Stories From The Motel Sick

by Michael Allen Rose (Editor)

Stories From The Motel Sick is a genre-bending anthology featuring new stories from authors of horror, bizarro fiction, sci-fi, erotica, noir, and so much more. Each story takes place at the Motel Sick, a strange, metaphysical motel on the edge of a highway leading to nowhere in particular. Inside, you'll find criminals and lovers, aliens, clones, loads of bones, tiny people, time travel, legacies of death, the virtuous and the vicious, grappling for money, power, fame, escape... everything and anything can be found somewhere inside the shifting interior of the Motel Sick. What most people don't understand is that although any form of currency is accepted at the Motel Sick (from cash to credit, from wampum to doubloons) the true price isn't always evident until its time to check out.



Featuring exclusive new stories

We have exclusive stories by award winning authors, both huge names and hidden

Matt Dinniman

Brian Pinkerton

John Baltisberger 

Christine Morgan

Jim Marcus 

Christopher Hawkins

John Chambers

Cynthia Pelayo

David Agranoff

John Wayne Comunale 

David Scott Hay

Garrett Cook

Jason Rizos

Jeff Strand

Bridget D. Brave

John Bruni

Elizabeth Broadbent

John Skipp

and

Shane McKenzie

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies, Bizarro Fiction

284 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 26, 2025

About the author

Michael Allen Rose is an award-winning writer, musician, editor and performance artist based in Chicago, Illinois. His stories have appeared in The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, Heavy Feather Review, and Tales From The Crust among other periodicals. He has published several books including Jurassichrist (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing) which won the 2021 Wonderland Award for best bizarro novel, and The Last 5 Minutes of the Human Race, winner of best collection in bizarro fiction 2022. He is the host of the annual Ultimate Bizarro Showdown at Bizarro Con in Oregon. Michael also releases industrial music under the name Flood Damage. He lives with an awesome cat named Dr. Light, and enjoys good tea. You can find more at www.michaelallenrose.com

Reviews

[Becky Spratford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review on Booklist Online E-Review and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2025/11... (link live 11/10 at 7am central)

Three Words That Describe This Book: Bizzaro, Hotel Horror, Existentially Terrifying but with Humor

Rose-- multiple Wonderland Award winner has his second themed anthology in as many years. Instead of rolling a die, this time he puts his authors into an haunted hotel and gives them a room and then lots of space to tell their story.

As an editor Rose does an excellent job of not only putting the stories in a good order but more importantly, he also creates the perfect frame with an inclusion of the Waiver and Guest Agreement-- the first story by Bridget D. Brave-- between those who work or stay at the Motel Sick (and chose to read the stories) and THE ENTITY who runs it and THE VOID which is the place we are all visiting. Ending with -- You do not wish to piss off THE ENTITY. And then asking for your signature.

The authors take turns with a room number and a story, but unlike a normal hotel, the numbers are not in order.

And then the collection goes from there. The TOC includes well known, award winning names like Jeff Strand, Cynthia Pelayo, and John Skipp (who gets the last story in room "infinity symbol")

This book is just a collection of scary hotel stories without his work to frame it-- increasing the terror and uniting the altho as a "book"

There are also illustrations and in the middle-- an entry by Rose himself entitled-- "In Case of Fire: BURNBURNBURNBURNBURN." Which lets you know just how much worse it could all get--but again, with humor.

Rose and friends also did a room service menu. These extras unite the anthologies as a single book.

For fans of darkly humorous stories that are Lovecraft Adjacent like John Dies at the End by Jason Pargin or those who love an existentially terrifying hotel story such as Travelers Rest by Keith Lee Morris and Cranberry Cove by Hailey Piper

[Kayleigh Dobbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant concept for an anthology, great stories, and very enjoyable over all.

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 of the last 5 collections I have read were anthologies in which I had a story in. One of the things about this one is that I was so excited to read, despite having had an e-pub of it for months, I did wait to I could hold the paperback in my hands.

Motel Sick was masterminded by editor Michael Allen Rose, having recently done a similar anthology, Fragile, a collection of stories that all started with the same story prompt. As one of the author I can tell you how this started. MAR wrote a group of writers and invited us to submit stories based on this concept.

A crazy bizarro motel, and we each got a chance to write about one of the rooms. We got a description of the outside, that it was next to an Arby’s, and in my case, I was told that my room, room 12, happened to be next to the room of unrelenting screams. I don’t know if other authors, were told by Michael which room or got a similar message about the rooms next to theirs. My story ended up being a time-travel story about a screenwriter.

This is a widely diverse set of stories, considering that everyone started with the same prompt, but that is what creative types do. The story that made me laugh the most should not be a surprise, as that was Jeff Strand’s piece. Cythina Pelayo had one that effectively icked me out. Every story offered something; I was never bored or skipped. Ending with John Skipp. Come on…how perfect.

Editor Michael Allen Rose paced the stories well, added flourishes like a room service menu, giving this book a great one-of-a-kind feel. This book is an argument for indie publishing. Amazing concept. You must have it!

[John Bruni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've fallen out of the habit of reviewing books on Goodreads, and I intend to return to that this year, but I felt I had to leave a note for my rating on this. From the Dept. of Full Disclosure: I'm in this book, I'm friends with the editor, and I'm friends with many of the authors in this book. That said, I don't give good reviews that aren't deserved. I'm lucky to be friends with so many talented people. Also, if you'd told me at the age of 20 that I'd one day be published in an anthology with John Skipp, I would have called you a liar, but here we are. This is an excellent book, but don't take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

[Happy Goat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great anthology and I'm shocked to see there aren't more people raving about it. The concept is just so much fun. A weird motel has any and every themed room you could want. Literally ANY theme. A room made of cash, a room that constantly moves at 80 miles per hour so you're in danger of a bird slamming into you while you sleep, a room with a time travelling elevator, the list goes on. The authors brought their scary, funny, highly entertaining A-games to this one.

[Joseph Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a backer on kickstarter and I am glad I did. I genuinely enjoyed every story in this anthalogy. My favorite was the kaiju story featured in Room 1653. It was genuinly funny and interesting to see the ways each author connected the stories together in unique ways that made it feel like it was really all the same hotel with( or maybe not) an Arby's in the parking lot. If you like weird fantasy and scifi with a good dose of horror thrown in you dont want to miss this one.

[Garrett Tschacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun anthology, very wild vibes throughout. Comedy, Horror, Sci-fi, Fantasy, all exist within the Motel Sick. Big black mirror vibes.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book: Stories from the Motel Sick
Editor: Michael Allen Rose
Publisher: RoShamBo Publishing
Publication Date: 11/26/2025
Print ISBN: 979-8-3493-2086-6
E-Book ISBN: 979-8-3493-2087-3
Capone’s Rating: 5 of 5 ⭐s


At times hilarious, sexy, or spooky, RoShamBo Publishing’s Stories from the Motel Sick is unrelentingly weird and always bizarre. “Bizarro” is probably the right word for the occasion, if you ask editor Michael Allen Rose, who hosts the Ultimate Bizarro Showdown at BizarroCon every year. And Rose’s editing prowess is on display in this lengthy, chunkable, but bingeable anthology of over twenty pieces of fiction in a group worldbuilding effort that finds the audience in a different motel room for each chapter in the book.
The Motel Sick itself is a bag of holding, room of requirement, or shop of needful things, often with the genie-logic of comeuppance and front-manned by a slouching, knowing desk clerk often found by patrons reading such fine periodicals as Boners? and described at times as “inattentive,” “unimpressed,” “derelict,” and—of course—simply “weird.” With an Arby’s across the street for all your dining needs, the motel itself has an ∞ of rooms, whether you’ve just committed a robbery, are stepping out on a spouse, or getting together with your pals for a yearly themed adventure party (I’m looking at you, “Room 11,700: The Authentic Experience” protagonists). John Chambers’ “Room 66” pushes the ridiculous road-based absurdism to its most logical and hilarious extremes. The “Motel Guest Waiver & Agreement” fixes the terms for us and those characters unlucky enough to be checking into the Motel Sick, and this reader readily agrees and submits to THE ENTITY for entertainment purposes as well as non-binding life lessons.
Who’s going to love this book? I suspect the answer here is, “the majority of people who read it.” More specifically, I’d bet at least one arm you’ll dig this antho if you get your jollies from Welcome to Night Vale, Max Booth III’s Lost Signals anthology, or the Oni Press’s revived EC Comics’ Epitaphs from the Abyss volumes. Michael Allen Rose has curated and arranged this anthology with a maestro’s touch, and its contributors are, clearly, fully bought into the concept. The theme here works and, like its number of rooms, makes me wish for more. I’m left with one question: When can we expect More Stories from the Motel Sick?

[Jonathan Gensler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun labyrinthine anthology, where each room will surprise you. Violence, sex, crime, comedy, drugs, double-crosses, and even a strange room full of lamps await you in the Motel!