News flash: Rampaging Fuckers of Everything On The Crazy Shitting Planet Of The Vomit Atmosphere has just been awarded the Wonderland Book Award for best story collection published in 2008! The above photgraph doesn’t really do justice to the splendor of the trophy, or the depth of Mr. Hansen’s gratitude. (However, it does catch the nefarious Mr. Andersen Prunty red-handed in the trophy-snatching act. Bad author! No snack for you!)
“The Wonderland Book Award is what exactly?” you ask. Why, it’s a handsomely engraved crystalline love sandwich, awarded each year at BizarroCon — the annual gathering of our particular subculture — by a vote of writers, editors and publishers across the bizarro genre. All of us here at Me were extremely startled and flattered that our book was chosen over this year’s strong field of nominees.
Five books are nominated for each of the two Wonderland awards each year. In fact, Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! was nominated for best novel, but that final honor was bestowed upon Mr. Kevin Donihe for his novel House Of Houses. Thank goodness! Winning both awards would have been trés awkward, and might even have triggered a knife fight with the fiendish, unstable Mr. Prunty.
Since his victory, Mr. Hansen has often been seen lovingly polishing his Wonderland Book Award with a pungent ammonia-based cleanser and a soft chamois. He carries it with him wherever he goes, but plans eventually to mount the award on the ceiling above his bed, in a hand-tooled solid gold frame encrusted with a bank of internet-enabled strobe lights that automatically flash each time a copy of the book is sold by Amazon.com .
