Posted inArnzen News

Many Genres, Many Awards…and One Great Year for Our Writing Guide!

As the writer's guide I co-edited with Heidi Ruby Miller -- Many Genres, One Craft: Lessons in Writing Popular Fiction -- comes to its first year anniversary, I was happy to learn this morning that it just won another book award. Here are the accolades I know about so far: Winner, "Business: Writing and Publishing" category, 2012 International Book Awards. Winner, "Education/Academic" category, 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Winner, General Non-Fiction Award. 2011 London Books Festival Award. Listed 5th in "This Year's Ten Most Terrific Writing Books" by The Writer magazine (Dec 2011). Finalist, "Business: Writing and Publishing" category.…
May 23, 2012Posted inArnzen News
Posted inWeblog Exclusive

The Freaksicord

Many see the Freaksicord as if it were a mirage when they first encounter it. It stands -- astonishingly -- like a walking stomach. Only as an afterthought does one notice the head, which dangles somewhere down below. Its head is so heavy with teeth, the neck can not bear its weight, and the head sometimes swings on its stalk like a pendulum between the beast’s stocky legs. Many presume that they might die between those muscular jaws, but what they don’t realize is that the neck, wings and head together function like a lever, lifting pray up into the…
April 14, 2012Posted inWeblog Exclusive
Posted inInstigation

Horror Poetry Writing Workshop in The Gorelets Omnibus

My fellow weird writers might want to take note of this. One of the neat bonus features available only in the hardcover edition of The Gorelets Omnibus is a "horror poetry writing workshop" that includes a handful of essays I've written about the craft over the years (for places like Byline magazine and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Star*Line magazine, among others). The chapter titles are: "The Poetics of Horror" "The Element of Fear in Horror Poetry" "Horror Haiku" "The Dead Draft: When Poetry Fails" "New Media Horror: Six Lessons from an E-Poet" Rounding out this virtual workshop in the…
March 1, 2012Posted inInstigation
Posted inBlather

You call it ‘disturbing,’ I call it…

This recent comic from Dan Piraro's bizarrocomics.com made me laugh. And as a "horror writer" and also a writing teacher, I can also identify with both the analyst and the analysand in many ways. But there's a lesson for the writer in this. My analysis here is that it is neither the axe, nor the obsessive gaze of the man on the couch, but the bow tie that makes this comic work so well. All good stories have conflicts that generate tension and here the tension is apparent, between the man with a weapon -- held in a way that…
November 25, 2011Posted inBlather