Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems

Creasing His Collar

she leans into it sweating over the board pushing the pointed weight with a smile satisfied by the feel of stainless steel sliding smooth across the neckline she plunges her thumb into the red button savoring the drama of the steam burst the gurgling scream of heat and horror beneath her hands the fabric fizzles and his collar crisps starched stiff and nicely browned with what's left of his jugular blood percolating in the steamer
April 10, 2011Posted inGorelets: Unpleasant Poems1 Comment
Posted inArnzen News

Preorder: MANY GENRES, ONE CRAFT

Readers of this blog who have the writing bug might want to hop on over to Amazon.com and put in an order for my latest book (co-edited with Heidi Ruby Miller), called Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction. Modeled after the graduate program where I teach -- the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University -- Many Genres is a thick hardcover collection of over sixty essays by prominent writers who look under the hood of both the craft of writing for a genre audience and the business of penning novels in today's publishing world.…
April 4, 2011Posted inArnzen News4 Comments
Posted inArnzen News

Making Readers Squirm: Sensory Immersion Podcast

Last June, I went on a Summer Teaching Tour at various writer's workshops, and one of the highlights was my return as guest lecturer to the Odyssey, The Fantasy Workshop, run by Jeanne Cavelos annually at St Anselm College, in New Hampshire. My guest lecture topic at Odyssey was "Making the Reader Squirm: Sensory Immersion," which they have just released as a podcast on the Odyssey Podcast page (it is also available through iTunes). In this lecture, I discuss ways that science fiction/fantasy and horror writers appeal to the reader's "sensorium" to generate a visceral effect. The class analyzed examples…
April 2, 2011Posted inArnzen News2 Comments
Posted inBlather

Guest Blog at Disquieting Visions: “It Is Not What It Is”

Bonus blather: Head on over to Gail Z. Martin and crew's "Disquieting Visions" weblog, to read my guest blog essay, "It is Not What it Is"...where I rant about my dislike for this phrase, and the role of horror in dispelling such worldviews. Gail is a terrific fantasy writer, and kindly invited me to contribute to the Disquieting Visions blog, as a sort of update to our very fun, chatty podcast interview she did with me about horror for her "Ghost in the Machine" series on her own website, shortly following the publication of my collection, Proverbs for Monsters. Her…
March 29, 2011Posted inBlather
Posted inArnzen News

Alternative Rorschach

Encouraged by early feedback, I'm starting a new digital art series on my flickr gallery called "Alternative Rorschach." Check it out, free associate, and tell me what you see in the comments section on flickr or on facebook. I've only done three "cards" so far; and if feedback keeps coming I will do the entire deck of psychologist inkstains in my own weird way in the weeks to come, so keep coming back (see Rorschach Inkblots page on wikipedia to learn more about the source of this stuff).
March 8, 2011Posted inArnzen News