Ask Me a Question on Goodreads

If you're on goodreads.com -- the book lover's equivalent of facebook -- then drop on by my profile page and "Ask the Author" any question you like. Nothing is too weird, too academic or too irrelevant. Of course, my answer might also be weird, too academic or irrelevant, too. I think goodreads is a great site, because everyone on it has a common interest and the discussions seem mostly genuine when it comes to books and stories. It features giveaways, reviews, discussion groups and more. And if you're into ebooks, the way it integrates with the new kindles from amazon…

The Goreletter 9.4 Mailed

Happy Halloween Season! The Goreletter Vol. 9, #4 was delivered to mailing list subscribers on 10/20/14 @ 10:00am est. It contains extra entertainment/material not available here on the weblog version, including breaking news about the re-publication of my first novel, Grave Markings, an extended Dictionscary entry musing over names for different lobes of the brain, and a list of funny hashtag games on twitter. A version of the image above was also included in the newsletter -- if you like it, you can download a large size of it from my flickr gallery. FYI: The newsletter erroneously was delivered with…

[caption id="attachment_7245" align="aligncenter" width="612"]Originally posted on Notegraphy Originally posted on Notegraphy[/caption] The message above was my overwrought response to a question posed on the Science Fiction Poetry Association's mailing list, that asked: "Is horror a genre or an attribute of literature?" It's heavy-handed, but that's kind of why I like it, so I turned it into a notegraphy post. [I've been using Notegraphy with students in my flash fiction writing course this summer. Here's my profile and I think you can see (though you may have to be a member first) some of my students work here ] Postscript, 7/31: Thanks to Diane Severson Mori for referencing this post in her recent review of Chad Hensley's latest poetry book at Amazing Stories.

The Nature of Horror: Horror is a Church…

Diabolique Strategies: Random Provocations into the Dark Side

I've long admired the "Oblique Strategies" -- an infamous deck of creativity cards invented by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt that has a cult following among artists and musicians. It is one part thinking game, one part fortune cookie. They made it as a way to spur them into thinking differently about their current projects, by drawing random lateral thinking triggers from the deck (like “destroy the most important thing” or “give the game away”). But I've always wondered: What would they look like if Eno had been in a Death Metal band instead of Roxy Music? Or…

ATTENTION: The Former Goreletter Server/Archive has Moved

On Halloween, I began using a new mail server to design and deliver The Goreletter, which includes fancy HTML graphics and more options. I have also now removed previous newsletter server pages for The Goreletter -- which means that more than a decade's worth of former archives are also no longer accessible and any links here and abroad that referenced a "cgi" directory are no longer valid and will probably take visitors automatically to an error page or a dead end. I am presently rebuilding the former archives (and eliminating all old dead URLs from them) in a fancy, new…