Michael A. Arnzen

The Bitchfight

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Novelette
Page Count: ???pp.
Pub. Date: 2008
Publisher: Bad Moon Books

A veterinarian is asked to perform a very bizarre house call.

Proverbs for Monsters

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story and Poetry Collection
Page Count: 296pp.
Pub. Date: October 31, 2007
Publisher: Dark Regions Press

Winner of the 2007 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Collection (tie)

YOU CAN CATCH A GOOD HUMAN WITH A BAD HAMBURGER

Proverbs For Monsters is an omnibus of the best writing to date by one the most offbeat and humorous writers working in the horror genre today, Michael A. Arnzen. Hand picked by the author, these are the stories “flash fictions,” and poems most cherished by readers, most enjoyed at live performances, most celebrated by editor of year’s best collections, and most recommended for literary awards from across his career.

AN INFANT VAMPIRE BITES HARDEST

Proverbs For Monsters you’ll get advice for growing your own maneating plant. You’ll ride the movies at Exorcystland — the scariest amusement park ever created. You’ll attend a bizarre grade school for assassins. You’ll meet a dentist with a very disturbing collection of baby teeth. You’ll encounter strange children — from the boy who carries his heart in a metal case attached to his chest to the girl who is completely encased in the carapace of her own giant scab. You’ll ride a deseased elephant and witness the death of the last vampire and learn more than you ever wanted to know about a perpetual embalming machine. You’ll wince and laugh and wince again.

FORTUNE FAVORS THE CLEAVER

Whether you’re never read Michael Arnzen before or are already a fan of his gleefully twisted imagination, you’re in for a very dark treat with this generous collection of thirty stories and thirty poems, many of them impossible-to-find or never seen before. Proverbs For Monsters offers the most delightful and disturbing retrospective of this acclaimed author’s career.

Licker

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Novelette
Page Count: 271pp.
Pub. Date: October 2006
Publisher: Novello Publishers

Michael A. Arnzen, the Bram Stoker Award winning author of the cult classic novels Grave Markings and Play Dead, delivers this all-new novelette of side-splitting terror. Robert Harper has some funky things growing on his tongue — but that doesn’t stop him from finally asking out the lovely Sheila. But something Robert could’ve never imagined is about to occur on their first date at a local carnival. With the “help” of two strange carnival attendents, Robert Harper is plunged into a world of horror beyond his worst nightmares — a world of demented hallucinations, twisted medical experiments, and beings that exist only in the darkest of corners.

Play Dead

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 271pp.
Pub. Date: June 2005
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

From the Editors of Barnes and Noble:
Play Dead, the first novel from Michael A. Arnzen in more than a decade — after 1994′s Grave Markings, which won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Critics Guild Awards for Best First Novel — is a depraved fusion of adrenaline-injected mystery and horror that is as brutal as it is unforgettable.

Johnny Frieze is a high-rolling gambler down on his luck; he has lost everything in Vegas — even his lucky gold tooth. Living in a homeless shelter with a misfit group of failed gamblers, career criminals, and raving lunatics, Johnny stumbles across the ultimate no-limit wager: a card game where the winner gets $1 million in cash and the losers get killed. The game is called Butcher Boy, and before it can begin, the four chosen players must create their own suit of cards by artistically “extinguishing life” and photographing the results. Once the gruesome deck is completed, the game begins in earnest — but what happens when the enigmatic entrepreneur bankrolling the contest is playing a much larger game, with even more nefarious stakes?

Set in a neon-lit metropolis where desperation and moral corruption are commonplace and the difference between life and death is mere luck, this viciously realistic look into the not-so-glamorous world of high-stakes gambling (and the sinister individuals who exist in its shadows) is both utterly repellent and addictively readable. Gambling aficionados as well as horror, mystery, and crime fiction fans are sure to enjoy this action-packed 52-chapter “novel-of-cards.” If Play Dead were a poker hand, it would undoubtedly be a royal flush.
–Paul Goat Allen

100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 121pp.
Pub. Date: April 10, 2007
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 196pp.
Pub. Date: April 2004
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press

Nominated for the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement for a Fiction Collection.

100 Jolts features one hundred short shots of fiction guaranteed to stun. Arnzen has honed his craft to deliver the highest voltage using the fewest words. Released as a paperback in 2004 this ground-breaking collection is considered by many to be a pioneering work in the flash fiction movement. It broke publishing barriers to micro-fiction, inspired many authors, has been adapted to film and audio, and was also a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.

The expanded hardcover edition (2007) contains, Aftershocks, a battery of newly added stories, as well as bonus writing prompts, and a brand new Afterword.

Table of Contents:

• Skull Fragments
• Diving In
• Gardener
• Skull Scraper
• Gastronomy
• Soft Spots
• Tapping Charley
• The Ugly Thing
• The Bitter Wife
• The Strangest Skull
• Resonant Eyes
• Fissures
• Knock Off the Auction Block
• Doofus
• Up For Air
• Limber
• Obictionary
• Degrees of Separation
• Punishment
• Nightmare Job #1
• Turn of the Season
• Pop-Up Killer
• Brain Candy
• White Out
• Stabbing for Dummies
• The Cow Cafe
• Handicapped Spot
• Take Out
• A Change in Policy
• Partners
• Mustachio Moon
• Return of the Living Dead
• Who Wants to be a Killionaire?
• Beyond Undead
• Stretch
• Stress Toy
• Tassels
• Returns
• The Dead Head
• Surgical Complications
• Jack the Teacher
• Little Stocking Stuffers
• In the Balance
• Diagara
• Strange Trout
• Revenge of the Mummy
• Nightmare Job #2
• Canines
• The Seven-Headed Beast
• Psycho Hunter
• A Worse Mousetrap
• Little Devils
• Latex
• Mother’s Haunted Housecoat
• Inside the Man with No Eyelids
• Burning Bridges
• Taking Care of Baby
• Five Mean Machines:
• Dreamachinery
• Womachine
• Trimachine
• Stomachine
• Mortichinery
• Tugging the Heartstrings
• Face of Clay
• Blind Spot
• Crusty Old Age
• Next-Door
• Choppers
• Amputating the Phantom
• How to Put a Cat to Sleep
• Nightmare Job #3
• While Knitting Your Hat
• Disgruntled
• Anniversary Meal
• Second Helping
• In the Middle
• The Curse of Fat Face
• Skullduggery
• Chanting Richard
• The Eight Ball in Big Mouth’s Pocket
• A Donation
• Nightmare Job #4
• Her Daily Bread
• My Wound Still Weeps
• An Evil Eye
• The Blood Ran Out
• Hand in Marriage
• Phrenological Love
• The Cut of My Jib
• The Leaf Pile
• Receiver
• Surge
• Convictions
• Valendine
• Contused
• Sinking Sandy
• Research Subjects
• Nightmare Job #5
• How to Grow a Man-Eating Plant
• The Killer Descends
• Gasp
• Domestic Fowl

Table of Contents: Aftershocks
(Only available in the hardcover edition)

• People Repellent
• The Kisser
• Word of Mouth
• Screwy Louis
• Election Day Alarm: A Parable
• An Ounce of Brains
• Printing Charlie
• Summons
• Death in Town Park
• Note Found on a Blood-Stained Pillow
• The Magic of Jesus
• You’re Not Getting Sleepy

Fluid Mosaic: And Other Outre Objects D’Art

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Trade Paperback
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 121pp.
Pub. Date: December 2000
Publisher: Wildside Press

13 short stories by Michael Arnzen.

Table of Contents:

• Immaterial Girl
• The Piano Player Has No Fingers
• My Wound Still Weeps
• In Fur
• Sight to the Blind
• Cheese
• Sinking Sandy
• Stigmata
• Falling Back
• The Blood Ran Out
• Fluid Mosaic
• While My Guitar Gently Weeps
• Mr. Pipecleaners

Grave Markings (10th Anniversary Edition)

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 400pp.
Pub. Date: April 2004
Publisher: Delirium Books

Grave Markings

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Type: Novel
Page Count: 383pp.
Pub. Date: October 1, 1994
Publisher: Dell/Abyss Books

The 1994 Bram Stoker Award winner for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.
The 1994 IHG Award winner Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel.

Living in pain, an insane, egomaniacal tattoo artist is obsessed with the mad images in his mind and the need for recognition, so he seeks new flesh to fulfill his ambition. . . .

Needles and Sins: The Selected Works of Michael Arnzen

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Short Story Collection
Page Count: 88pp.
Pub. Date: November 2007
Publisher: Dark Regions Press

No summary available.

Freakcidents: A Surrealist Sideshow

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Illustrator: GAK
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 52pp.
Pub. Date: April 2003
Publisher: Shocklines Press

The 2005 Bram Stoker Award winner for Superior Achievement for a Poetry Collection. (tie)

Thirty disturbing — and perversely hilarious — poems of mutancy by Michael Arnzen, the Bram Stoker Award-Winning author of Grave Markings, generously illustrated with the bizarre imaginings of GAK.

Table of Contents:

• Umbilicile
• The Scab
• Genetic Defect Jennie
• Test Tube Tommy
• Soft Spot Sally
• Mutant Marcus
• The Conjoined Triplets
• Triple Face
• The Hairy Baby
• Spiderboy
• Girl Abandoned at Birth Raised by Rattlesnakes
• Siamese Blood Brothers
• Needle Baby
• Woman Gives Birth to Full Grown Man
• Boy’s Heart is on the Outside of His Body
• Born Every Minute
• Werecat Wally
• Mad Head
• Polka Clots
• A Personal Computer
• Stripper
• Freakshow Breakup
• Freaky Deak’s Splatfall
• Upon Suicidal Tendencies Among Sword-Swallowing Shellfish-Eating Circus Freaks
• Claw Head
• Venting Frustrations
• The Incredible Edible Fred
• Smoker
• The Creep with No Head
• Inside The Man With No Eyelids

Rigormarole: Zombie Poems

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 40pp.
Pub. Date: 2006
Publisher: Naked Snake Press

Why do zombies lumber?

What is the Resurrectal Cortex?

What lurks in the Home Depot of the Dead?

Rigormarole is a score of poems for the walking dead by Michael Arnzen, the award-winning author of Grave Markings and Play Dead.

Featuring original sketches by John Skipp, splatterpunk godfather and editor of Book of the Dead.

Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 64pp.
Pub. Date: November 2003
Publisher: Fairwood Press

Gorelets: Unpleasant Poems

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: goreletsebook.jpg
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 82pp.
Pub. Date: September 2003
Publisher: Double Dragon eBooks

Nominated for the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement for a Poetry Collection.

Gorelets is a collection of “sudden horror poetry”: 52 ultra short shockers by Michael Arnzen guaranteed to make you squirm!

The eBook version by Double Dragon eBooks has an extra 21 poems, bringing the total up to 73.

Dying (With no Apologies to Martha Stewart)

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 20pp.
Pub. Date: April 2003
Publisher: Tachyon Publications

If Martha Stewart needs advice on removing those pesky bloodstains from the carpet, she finally knows whom to call. But she might want to call ahead and bring along a little extra muscle. In Dying, a satire of the pop-culture phenomenon, Living Magazine, Michael Arnzen turns Stewart’s cheery perfectionism into something almost as horrible . . .

Sportuary

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 41pp.
Pub. Date: 2003
Publisher: Cyber Pulp Digital

A chapbook of 30 poems of sports and humor.

Paratabloids

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 48pp.
Pub. Date: March 18, 2000
Publisher: Ozark Triangle Press

“WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO 7-LP EYEBALL!”

“I DIED AND WATCHED MY OWN SURGERY!”

“ANT JUICE CURES ARTHRITIS!”

Sound familiar? Nearly everyone knows that the stories in the tabloids aren’t real, but pulp newspapers like the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS outsell most “real news” magazines. And that’s because — in some suble, unconcious way — the tabloids are reporting the truth.

In Paratabloids, Bram Stoker Award-winning horror writer Michael A. Arnzen captures that truth in 22 poems that steal actual headlines from the tabloids and tell the truth in a way that only Arnzen can. These poems all relish the outre, the insane, and the grotesque, telling the untold — and often quite touching — stories that lie right under the surface of the headlines.

“This is poetry like you’ve never heard it before!”

Writhing in Darkness: The Selected Poetry of Michael Arnzen (Volume #2)

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 34pp.
Pub. Date: 1997
Publisher: Dark Regions Press

A chapbook of 17 poems of the horrific.

Writhing in Darkness: The Selected Poetry of Michael Arnzen (Vol #1)

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 34pp.
Pub. Date: 1997
Publisher: Dark Regions Press

A chapbook of 19 poems of the horrific.

Chew and Other Ruminations

Author: Arnzen, Michael A.
Format: Softcover Chapbook
Type: Poetry Collection
Page Count: 41pp.
Pub. Date: 1991
Publisher: Mastication Publications

A chapbook of 19 poems of the horrific.