Michael A. Arnzen's Blog: News from Gorelets.com, page 10

The Goreletter 9.5 Mailed

Clip from “Color Outta Space”

The Goreletter Vol. 9, #5 — the last issue for 2014 — was delivered to mailing list subscribers on 11/27/14 @ 9:30pm est. It contains extra entertainment/material not available here on the weblog version, including info about the bonus materials in the 20th Anniversary re-release of my novel Grave Markings, the best poems from my Halloween night poetry slam with Stephanie Wytovich, a #HorrorSelfies contest and a new poem based on an piece of weird art I made called “Chernobyl Potatoes”. A version of the image above was also included in the newsletter — if you like it, you can Subscribe today…it’s free and you can always unsubscribe if it terrorizes you too much. Issues are sent just once every two-or-three months, so your inbox won’t suffocate. Contact me if you have any questions. — Michael A. Arnzen

Sportuary: Free from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday

What a year! This Thanksgiving, I want to express my gratitude to all the longtime readers and new-found friends who have read my work, attended a reading, come to a booksigning or posted a note online over the past year. I really appreciate it.

FREE on Amazon from 11/27-12/1!

So starting on Thursday, Nov 27th (at Midnight, Pacific time)through Black Friday and ending Cyber Monday on Dec 1st, you can nab a copy of my ebook, Sportuary, absolutely free exclusively on amazon.com. Tell all your friends — it’s a perfect season for sporting with the damned! Just head to my author page on amazon.com, look for Sportuary (it’s listed in the “Kindle” category), and download your free copy. Enjoy the “pentagramathlon of pain” and please do post a review on Amazon, Goodreads, your Facebook page, or anywhere you like.

p.s. I hope you realize you can read Kindle ebooks without a kindle.

“It is easy to see why many of Arnzen’s readers consider him a master of the macabre. Sportuary is…one hell of a fun read.” –Gary West, The Dream People magazine

The Goreletter will also deliver its last issue of 2014 prior to Thanksgiving weekend. Please subscribe! As always, it will contain a diverse mix of news, humor, horror and pithy morbid thoughts that you won’t find anywhere else.

Happy Holidays, weirdos! — Mike Arnzen

FLASH CONTEST: It’s #Haikuween Night on Twitter

[Note: this contest has officially ended. See results at the bottom of this post.]

Horror poet Stephanie Wytovich (author of Hysteria and Mourning Jewelry) and I will be live-tweeting horror haiku intermittently on twitter.com throughout Halloween night, from 7pm-11pm eastern. Anyone who retweets one of our poems tagged with #Haikuween (or who posts their own bloody #Haikuween tagged as such) will be entered into a random draw to win the infamous “Poedown” limited lettered CD (in a double-live case, coupled with the Arnzensongs CD).

This is a very rare treasure, as only selected backers of the Fridge of the Damned kickstarter campaign in 2013 have one of only 26 copies made. This is probably your only chance to nab one!

Here’s what our #haikuween looks like:

My costume tonight / is the skin of a large man / dressed as leatherface. #haikuween @JustAfterSunset

— Michael Arnzen (@MikeArnzen) October 31, 2014

Come join the fun!

Win this CD Halloween Night on Twitter!

Contents:

POEDOWN:

Arnzen vs. Wytovich LIVE

Horror Poetry Slam at DV8 Espresso Bar & Art Gallery

Greensburg, PA 11/2/2012

Wytovich:

Welcome to the Madhouse

Nurse in Ward One

Patient Muse

The Color White

A Killer Recipe

Another Nurse

Blackbird

Body Suit

Arnzen:

The Stuffed Black Cat

Poe Remixes

The Fall Down the Stairs of the House of Usher

My Pet Vampire

Creasing His Collar

Evolution of the Senses

Twitter Poems

The Seven-Headed Beast

Donation

+ Bonus Tracks: Audiovile Demos



UPDATE: The contest has ended. A LOT of great poems were produced. Search twitter for hashtag #haikuween (or you can see mine in the “horror poem” section of The Nest). Be sure to check out Stephanie Wytovich’s poetry on twitter too — together we wrote haiku for four hours on Halloween night!

The winner of the contest was Eric Stoveken, who played along by posting the following horror poem:

Children's icy hands
Reach, I think, for the candy
Grab my wrist. I'm wrong
#haikuween

— E.M. Stoveken (@EMStoveken) November 1, 2014

Eric wins the rare, lettered, Poedown/Arnzensongs double-live CD!

For more contests like these in the future, be sure to subscribe to The Goreletter.

Scenes from the Bizarro Halloween Party / Grave Markings Launch

Last night, Raw Dog Screaming Press threw a great Bizarro Halloween night and launch party for Grave Markings 20th Anniversary Edition at the Terrault Contemporary gallery in Baltimore, MD. As you’ll see in the photos below, advanced copies of the novel were available, and the night featured a series of fiction readings, emceed by bizarro author John Edward Lawson. The tattoo artist responsible for the great tat on the cover of the book, Ethan Fuhrer, was on hand, along with Nathan Rosen, designer of the covers for GM and Play Dead. The highlight of the night was hearing creepy stories from G. Arthur Brown, B.E. Burkhead, J.L. Gribble, Nathan Rosen and K. Ceres Wright, and I wrapped up the show with a reading of some flash fiction and an excerpt from the new book.

You can see a great gallery of even more images from the event and also secret gatherings earlier in the day at the Poe House and Lost City Diner over on the Raw Dog Screaming Press website.

Everyone got involved with my reading of “The Seven-Headed Beast” from 100 Jolts. It was like an “Acoustic Audiovile” moment, which is just as weird as you might imagine. I post here for your creepy listening pleasure. (You will be able to hear my entire reading from the event as one of the online bonus features included with your purchase of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Grave Markings!)

“The Seven Headed Beast” (Live at the Terrault Gallery, Halloween 2014)

Download 2:31 (2.65mb .mp3).

New Release: Grave Markings 20th Anniversary Edition

Available now from Raw Dog Screaming Press

This Halloween marks two decades since my Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Grave Markings, was published by Dell/Abyss Books. The story dramatizes a tattoo artist’s descent into madness, and the subsequent “artistic” killing spree that results.

I was fortunate that ten years ago, it was reprinted in a fancy leatherbound and collectible hardcover run by Delirium Books — but only the most die-hard collectors could afford or acquire it and the book is now rare and long out of print.

This year, happily, the novel has been resurrected by Raw Dog Screaming Press in a special 20th Anniversary Edition for a new generation, in affordable format available in ebook and trade paperback!

Grave Markings XX is available now, whether directly from the publisher or on amazon.com or through your favorite retailer. This new edition includes 50 pages of bonus material — articles I’ve written about this book over the years, as well as a batch of short stories — tattoo tales I wrote for biker magazines in the early 1990s. There is also an exclusive link in the back of the book that points to a secret page of online extras, for those interested in more!

See facebook event page also.

Fittingly, there is an early release party (and “Bizarro Horror” event) to be held in an art gallery (the Terrault Contemporary) this Saturday, 10/25/14 — free and open to the public — in Baltimore, MD, at 7:30pm. Raw Dog Screaming Press will have copies on hand for those who want it first. I will also have some copies on-hand at my reading at Rickert & Beagle Books in Pittsburgh on Oct 28th.

Grave Markings: Goodreads giveaway!

Enter by Nov 20, 2014 for your chance to win an autographed copy of Grave Markings from publisher Raw Dog Screaming Press!



See https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh... for details.

The Goreletter 9.4 Mailed

Clip from “Phantoms”

Happy Halloween Season!

The Goreletter Vol. 9, #4 was delivered to mailing list subscribers on 10/20/14 @ 10:00am est. It contains extra entertainment/material not available here on the weblog version, including breaking news about the re-publication of my first novel, Grave Markings, an extended Dictionscary entry musing over names for different lobes of the brain, and a list of funny hashtag games on twitter. A version of the image above was also included in the newsletter — if you like it, you can download a large size of it from my flickr gallery.

FYI: The newsletter erroneously was delivered with the subject line “September 2014.” Technically, I call this one “Horror is a Church” and it should be dated October 2014.

If you subscribe and did not receive this issue, review the archives at gorelets.com. If you need to check or update your subscription’s email address, just enter it in the subscribe box and review the report.

I see The Goreletter as something akin to a weird magazine rather than an author’s publicity tool. Subscribe today…it’s free and you can always unsubscribe if it terrorizes you too much. Issues are sent just once every two-or-three months, so your inbox won’t suffocate. Contact me if you have any questions. — Michael A. Arnzen

Halloween Readings at SfPoetry.com

Catgut by Volker Neumann

My new spoken word rendition of “Katzen Clavier” — with bass and drum accompaniment — just went live on the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s “Halloween Readings” page. Curated by special guest Stephanie Wytovich, there are lots of fun readings on the site this year, including work by Marge Simon, Sara Tantlinger, Symantha Reagor, Maria Alexander and many more. Give them all a listen and get in the mood for the season of the witch!

p.s. You can find other audio streams here on gorelets.com, via the “audio” tag. Or check out my cd, Audiovile, available on iTunes, CD Baby, or direct from Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Storytelling and Other Fall Events

Hear Arnzen’s Storytelling from Riley’s Last May at L. Connolly’s Blog

All sorts of readings and book signings are in the works for both the Halloween season and the year to come!

First up is a return to Riley’s Pour House (215 East Main Street, Carnegie, PA 15106) — a great Irish pub with excellent food and a great spirit (in every sense of the word) — for a Storytelling night hosted by Pittsburgh horror writer, Lawrence C. Connolly. This event — slated for Sept. 30th at 8pm — promises to be a hoot, with a special focus on flash fiction stories, featuring myself, Stephanie Wytovich, Sheldon Higdon, Albert Wendland and other surprise guests on hand. Read all about it on Larry Connolly’s blog, where he includes a fun sound recording of my storytelling last May at a similar event.

You can always keep up with my future events here at gorelets.com (see The Events page), or get news in your inbox by subscribing to The Goreletter. There are several jaunts coming up for Halloween season, including a visit to the Frostburg Indie Press Fair in Maryland on October 11th and another fun reading scheduled for Rickert & Beagle Books in Pittsburgh on the afternoon of Oct 28th.

 

I look forward to them all. But I’m ESPECIALLY eager for the reading in Baltimore at the Terrault Contemporary Art Gallery on October 25th at 7pm… which is not only “Bizarro Halloween” night but also — wait for it… — the surprise launch party for the 20th Anniversary Edition of GRAVE MARKINGS in trade paperback! Sponsored by the publisher, Raw Dog Screaming Press (who will soon have preorders, so keep your eyes on their website), this promises to be a blast. Everyone’s invited. I’ll post more about this soon. You will dig the book cover and the new features it includes.

I’ve also got far future trips percolating and planning — from attending both World Horror Con 2015 (the con’s 25th anniversary party) AND WHC 2016 (Provo will rule) to teaching at Nightsun Writer’s Workshop in 2015 and an amazing DogCon 4 in Philadelphia to other surprise events I can’t wait to announce here! Stay tuned!

The Nature of Horror: Horror is a Church…

Originally posted on Notegraphy

The message above was my overwrought response to a question posed on the Science Fiction Poetry Association‘s mailing list, that asked: “Is horror a genre or an attribute of literature?” It’s heavy-handed, but that’s kind of why I like it, so I turned it into a notegraphy post.

[I've been using Notegraphy with students in my flash fiction writing course this summer. Here's my profile and I think you can see (though you may have to be a member first) some of my students work here ]