Poetry Project: Dear Twitter Followers

Hello Friends, Family, and Ghouls!

I'm embarking on a poetry project and I'd love for you all to be a part of it! As most of you know, I'm working  on some very big (and scary) projects, and in a quest to get the word out and gain readers, I've been marketing myself a lot on twitter with updates, quotes, and random rants and ravings. So this is my outreach to all of you creepies and crawlies!

A few weeks ago, I decided that every 50th (maybe 25th if you guys are good!) follower of mine on twitter would get a poem dedicated to him/her on my blog as a way to say thank you for supporting me. My 300th follower was Tricia Leedom, a dear friend and college of mine! Tricia is a wonderful romance writer that I had the pleasure of meeting at Seton Hill University through the Writing Popular Fiction program and even though there is quite a war between us romance and horror folk, I tried to tie in the concept of love and romance into her poem....but I still think the character died. Oops! ;)

So here you go, Tricia! Hope you like it!

Heart Break

For years I pumped for you-

Kept you alive for him,

Like a machine spurting its oils

Grinding its gears in an automatic pace

So its project would never waver

Never falter from its job

But then like a wrench in the works

He came at you from the side,

With broken promises and lies

That turned on the waterworks

And poked a hole in my skin

It wasn’t until I sensed you breaking that

I felt the scarlet drops hit my valves,

Soundlessly at first,

But then the splinters turned to vicious cracks

With cherry rivers

Violently flooding my chambers

While arterial spray hit the walls

And smacked against my flesh coat

I tried…

But it got harder to work

With my veins twisted in his grasp

You watched as his words tied around

My ventricles with a crimson noose

That leaked rose waterfalls

As he strangled the life out of me

My world grew hazy,

As I wondered in this pinkish haze

Where the more he spoke

The deeper you hurt and

The closer I came to a complete break

As my atriums slowed their breaths and

Drowned in the ruby storms that attacked them

I was dying, 

And yet there you were

Just standing there,

Letting him kill you,

And I think in that moment

When he told you it was over

You forgot that if I died,

So did you 

© Stephanie M. Wytovich, 2012.

Book Review: On Writing by Stephen King

I’ve been a Stephen King fan ever since I’ve been little when my mom bought me Pet Sematary. I remember staying up well into the wee hours of the morning reading about Gage and Church, and being scared out of my mind that all the pets my dad and I buried outside in the back yard where going to come back to life and kill me. Yeah, thanks mom. Good idea. But it was that feeling of fear that kept me reading, and after it, I couldn’t stop. There’s something about the way that King crafts his stories that never ceases to amaze/terrify me, and at 23 years old, I’m still reading, and rereading, his novels. So it’s no surprise that I all but devoured his book on the craft, On Writing. However, what is odd is that I’ve had this book on my shelf for years, but never got around to reading it. And after the semester I had last term, I felt that I could use some much needed inspiration from one of my favorite novelists. So in desperate need of guidance, I started his book.

Now as a writer, I know it’s the kiss of death in the business to use a cliché, but in this case, screw it. This book changed my entire outlook on writing, and very well might have damn near saved me. No one told me writing a book was going to be easy, and I didn’t expect it to be. BUT, I didn’t except to struggle with it to the point of tears every time I sat down to write. I was beyond frustrated, and writer’s block coupled with a very difficult time in my personal life was not helping the situation. Frankly, I was ready to give up after this semester. I had even started to look at graduate programs for literature since I felt that this writing thing wasn’t going to work out for me.

I’d lost my spark.

But then I read Stephen King’s story. Not his this-is-how-I-did-it story, but his this-is-what-I-went-through one. And wow. I was blown away. I think I needed to hear how one of literature’s creative writing Gods struggled every single day with the craft, and even ended up throwing Carrie away in the trash only to have it be saved by his wife who, till this day, remains to be his biggest fan (although Annie Wilkes may have something to say about that). I needed to hear that he worked several odd jobs, in addition to teaching, to get through life, and that the craft almost killed him in his search for a good story. I guess what I really needed at that time in my life was for someone to tell me “You know… you’re not the only one this happens too.”

But I’ll spare you my tortured artist story, and get to the second part of the book. In this section, King gives you a toolbox, one of the big ones with four layers, and lots of hidden drawers to keep your odds and ends in. In it, he gives you the necessities of writing such as vocabulary, grammar, and style (Thank you Strunk and White). He talks about the death of adverbs, the difference between active and passive voice (where I had a light bulb moment) and the importance of a strong verb.

King talks about his cigar smoking muse, and the importance of reading in your genre. He writes, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others. Read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.” He also stresses the write every day mantra, which is something that I had been improving on but wasn’t quite there yet. So I figured what the hell. What did I have left to lose? I had promised myself that I would finish out the semester regardless, so I might as well give it one more fighting chance. At this point, I think I all but fired my worthless muse, and then sat down and organized this semester’s reading list (in addition to everything else I had to read for class). I ordered a dozen books that were comparable to what I was writing, such as The Exorcist, and The Storm of the Century, and I can’t even begin to tell you how many exorcism movies I’ve watched/studied in addition to reading books about demons and flipping through the bible. I forced myself to write every day, even if I only was able to churn out a decent paragraph of 150 words, and towards the end, I forced myself to stay in that chair for 2, maybe 3 hours just to get the word count. I fixed up my writing desk, disconnected the internet, and started to write with my door shut. I completely changed everything I did when it came to writing, and now, what I was once forcing myself to do, has become a steady rhythm in my day that I look forward too.

I think that King’s book is something that I’m going to come back to time and time again. I have pages flagged, paragraphs underlined, and sections starred, and every time that I feel myself slipping or getting stranded again, I find myself grabbing it off of my bookshelf. Essentially, it’s become my pick-me-up book and looking back, it kills me that I didn’t read it sooner. But at the same time, part of me wonders if I was subconsciously waiting to read it until I really needed it, and thanks to Stephen King, I’ve decided to recommit to finishing the program and my novel. Funny how things like that work out. The man that kept me from sleeping as a child is still keeping me awake, but this time it’s from working on my own story. A story that someday I hope will terrify children (and adults) as well.

BOOK REVIEW: THE GORELETS OMNIBUS

I’ve had the pleasure of both studying, and being mentored, by Michael A. Arnzen at Seton Hill University for almost 5 years now, first in my undergraduate studies as an English Literature major, and now in graduate school as a horror author in Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction Program. Arnzen’s taught me a lot about writing over the years, and now even though he’s not the one literally grading my progress, he’s still managing to teach me a lot through his own creative outlets. Case and point, The Gorelets Omnibus.

First things first.  What exactly is a Gorelet? Arnzen describes them as “little gory things [he] sometimes write[s] that might otherwise be called short-short horror poems” (9). Now, when I first heard about the Gorelet project, I was really inspired as a poet because you don’t often see genre specific poetry being published. That’s one of the reasons that the Gorelets are so fun because not only are they disturbing and uncanny, but they push the boundaries of what’s classically accepted in the poetry market. The other reason is that they were originally designed to be “read upon the first handheld/mobile computers,” so they’re short, bloody, and well, to the point (9).

When I started the collection, it really opened my eyes to how effective a few, simple words can be. Often times as writers, we tend to flower up our prose and drag on and on about a particular image or scene, and here Arnzen shows us that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Choosing the right set of words in a poem is crucial, but when done right can evoke not only an image, but a feeling. Take for example, his poem “Alien Art”:

crop circles

are worse than you thought-

they’re graffiti of the gods

tagging in a new gang war

In four lines, Arnzen gives us the subject, the characters, the conflict, and a whole mess of intergalactic tension. Now how many of you are conjuring up images from War of the Worlds right now? That’s what I thought. When you read this, you feel the way the sky stares at you when you’re outside, and at night, when you look at the stars, you can’t help but wonder whether or not you’re really alone.  In just 18 words he gives us a beginning, a middle, and a end…and that my friends, is called a story.

But the Gorelets aren’t all about stuffing your feet into rabbit carcasses, or eating glass for breakfast. They’re also about Blitzen killing Santa Claus, and a Red Lobster meal gone wrong. What I’m trying to say is that what’s nice about Arnzen’s style as a horror writer, is that he knows how to incorporate comic relief. Don’t get me wrong, it’s DARK humor, but if you’re the kind of person that reads horror anyways, then you’ll find yourself chuckling along with pieces such as “Home Depot of the Dead,” and “Disco Inferno.”

So what have the Gorelets taught me as a student, and as a writer? 

Well the main thing I learned is that you write the story you have to write no matter how bizarre, disgusting, or scary it might be. You just do it. Then, when you have a collection of writing and an idea to follow it… you stick to your guns, or your knife (whatever your weapon may be), and you go for it. And most importantly, you have fun doing it.

Great stuff, Mike.

You never cease to stop teaching and inspiring me.

READERS: 

Click here to buy The Gorelets Omnibus.

And as always, Pleasant Nightmares!

Works Cited:

 Arnzen, Michael A. The Gorelets Omnibus, Collected Poems, 201-2011. Bowie, MD: Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2012. Print.

Featured Author in the Madhouse: Cynthia Ravinski

Visuals, Imagery, and Crafting Story from Dream
By Cynthia Ravinski

I'm part of the EmotoBook Revolution.  Let me tell you how that happened (I'm a story teller, that's what I do.) Writing an EmotoBook changed the way I look at writing. So let's start here.

For me, a story starts with a dream- vivid color and poignant action streaking across the movie screen of my resting mind with abstract gravitas. I think the strangest thing is that there are never any words.

If I decide an Idea is worth turning into a story, it's usually because it has haunted me for days and I'm thoroughly mad like the Hatter about the thing. And then, I only face the task of crafting it into something intelligible to other humans. Let me step aside here to say that without an Idea no writing can be done, there is only that familiar blank white screen with a blinking black cursor. With an Idea, I at least have something to hang some words on, from which I will shape my story.

Crafting a story is a very technical thing, and is separate from the story Idea. Simply relating events is not truly telling a story, it misses a lot of resonance. A writer's job is to craft a story so that black and white text creates an internal cinematic dreamscape for a reader.  There are many tools a writers uses to do this.  One of the most important, I think, is visual imagery.  When readers look at text, all they see are black lines on white.  I've always been completely seduced by a brief chain of words that can slip a ravishing scene into my head.

The idea of EmotoBooks as a literary form lodged in my mind and haunted me for days after I'd first heard of it. Using abstract imagery to enhance the reading experience tackles multiple areas of the brain, and appeals to my vivid dreamscapes that have no words.  Louis Sullivan, an American architect, put it perfectly, "form ever follows function."  EmotoBooks have a unique style and structure.  They are all fast-paced, imagery-heavy short stories or serial novels containing abstract, emotionally provocative illustrations to depict what characters feel during peak moments of tension.  These expressionistic elements provide both a cerebral and visual stimulation, which enhances the experience.

When I began the editing process for my EmotoSingle, Lingering in the Woods, it was glaringly obvious that my instinctive use of imagery was not as effective as I would have hoped.  I've always tried to keep my stories visually balanced, like in my dreams, but it became apparent that in doing so, I reduced the impact of important scenes.  Encouraged by my editor at Grit City, I intensified the imagery in the most powerful parts of the story as a seat for the abstract artwork going into the story.  Through this craft element, I added a texture to the story I wouldn't have found before, visually highlighting the peaks and valleys of the plot.

Writing stories is a grand puzzle with no absolute solution. Trial and error is the best way through that maze.  I only hope that my work's images burn lively in the minds of readers.

BIO: Cynthia Ravinski writes, among other things.  From her coastal northern setting, she crafts stories in impossible worlds and dreams up crafty characters to occupy them.  She's been an athlete, a co-pilot, and a world traveler.  She's basked in the light of great poets, and has been educated to high degrees at UMaine Farmington and Seton Hill University.  To say she is obsessed with drinking tea is an understatement.  Visit her here to learn more.

BOOK REVIEW: I'M NOT GUILTY

I’m Not Guilty

The Development of the Violent Mind: The Case of Ted Bundy

A Novel by Al Carlisle, PH.D.

Recently, I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah for the World Horror Convention/Bram Stoker Awards.  It was an amazing experience to meet so many talented writers and artists, and listen to the minds of the masters in the field.  I sat in on a variety of lectures, went to the Salty Horror Film Festival (where I watched the award winning short film An Evening with my Comatose Mother) and took a writing workshop with Mort Castle where I practiced evoking truth in my fiction.

But one of the reasons I was drawn to the convention was that Al Carlisle would be speaking on the progression of serial killers and the ins and outs of multiple personality disorder. See, in addition to working on my thesis novel, I’ve been diligently researching an idea for a separate novel, and I thought that his lecture could help bleed some truth and realism into the character profile I’m working on. Also, for those of you that are unaware, I came very closer to majoring in forensic psychology, and even though I chose a more literary path, I still devour abnormal psychology articles and books on a regular basis. So when I found of that the lead psychologist on the Ted Bundy case was speaking at the event, I hoped on that plane quicker than you could say ‘serial killer.’

Before I get into the lecture though, here are some basic details about the case:

-Ted Bundy confessed to 30+ homicides before his execution in 1989.

-He is famous for his charming personality and his ability to lie and fool everyone around him. He would attack his victims at random (trolling, as he called it), and normally feign injury in order to entice them.

-Bundy became obsessed with his victims, and spent great amounts of time with the bodies after the murders. He would perform sexual acts on the corpses, and even claim that he bonded with them after they died, as if a part of their spirit became one with his.

-Bundy kept souvenirs. He decapitated at least 12 of his females, and kept their heads in his freezer, and when he grew tired of those, he would visit the dump sites, and spend time with his girls there.

- Oh, and Ted Bundy escaped from prison….twice.

Needless to say, Carlisle’s presentation was riveting.

I’ve read a lot about the minds of serial killers (Bundy in particular) and I’ve watched numerous documentaries on the subject as well, but there is something said for listening to someone in person who has actually been in contact and worked close with the killer. For instance, what really got me was when Carlisle talked about Bundy’s legendary charisma. Sure he knew that Ted was a cold blood killer, but he couldn’t deny that he liked the guy, and that’s why so many people couldn’t believe that Ted was capable of the murders.  In fact, that’s what hooked me with the case. I wanted to know how someone that was so obviously guilty, could (1) convince himself that there was nothing wrong with what  he was doing (2) charm everyone around him and (3) be as successful and skilled as he was in everyday life. Suffice it to say, I feel like I got all of my questions answered and it was a pleasure getting to meet Dr. Carlisle in person.

After the Q&A, I simply had to buy his book I’m Not Guilty- which might I add, I started and finished on the plane ride home.  The novel is essentially a mock interview comprised of the time he spent with the Bundy, detailing his life from childhood to execution. You learn about Ted’s insatiable need for pornography as a child (which he blames the murders on), his first rape attempt as a teenager, and then his steady decline into becoming the killer we know him as today. However, despite all the gore and psychological profiling, what I found to be most intriguing was learning about the relationships he had in life, particularly with Marjorie and Liz. Ted was incapable of letting himself be loved, and no matter how hard he tried, he could never break down the walls that closed him off to everyone around him. He would always be two people: Ted and the Entity, and as long as the Entity existed, the thirst for blood could never stop.

Curious yet?

If so, I’d HIGHLY recommend it, because there’s nothing scarier than getting inside the mind of a killer. And let me tell you something. Ted Bundy’s mind is simply horrifying, but he’ll try his best to convince you otherwise.