Scuttlebuggery: Soccer for Scarabs

Scuttlebuggery is a stylishly steampunk online promotional game for the goth band Johnny Hollow, brought to you by the geniuses at My Pet Skeleton Productions (maker of "A Murder of Scarecrows" featured here awhile back). In this game you play a scuttlebug -- a round beetle who must figure out how to push bubbles of absinthe toward a drain, dodging beetles and fluttering moths along the way. It's like soccer for scarabs. And though it sounds like child's play, it is a Sisyphean challenge that will likely make you appreciate the vast labor of the insect world, scuttling all around…

Happy Halloween 2008

HAPPY HALLOWEEN.  Here's some new audio goodies to celebrate this crazy annual affair we call Halloween. To start, here's a great link to the Halloween Poetry Readings that the Science Fiction Poetry Association has collected.  They've posted "Halloween Costumes I Wish I Would Have Seen" -- a clip from my reading event at Penn Highlands Community College (Johnstown, PA) earlier this week.  On the SFPA site, you get there are a handful of great poems there for you to trick or treat your ears with.  Update, 2009: It's no longer on the SFPA page, but you can listen to it here on…

Halloween Costume Contest Winner Announced

The winner of the Goreletter's "Virtual Halloween Costume Contest" is author JAMES NEWMAN for his creepy family portrait. I actually adored ALL the entries...so why did James win? Ultimately, it came down to the scenario of the photo. I liked the vampiric relationship implied by the couple, but it was the "eyeball with fangs" child that did it for me... it looks like something out of one of those Robt. Williams art pieces...and how can the kid breath inside that mask? FREAKY! James wins a limited edition hardcover of my new book, PROVERBS FOR MONSTERS, as soon as I receive…