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Irregular Creatures [Kindle Edition]

Chuck Wendig
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Contained within are nine stories featuring bizarre beasties, mythological mutants, and overall “irregular creatures” – including flying cats, mermaids, Bigfoot, giant chickens, and mystic hobo hermaphrodites.

Features 45,000 words of horror, fantasy, science-fiction and humor.

The collection features the following nine tales:

DOG-MAN AND CAT-BIRD (A FLYING CAT STORY)

Joe’s got job woes and family problems, and it’s made all the more complicated by a cat who dies on his porch one night – or, so Joe believes. The cat is not only dead, but it appears to be some kind of improbable mutant: a cat with wings. The cat initially complicates Joe’s life as he hides it from his family, but he soon learns that more may be at stake than he realized. Little does he know, a battle for good and evil, between Heaven and Hell, is about to be fought in his garage.

A RADIOACTIVE MONKEY

That bartender you really like, well, she just whipped up a potent cocktail called a “Radioactive Monkey.” Would you drink it? (Hint: you shouldn’t.) Jonny Stoops, however, decided to take the plunge. (Hint: it doesn't end well.)

PRODUCT PLACEMENT

Imagine one morning you wake up and you discover that the world is now home to products you don’t recognize but everyone else does. Flix candy bars? Jack Kenny whiskey? Burrito Hut? Donnie’s never heard of these brands, but those around him say such products are beloved and have been here for years. Donnie’s quest to discover the truth – and prove he’s not nuts – reveals a marketing and advertising scheme not of this dimension.

THIS GUY

"Every day, I catch him before he makes it to the China Skillet... I drag him into the alleyway, and I beat him with a tire iron. Sometimes, I stab him with a kitchen knife. I do this every day. I think it's starting to affect me." Every day is the same for the protagonist: get up, drive to work, and on the way there, beat some zombie to death. Next day? Zombie’s back. It would take a toll on one’s sanity, wouldn’t it?

MISTER MHU’S PUSSY SHOW

Nolan seeks untold pleasures, but never finds them: not until now, when he becomes swiftly obsessed with Tasanee, a Bangkok dancer at a hole-in-the-wall club. He is driven to pursue her at any cost, but what he finds at the end of his obsession is not pleasure, but pain.

LETHE AND MNEMOSYNE

Old age wreaks havoc on the body and mind, and in this flash fiction that has been never more apparent than when a senile old man’s children exhort him to remember the means by which he controlled the giant chicken wreaking havoc back home.

THE AUCTION

Benjamin’s father shows his son the secret behind his job: he is a buyer and seller of very forbidden things, magical things, objects of a fantastical purview. He takes his son to “The Auction,” a place where anything can be bought and sold: mythological creatures, insane machines, haunted and horrific artifacts. Benjamin is lead astray by a religious man with pious words but sinister intent. When Benjamin encounters a sickly mermaid on the auction block, can the boy step in and avert disaster?

BEWARE OF OWNER

A short story of how father teaches son: Dad teaches the boy that you don’t need to beware of a dog, but you damn well better beware of owner.

DO-OVERS AND TAKE-BACKS

Taye and Beau are two characters from two different worlds: the first a boy in the city projects, the second a rich man with a hollow life and an estranged family. But a bizarre figure steps in as catalyst – an inhuman “Rag-Man” appears and draws connections between the two characters that could not have existed before.

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Product Details

  • File Size: 261 KB
  • Print Length: 138 pages
  • Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
  • Publisher: Terribleminds; First Kindle Edition edition (January 6, 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B004IARV00
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Lending: Enabled
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,169 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Mad genius penmonkey Chuck Wendig strikes again! January 12, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
Feeling a little post-holiday blues? Housebound by the Snowpocalypse? Well I've got something to occupy your time and cheer you up: Irregular Creatures, the new short story collection from mad genius penmonkey Chuck Wendig. Anyone familiar with Chuck's always inspired, take-no-prisoners style of blogging over at TerribleMinds already knows how talented of a writer he is. I'll do my best to convey the sheer awesomeness that is Irregular Creatures, but it's really something you should do yourself a favor and experience firsthand. Here we go...

"Dog-Man and Cat-Bird (A Flying Cat Story)" - Seems kind of odd to call a short story epic, but this one certainly is. Joe, a struggling sculptor, gets more than a bad night's sleep when he's banished to the sofa one night after an argument with his wife. An injured cat shows up at the back door and, when Joe tries to shoo it away, promptly dies. Or so Joe thought: I came back to the garage, only to find that the cat had sprouted wings. This was not a possibility I had considered, nor was it a possibility I accepted upon its discovery. And yet not only does he come to accept it, but when he discovers his son is a pawn in a battle between good and evil Joe realizes that Cat-Bird is much more than a genetic freak. This is my favorite story in the collection, and it's worth the price of admission for this one alone.

"A Radioactive Monkey" - A cautionary tale about the dangers of drinking strange concoctions, especially if done to impress a beautiful woman you barely know. This one would be right at home as a Tales From the Crypt episode.

"Product Placement"- You wouldn't think a candy bar could have inter-dimensional ramifications, but buying a "Flix Bar" is exactly the thing that starts Donnie's trip into a bizarre world where product placement takes on a whole new meaning. Oh, and you'll never look a 9-volt battery quite the same way again.

"This Guy" - "Every day, I catch him before he makes it to the China Skillet... I drag him into the alleyway, and I beat him with a tire iron. Sometimes, I stab him with a kitchen knife. I do this every day. I think it's starting to affect me." A peek into a man's descent into insanity, this one can be described as Groundhog Day gone murderously, insanely awry.

"Mister Muh's Pussy Show" - "God didn't live here. Wouldn't even show his face lest the sin burn out his eyes." A gaijin in Bangkok gets much more than he bargains for when he pursues a mysterious beautiful woman after seeing her perform at a sex show. Vegas may be known as "Sin City," but it's got nothing on Wendig's Bangkok.

"Lethe and Mnemosyne" - Shortest of the collection at a mere two pages, this one is definitely a hit and run of the "What the hell?" variety. (And I mean that in the best possible way.) The title refers to the Greek goddesses of forgetfulness (Lethe is also one of the five rivers of Hades) and memory, and the juxtaposition of the two perfectly sums up a story that manages to get in both a giant chicken and a mermaid in under two pages.

"The Auction" - My second favorite of the collection. This one truly takes you down the rabbit hole to a place where anything you can imagine - and quite a bit you couldn't possibly- is up for auction at a mysterious once a year gathering. Young Benjamin finds himself there in the company of his father, a veteran of the gathering whose job it is to procure items for his boss. As young boys are want to do, however, Benjamin wanders off, and finds himself in the company of a pseudo holy man on a mission of ill intent, Bigfoot, a woebegone mermaid, and a mischievous telepathic creature that gives Benjamin an unforgettable lesson in trust and independent thinking. Very Clive Barker-esque.

"Beware of Owner" - Pretty bleak, this one, but with a pitch black vein of humor running through it. Takes the annoyance we all feel with door-to-door salesmen and other uninvited cold-callers to an extreme we may have secretly fantasized about but would never act on... most of us, anyway.

"Do-Overs and Take-Backs" - Wendig's got a healthy streak of naughty nine-year-old in him, so he likes to pitch this story as being the one with the mystic hobo hermaphrodite. Ok, it does have a mystic hobo hermaphrodite, but there's really a lot more going on here. At heart, "Do-Overs" is a "be careful what you wish for" tale, with a sprinkling of searching for redemption mixed in... yes, with a mystic hobo hermaphrodite. Grow up already. Sheesh!

The stories in Irregular Creatures run the gamut: from fantasy to science fiction, horror to humor, there's a little bit of everything going on. If you like short stories, have a sense of adventure, or just want to be a mensch and support an author who really deserves it, give Irregular Creatures a go. You'll be amazed, amused, entertained, and even potentially horrified, but you won't be disappointed.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Wordmonkey on fire January 12, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition
This is a fantastic collection of short stories. I devoured it as quickly as one can while chasing a two year old around the house. Wendig's blunt delivery is refreshing. It's alternately sad, funny, horrific, weird and just plain awesome. In the immortal words of Yo Gabba Gabba (hey, I have a toddler, this is my life) "Try it, you'll like it."
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Confessions of a Wenbagger January 13, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've been a fan of Chuck Wendig for a while now, and last year I was very lucky to not only make a connection with him, but to start calling him a friend. Not a friend in the "hey dude, lend my twenty bucks and don't look at my girl like that" sort of way, more in the "I've got a giant wad of cabbage in my pocket, and it's your fault" way. What does that mean? God only knows. God only knows.

From the very first story, Irregular Creatures grabs you. What you could simply shunt off as a silly premise grips you with strong characters, sharp writing, and amazingly vivid imagery that puts you right in the moment. You aren't simply along for the ride, you are put into the world and Chuck creates and you can feel it live and breathe, and that is a damn sexy thing.

Don't buy this book because it might be good, buy it because you have been good and deserve a treat. You deserve it. Treat yourself right.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Nails it!
Chuck knocks it out of the park with this one. You will be blown out of the water. You'll be knocked off your feet. Read more
Published 12 days ago by J. P. Donoghue
5.0 out of 5 stars The mundane is crazy (and that's how we like it)
Irregular Creatures isn't the type of compilation you can expect. It seems to flow in a similarly dissimilar thought pattern where flying cats, mad auction houses and a repeated... Read more
Published 15 months ago by M Chamli
5.0 out of 5 stars I love these irregular creatures
I picked up this book of short stories because I started reading 250 Things You Should Know About Writing, and I really liked what Chuck Wendig says about luck. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Leslie
5.0 out of 5 stars Really great and diverse story collection.
The first story collection I ever read was Stephen King's "Night Shift." It's King's first collection, and it contains stories steeped in genre as well as more "literary"... Read more
Published 16 months ago by Will Entrekin
4.0 out of 5 stars A great little read
Irregular Creatures was the final push I needed to buy a Kindle. I was dithering about getting one, and had stumbled onto Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds website just before the he... Read more
Published 20 months ago by Snellopy
4.0 out of 5 stars Chuck Wendig's Fantastic Bestiary
I've been a fan of "Terrible Minds", Chuck Wendig's high-energy and hilariously profane writing blog, for a while now. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Jerry D. Rhoades
5.0 out of 5 stars other 5 stars got it right.
cant really add anything more that hasnt been covered in the other reviews. this is my number two favorite just after enders shadow by orson scott card. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Arturo Nuno
5.0 out of 5 stars A Whole Bunch'a Giants
There's a whole bunch'a giants looking over Chuck Wendig's shoulder these days. Giants like Ray Bradbury, Charlie Beaumont, Sake, E.A. Read more
Published 23 months ago by A. J. Hayes
5.0 out of 5 stars You Had Me at "Winged Cat"
This anthology had me from the very first page of the first story. Dog-Man and Cat-Bird (A Flying Cat Story) is still my favorite. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Sonia M
5.0 out of 5 stars Something to a Cat with Wings?
I had a dream that I woke up and looked out the window and saw a fluffy grey owl hovering in the wind. Read more
Published 24 months ago by Alexandra
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More About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. He's the author of BLACKBIRDS, DOUBLE DEAD and DINOCALYPSE NOW, and is co-writer of the short film PANDEMIC, the feature film HiM, and the Emmy-nominated digital narrative COLLAPSUS. He lives in Pennsylvania with wife, taco terrier, and tiny human.

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