Freakcidents Happen

I'm happy to announce that FREAKCIDENTS is officially a finalist for the 2005 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection! FREAKCIDENTS (think "freak+accidents") is a series of character studies of wild mutants and crazy sideshow attractions. This title has always been one of my personal favorites. You can still read some excellent reviews and sharp literary criticism about the book online in Sidereality, Strange Horizons, FeoAmante.com, and Chiaroscuro. Shocklines Press still has copies of this limited edition book available in an affordable trade paperback and a short run of very special signed/lettered hardcovers. UPDATE, 4/14: Shocklines is…

Licks, Flicks, and Amazons

Random updates... I've started to post messages to a new weblog I'll intermittently keep on Amazon.com. New entries will pop up on my book pages, or you can find me on their Author's Directory. Or you can just leap right to it by reading my first entry. Novello Publishers have announced that they'll be publishing my novella, Licker, later this Fall, in a limited edition chapbook. Licker will be a humorous horror story about a boy who is having some very bizarre problems with his tongue. I think this is likely to be the funniest, weirdest, sickest thing I've ever…

Bits of Insistent Terror

Some bits and bites of news... The new dark poetry webzine, Spiderwords, has posted a fantastic review of my Fairwood Press chapbook, Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems. Reviewer Geoffrey Goodwin writes: In eleven lines or less, no line greater than eight words, Arnzen has created bite-sized bits of insistent terror...these poems are definitive and powerful as sexy as surgery. Bound by the little rules that shaped his dark vision, like Picasso embracing the constraints of the Blue Period or Cubism, these poems are stronger for their little glimpses into Arnzen's febrile imagination. Spiderwords is also running a fun contest for an essay…

Grimoire Grimaces

An incredible book arrived in my mailbox the other day -- my author's copy of the "Grim Grimoire" sculpture-bound edition of Play Dead. You have to touch it (but watch your fingers) to really feel how cool this thing is, but you can get an idea of how cool it is at the Raw Dog Screaming Press website. It even comes complete with a custom-designed deck of cards! I know that a few early adopters have received their copies -- each of which is handmade and thus delivered a bit slowly -- but this collectible book will likely be priced…