Posted inInstigation

Joe-La Dowdy Wins the Instigation Marathon!

Imagine a red devil jumping for joy, wagging its deadly tail, and applauding with hooves ablaze -- that's me, cheering for writer Joe La Dowdy, who just published her 365th creative blog entry, marking a full year of dark flash fiction and devious poems inspired by the 365 prompts in my book, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side! That's right. She wrote 365 stories. Jealous? You should be. I am! READ THEM. Joe-La's accomplishment is not easy. It takes a tremendous amount of stamina and discipline to return to the computer, every single day, to do yet another exercise,…
July 5, 2016Posted inInstigation1 Comment
Posted inAmbulations

Snapshots of StokerCon 2016

StokerCon 2016 was the inaugural convention sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, highlighting the genre with panel discussions, readings, writing workshops, booksignings and presentations... culminating in the Bram Stoker Award banquet, awarding the genre's top practitioners with the coolest trophy in the world. It was a blast. Lots of great writers were up for and won the trophy, including some of my closest friends in the business from Raw Dog Screaming Press and Seton Hill U's MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. My workshop on "Making the Reader Squirm" went very well, engendering plenty of squirmy moments and good writing by…
May 18, 2016Posted inAmbulations2 Comments
Posted inAmbulations

Snapshots from the 2016 World Horror Con

Just back from a "Provo-cative" weekend in Provo, Utah, where I attended the 2016 World Horror Convention as a special guest. It was a very intimate con, mistimed in the grand scheme of genre events this year (i.e., the first StokerCon is in Vegas next weekend -- I'm going to that too), but having a smaller event led to tighter bonds as we all got to know each other better as professionals and people. They kept me VERY busy (I was on three-to-five programming events per day), so I didn't take as many photos as usual, but I did manage…
May 3, 2016Posted inAmbulations1 Comment
Posted inArnzen News

More on “Please Publish My New Adult Coloring Book: GTFU”

Today my short parody, "Please Publish My Adult Coloring Book: Grow the F*ck Up!" is featured on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.  I'm perversely proud of this, for some reason.  Mostly, I think, because it validates my thinking that this silly piece actually contains a great idea for a book! However, I am also sensitive to the notion that adult coloring books have therapeutic value. When my dad had a stroke, this was something I bought him to help retrain motor memory and create even though debilitated.  I also think coloring is fun, and it's kind of cool when groups of people…
April 25, 2016Posted inArnzen News