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.

~~~~~~~~~

+ 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.

~~~~~~~~~
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!]

He skins action figures
for his masks and stalks
the model railroad village
weilding his deadly pushpin
every Halloween
until Giant Michael Myers
tosses him aside, bored,
leaving him fallen
paralyzed on the tracks
for an eternity of waiting
in suspense
for the train that never comes –
his tiny imagination
a cruel justice
worse than a thousand thousand
carnage-ridden runovers

Horror author Brian Keene is being massacred today by writers across the globe…fictionally, of course, and in the name of drumming up donations to the Shirley Jackson Award society.

Here’s my unsolicited and wholly unwarranted contribution, written impulsively just a few moments ago, because I like Brian and I like the Shirley Jackson Awards. Be sure to click over to Keene’s website, where there are plenty of entertaining alternatives by numerous twisted writers. All in good fun!

BRIAN KEENE MUST DIE

“And then his face caved in.”

Brian Keene leaned back in his rickety old chair and evaluated the sentence. The whole book had led up to that one line, and it was a damned good one. He couldn’t think of a better way to end his 42nd novel.

But he could think of a better way to end the night. He walked across his office, opened a file drawer labeled “research” and pushed aside a hanging folder of old comic books, till he found what he thought might still be hidden there, from many years ago. His fingers found the hockey puck-sized canister and he chuckled to himself as he pulled it out.

“Good old Kodiak,” he said, tapping the green can of snuff against his thigh. He went outside and enjoyed the night moon. The crickets. The hum of the world.

And he ran his finger around the rim of his ancient can of Kodiak chewing tobacco. The one he hid in a drawer many, many novels ago — when he had a full head of hair and enough spunk left in him to try to kick the habit. He’d hidden the chew in his files “just in case” he wouldn’t be able to endure the withdrawals. Instead, he’d gotten so drunk on Knob Creek that night he’d blacked out and forgotten it was there. It sat there for years — at least fifteen — and — aside from his nightly pull from a flask of Knob Creek — most of his addictions were long behind him. He’d totally forgotten the can of snuff was in the drawer until just a moment ago, when he wrote those final words to THE LOWERING and somehow it tripped a lightswitch on in the closet of his memories and he instantly remembered it.

He took a whiff of the can, like a wine critic sniffing a cork. Fifteen years old, but it smelt great, and memories of his snuff days came flooding back to him. It didn’t smell like chewing tobacco at all. More like a cross between fermented grapes and graveyard earth. The fact that it was still smelly at all surprised him, but then again, very little surprised him now that he was in his late 70s. He gently tapped a finger on the mound of black leaves and its tar stuck to the pads of his fingers. He rubbed the leaves between them and the tobacco leaves crisped into powder, but left a minty residue on his fingertips, which he sniffed one more time to check his senses. It smelled tasty. Chewable.

“Screw it,” he said and took the flask out of his back pocket. He poured Knob Creek all over the stuff to kill any bugs that might have grown inside. Surely something had grown in the festering can over the years, no? But maybe the can fermented the stuff like whiskey and was sealed so well that chewing it would be like drinking ancient wine. Who knew? So he took a healthy pinch and balled it up and packed it between his cheek and gum, just like he used to do it in the old days: testing the capacity of his cheek by pushing it down firmly with his tongue.

It didn’t taste rancid at all. It tasted better than he even remembered Kodiak ever tasting. Saliva pooled in his mouth and he spit at a crumpled Budweiser can on the grass nearby, which made a metallic “pop” when his spit hit it, like he’d shot it with a pistol.

He sat on his steps and wished he had one of those great ornate spittoons from the old west. He spit again, and felt like Josey Wales when the can not only “popped” but leapt up in the air from the impact. He watched the blackened spit crawl down the BUD label, glimmering in the moonlight, leaves of old Kodiak sticking to the aluminum.

In fact, the moonlight glimmer of his spit seemed too familiar. The drool was too white. It reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place.

He swirled more spit around in his mouth. The chew was beginning to sting a little, to sour his gum tissue up. Almost as though the “pinch” were pinching back. He could feel the stems poking him.

He spit again, to get some of it out of his mouth.

It pinged the can like a bullet, and it rattled across the grass, smeary with his saliva.

And the he saw what was so shiny in the spittle.

It wasn’t the shine of the moon. It was a different kind of whiteness. At first he thought it might be paint on the tin can, flecking off from impact of his sharply shot acidic spit. He stood, picked up the can, and held it up to the moon to get a better look.

And he saw teeth. Little tiny teeth.

And he knew that the pinch in his lip was not old stem and acidic tobacco at all, but the manic chewing of those tiny teeth — a least a hundred of them. Ancient microbial teeth, mature and angry from being locked inside the Kodiac can over all those many years. He had to laugh, as the image of microscopic little Kodiac bears popped into his unflinching dark imagination: tiny grizzlies, gnashing their muzzles into the field of pink tissue, tearing bloody chunks of the stuff out with a snap of the neck and the claw of their heavy feet. It seemed preposterous, and the wounds would surely be minimal, since this was all in the close-up magnification of his mind. But the image wouldn’t go away and he could feel the chewing tobacco chewing and it began to make him more than a little uncomfortable, so he tried to probe the wad out with his tongue.

But it wouldn’t let go. The wad of Kodiak kept chewing and held firm, gripping the pink muscle with its nasty claws and it wouldn’t let go no matter how hard he tried to plunge and spit it out…and the monstrous teeth gnashed and clawed and the orgy of writhing little animals — not bears at all — not even animals of this world — but no less grizzly, and no less hungry — pulled the bolus of themselves down into his gullet…and as he choked and snortled and fell to the ground beside the beer can, he could feel them grinding their way down his throat, eating him inside out, eating right through his larynx, and the blood was spewing both up and down now — he could feel it spritzing from a torn artery and shooting against the walls of his esophagus, streaming up his windpipe and into his nasal cavity while also flooding down into his lungs, and he needed air, he needed air, and he tried to scream for help but his larynx was gone and the motion of his jaw just unhinged what was left of his lock on life. And the chewing tobacco chewed. It chewed its way into his ribcage, then his stomach lining, where it found the whiskey flavor it hungered for.

And then his face caved in.

–
This silliness was written for the Shirley Jackson Awards. May Jack Haringa and Brian Keene rest in piece.

Read all the other great contributions to the Brian Keene Must Die project on the dead man’s weblog.

NaNoWriMo — aka National Novel Writing Month — launched today (and I have a suspicion that Starbucks’ stock will, too)! Since I know that a lot of writers follow this blog, I thought it might be cool if I shared some “Instigation” prompts just for novelists who are speeding through a caffeinated session of binge writing but hitting roadblocks along the way.

These prompts are intended to help you get over those hurdles more than just help you get started — but whatever they do, I hope they instigate you to take your book in a weirder direction than you ever imagined. Because “finishing” in a month isn’t good enough…you have to get CRAZY!

I hope this injection of the dark side helps in some way. And you can always come back here and read the whole Instigation department of The Goreletter for more ideas. Good luck! — Mike Arnzen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+ Unexpectedly kill a character. Have your protagonist hear their dying words…but only partially.

+ Take a break and reflect: What element of fiction is the weakest in your book right now: character, setting, dialogue or conflict? Choose one. The next time you hit the keyboard, write three paragraphs of prose dedicated just to that element in some way. And make it DARK.

+ The next time you give a description of a character’s physical features, identify a disfigurement. ANYTHING, ranging from an almost imperceptible scar on their brow to giant webbed feet. Expound through dialogue or monologue about what sort of torment that disfigurement causes the character, and how they endure it.

+ Notice the teeth.

+ Give your viewpoint character permission to have a lengthy flight of fantasy, imagining what they would do if they had psychic powers or dreaming how they might solve the main conflict if they had superhuman powers of some kind.

+ Set your next dialogue-driven scene in a foul restaurant. Break up the conversation with intermittent observations of the low hygiene and filthy food. At the end, draw comparisons between the establishment and the novel’s conflict or antagonist.

+ Use a banal object in a scene as a makeshift weapon.

+ “Goth up” a minor character and give them something morbidly pithy or darkly ominous to say.

+ Take your main character’s hostilities and frustrations out on an inconsequential object…but in prose that dramatizes this eruption in an ultraviolent way.

+ Treat weather as a monster.

+ As you head into your next plot point, ask yourself: “And what could make the outcome even worse?”

+ Review your manuscript so far. Seize on an object or image from your description that you mentioned in passing, and bring it back into the picture in an uncannily meaningful way.

+ Something strange is hidden under the desk/table/seat. Your protagonist stumbles on it. This is important to a future scene. But keep the discovery a secret for now. You’ll figure out its importance later.

+ Make your main character sick. Whether a cold or a contracted disease. Use this sickness in an unexpected way to solve a problem.

+ Describe a new character (as they enter the story) in the darkest way you know how, from head to toe. Then make them so nice it’s laughable.

+ Introduce your viewpoint character to Insanity.

+ Reference a horror movie or book in an explicit/overt/obvious way. Then turn it inside-out.

More here.

A plea:

If you enjoyed the latest issue of The Goreletter, please post feedback in the forum I opened up at Amazon to help me spread the word. I’m always eager to hear what people think, and I appreciate concrete tips for future issues. It will land you an entry in the latest contest and perhaps a freebie for being the first of thirty entries!

If you’re not on amazon.com, you can leave a comment here on the blog too, of course, (but to be fair to all I can’t give a contest entry for it).

If you don’t know what this ‘contest’ business is, then just sign up free to my newsletter to find out. You’ll get a free ebook for subscribing and you can always unsubscribe later if you want. — Mike Arnzen