Arnzen with zombie hostess, Becca May.

Arnzen with zombie, Rob Dutzman.

Raw Dog Screaming Press has posted some great photos and coverage of last weekend’s fun at Zombiefest 2007.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Comes Early:

[This just in: See the Post-Gazette article on this event.]

I’ll be attending Zombiefest in Pittsburgh this weekend (10/27-8) to kick off the Halloween-week frenzy early. I’ll be presenting a reading on a panel with Greg Lamberson and Scott Johnson on Saturday at 2pm. Other guest writers include Gary Braunbeck, Max Brooks, Kim Paffenroth, Edward A. Holsclaw II, and the guys from Bloodtype Online. Zombiefest culminates in an attempt to break the world record in a zombie walk through the Monroeville Mall (setting for the original Dawn of the Dead) for charity.

A Halloween Bargain:
I was alerted by Fictionwise — the premiere e-book distributor for popular fiction and short stories — that all horror and dark fantasy e-books are 25%-30% off this month in celebration of Halloween…there’s still time left to get as many as you can, including several of my short stories and collections in e-book format, cheap. [There is also a weekly discount page for Goreletter subscribers which features a number of titles from Raw Dog Screaming Press.]

A Halloween Costume Contest:
Usually I only post contests within the pages of the e-mail edition of The Goreletter, but this time I’m opening it up to everyone. Here’s your chance to win $75 in free Arnzen books!

This ought to be easy and your chances of winning are good! Send me a photo (whether at a party, on your doorstep, or whatever) of yourself in costume. It doesn’t HAVE to be a Halloween photo, but I imagine that would be the easiest time to take a picture. (I will post your photos under my profile at myspace.com, so entering this contest grants me one-time online publishing rights to your photograph).

Deadline: November 5th
Preferred format: .jpg file (may be re-sized for space)
Size limit: 1.4 megabytes
SEND TO: arnzen@gmail.com

Horror imagery preferred. Points for creativity, craft, and use of scenario/scenery. Bonus points for incorporating any Arnzen-related paraphernalia in your shot (holding a book, dressing up like a character, whatever). Try to keep the imagery below an R rating please, since little kiddies read my stuff sometimes and I don’t want my site to get censored/banned/etc. by the powers that be. (I will not publish nudity, drug references, or other images that I’m not comfortable sharing with the public.) New photos preferred.

Submit by e-mail only to arnzen@gmail.com. Do not send weblinks to download from. Your name will be included in the photo caption. Anyone who submits will be automatically subscribed to the e-mail edition of The Goreletter, if they do not already subscribe. Your e-address will not be used in any other way.

ONE GRAND PRIZE TO MY FAVORITE PHOTO: A free signed limited hardcover copy of PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS upon release ($50 value!) & one DVD of EXQUISITE CORPSE ($17 value!) with bonus autographed Arnzen ephemera inserted in the clamshell case ($???).

I really enjoyed reading Greg Lamberson’s meaty review of my audiobook, Audiovile, which was published last night at the great new horror site, Fear Zone:

“16 tracks of brain damaging terror. Stories like “Psycho Hunter,” “Stabbing for Dummies,” and “Six Short Films About Chauncey the Serial Killer” will have you alternately cackling and gasping. The brilliance of these tales — amplified by Arnzen’s pitch perfect delivery — is that within the space of a couple of minutes, each one sets a grin on your face, then slaps it off, then kicks you in the groin and leaves you gasping (but still laughing), “That isn’t right! That’s just plain WRONG!” – Greg Lamberson, Fearzone.com

If you’re anywhere near Pittsburgh’s Zombiefest this coming weekend (10/27-28), you too can get your brain damaged by coming to my reading, or visiting my publisher’s table at the convention.

I’ll be reading at two events in Western Pennsylvania this coming weekend, in celebration of Halloween:

On Friday, Oct 19th, at 7:30pm, you can catch me live at the Bottle Works Ethnic Arts Center (411 Third Ave.) in Johnstown, PA. I’ll be reading alongside Gerry LaFemina. Free and open to the public. Visit http://www.bottleworks.org/ for details.

On Saturday, Oct 20th, from 8-10pm, I’ll be chugging coffee and getting weird at the “Get Lit” event (see poster above) at DV8 Espresso Bar and Gallery (208 S. Pennsylvania Ave.) in Greensburg, PA. Free to all coffee lovers and horror fans. Visit http://www.myspace.com/dv8espressobarandgallery for more information.

I will have copies of my new book (Proverbs for Monsters), cd (Audiovile), and even DVD (Exquisite Corpse) available for sale, first come first severed…I mean “served.”

If you can’t make it, then I hope I’ll see you at ZOMBIEFEST the following weekend (Oct 27th)! Happy Halloween, hellions.

The Goreletter Vol. 5, #1, with the title “Cold Cuts” was mailed to subscribers on 20/Oct/2007 @ 12:39 pm est. It contains extra material not available here on the weblog version, including a subscriber-only Halloween Costume contest where you can win $75 in free books!

If you subscribe and did not receive this issue, e-mail me for a replacement or review the archives at gorelets.com.

Subscribe today…it’s painless, fun and free! (Well…probably not completely pain-free). Issues are mailed only four-to-six times a year, so your inbox won’t be glutted. This Bram Stoker Award-winning newsletter has just begun its fifth year of production; sign up and see what thousands of other horror fans are reading! — Mike Arnzen

+ Write a story from the viewpoint of a groundskeeper at the graveyard — avoiding any of the typical trappings of the horror genre. Make it mundane, even. Avoid using speculative fiction technique at all until you get to page three. Then, if you need to jazz things up, let her rip.

+ Devise a plot surrounding a schoolyard bully…when he’s elderly, in the nursing home.

+ Describe a tuft of stiff hair that has grown in a very unexpected place on your main character’s body.

***
If you publish something instigated by this department, let me know and I’ll mention it here! Congratulations this time around to D.W. Green, for his story “Surgical Puppet Theater,” which will appear in the upcoming anthology, Darkened Horizons.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that “suppurate” described the after-effect of a satisfying dinner. A term for how you satisfied, sated, and sedated you feel when you sit on the couch after, say, a Thanksgiving meal, opening your belt. But no: “suppurate” is the fancy word we reserve to describe pustular discharge. Slimy, often freakishly yellow, leakage. The putrid rot that spills from a burst boil or infected blister.

It comes from the Latin term “puris” which means “pus” though there’s nothing pure about it, since pus is surely disgusting. I have a friend who once argued with me that “pus” is incorrect; that it’s actually spelled “puss.” I asked him how his cat was doing. He said “Fine, she’s even purring on my lap right now.” If I was smart, I would have replied “Sup-purr-ating, maybe.”

Mono-1.com (a progressive advertising agency) has posted a fun “mix and match” game where you can assemble all the elements of the human head into a freaky photorealistic picture, called Monoface. They say there are 760,000 possible “monofaces” you can make with the various random mash-ups of eyes, noses, mouths, and hair/shoulders. Create your own mutants and have a ball.

Tight as a tick to a scalp,
I keep my vampire nailed down
to the floor in my bedroom.
His arms are stretched pale and flabby
as the hairy little bat I know
he wishes he could turn into
when I see him squinching his lupine brow
and grunting like he’s constipated.
But the nails won’t set him free
from the clock-handed impalement of his limbs.
Maybe he could transform into a flying rodent
but he’s stretched so tight, the tension
between those silver spikes would only split
him right in two. I keep him fed
with stray pet blood and sometimes
he acts like he loves me for it –
cooing like he’s the one stray I kept,
the one pet I cared enough about to take in,
the lucky survivor I won’t kill.
At other times — usually at night
when I peek over the bed before sleep –
his eyes quiver ablaze and he stares
right at me like some starving feral animal
caught in a barbed wire fence.
Asleep, I dream of torture –
of drizzling holy water left-right
across pasty dead flesh, drawing
cross-shaped wounds in the gray canvas
of skin. I dream of taking needle nose
pliers to teeth before teasing him
with my bare wrist and strained neck.
But in the morning, the sunlight blares
into the windowpane, fizzling his face
and he screams like a drowning hyena.
It’s annoying. And as I close the curtains
I deeply wish I could just finish him off,
but this supernatural sundial
is the best alarm clock I ever had.

One of the ways I entertain myself when I stand in line at the local sandwich shop chain is by watching the cold cut artists behind the counter as they prepare my meal. They arrange the order line so you can customize your sandwich as they create it, dictating what toppings and sauces you’d like to include in your meal. It makes you feel special.

But me? I’m fascinated by the open display of butchery and cold meat.

Standing behind the sneeze guard glass makes me feel like I’m in a surgical theater, watching doctors operate as they slice bread with their long knives and handle meaty tissue in their latex-covered hands. They spritz and drizzle dressing along the cut like they’re cleansing an open, foot-long wound. Sometimes it’s a messy affair, when the sandwich spills its contents across the counter like the mess you’d see on a coroner’s table during a lunch break. But I forget all that as they wrap up the meal in paper, twisting it up tourniquet-tight, like they were saving a bleeding leg.

Those creepy latex gloves they wear. That’s what sends me into this fantasy.

And they don’t change them often. They don’t scrub in. They don’t sterilize their instruments. They might put on fresh gloves when you place your order, but they rarely change them when they pick up a dirty butcher’s knife handle or press a button on a crisping oven or a microphone transmitter to the drive-thru window, or — worst of all — handling the cash register or all your filthy lucre before they are finished making your meal.

It’s like they think the gloves are there to protect their hands, rather than the sanitation of your sandwich.

And eating all that contact residue is like — I dunno — like you’re on the subway, licking the seats or something.

***
I fear raw meat and cold cuts. For more of my opinions on such culinary delights, here’s an oldie from The Goreletter