Ask the Author: Michael A. Arnzen
Answered Questions (10)
Michael A. Arnzen
To answer your question: I am doing well. lol.
All the best to my fellow ink-stained Arnzen! For anyone reading this, Tim and I are distantly related, but only became friends by accident over the internet (mostly twitter) when we discovered the uncanny luck that another Arnzen was writing dark fantasy fiction! Tim's books are adventurous and fun reads. Check them out while I work on publishing my own next titles....
All the best to my fellow ink-stained Arnzen! For anyone reading this, Tim and I are distantly related, but only became friends by accident over the internet (mostly twitter) when we discovered the uncanny luck that another Arnzen was writing dark fantasy fiction! Tim's books are adventurous and fun reads. Check them out while I work on publishing my own next titles....
Michael A. Arnzen
To answer your question: I am doing well. lol.
And I will be doing better once I read Crevasse. Thanks for the recommendation. Sorry I overlooked this post for over a year.
And I will be doing better once I read Crevasse. Thanks for the recommendation. Sorry I overlooked this post for over a year.
Michael A. Arnzen
"Like Sand in the Hourglass"
The sculptor's greatest life achievement was a public piece called "Doomsdate" -- a staggering large sundial, constructed entirely of solar-powered clocks gathered from around the globe. On the day of his death, the silence stunned us as every clock hand suddenly stopped spinning at the exact same moment -- as did the Earth.
The sculptor's greatest life achievement was a public piece called "Doomsdate" -- a staggering large sundial, constructed entirely of solar-powered clocks gathered from around the globe. On the day of his death, the silence stunned us as every clock hand suddenly stopped spinning at the exact same moment -- as did the Earth.
Michael A. Arnzen
Believe it or not, an art film has been made of my work: Exquisite Corpse (Jim Minton, 2007) adapted a dozen or so of my poems and flash pieces into an anthology of horror shorts, and it spent some time on the festival circuit. Here's a trailer and excerpt: http://gorelets.com/books/exquisite-c...
I think a lot of my shorts from 100 Jolts or the Horror Library anthos would make for great movies, but like most writers, it's the novels that would be the most fun to see on the screen. It would be a joy to see recognizable actors giving life to the characters and acting out the dialogue in Play Dead or Grave Markings. Being on the studio or location for a movie production, though, would probably be frustrating to me -- adaptation requires making changes, and I would probably find that process a bit torturous unless I had real input -- but it's so rare to be in that position. So I'd rather just see the final product and bite my nails in the dark. One of the benefits of writing is that you can be director, cinematographer, actor and editor all rolled into one, whereas in the real world of movies, it's sort of "art by committee," and it's a roll of the dice whether it will work or not.
Thanks for the great question!
I think a lot of my shorts from 100 Jolts or the Horror Library anthos would make for great movies, but like most writers, it's the novels that would be the most fun to see on the screen. It would be a joy to see recognizable actors giving life to the characters and acting out the dialogue in Play Dead or Grave Markings. Being on the studio or location for a movie production, though, would probably be frustrating to me -- adaptation requires making changes, and I would probably find that process a bit torturous unless I had real input -- but it's so rare to be in that position. So I'd rather just see the final product and bite my nails in the dark. One of the benefits of writing is that you can be director, cinematographer, actor and editor all rolled into one, whereas in the real world of movies, it's sort of "art by committee," and it's a roll of the dice whether it will work or not.
Thanks for the great question!
Michael A. Arnzen
Great question, Sara, and it's hard to really answer in any simple way because a writer can make any number of choices, and one of them includes not using the tropes and cliches whatsoever. Horror is fantasy, horror is violence, horror is absurd nightmare, and horror is evil. Those are abstractions, feelings, and actions, not tropes or cliches or even conventions, really, so much as human qualities. So as long as a writer is being honest to those elements, they're probably doing it right.
So my first answer is itself a cliche among writers: "write what you know." Be genuine about what scares you, what disturbs you, what freaks you the hell out. Sometimes writers use cliches or overly familiar character types because they are more infatuated with them than they find them frightening.
Being inventive with these things is precisely what a horror reader wants -- surprise is everything when it comes to the "unknown" and originality is everything in the fantastic -- so writers also work hard to undermine expectations. I have a list of techniques for "Making Modern Monsters" in the book Many Genres, One Craft, that might work as a cheat sheet for brainstorming new ways of representing fear, but truth be told sometimes the originality comes in the way something is written and represented, rather than content (it's not the vampire that's scary, it's the way its fangs puncture the skin). One technique is to spend time zooming in and detailing concretely the stuff people would normally want to look away from. Writing a prose scene of terror as if it were poetry, for instance, could also make it fresh and original. I think readers want to see us work the words in a clever way that no one else has done before, and appreciate our uniqueness as much as the standard archetypes of dread.
So my first answer is itself a cliche among writers: "write what you know." Be genuine about what scares you, what disturbs you, what freaks you the hell out. Sometimes writers use cliches or overly familiar character types because they are more infatuated with them than they find them frightening.
Being inventive with these things is precisely what a horror reader wants -- surprise is everything when it comes to the "unknown" and originality is everything in the fantastic -- so writers also work hard to undermine expectations. I have a list of techniques for "Making Modern Monsters" in the book Many Genres, One Craft, that might work as a cheat sheet for brainstorming new ways of representing fear, but truth be told sometimes the originality comes in the way something is written and represented, rather than content (it's not the vampire that's scary, it's the way its fangs puncture the skin). One technique is to spend time zooming in and detailing concretely the stuff people would normally want to look away from. Writing a prose scene of terror as if it were poetry, for instance, could also make it fresh and original. I think readers want to see us work the words in a clever way that no one else has done before, and appreciate our uniqueness as much as the standard archetypes of dread.
Michael A. Arnzen
I feel like a hypocrite saying this -- because I've abandoned novels halfway through them, having "cut my losses" -- but I feel one should take a "never say die!" attitude to a project. Finish it, and if it doesn't sell, so be it. You will learn more from reaching the end of a journey than never taking the full trip.
However, I know the frustration. I think if the story has really gone off off the rails and rattled your confidence in what you're pursuing, then you should set the work aside for awhile and do something different and new to "clear the slate" before you start over again -- from a new novel to a short story or a poem. Anything to reset the creative engines. Otherwise, you'll begin to feel that frustration akin to struggling to untie a tight knot that just can't be opened up, fraying the ends of the rope but getting nowhere. Projects I've dropped and return to -- as a reader rather than a writer -- sometimes reveal themselves to be works of garbage that I laugh at in that "what was I thinking?" sort of way -- or otherwise works of genius in utero -- and the solutions begin to reveal themselves as I read and take notes about how to revise.
Another trick is to throw a wrench into the works and try to make it worse... this sometimes can lead to original ideas and magic solutions, too. Try my creative triggers at http://diaboliquestrategies.com or my ebook, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side for some "spurs" if you haven't seen them yet. Best wishes, Andrew! You're not alone! -- Mike Arnzen
However, I know the frustration. I think if the story has really gone off off the rails and rattled your confidence in what you're pursuing, then you should set the work aside for awhile and do something different and new to "clear the slate" before you start over again -- from a new novel to a short story or a poem. Anything to reset the creative engines. Otherwise, you'll begin to feel that frustration akin to struggling to untie a tight knot that just can't be opened up, fraying the ends of the rope but getting nowhere. Projects I've dropped and return to -- as a reader rather than a writer -- sometimes reveal themselves to be works of garbage that I laugh at in that "what was I thinking?" sort of way -- or otherwise works of genius in utero -- and the solutions begin to reveal themselves as I read and take notes about how to revise.
Another trick is to throw a wrench into the works and try to make it worse... this sometimes can lead to original ideas and magic solutions, too. Try my creative triggers at http://diaboliquestrategies.com or my ebook, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side for some "spurs" if you haven't seen them yet. Best wishes, Andrew! You're not alone! -- Mike Arnzen
Michael A. Arnzen
No, I'm one of the lower demons, originally sequestered in Hell's equivalent of Sesame Street -- Pustulupagus is my true name.
I often don't feel unmotivated...there's so many proverbial irons in the fire that if one feels cold, I leave it steeping in the flames, and pick up another one, shifting from poetry to fiction to criticism to humor, etc. When when I'm truly feeling unmotivated I try to take stock: is there a physical reason for my block or is it just mental? If it's just mental, I chug a cup of coffee and just start playing with the keyboard -- opening with poetry -- but it's really more like free-writing just to loosen up. I would compare it to how musicians warm up before the show, limbering up their fingers and what not. When ideas start to percolate, shapes and structures start to emerge, and then I'm back in the groove... But if it's physical, I try to rest or do something enjoyable -- but something related to the arts or to sleep and dreams. I don't consider it laziness to take a break from a writing project. We are workers of the unconscious, and that needs to be respected.
Loved this question, Blake. Thanks and best wishes with your upcoming poetry book! -- Mike Arnzen
I often don't feel unmotivated...there's so many proverbial irons in the fire that if one feels cold, I leave it steeping in the flames, and pick up another one, shifting from poetry to fiction to criticism to humor, etc. When when I'm truly feeling unmotivated I try to take stock: is there a physical reason for my block or is it just mental? If it's just mental, I chug a cup of coffee and just start playing with the keyboard -- opening with poetry -- but it's really more like free-writing just to loosen up. I would compare it to how musicians warm up before the show, limbering up their fingers and what not. When ideas start to percolate, shapes and structures start to emerge, and then I'm back in the groove... But if it's physical, I try to rest or do something enjoyable -- but something related to the arts or to sleep and dreams. I don't consider it laziness to take a break from a writing project. We are workers of the unconscious, and that needs to be respected.
Loved this question, Blake. Thanks and best wishes with your upcoming poetry book! -- Mike Arnzen
Michael A. Arnzen
I hope so, but I think all ways of seeing can be fragmented and transformed by the genre, by male and female authors/directors alike. Ever since reading Carol Clover's MEN, WOMEN AND CHAINSAWS, I've learned to see how complicated the psychomachia of all this stuff really is. These films indulge voyeurism but also punish us for it. Horror is sadomasochistic. And in that way, horror is a great equalizer. We're all meat in the grinder in a horror film, and the painful grit of the grinding sometimes spits out new ways of thinking about humanity in the process.
Michael A. Arnzen
Great question! Basically, a "gorelet" is a term I made up for tiny horror poems that were no longer than 11 lines, 7 words max each. Those numbers are arbitrary, but they used to be the maximum I could fit on the PDA devices I used to write them on, when I first started experimenting with horror poetry writing on a Palm Pilot as a digital literary toy. Now they're virtually their own subgenre, with The Gorelets Omnibus out in print and the ongoing website at http://gorelets.com
Little known fact: Gorelets is also a town in Belarus. I should go on excursion someday to do...something...there.
Thanks for the question, Heidi! -- Mike Arnzen
Little known fact: Gorelets is also a town in Belarus. I should go on excursion someday to do...something...there.
Thanks for the question, Heidi! -- Mike Arnzen
Michael A. Arnzen
I have an affection for dismembered hands. In the movies, anyway. They're goofy as a concept, absurd in their gestural performance and...somehow creepy as hell. Thing from the Addams Family might as well be my favorite actor. I do a study of this trope in my upcoming study, The Popular Uncanny, which covers the icon from its first appearance in early cinema ("The Thieving Hand" was one of the first one-reelers) to the Hamburger Helper commercials today.
In fiction, I am fascinated by the scenes where writers try to represent a person passing out or dying, told from within their deep point-of-view... the "and then the lights went out" kind of moments. Probably because I find them unrepresentable and difficult to write myself.
Things have changed over the years, I suppose. I used to just like scenes or depictions of decapitation for some strange reason when I was a pre-teen. Now a decapitation has to be done in really clever an unexpected way for me to really enjoy it. More often, it just seems so...obvious.
Thanks for asking, Jennifer!
In fiction, I am fascinated by the scenes where writers try to represent a person passing out or dying, told from within their deep point-of-view... the "and then the lights went out" kind of moments. Probably because I find them unrepresentable and difficult to write myself.
Things have changed over the years, I suppose. I used to just like scenes or depictions of decapitation for some strange reason when I was a pre-teen. Now a decapitation has to be done in really clever an unexpected way for me to really enjoy it. More often, it just seems so...obvious.
Thanks for asking, Jennifer!
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Jun 10, 2023 01:01PM · flag