Pithy Morbid Thought Contest Winners Announced

For the record, the Pithy Morbid Thought contest has officially ended and prize-winners have been selected! Winners were announced live with much drama on twitter.com/MikeArnzen this morning. I assigned all entrants a number and used http://random.org to pull random winners out of the virtual hat, then announced as I went a long live on twitter. Below are the prize winners (visit their websites if they provided them) along with links to information about the titles they won. Congrats one and all. — Mike Arnzen, http://gorelets.com WD Prescott won a signed hardcover of my novel PLAY DEAD for: “When choosing between…

Bizarro Alert: Borderline France

Hot on the heels of Skull Fragments, comes another appearance in France. Borderline magazine has just published Jerome Charlet's French translation of my short-short, "The Cow Cafe" (Au Vachement d'Cafe) in their 13th issue. Of import: this issue is focused primarily on the BIZARRO genre, and includes translations of work by such over-the-top and outre writers as Jeremy R. Johnson, Kevin Donihe, Andersen Prunty, Jeremy Shipp, Carlos Gardini, artist Maxime LeDain, and an interview with horror writer Kealan Patrick Burke. Good to see the 'bizarros' getting the international attention they deserve. The cover is wildly suggestive and weird.

The Writer’s Workshop of Horror

I'm pleased to appear in this brand new book of advice for those who want to improve their horror fiction, called order The Writer's Workshop of Horror (ed. Michael Knost, Woodland Press, Aug 2009). It's focused exclusively and deeply on the craft of scary storytelling, with a stellar line-up of contributors that include the likes of Clive Barker, Joe Lansdale, F. Paul Wilson, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Keene, Elizabeth Massie, and too many more to list:  from grand masters to rising stars, the book is a treasury of wisdom you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere.  If the (also fantastic) Horror…

2008 Bram Stoker Awards Announced

This press release just came in, hot off the ether: *** Horror Writers Association celebrates 2008 Stoker winners At long last, the anticipation is over. The Horror Writers Association has announced the winners of the 2008 Bram Stoker Awards at its annual Stoker Banquet held tonight as part of the Stoker Awards Weekend held in Burbank, California.  Nine new bronze haunted-house statuettes were handed over to the writers responsible for creating superior works of horror last year. This year’s winners are: Superior Achievement in a NOVEL DUMA KEY by Stephen King (Scribner) Superior Achievement in a FIRST NOVEL THE GENTLING…

Teachers of Terror Take Note

Dissections: The Journal of Contemporary Horror just released their May 2009 special issue on "issues of teaching the horror genre in the classroom."  Sure, I'm in there with a discussion of "learning objectives" in a horror course, but with essays like Doug Ford's "The Sublime Trials of Jack Ketchum: Teaching 'The Girl Next Door' in the Era of Torture P**n" and poems about classic movie actors by Bryan Dietrich, you know you're getting something as fascinating as it is educational.