Come up with a witty caption for the image below and you will be eligible to win one of the following “book & comic series” prizes (…there will be two winners chosen!) :

• An almost-impossible-to-find signed “Advanced Review Copy” of The B*tchfight by Arnzen
  + the first four issues of Jai Nitz’ horror comic series, Heaven’s Devils (Image).

• A signed copy of Arnzen’s (now out-of-print and still out-of-its-mind) novella, Licker
  + the first four issues of Army of Darkness vs. Reanimator (Dynamite Comics).

NEW BONUS ADDITION: A THIRD PRIZE!
Matt Schuster will be picking his personal favorite caption for his art, and the winner will receive the original sketch for it! If you haven’t entered yet, the odds just got a lot better, so act now!

HERE ARE THE RULES:

• DEADLINE: JULY 6th, NOON, est. Any captions/comments received after that date will not be eligible to win.
• Anyone can post a caption to enter by leaving a “comment” below.
• One entry per person — so make it count.
• I know it’s hard to abide by this one, but no obscenity. That’ll be my judgment call, but try to keep it PG-13. I won’t approve comments with “curse” words or overt description of sexuality, because kids do visit this site.
• A valid e-mail address MUST be provided on the comment form along with your entry so that you can be contacted if you win a prize. Your privacy will be respected.
• ALL entrants who post entries will be added to the Goreletter e-mail list, if they are not already subscribers. To win you have to be a subscriber when decisions are made. You may unsubscribe after the contest if you want to (but you won’t want to); regardless, your personal info is safe.
• Captions do NOT have to be funny to win, but must pertain to the image given. The winners will be chosen based on Arnzen’s entirely subjective judgment about good captioning.

Thanks to MATT SCHUSTER — the artist from Proverbs for Monsters — for graciously providing this original sketch for this contest. Drop by his website to see more of his fantastic imaginings!

Here it is…caption away!

UPDATE: CONTEST DEADLINE HAS PASSED… COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY ARE NOW CLOSED! WINNERS POSTED SHORTLY!

The five bloggers upon whom I choose to bestow this same honor are:

#1: Dennis G. Jerz for his frequent posts of noteworthy articles and his openly geeky commentary
#2: Brian Keene for his provocative contemplations about the horror genre and the writer’s life
#3: Jeff Vandermeer for his literary savvy about the fantastic and his writing whimsy
#4: Richard Ristow for his deep analysis of horror writing
#5: ALL the Storytellers Unplugged writers for their excellent discussions of the writing life

[Ironically, The Horror Channel has just posted a bleary-eyed video interview with me, shortly after I stepped off the stage at the 2006 Bram Stoker Awards in Newark last June, when I won the award for Freakcidents. Good memories!]

World Horror Convention itself was a blast this year. It was one of the few times my wife Renate attends these things with me, and we had a great time together checking out Toronto. I met many old friends and made new ones, and though I wouldn’t dare try to list all of them here, it was nice to hang out with a few fellow faculty and alumnae from our Writing Popular Program at Seton Hill University, including Lawrence C. Connolly and Jean-Loup Benet (pictured below).

Among the personal highlights at the con….

Getting to taste Brian Keene’s bottle of Knob Hill during the opening night panel, “What is Horror, Exactly?” with Keene, Gary Braunbeck, Deborah LeBlanc, and the wonderful Mark Morris. Our audience was so large we had to move the panel out into the reception area, and this made it only larger, as snockered and curious passers-by joined in on the fun, and we sported with their comments. We never pinned horror down “exactly” and that was a very good thing, because I think we revealed the amorphous and wide range of the genre.

At the “mass autograph” session, in which all the major writers in attendance gather in a room to sign books, I had the odd opportunity to sign a jacket…which is now for sale on eBay to benefit a horror fan in need. (Go bid on it here — it’s a good cause.)

My screening of Exquisite Corpse drew a great conversation afterward, as we talked about how poetry and other experimental forms make different demands on the filmmaker and audience. At my fiction reading, I previewed some excerpts from my upcoming audiobook, Audiovile (and found it very difficult not to hear the accompanying music in my head as I read aloud).

And at the end of the convention, I sat on a panel called “Young Blood: New Writers to Look Out For” (starring Sarah Langan, Alexandra Sokoloff, Sarah Pinborough, and Violette Malan — all pictured above, though I wish we could see their faces rather than this offbeat ‘last supper’ look we’ve got going on). I assumed this panel would be a polling of who we thought people ought to be reading these days, but instead discovered that the panelist themselves were the ones who were being showcased (…which was fine by me, even though I’ve been publishing for about 18 years now). After we talked a bit about our work and the new challenges of the industry today, the panel quickly became a discussion about strategies for getting published, since there were a number of new writers in attendance with questions. Of course, one thing a new writer can and should do is attend the conventions in the trade, like next year’s WHC, which I can guarantee will be not only informative and career-rewarding, but also just a whole lotta fun.

Just a little fridge magnet frivolity. It means nuhthink!

Rumor has it that the custom card set may be made available for sale separately, since the demo was such a hit at World Fantasy Convention last November. I’ll let you know.

This fantastic photo is taken from a break on the set of Hell on Earth, a zombie film in production by Ted Bohus at Horror Biz Films. The artist behind the special “Grim Grimoire” edition of Play Dead is also a prop artist for this film (also playing a zombie), which will feature one of his famous “Necronomicon”-styled books.

The special edition of Play Dead will priced and orders will be taken very soon. The standard hardcover edition of my novel is available now from your favorite bookseller (though you may have to ask them to stock it) and it’s already amassing great customer reviews at places like amazon.com.

[Speaking of zombies...: Naked Snake Press and Shocklines.com are both offering unique special deals on my zombie poetry book, Rigormarole.]

Getting the right-sized
carton is proving difficult
because they make
them for hats not heads,
and he tumbles and thuds
inside every one he’s tried
so far, bruising him ugly.

Then there’s matter
of which side to face up
since sometimes he
doesn’t want to look
him in the eyes when they talk
and at other times he wants
to pull him out by the hair
and pretend it’s his birthday.

And the cardboard is weak
and the bottom keeps
getting so soggy that the head
is like an upside-down
jack-in-the-box
but it isn’t as fun.

So he has to use a liner
but it crackles inside
and this inexplicably
disturbs him.

After he finally finds
a good enough box
he mails the head
to himself just for kicks
but it never arrives
and after awhile
the postman smiles
too much for a man
delivering his replacement
without a box to keep it in.

“I greatly look forward to each newsletter. I don’t look at it in progress because I don’t like to spoil the enjoyment and shock that I get from reading the finished copy. Sometimes something you’ve written sticks in my mind and I can’t get it out…then I have to get my electric drill and…but I won’t bore you with that.” — subscriber, Jennifer Peterson

Along with breaking news, this weblog is really just a place where I post first draft sections of the newsletter as I compose them. You can get it as an RSS feed, if you wish, but to really get the full effect of The Goreletter, please subscribe to the e-mail version. Just look at the archives for a sample of what you’d be getting. In addition to updated versions of the articles that appear on the blog, the e-mail edition includes more unique contests, more personal news, and a section of exclusive subscriber-only discount coupons on magazines, books, and software. It’s published only once per month, and your privacy is protected.

I don’t count hits on this blog and I have no idea how many people subscribe via an rss newsfeed. But I do know that I currently have over 900 subscribers to the e-mail version, and I’m committed to at least doubling that by 2006. I’ll likely be giving a prize to the 1000th subscriber, so if that entices you, sign up using the form in the right column of this page. If you have problems subscribing, e-mail me with a request and I’ll set you up.

This collage appears in Eye Contact, the literary magazine I advise at Seton Hill University where I teach. The theme for this particular issue of the magazine was “truth.” I clipped words and phrases out of Weekly World News; when I began, I thought I’d build a collage of freaky and bizarre headlines, but I found myself instead pulling out the more “normal” terms and assembling them in an abnormal way. The “shout out” style of the excessive typography, I’m hoping, renders everything strangely familiar. I believe the “left behind” phrase at the center originally referred to that whole “Left Behind” Armageddon novel series phenomena, but for me it seemed to progressively suggest something entirely different about the No Child Left Behind Act as I built this collage around it as a centerpiece. I’m still not sure what it all means, if anything at all.

UPDATE: This deal has officially ended, but you can still get Grave Markings and a free bonus book if you order the title through shocklines.com.

What shocks you?
brought to you by Quizilla

http://gorelets.com/gorelets/Stoker04_WEB/

You can also read the press release that my school, Seton Hill University, is sending out far and wide to celebrate the achievement. Nice!

Enjoy!
– Mike Arnzen