Charlene Elsby

"Explosive and propulsive, The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty proves Charlene Elsby to be a formidable talent. This book will haunt you." - Juliet Escoria, author of Juliet the Maniac "Depraved, stark, and dripping in blood, The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty by Charlene Elsby is an experience that demands to be felt. Unique prose, dark musings, and an experimental structure blend beautifully with the layers of grief and bodily autonomy. In the main character's labyrinthine mind, readers will find themselves seduced into what I can only describe as a really messed up coming-of-age story (in all the best, gory ways)." - Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil's Dreamland "The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty is an astonishing mirage, a novel full of dish soap and restaurant clothes, of summer months and arcane sex, of trailer parks and dishcloths, or cocks and thighs and food processors, fryer grease and the coal-black bodies of Erinyes, of maintenance fees and telephone bills. Elsby taunts and teeters on the rock face of reality and delirium, chaos carnivals where words transmute into data dumps of unreliable memory, into unapologetic rebellion against the literary mundane. A supernatural work of cigarette attitude and wit that shatters the cosmic rollercoaster, a seismic flare-up that left me exhilarated and questioning my own framework of despondency. A welcome addition to the Charlene Elsby manifest. Take a cool walk among the home décor of the Devil, it's lustful, you'll quite like it." - Shane Jesse Christmass, author of Belfie Hell "Unlike Plato's realm of eternal forms, which he associates with the sun, Charlene Elsby's Devil lurks in the solar eclipse, in the eternal shadows that undergird existence. A bildungsroman unlike any other, The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty had me laughing out loud & deeply disturbed. Through surgically precise prose, Elsby conjures a lean & mighty novel set in a trailer park full of memorable characters, devilish disruptions, & a plot that thickens towards an unforgettable finale. I read it in one sitting." - Logan Berry, author of Run-Off Sugar Crystal Lake "As the unnamed narrator of Charlene Elsby's The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty so wisely observes, "We do define people according to what's been done to them, not what they've done." There are those who fuck, and there are those who are fucked. There are performers and there are objects. And at the center of it all, like the brilliant, blinding core of a burning star, there is the image of Marilyn Monroe, whose beauty belonged only to those around her. With intense and direct language, Elsby reminds us that corrupting forces are always at work, howling mockery at our very desire to be loved." - David Peak, author of Corpsepaint

I'm not relentless. "Relentless" makes it sound like there's something called "relent" and that I'm lacking it. In that sense, I'm not relentless, but perhaps I'm unrelenting. I could relent if I wanted to. But he always has to die. I mean "always" in two senses: at all times and all of the time. I can't kill him all of the time. That would take too long. But all of the times I did, I did. I'd do it again. I could relent if I wanted to, but instead I'd do it again. If he's different, then he's the same and if he's the same, he's got to go. If he were different and not the same, then there would be two things and I'd only have to kill one of them. If only I only had to kill one of him. What a life I would live, if only I only had to kill him the one time. But death doesn't always do him in.

Welcome to the Organization.Employees of the organization contribute to its mission to apply non-traditional methods to the non-traditional problems of today.To ensure that all employees have the same opportunity to thrive, the organization's state-of-the-art live and work facility has all the comforts of home, plus technology that maximizes their opportunities for collaboration.Without the organization, Clarissa Knowles would have nowhere else to go. That is, unless she can make it to Dick's house, the professor she's been talking to online. Haunted by her failed relationship with Maurice (the existentialist), and the deaths of her parents, can Clarissa shake off the values of the organization, pack up her cat - and go?The Organization is Here to Support You is an existential bureaucratic horror satire in the tradition of Franz Kafka, J.G. Ballard, and Sayaka Murata.

A philosophy professor tests the limits of the soul and body by performing dehumanizing experiments on unwilling subjects, after the department is closed due to budget cuts. Violent Faculties follows a philosophy professor influenced by Sade and Bataille. She is ejected by university administrators aiming to impose business strategies in the interest of profit over knowledge. She designs a series of experiments to demonstrate the value of philosophy as a discipline, not because of its potential for financial benefit, but because of its relevance to life and death. The corpses proliferate as her experiments yield theoretical results and ethical conundrums. She questions why it is wrong to kill humans, what is it about them that makes their lives sacred, and then attempts to find it in their bodies, their words, their thoughts, and their souls—seeking foundational truths with a knife in her home office.