Michael A. Arnzen's Blog

It’s funny: when I turn to my dollar-store dictionary for advice on the correct way to pronounce “offal” it says “awful”! I thought so. There’s nothing wonderful about offal: it’s all awful, even in its very utterance.

Offal is butcher’s term for the “less valuable edible parts of a carcass” — which is another way of saying the “guts” that are left over after the “meat” has been cleaved into muscular, familiar chunks. But the important thing to remember is that while these aren’t worth much, the

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For your next movie night, rent:

Witches’ Brew (Strock, 1980)

Love At First Bite (Dragoti, 1979)

Saturday the 14th (Cohen, 1981)

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“Monster Evolution” is a clever online game from Nob Studio, in which you terrorize a city eating humans — and if you eat enough of them, you can “evolve” into creatures with special powers and take out the shooters and tanks that come after you.

It’s like Cloverfield meets John Carpenter’s The Thing. Almost.

Try “Monster Evolution” for yourself, and play God(zilla) for awhile: http://www.nobstudio.com/games.html?fid=&gid=18

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PS Publishing is now taking orders for Darkness on the Edge: Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. It will soon be available in a signed and unsigned limited edition hardcover.  My story is called “The Hungry Heart” — sort of like Poe meets the Boss.  Other contributors include Sarah Langan, Gary Braunbeck, Elizabeth Massie, Lawrence C. Connolly and lots of other great dark fantasy writers.  Edited by Harrison Howe, with cover art by the infamous JK Potter. Definitely worth a look!

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Get more weirdness in fewer words now on twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeArnzen

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Just received this photo from translator, Jerome Charlet. SKULL FRAGMENTS has just been published by Les Perseides in France, and is available through French book outlets online (it is a bilingual edition, so English readers can also enjoy). Click on the photo to read more info, or see the news on “European Translations” below:

Skull Fragments: New French-English Chapbook

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NEW GORELETTER CONTEST! DEADLINE JULY 1st

What is a “Pithy Morbid Thought”?

A brief philosophical quip — often ironic — about death, disease, horror, torment, fear, terror, etc. I collect them for inspiration and uncomfortable moments at dinner parties. They also serve as “curtains” which close out each e-mail issue of The Goreletter. Here’s an example of one of my favorites (from Goreletter 2.7):

Peace Meal

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism.
If people were forced to eat what they killed,
the

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Attention writers of short-short horror stories: Ligonier Valley Writersis hosting a new contest looking for flash fiction on “Werewolves and Shapeshifters”. Deadline is Aug 15th. I have agreed to be the finalist judge.

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Raw Dog Screaming Press has announced publication of the grand finale issue of Bare Bone magazine (#11). It features fiction from Kurt Newton, Ronald Damien Malfi, Cody Goodfellow, Steve Rasnic Tem, Paul Finch and Jeffrey A. Stadt among others. Some of the poets included are myself, Cameron Pierce and Forrest Armstrong. (Read the full TOC on Kurt Newton’s blog.)

Editor Kevin Donihe has done a rather remarkable job with this magazine over the years, turning it from a truly-bare-boned zine into a

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IMPORTANT: The “Pithy Morbid Thought” contest I was running on The Haunt (with a deadline of tomorrow) has been lost by their website! Apparently their boards crashed and the backup was unrecoverable. I will make up for this by starting over here on The Goreletter in the days ahead.

If you participated in that contest, I do NOT have your original entries or names (I expected the webmaster to back those up!)…so I hope you will re-enter. I may use Twitter as part of this contest. More to come

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