“Pithy” Contest Lost — But Will Return Soon

The "Pithy Morbid Thought" contest I was running on The Haunt (with a deadline of tomorrow) has been lost by their website! Apparently their boards crashed and the backup was unrecoverable. I will make up for this by starting over here on The Goreletter in the days ahead. [UPDATE, 5.15: You can now enter the contest here by July 1st.] If you participated in that contest, I do NOT have your original entries or names (I expected the webmaster to back those up!)...so I hope you will re-enter. I may use Twitter as part of this contest. More to come..…

European Translations

This Spring will see a handful of my short works transformed into European languages, so I want to publicly express thanks to the translators. Piotr Leszczyński has written a number of excellent Polish versions of my short-shorts for the online journal, Minimal Books , over the past few years -- and several of his translations have appeared in print this month in the Polish literary magazine, Red. Jerome Charlet has been busy translating my work into French, and a fine chapbook edition of "Skull Fragments" (the lead story from 100 Jolts)  is scheduled to appear next month as part of…

Apron of the Abattoir

Author Carole Lanham (aka "The Horror Homemaker") has posted a fun collection of aprons, including a funny old one from the Michael Arnzen Dying photoshot and Kim Paffenroth roasting his Bram Stoker Trophy. Speaking of trophies, it's Stoker season right now and the final ballot for last year's best horror fiction has recently been announced on the Horror Writers Association website.  Congratulations to all!  Extra helpings of kudos to Horror Library Vol. 3 (collection category) and The Book of Lists: Horror (non-fiction category), both of which include my work. But back to the happy Horror Homemaker: read Carole's fabulous zombie…

Broken Picture Telephone

Remember Telephone -- the "pass it down" game of crazy miscommunication from your youth? Well you no longer have to get uncomfortably close to your neighbor to whisper into their ear. Broken Picture Telephone is an ingenious game of text and stick figure drawing that will have you laughing for hours. It involves responding to obscure messages by drawing what they say -- and vice versa -- until you get a very bizarre story reminiscent of David Lynch's surrealism. For example, my first test of the game gave me the sticky note above ("a smiling bowl of meatballs with feet…