Saturday, March 06, 3:00 PM
Backlist Books bookstore: 39 Lincoln Way E., Massillon, OH 44646

Reading and signing with Raw Dog Screaming Press authors Michael Arnzen, D. Harlan Wilson, Anderson Prunty and John Edward Lawson at Backlist Books bookstore: 39 Lincoln Way E., Massillon, OH 44646. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
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To keep up with my readings and booksignings, visit my author page at BookTour.Com

Just a vampire girl
Livin’ in a zombie world
She took the midnight train
Goin’ anywhere

Just a city boy
Dead and raised in south Detroit
He took a bite of brain
Goin’ anywhere

Find a human in a smoky room
The smell of blood and cheap perfume
For a lifetime they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night

Slurping hearts till the lust’s fulfilled
Everybody’s out to kill
Doin’ anything to feel the vice
just one more time

Some are green, some are blue
Some have mouths that cannot chew
Oh, the horror movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers shuffling
Up and down the boulevard
Shadows searching
In the night
Undead people
Living just to find emotion
Feasting somewhere
In the night

Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh

Don’t stop
Bleeding
Hold on to that feeding
Undead
People
Oh-oh-ooooh

Orphan Feast is a delightfully strange game, inspired by a combination of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” and Dickens’ Oliver Twist — with a little Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton thrown into the mix. In Orphan Feast you play Creeky Tom, a ghoulish rogue whose goal is to prowl the dark alleys and rundown streets of old London and capture the homeless street urchins you’ll find everywhere there, gathering them in a sack, while avoiding a cast of crazy characters out to foil you in bizarre ways. The orphans — if you make it back to your lair — are destined for the oven, to be baked into pies (and Tom himself often snacks on the little kiddies when he’s not doing anything else). It’s a despicable premise, but the artwork is so well-done that you’ll keep playing to see what they come up with next.

Brought to you by [adult swim] games, so you know that it’s weird. In fact, they’ve got a LOT of crazy games even weirder and more deplorable than this one. Like 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, a classic favorite.

Getting hungry? Time to partake in the Orphan Feast!

Happy Holidays!

A few bits of “writer”-related news to note:

I’ll be returning as a guest lecturer at the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop next Summer (applications for early admission due Jan 30th!). The kind folks at Odyssey just interviewed me for their blog, too, where I talk about how I persisted in the early years of my career, and where I share some advice for writers of genre fiction. [I'll also be returning to teach at the Alpha Workshops for Young SF/F/H Writers next summer, as well!]

A shorter interview is attached to a brief 5-Star Review of my short story “Spring Ahead, Fall Back,” over on Red Adept’s Kindle Book Review Blog. You can get that story and more on your Kindle at amazon.com. [Speaking of amazon, I just posted lengthy "Listmania" of hard-to-find anthologies they sell in which I appear, aptly entitled "Michael Arnzen Is Lurking In The Shadowy Corners of Your Bookstore"].

And finally, a meaty excerpt from my article in the book Writer’s Workshop of Horror appears in this month’s (Jan 2010) issue of The Writer magazine, which is on the racks now!

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P.S. My 20th Anniversary Contest has passed deadline. If you have entered by kindly writing a customer review, you need to let me know about it via e-mail with your mailing address asap. The random draw for winners will be posted later this week. WINNERS HAVE BEEN POSTED. THANKS TO ALL!

I’ve gathered all the books I’ve reviewed in The Goreletter (since 2002) into some fun listmania lists over at amazon.com, and I’ll keep adding titles to them from the “Not Dead Yet” department into the future.

I’ve also been having way too much fun trolling around amazon for weird discoveries, and I have compiled a few other funky lists, like the Goofy Gory Gifts Galore list and other novelty lists. I’m apparently a listmaniac.

After many years of neglect, I have updated my author profile on amazon.com, where you can find more weirdness and links to many of my books and anthologies. Since amazon now features some of my stuff in their kindle store, and because I am likely to begin publishing The Goreletter for Kindle readers as well as web browsers, I have made gorelets an amazon affiliate, and I have been cleaning up their database when it comes to Arnzen titles by uploading book covers or making corrections. Your reviews and tags on amazon.com are appreciated.

Book Collectors, Arnzenophiliacs, and Ebayaholics, look out! Your chance to win some pretty rare swag in my 20th Anniversary Contest is ending sooner than you think! I’m extending the deadline to December 13th!

Up for grabs are some exceptionally hard-to-find items:

A “test design” pressing of the Live and Vile audio disc. This CD (pictured above) was released in only 26 lettered edition copies, bundled with the leather bound edition of my novella, The B*tchfight, from Bad Moon Books in 2008. It features a hilarious live reading from the Zombiefest convention and demo versions and outtakes from my recording sessions for Audiovile. Only 26 people in the country own these rare tracks; and only three copies of the hand-made test pressings exist. It’s signed. The winner will get this rare cd PLUS a signed copy of 100 Jolts for read-along fun.

Also up for grabs is a signed deck of Play Dead playing cards. These cards feature art by David Liscomb, inspired by images in my novel PLAY DEAD. They were included with the “Grim Grimoire” (sculpture-bound) edition of the novel. Not a lot of these exist! The winner will get the cards PLUS a copy of Exquisite Corpse, the film based on my short-shorts and poetry.

A third prize offering is a signed white paperback / “advanced review copy” of my out-of-print novel, Play Dead. Unavailable anywhere, an unknown limited run of these bound paperback versions were sent only to book reviewers before the book’s release. You’ll get this PLUS a signed copy of my latest chapbook, Skull Fragments.

HOW TO ENTER:

I’m trying to broaden my audience, so I need your help. You get an entry for any “user review” or “customer comment” you post about any of my books on any web retailer where you already shop online. I don’t see this as a bribe for false advertising: You can praise or damn me and my god forsaken “writing…I don’t care. Ideal places to do this include the Arnzen pages on Amazon.com, itunes, cdbaby.com, horror-mall.com, or anywhere my work is sold.

ANY old titles from my 20 years of weirdness can be reviewed in this way (for convenience, there’s also a large list on my amazon.com biography page). If you haven’t actually read any of my books, I invite you to review some of these freebies:

• you can review The Goreletter on amazon.com
• you download your free ebook of Sportuary and then post a review on amazon.com
• you can listen to the sampler of Audiovile on cdbaby.com and review it there or post one on itunes

When you’ve published your review, simply e-mail me (or post a link in a comment here) to tell me about it before Midnight eastern on Dec 13th, 2009. Include your mailing address, because the first thirty entries get this signed bookplate for free, while supplies last:

That’s a lot of cool stuff. If you do not currently subscribe to the email edition of The Goreletter, you will automatically be added to the list. If you are weird enough to be reading this now, you are sure to like the newsletter (which is only delivered quarterly or so, and won a Bram Stoker Award, so it can’t be half bad). You must be on my mailing list to qualify for a prize when winners are chosen, but you are free to unsubscribe anytime you like.

Winners will be chosen from a random draw. have been posted (see comments section on this post).

I’ve decided to challenge myself with an art & fiction experiment that is being hosted by The Art House Co-op called “The Fiction Project.”

How it works is like this: I registered on their site and will soon receive a Moleskine sketchbook and a random surprise “theme” that they will send me in the mail. I next will create a story along with images somehow based on that theme (and it can be as loosely based as I want it to be). I will share scans of my work in progress online. The resulting physical book will be sent back to Art House by their mid-April deadline, for permanent display in the co-op’s future location, The Brooklyn Art Gallery.

The Fiction Project is kind of like “nanowrimo“…only more artsy, less lengthy, and with lots and lots of breathing room.

I literally intend to choke every cubic inch out of that breathing room.

Who knows what will come out of this? Something dark and dreadful and weird, for certain. Sounds fun. I look forward to sharing as it develops.

And I invite you to do this along with me! Deadline to sign up is Feb 15, 2010. Once you’re registered (cost = $18), you can add me as a friend on their site so I can follow your progress. I will post every page I create as I finish it on my site profile and someplace here on gorelets.com.

[ To see how great Art House Co-op projects can get, check out their gallery of art from a similar event they ran last year (which I started, but then quit too soon): The Sketchbook Project 3. The exhibition was covered by CNN in the video below]

If you got your free ebook for subscribing to the Goreletter, but don’t know how to read it, did you know that Amazon.com recently released a free Kindle reader for the PC? (New versions for other platforms are coming soon, too). Here’s how: simply download and install Kindle Reader for PC…and then double click on the file for your ebook from inside of Windows. Voila! It’s easy. Then go back to amazon’s kindle shop and download any of the INNUMERABLE other free ebooks they’ve got. (This is so popular, that all their “bestsellers” today are freebies). Or buy some of my short stories for under .50 cents!

(If you do the latter, and post a review before Dec 1st, e-mail subscribers can get an easy entry into the rare Arnzen stuff giveaway contest in the latest Goreletter! First thirty entries get a free signed bookplate, too. Can’t lose!

[I am loving my Kindle. You should get one too. Here are my reasons.]

I don’t know why I’ve fallen for Amazon after all these years of resisting their lure. But e-books aside, I’ve finally got a decent amazon author page, and I’ve been getting way too goofy with listmania and other amazon fun.

Last week I posted a batch of creative writing sparks just for novelists to inspire some craziness during the launch of NaNoWriMo (“National Novel Writing Month”)

Now it’s a week later. Many writers have quit. Still others are beginning to lose steam. So I’m offering another batch of Instigation to possibly keep the fires burning weirdly.

Remember: finishing is not enough. You have to GO CRAZY! The glee of the twisted is a communicable disease that many readers love to catch. Good luck.

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+ Your character is desperate. Literally have them make a sacrifice. To a named deity. Even if it’s just a silly, imaginary one, like “The Great God of Caffeine” or “Vile Demon Dog of Desperation”

+ Torment with temperature.

+ Plan to give your next scene an extremely unexpected or traumatic outcome. Now START with a summary of that outcome, and write the rest in flashback or in reverse chronology, till you arrive at the cause.

+ Start a chapter with your protagonist listing a catalog (out loud or in their thoughts) of events from the book or their personal history, that begins with the line “These things just aren’t supposed to happen.”)

+ A document or art object that is somehow crucial to your storyline is discovered to be a forgery.

+ Luxuriate in twisted exposition: take a moment to describe the beauty in something disgusting or offensive.

+ At the start of the next chapter or scene, repeat the first sentence of your novel. Then precede to contradict it or reveal a new shade of its meaning.

+ Unveil a character’s irrational fear of a relatively banal object in the current setting (cellophane wrapping, ceramic mugs, aluminum picture frames, leather sofas, birch trees, suede…the more mundane the better).

+ Play fortune cookie with your book title or opening line: add “in bed” or “in the mail” after it and see where it takes you.

+ A character your protagonist expected to appear in the next sequence has disappeared or gone missing. Let them investigate the mystery…and reveal a dark secret in the process.

+ Unexpectedly, a parent arrives on the scene. And he/she/it is furious.

+ Turn a minor character into a sage. Or take a minor character’s passing comment earlier in the book, and give it more ominous weight now that you are further into the story.

+ Unmask one of your most trustworthy characters as a liar or fake!

+ Creatively employ the following words and phrases on your next page (force yourself to fit them all on one page — bonus points if they fit in one paragraph): bone shards, apparition, jitter, rocket, smear, rabid, dread, puncture

+ Uh-oh: dead batteries. Rob something the character(s) take(s) for granted of its energy.

+ Make your next scene or chapter your “Alien” moment. And by “Alien” I mean an interruption that is as outrageously unexpected as the “chest-bursting” scene from the Ridley Scott film: surprise everyone with an eruption of something astounding that had been hiding in plain sight all along.

+ Write the last scene of your book. But not the one you plotted. The one you will use to foil those readers who always jump to the end before it’s finished. THEN go back to where you were before. That’ll teach them!

+ Stop siding with the good guys so much. Let evil flourish for awhile.

More here.

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If these work for you, share them with your writer friends. Got more crazy ideas? Comments welcome.

The first Zoomquilt, back in 2005, was an amazing feat of online collaborative art. It took me five years to break out of its infinite loop. Little did I know that in 2007, it returned in a sequel that’s even darker and more addictively hypnotic than the first. Are you ready for…

ZOOMQUILT II

Let’s play a scavenger hunt together, shall we? See if you can spot the following on your never-ending journey into madness:

+ a pirate flag
+ a “warning dynamic killa” flag
+ “the end is nigh” flag
+ a “no Mickies” flag
+ a “hell” sign
+ a “fresh fish” sign

Remember to blink…

[Thanks, Boing Boing!]