Posted inArnzen News

Horror 101 – New Book for Writers

Horror 101: The Way Forward has just been released by Crystal Lake Publishing, and if you're a writer on the dark side, I highly recommend it. As Mort Castle wisely notes in the book's introduction, this book is a successor, of sorts, to JN Williamson's classic writer's guide, How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and enters the canon of "essential reference" for the dark fiction author, alongside the HWA's On Writing Horror and Michael Knost's Writer's Workshop of Horror. It's a great collection of "advice from seasoned professionals" on how to sustain a career in the…
April 29, 2014Posted inArnzen News
Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems

AVENGER – my Peter Gabriel-inspired crime poem for 30 Days of the 5-2

AVENGER I know something about opening pimpers and whores I know how to kill quietly and mop up bloody wooden floors I know how to hide body parts behind my cabinets and drawers Clipping the strippers Clipping the strippers of their spinal cord wires Their stunned paralysis inspires Inspires me I like laughing at lap dancers when they're tied to chairs I like listening to harlots when they make their final prayers I like watching while they clutch their throats for air Avenger's happy in the dark Avenger's come Avenger's come to take away your mark, devil's mark devil's mark…
April 18, 2014Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems1 Comment
Posted inArnzen News Instigation

Diabolique Strategies: Random Provocations into the Dark Side

I've long admired the "Oblique Strategies" -- an infamous deck of creativity cards invented by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt that has a cult following among artists and musicians. It is one part thinking game, one part fortune cookie. They made it as a way to spur them into thinking differently about their current projects, by drawing random lateral thinking triggers from the deck (like “destroy the most important thing” or “give the game away”). But I've always wondered: What would they look like if Eno had been in a Death Metal band instead of Roxy Music? Or…
March 23, 2014Posted inArnzen News, Instigation
Posted inAmbulations

AWP14 Seattle

Last weekend, I attended the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference (aka AWP14) at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The AWP website boasts that with over 12,000 attendees and 650 exhibits it is "now the largest literary conference in North America" -- and it certainly was the largest I've been to in my life, with a shopping-mall sized number of tables (featuring colleges, writing programs, presses and publishers) at the bookfair and plenty of superhuman writers as guests (Sherman Alexie and Ursula LeGuin gave readings, for example). Seton Hill University had a table for our MFA…
March 8, 2014Posted inAmbulations