorable mentions, all the authors and publishers from your friends at Bizarro Central. We are excited to see what art blossoms in the wake of 2025 and what 2026 will bring.
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