Subscribe to The Goreletter and Get SPORTUARY Free!

[UPDATE, Oct 2010: THE FREE E-BOOK OFFER DESCRIBED BELOW IS NO LONGER VALID. Please visit amazon.com for your copy, cheap.] I've just published I'm getting geared up to finish the next e-mail edition of The Goreletter, so I thought I'd post a little incentive for readers to subscribe (free) so they won't miss a beat as this award-winning newsletter launches into its sixth volume of all things weird, wacky, wicked and wobbly. I try to make every issue a combination of original material with "best of blog" excerpts and often include coupons and contests for free swag (or as I…

Play Dead in Common

Lots of little things going on, so I thought I'd post a bunch of random news all in one batch: + WD Prescott is running a neat contest on his website with a chance to win a signed copy of my out of print novel, Play Dead! + You can now order the 'spoon river horror poetry anthology,' Death In Common, edited by Rich Ristow, on amazon.com + Two of my critical essays on THE EXORCIST will appear in Studies in the Horror Film: The Exorcist, which promises to be a fantastic -- if not the definitive -- collection of…

Pluck Your Last Drink Bird Head

Awhile ago I got the strangest e-mail message from World Fantasy Award-winning author (and old friend) Jeff Vandermeer. It read: Who is Last Drink Bird Head? Story, anecdote, 500 words. Don't Think: just write. And I did. My story was but one of a long list of short-shorts that now appear in Last Drink Bird Head: Flash Fiction for Charity -- with all proceeds going to proliteracy.org. The results are pretty astounding, ranging from hilariously surreal to pensively chilling to deeply touching. The publisher writes: "Last Drink Bird Head is a blues musician, a performance artist, a type of alcohol,…

Bizarro Alert: Borderline France

Hot on the heels of Skull Fragments, comes another appearance in France. Borderline magazine has just published Jerome Charlet's French translation of my short-short, "The Cow Cafe" (Au Vachement d'Cafe) in their 13th issue. Of import: this issue is focused primarily on the BIZARRO genre, and includes translations of work by such over-the-top and outre writers as Jeremy R. Johnson, Kevin Donihe, Andersen Prunty, Jeremy Shipp, Carlos Gardini, artist Maxime LeDain, and an interview with horror writer Kealan Patrick Burke. Good to see the 'bizarros' getting the international attention they deserve. The cover is wildly suggestive and weird.

The Writer’s Workshop of Horror

I'm pleased to appear in this brand new book of advice for those who want to improve their horror fiction, called order The Writer's Workshop of Horror (ed. Michael Knost, Woodland Press, Aug 2009). It's focused exclusively and deeply on the craft of scary storytelling, with a stellar line-up of contributors that include the likes of Clive Barker, Joe Lansdale, F. Paul Wilson, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Keene, Elizabeth Massie, and too many more to list:  from grand masters to rising stars, the book is a treasury of wisdom you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere.  If the (also fantastic) Horror…