Michael A. Arnzen's Blog: News from Gorelets.com, page 8

Snapshots from the 2016 World Horror Con

Just back from a “Provo-cative” weekend in Provo, Utah, where I attended the 2016 World Horror Convention as a special guest. It was a very intimate con, mistimed in the grand scheme of genre events this year (i.e., the first StokerCon is in Vegas next weekend — I’m going to that too), but having a smaller event led to tighter bonds as we all got to know each other better as professionals and people. They kept me VERY busy (I was on three-to-five programming events per day), so I didn’t take as many photos as usual, but I did manage to snap a few which I’ll post below.  Shout-outs to everyone who I met (which felt like EVERYONE at the con), even if you’re not in the shots below.  And in lieu of writing up a lengthy con report, I’ll just tag some comments in the captions of the photos. Enjoy.

THANK YOU to World Horror Con and the gang in Provo for inviting me out as a Special Guest. I was worked like a dog, yet given the royal treatment, and I totally appreciated both!  And thanks to many old friends who came to support me throughout the weekend.  Next up in early May: StokerCon!

 

Jaren Rencher (of Utah Horror Writers chapter) kindly picked me up at the SLC airport. Kevin J. Anderson and I rode an hour to Provo with him, as KJA regaled us with tales of his work with the band Rush. Amazing.

The awesome “souvenir book” for WHC 2016, designed by Bailey Hunter (Dark Recesses Press) and featuring art by Keith Thompson. As one of the guests, I’ve got a story in this one — if you got that, plus my signature, you’ve got a rare collectable book!

The Harmons (C.H. Lindsay on left) reveal the Grandmaster Award trophy for Michael R. Collings during the opening ceremonies. What a plaque!

I was honored to be a special guest. Guests got tokens for free massages. I gave mine to homeless people on the streets (esp. the pickpocket guy asking passers-by for “free hugs”)

Off to lunch with Jeff Strand and Sara Tantlinger. We found pizza nearby and cracked each other up for an hour or so.  I spent a lot of time with these two; they are joyful in the darkness and we shared cackles all weekend.

I had a powerpoint for the “Mutterverse” experience (which is not in print and can only be seen live), but the A/V technology at the conference failed … so I just read scary short-shorts for an hour to a small group of attending friends and trapped IT personnel.

This is what I sometimes look like reading weird stuff. (Photo: Jeff Strand)

Seton Hill students & alums were at WHC 16, and spending time with them was awesome. Here I stand with the aforementioned Sara Tantlinger, DK Godard, & Cody Langille!

It was a privilege to moderate a fantastic panel about horror poetry with these three talents (Linda Addison, Michael Collings, and Charlie Harmon).

I enjoyed trading a few tales about the old days with Brian Keene (author of The Rising, The Complex). He rushed off to make a new podcast shortly after this most metal moment.

Something evil lurked in the NEBO room at the con hotel. If you’ve read Play Dead, then you know what it might be.

I cheered from the back at this year’s “Gross Out Contest.” Here Brian Keene dishes out the rules of the game. It is the most dangerous game. Jeff Strand took 2nd with a fab story. Stephen Kozeniewski (Koz — who was an awesome panel moderator, too) won the night; I missed it, but heard it was gaggingly great.

Had good conversations with these two (Michael Bailey and Jason V. Brock) throughout the con. Jason and I got into some very heady topics. Both these guys really know their horror — plus Michael Bailey’s long arms will terrify you — so do not mess with them.

Jeff Strand gave a fantastic reading of two hilarious horror tales. He is a towering presence. Weiner dogs beware. One highlight of the con was our “kaffeeklatsch” together, where a gaggle of friends and new readers asked us about our history and process and future plans. We giggled with the gaggle. Jeff shared some impressive stories about film and other developments in his career.

Here my friends Jeanne and Bill Bush chat up with Brian Keene at the Mass Autograph session.

A moment with the wonderful Sunni Brock of JaSunni Productions. We shared a panel (along with her partner, Jason) on music later in the con that was very deep, and very good.

A long shot of the Fridge of the Damned display. Here James Beers composes a sick one. You can read his, and the work of others at the con, over on my flickr gallery.  (Notice how I’m rarely in my seat at these things. I go around and try to get books signed.)

I really enjoyed getting to know Rachel Autumn Deering at this convention — her book Husk is impressive. She signed it with a reference to my “Doofus” story in 100 Jolts and blew my mind! She’s really cool. Seek her work.

Sara Seeley had brains on her table; I juggled them. (Photo by David West, who was an awesome guy to chat with, too).

Laughing it up with my old army buddy, Bill Bush. Bill has quite a collection of Arnzenalia… I promised him a signed femur in the future. Not sure when I’ll deliver. But some day. I never said it would be MINE. Maybe I’ll extract and sign his? We’ll see.

Mountains and railings in SLC.

And…back home to PA. Pittsburgh is a city of bridges. This beast reminds you of this fact at the airport. It’s probably supposed to represent a Pittsburgh Steeler, but I see it as a monstrous transformer about to destroy the place. And I can imagine being stabbed to death by the Andy Warhol Bridge.

More on “Please Publish My New Adult Coloring Book: GTFU”

Today my short parody, “Please Publish My Adult Coloring Book: Grow the F*ck Up!” is featured on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.  I’m perversely proud of this, for some reason.  Mostly, I think, because it validates my thinking that this silly piece actually contains a great idea for a book!

However, I am also sensitive to the notion that adult coloring books have therapeutic value. When my dad had a stroke, this was something I bought him to help retrain motor memory and create even though debilitated.  I also think coloring is fun, and it’s kind of cool when groups of people gather together in coffeeshops to fill in the blanks and chat in a sort of crayola-laden kaffeeklatsch.

Or as @ShinyZomby puts it on twitter:

What am I doing this morning? Coloring…cause yeah #coloring #adult #whynot pic.twitter.com/gB2m0DjdS5

— Megan (@ShinyZomby) April 25, 2016

Anyway — no, it’s not the therapeutic value, it’s the denegration of publishing and the deskilling of the arts I’m against.  We are substituting artistic creation with…something else. So I’ve gathered together a list of some research I’ve been doing (and madly sharing on twitter all day) as a sort of “but seriously!” counter-message campaign:

Adult Colouring Book Craze Triggers Global Pencil Shortage (Independent UK)

Adult Coloring Books Were Popular and Subversive in the 1960s (Smithsonian)

America’s Obsession With Adult Coloring is a Cry for Help (Quartz)

Why Adults are Buying Coloring Books for Themselves (New Yorker)

I do like some coloring books.

The kind where the pages turn yellow-colored with time, for instance.

Thanks again, McSweeney’s!

p.s. the astounding stats cited at the top of my humor piece are real! See Publisher’s Weekly and Washington Post

I hope this becomes some kind of ouroboros and Arnzen's pitch for a new adult coloring book actually gets published. https://t.co/WbcT5JJ4KA

— Jeremy R Johnson (@JRJ_Is_Probable) April 25, 2016

Thanks Jeremy! I totally concur!

Shared Psychosis: An Interview with Sara Tantlinger

Celebrating Nat’l Poetry Month with the 52!

One of the things I enjoy about National Poetry Writing Month (aka “NaPoWriMo”) is Gerald So’s “30 Days of the 5-2” Crime Poetry blog tour. He asks poets and readers to contribute something for a calendar day related to his journal of crime poetry. I’ve participated in the past (and I also published a new piece at the 5-2 just last month for “Pi Day”) but this time around I decided to do something different: conduct an interview.

As luck would have it, I knew one of the recent contributors to the journal, because she’s working with me as a horror writer presently enrolled in our MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction: Sara Tantlinger. We meet roughly once a month to talk shop, and so I took advantage of the opportunity to ask Sara about her “criminal” motivations as a writer, especially in a creepy love poem she placed in the journal last year, called “Love Me like a Murder Scene.”

Read and listen to that poem first below, since our interview focuses mostly on the text and her thought process as she constructed it.

LOVE ME LIKE A MURDER SCENE
by Sara J. Tantlinger

You hold me like a ransom note

and love me the way a knife loves

a heart. The police tape is strewn

around us, yellow ribbons that scream

caution, caution, what have you done?

This murder scene love bleeds dark

rubies under my skin, and you can slice

into me all you like, but I remain viciously

tied to our passion crime, a wolf who refuses

to die by anything other than your mouth.

Your eyes, bruised with affection, promise

me forever, but I know that does not mean

golden sun and songbirds. Forever is cruel,

a chilled finality between us. I want it anyway

because I know you will meet me at the end.

Stop your shaking hands. Hold the knife against

our chests, grip me tight in your threatening

embrace, and I’ll promise to love you even when

your skin rots from your corpse. I will clutch your

bones to my heart and bid the world farewell.

— originally published in The Five-Two (8 June 2015)

Karen Petersen, a guest editor for the 5-2, called the poem “tantalizing”: “‘Love Me Like A Murder Scene’ immediately got my attention and kept it. The poet uses crime scene homicide metaphors with a creepy brilliance that captures the obsessive nature of intense passion.” Editor Gerald So liked it enough to submit it as one of his “Best of the Net” submissions for the year. And I, of course, find the seductive violence of the poem worth celebrating.

So, without further ado, here’s my interview with Sara J. Tantlinger (also posted to Soundcloud), where we analyze what the poem means to her, from the invention of the piece to its possible inspirations and meanings. Happy Days of the Five-Two:

.

Check out HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. II

Related:



Learn more about Sara J. Tantlinger on her website, Muses and Madness, or keep up with her work on twitter.

In addition to her poem in the 52 Crime Poetry Weekly and other published pieces, Sara placed a poem in the HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. II, a fantastic collection of dark poems published last year by the Horror Writers Association. (You can read other excerpts here)

Visit the 52 Crime Poetry weekly weblog and celebrate National Poetry Month.

The 5-2 is an awesome journal and I hope you’ll check them out regularly, and support their ebooks (editor Gerald So will contribute the income to Academy of American Poets this month).

At the interview. Photo by Heidi Ruby Miller

Spring 16 Appearances

We’re moving into the season for literary conferences and conventions, and it feels like I’m crawling out from under a snow-covered mossy rock, so I thought I’d post a general update on things I’m planning to do after I blink away the sun blindness.

Among other things, I’ll be a guest at two big cons in the horror genre.



The 2016 World Horror Con in Provo, Utah runs April 28th-May 1st, and I’m fortunate to be one of the special guests. This promises to be an intimate con, with a great chance to hang out and chat with writers and artists over the weekend. I’ve got two presentations scheduled, along with a fun “kaffeeklatch”. See my event page or go directly to the WHC2016 website.

I’ve attended many Bram Stoker Award banquets over the years, and these are always fancy events, tucked under the arms of someone else’s con or in a hotel for a business meeting. But now they’ve raised the bar to “convention” status for the first ever STOKERCON. I’ll be hosting a guest writing workshop at the conference, sitting on panels, and generally mingling about. You can find me on my event page or go directly to the StokerCon16 website.

The HWA actually interviewed me recently to talk about my “Making the Reader Squirm” workshop, so watch the StokerCon16 blog page for that to appear soon.

Though most of my time is devoted to writing right now, summer is already getting booked up and I’m looking into adding some new Fall/Halloween excursions. So Subscribe to the Goreletter or keep your eyes on the upcoming events page on gorelets.com to make sure you stay abreast of the latest.

Poster for WHC 2016 features art by guest Keith Thompson

the vampire smiles

Source: twitter / notegraphy / nest

Instigation Prompts: Scary Politics

Poster by Dante Neal at Mashable

In December’s issue of The Goreletter, I posted the following list of story starters for “Scary Politics.” As the primary season is heating up to the boiling point of hellfire, I thought I’d copy it here to the blog, as a reminder that there’s no better place for reimagining the world — and for doing so in horrific ways — than in the real world of American politics.

If you didn’t see this before, it’s because you don’t subscribe to my newsletter. SUBSCRIBE (or fill out the form to update your email address) and you’ll get Instigation fresh off the grill. And if you want giant collection of over 500 things like this, don’t forget my ebook, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side.

SCARY POLITICS



Discover the weirdest story you can by simply freewriting (without stopping to edit) in response to one the following prompts and seeing where it takes you.



Murder by voting booth.

Script an over-the-top smear campaign or ludicrously accusatory TV commercial.

From the point of view of an assistant or intern, dramatize a politician’s appeal for help in covering up a heinous crime.

Describe a deathmatch between an elephant and a donkey (or other political animal symbol) with as much gritty realism as possible. Give this battle a function.

Write a “Bill of Rights” for the citizens of Hell. Or invent a “Bill of Wrongs.”

Choose your favorite monster or imaginary creature. Now create a political party for others of its kind, or have it run for office on behalf of all monsters.

Zombify an assassinated politician.

Deliver a non-human character’s speech before the UN General Assembly.

***

Related reading for further inspiration:

+ Read “The H Word: The Politics of Horror” by Paul Tremblay (Nightmare Magazine)

+ See “If Horror Movie Villains Were Running for President” from Donte Neal at Mashable (Neal created the great Pennywise the Clown (from King’s IT) poster on this blog entry).

+ Speaking of Stephen King, now might be a really good time to re-read The Dead Zone!

+ Do a google or youtube search for “American Horror Story” + your favorite candidate’s name.

+ Of course, vote Cthulhu! Here’s his I Have a Dream speech.

Goreletter 10.2 Mailed

The Goreletter Vol. 10, #2 was delivered to mailing list subscribers on 12/29/15 @ 3pm est. It contains extra entertainment/material not available here on the weblog version, including a new gorelets poem, a mini year-in-review, information about upcoming events, a batch of “political” instigation prompts, and new art/photos.

But most importantly, it contains news about the NEW YEAR’S EVE GRAND PRIZE GIVEAWAY in the currently running contest rally. If you subscribe to the Goreletter you can win a rare leatherbound, lettered edition of my fiction collection, Proverbs for Monsters. All you need to do is sign up for the newsletter before Midnight eastern on New Year’s Eve, 12/31/15. A random email address will be drawn and contacted the next day about the prize, which will be announced here and on twitter & facebook thereafter.

If you subscribe and did not receive this issue, or just want to see the back issues, 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 highly recommend you enroll in the HTML edition, which contains more rich features than the scaled down text-only version. But do as you will!

I hope you’ll sign up! I approach The Goreletter like an artist’s sketchbook and a way to share my creative/horror life with people who may have a mind of a similar bent. And it is bent, indeed. From distorted art pieces to weird poems to fresh “instigation” prompts for sick writers…it’s always got something strange inside. It’s also free and you can always unsubscribe whenever you want, judgment free. Privacy is respected. Issues are sent just once every three-or-four months, so your inbox won’t suffocate…in fact, you’ll forget you’re signed up just around the time that a new issue sneaks up on you and pounces. Contact me by email or leave a comment here if you have any questions. — Michael A. Arnzen

This graphic header from the newsletter is also a desktop wallpaper I posted to Flickr for Halloween

Holiday Hugs & Kisses from gorelets.com: End of Year Contest Rally!

Happy holiday hugs and kisses! See below (and come back again and again!) for rotating and ever-updating contests rounding out the end of 2015!

Aside from creeping you out with those uncanny body parts above, the best way I could think of to give you a holiday gift was to run random draw contests to finish out the year! There will be several rotating giveaways, so come back to this page routinely between now and New Year’s Eve.

For the first Xmas round of prizes, all you need to do is click the ‘follow’ button on my amazon profile page to be entered to win as I post contests. I will be offering new contests like this on different websites and using a variety of methods, and will keep cycling things so you’ll have new opportunities to win if you miss out. And see below about how to enter the grand prize finale! And hey, you ARE eligible for every contest, so come back again and again!

GIVEAWAY #1: Dec 24th 2015

The FIRST PRIZE was a free HARDCOVER edition of The Gorelets Omnibus! This is the one with 50 pages of bonus features, including a “horror poetry writing workshop,” a copy of Michael Arnzen’s Dying, and currently the only print version of many of the prompts from Instigation!

AMAZON GIVEAWAY for The Gorelets Omnibus Hardcover Edition! GO TO: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/abeec98c38470389 NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of Dec 31, 2015 11:59 PM PST, or when all prizes are claimed. See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.

The first winner was Andrew Vincent — congratulations! A new contest will be announced later today (on Christmas Eve).

 

GIVEAWAY #2: NOW OPEN



AMAZON GIVEAWAY contest for the Audiovile CD! GO TO: https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/b9d3f687c1ac6004. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of Dec 31, 2015 11:59 PM PST, or when all prizes are claimed. See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.

 

GIVEAWAY #3:

Stay tuned! This page will be updated when a new one begins. And while you’re waiting, subscribe to the Goreletter to learn the rules for entering the grand prize-winning contest tba!

It’s been a great year but I’m looking forward to 2016 even more… it promises to be the most uncanny year yet! Make sure you keep up with me by subscribing to The Goreletter — a new one should be out before the end of the year, and again: it will feature the top prize!

SUBSCRIBE

Easy-peasy: CLICK HERE to sign up.

Mailings now go out roughly every 1-2 months. Privacy is tight and well-respected. In 2013, I adopted a new email system that has greater security and allows for high-quality HTML-based design, but a plain text version is still also available. Browse the back issues to see the newsletter’s decade-plus history.

 

Instigation Prompts: Horror for the Holidays

In last November’s issue of The Goreletter, I posted the following list of story starters for “Horror for the Holidays.” Since the season will soon be upon us, I thought I’d share it here on the blog, to help the sicko writers out there get started on corrupting their holiday imaginations early.

If you didn’t see this before, it’s because you don’t subscribe to my newsletter. SUBSCRIBE and you’ll get Instigation fresh off the grill. And if you want whole trove of things like this, pick up my ebook, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side

Horror for the Holidays



Discover the weirdest story you can by simply freewriting (without stopping to edit) in response to one the following prompts and seeing where it takes you.

+ a possessed belt buckle

+ murder by butter

+ the carving of the beast

+ a sinister game at the children’s table

+ a postmodern puritan meets a elderly witch

+ gravy, in zero gravity

+ a secret trophy on the Xmas tree

+ serving up hot cider — named “Suicider”

+ ceremonial burning inside the chimney

+ inappropriate carolling

+ new year’s eve in prison

+ the snow smothers

+ snow angel chalk outlines

+ the tree feels it all

+ Rudolph the Red-Tipped Pain Spear

+ new year’s cocktails from hell

+ the haunted advent calendar

Zombifurcation

At the Nightsun writing conference in Frostburg, MD, last weekend, I had the privilege of performing a reading of fiction and poetry. Here’s an audio clip from the event, along with the text for one of the pieces I read — the Seussian horror poem, “Zombifurcation” — which appears in the latest issue of The Goreletter.

ZOMBIFURCATION

A zombie crawled right,

a zombie crawled left —

both shared the singular

body I'd cleft.

I'd chopped down his chest,

and cut off his scream —

but still he came at me,

splitting his seam.

He pulled himself toward me

in reanimation:

One arm for each half

toward opposing locations.

A zombie crawled left,

a zombie crawled right —

both sides of my brain

they would eat to unite.
           
I dropped my machete

and pulled out my gun —

I had to be ready

to shoot either one.

And he got awfully near me

on the floor of the crypt,

but then lost all his traction

when his torso was ripped.

A zombie crawled here,

a zombie crawled there —

without one another

they just clutched at the air.

I could have just left then —

let yang to chase yin —

but I wasted two bullets

on the Siamese twins.