A man with orange glasses and a short red beard wears a black long sleeve shirt, and smiles.
Publishers Marketplace Deal Report HELP! I CAN'T STOP SH-TTING SNAKES by Michael Bettendorf Imprint: Clash

Publishers Marketplace Deal Report for HELP! I CAN’T STOP SHITTING SNAKES.

Author of Trve Cvlt Michael Bettendorf's Midwestern Chrome, set in a capitalistic hellscape near-future Midwest, in which a detective is presented with a bag containing the severed head of an android that begs for help in his dead wife's voice.

Publishers Marketplace Deal Report for MIDWESTERN CHROME.

Michael Bettendorf's TRVE CVLT, an interactive new weird horror gamebook novel in which the readers themselves will be responsible for achieving trve black metal infamy or plunging the world into an apocalyptic occult wasteland.

Publishers Marketplace Deal Report for TRVE CVLT

Behind the Beard

Michael Bettendorf is a speculative fiction writer from Nebraska, primarily interested in genre blending sci-fi, horror, and crime, often inspired by his Midwestern upbringing. He is a library technician in Lincoln where he earned an English degree from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with an emphasis in creative writing in 2012.

HELP! I CAN’T STOP SHITTING SNAKES, a literary bizarro/body horror novella, was just announced at CLASH Books. If you’re into absurdist humor and horror with a literary spin - mark your calendars for a January 2027 release.

MIDWESTERN CHROME was just announced. Fans of Philip K. Dick, Dashiell Hammett, Fargo, and tech-noir will want to stay tuned! Release is Summer 2026.

Midwestern Chrome glitches in overlapping purple and yellow font. A neon soaked street, bathed in blue and purple hues. A man with sunglasses perched on his head holds a decapitated head, a bag at his side. The head stares with electric blue eyes.

Cover for Midwestern Chrome by Arianna Bosa.

His debut experimental gamebook TRVE CVLT is out through Tenebrous Press now! Check it out here.

TRVE CVLT cover wrap; black metal dudes with guitars and amps; a seriously haunted house looms over a ritualistic set-up: candles, pentagram, cow-skull. The whole thing is bisected by Weird radio frequency garble - all in phantasmagoric pinks/purples

Full Wrap Cover for TRVE CVLT by EchoEchoIllustrations.

Literary Hub included TRVE CVLT on its list of books to check out for those curious about horror; and Book Riot featured TRVE CVLT on its Must-Read New Horror List!

Michael is a recipient of the 2023 Brave New Weird Award, and has earned nominations for the Pushcart (2025), Best Short Fiction (2021) and Best of the Net (2021) awards. He lives in Lincoln with his partner and dog, where he tries to convince the world that Nebraska is too strange to be a flyover state.

He is seeking representation and can be reached here, on Twitter (Updates Only) @BeardedBetts, Bluesky @beardedbetts.bsky.social, and Linktree.

He is a featured author at Indiosyncrasy - an indie author hub.