Books by Cameron Pierce

THE PERFECT FATHER'S DAY GIFT!Since the earliest writings of civilization, people have been writing about fish and the pursuit of them. Taut Lines is a book of the present with regular forays into the past, reflecting not on where we're going, but where we've come from.As all anglers know, the fish themselves are only half of fishing. Finding peace, spirituality, or a sense of belonging in nature; the meditative tranquility that settles into the mind and body as you cast into the waters for hours on end; the companionship or, alternately, the solitude: these are some of the things that hook anglers as much as the fish. They are all explored in this book.In the name of variety, coverage has been extended to some fishes typically overlooked in fishing anthologies, up to the great white shark from Jaws, the most famous (and feared) fish in all of film and literature. There are as many types of fishing literature as there are fishermen. One of these is humorous stories about the follies that inevitably plague anglers. Several stories of this type are to be found in Taut Lines, including Rudyard Kipling's 'On Dry-Cow Fishing as a Fine Art' and Eric Witchey's 'Bats, Bushes, and Barbless Hooks.' Fishing is more than folly, however, and so many of the stories tackle more personal and profound subjects. Kevin Maloney's 'Soldiers By the Side of the Road', Gretchen Legler's 'Border Water', and Gabino Iglesias's 'Fourteen Pounds Against the World' are just three of many heartbreaking essays which prove that while fishing is an effective medicine for grief and loss, it can also lead to contemplations of death and mortality, both the fish's and our own. A passion for angling is most often passed down through families, and so many of the pieces in Taut Lines examine familial dynamics in relation to fishing, like 'Fish' by Judith Barrington and 'Unsound' by Nick Mamatas. There are great stories of big fish by angling legends such as Jeremy Wade, Bill Heavey, and Zane Grey, along with stories of daring rescues ('The Man in the Fish Tote' by Tele Aadsen) and war ('I Used to Be a Fisherman' by Weston Ochse), alongside a new modernized version of the first text written about sportfishing, 'Treatise of Fishing with an Angle' by Dame Juliana Berners and 'Fishing for a Cat' by Francis W. Mather, perhaps the earliest known essay devoted to catfish angling. There are also some long-lost classics, like former Atlantic editor Bliss Perry's 'Fishing with a Worm'.

The bacon storm is rolling in. We hear the grease and sugar beat against the roof and windows. The doughnut people are attacking. We press close together, forgetting for a moment that we hate each other. In Die You Doughnut Bastards, amputees, lonely young people, and talking animals struggle for survival against the freakish whims of nature. A typewriter made of fetuses is the source of woe for an expecting couple. Tao Lin rewrites The Human Centipede 2. A girl with a glass jaw hides an otherworldly secret. A demonic loner goes to a birthday party in Hell. You'll encounter a killer in a marsupial mask, a prison for anorexics, haunted pancakes, and a songwriter with a cult following. Surreal prose poems give way to personal accounts of alienation and modern love. Vegetarian narwhals are sold at the supermarket. And in a city that might be your own, zombie doughnuts are rising up. Kill yourself before they kill you. Or just kill yourself.Featuring original illustrations in the style of Daniel Johnston, Die You Doughnut Bastards is the latest way to drown, brought to you by Wonderland Book Award-winning author Cameron Pierce.

There's a new genre rising from the underground. Its name: BIZARRO. For years, readers have been asking for a category of fiction dedicated to the weird, crazy, cult side of storytelling that has become a staple in the film industry (with directors such as David Lynch, Takashi Miike, Tim Burton, and even Lloyd Kaufman) but has been largely ignored in the literary world, until now. The Bizarro Starter Kit features short novels and story collections by ten of the leading authors in the bizarro genre: Russell Edson, Athena Villaverde, David Agranoff, Matthew Revert, Andrew Goldfarb, Jeff Burk, Garrett Cook, Kris Saknussemm, Cody Goodfellow, and Cameron Pierce.

A demented fairy tale about a pickle, a pancake, and the apocalypse. It is Gaston Glew's sixteenth Sad Day - the sixteenth anniversary of the saddest day of his life: his day of birth - and his parents have just committed suicide. Fed up with the sadness of Pickled Planet, Gaston Glew builds a rocket ship and blasts off into outer space, hoping to escape his briny fate. Meanwhile, on Pancake Island, Fanny Fod, the most beautiful pancake girl in the world, nurses a secret sadness as she guards the origin of all happiness: the mysterious Cuddlywumpus. When Gaston's rocket ship crash-lands in the sea of maple syrup that surrounds Pancake Island, nothing will ever be the same for him, or for Fanny Fod.Captain Pickle says: "Unchain yourself from this briny fate, oh pickled prisoner, and read Cameron Pierce's The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island: A Tragedy for People Who Eat Food!"

Sad stories from a surreal world.A fascist mustache. A desert inside a dead cat. The ghost of Franz Kafka. Primordial entities mourn the death of their child. The desperate serve tea to mysterious creatures. A hopeless romantic falls in love with a pterodactyl.From a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where robotic gargoyles are law, to a blighted suburbia where the elephant god Ganesh seeks revenge on a man and his android wife, Cat Brain Land is a place of domestic despair and nightmare foreboding. Where sirloin steaks enroll in daycare and ex-lovers return as tiny dolls.This is a land of camel people and the Lord of Meat. The farther into Cat Brain Land you get, the more difficult it will be to get out.