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Grave Markings
Grave Markings follows the tortured mental breakdown of Mark Michael Kilpatrick—an artist driven to purge visions of hell from his tainted mind by permanently working his ink into the skins of unwilling victims...the flesh of both the living and freshly dead.
News reporter Roy Roberts finds himself drawn into an obsession with tattoo culture, at the same time as Kilpatrick's own compulsions produce sicker and sicker masterpieces that attract media attention, twisting in a spiral that inevitably brings Roberts and his loved ones into Kilpatrick's morbidly perverse universe, and the artist's deadly inkgun turns toward them...
Now, for the first time in trade paperback, readers can find out why this novel won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Critics Guild Award, and such widespread acclaim across the horror genre. Included in this special Twentieth Anniversary edition are 50 pages of insightful BONUS material by Arnzen: a new preface, five literary essays, and four short stories (two never before published) involving bikers, tattoo and terror.
News reporter Roy Roberts finds himself drawn into an obsession with tattoo culture, at the same time as Kilpatrick's own compulsions produce sicker and sicker masterpieces that attract media attention, twisting in a spiral that inevitably brings Roberts and his loved ones into Kilpatrick's morbidly perverse universe, and the artist's deadly inkgun turns toward them...
Now, for the first time in trade paperback, readers can find out why this novel won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Critics Guild Award, and such widespread acclaim across the horror genre. Included in this special Twentieth Anniversary edition are 50 pages of insightful BONUS material by Arnzen: a new preface, five literary essays, and four short stories (two never before published) involving bikers, tattoo and terror.
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 1, 1994
8 people are currently reading
770 people want to read
About the author
Michael A. Arnzen
81 books280 followersMichael Arnzen has won multiple awards for his fiction and poetry, including four Bram Stoker Awards and the International Horror Guild Award. He teaches horror and suspense writing at Seton Hill University, as faculty in their unique MFA degree program in Writing Popular Fiction.
To catch up with Arnzen or hunt down collectable editions, visit the author's website, GORELETS.COM Or tune in his new podcast: 6:66 w/Michael Arnzen at http://6m66s.com/
To catch up with Arnzen or hunt down collectable editions, visit the author's website, GORELETS.COM Or tune in his new podcast: 6:66 w/Michael Arnzen at http://6m66s.com/
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 24, 2015
Perhaps the best way to explain what an audacious and original novel Grave Markings is might be to explain how horror often fails and why. Fans of the genre are too familiar with the usual suspects; abused character/monster tropes, cheap revulsion tactics, utter lack of characterization, fixed gender stereotypes that reduce characters to plot devices, and so on. Most of these elements aren’t horror specific, but I would venture to say that oftentimes horror is most guilty of the all too familiar straw man/woman tactics of introducing flimsy characters only to see them eviscerated in (what the author hopes) is a creative and original way.
Now, let’s examine Arznen’s Grave Markings.
From the outset, we are wrested from a safe space and taken through the degeneration of Mark Michael Kilpatrick, the book’s antagonist/monster. Without wasting a single word, the reader unequivocally understands the motivation: abused and marginalized artist has psychotic break and feels the need to “go public.” The how of going public is where the horror and originality begin.
Not all horror involves maiming limbs, arterial blood spray, or unidentified viscous fluids leaking from some monster’s orifices. Arzen’s Kilpatrick seeks to mark his victims—permanently—and defacto make them eternal billboards of his art, his pain, his vision. Worse than a creative decapitation (which seems the benchmark of amateur horror-ists), the reader idles helplessly while the victim is claimed and metamorphosed. A prostitute’s skin is overtaken with an army of phallic demons. A mechanic’s torso becomes a cybernetic vision of a living machine. Each breath drawn invests motions to its function. Gruesome stuff.
Arnzen’s prose has a startling clarity to it that I am reticent to attempt making a comparison. Verbs wring out every syllable for maximum effect. When Kilpatrick is fading to darkness, he doesn’t “surrender,” or “get sucked” into it; it sphincters him. The mental masturbation of a character isn’t a stream of graphic images; instead, it’s compared to “a furious fuck on speed, a vacuous rampage of the flesh that led to blinding orgasmic joy.” Time after time, careful descriptions, similes, and metaphors provoke the imagination in new ways, even with the simplest of touches (“set fire to the end of a cigarette,” “a cheap block of pine in a clogged urinal,” and “like trying to speed read War and Peace in a moving car” are favorites).
Colorado Springs, chosen as the backdrop for this story, is rendered with crisp detail. Having lived and served my military term here, I saw my long lost mountains again and remembered the eccentricities of the neighborhoods and their demographics (the book was published in 1994, eight years before my arrival). The world of tattooing—arguably the most important element or theme—is also told in a convincing manner. As someone with less than 50% of his skin remaining for ink, I thoroughly enjoyed playing voyeur as Roberts, an ink virgin, develops his nagging desire for a tattoo into to a full-fledged obsession. Surrendering to whim and growing in the process, the vulnerability of a grown man and the companionship found in unlikely places is one of the book’s many great feats.
If more horror writers were provided important novels like Grave Markings, I imagine we would soon see the gore-spattered maws of oversexed vampires, sensual werewolves, and completely psychotic everyday normal guys retreat back to the 80’s and cheap horror flicks. Arnzen raises the bar by creating a believable tale of mental illness, selective subculture, and the lasting consequences of trauma. Like any good story, horror or otherwise, an important question is provoked: can a victim of violence ever learn to trust again? Live without fear, or suspicion of treachery in the hearts of their fellow man? Echoes of Paul Tillich’s work regarding what words and symbols actually mean are most definitely at play, and even as the protagonists feverishly labor to understand the killer, the reader is also tasked with deciding exactly what the power and significance of images are, without words.
Grave Markings deserves every award and all of the praise it has garnered. As a writer of horror fiction, as well as a devout consumer, I already feel indebted for the wise and entertaining lessons it has imparted. A rock solid 5 stars.
Now, let’s examine Arznen’s Grave Markings.
From the outset, we are wrested from a safe space and taken through the degeneration of Mark Michael Kilpatrick, the book’s antagonist/monster. Without wasting a single word, the reader unequivocally understands the motivation: abused and marginalized artist has psychotic break and feels the need to “go public.” The how of going public is where the horror and originality begin.
Not all horror involves maiming limbs, arterial blood spray, or unidentified viscous fluids leaking from some monster’s orifices. Arzen’s Kilpatrick seeks to mark his victims—permanently—and defacto make them eternal billboards of his art, his pain, his vision. Worse than a creative decapitation (which seems the benchmark of amateur horror-ists), the reader idles helplessly while the victim is claimed and metamorphosed. A prostitute’s skin is overtaken with an army of phallic demons. A mechanic’s torso becomes a cybernetic vision of a living machine. Each breath drawn invests motions to its function. Gruesome stuff.
Arnzen’s prose has a startling clarity to it that I am reticent to attempt making a comparison. Verbs wring out every syllable for maximum effect. When Kilpatrick is fading to darkness, he doesn’t “surrender,” or “get sucked” into it; it sphincters him. The mental masturbation of a character isn’t a stream of graphic images; instead, it’s compared to “a furious fuck on speed, a vacuous rampage of the flesh that led to blinding orgasmic joy.” Time after time, careful descriptions, similes, and metaphors provoke the imagination in new ways, even with the simplest of touches (“set fire to the end of a cigarette,” “a cheap block of pine in a clogged urinal,” and “like trying to speed read War and Peace in a moving car” are favorites).
Colorado Springs, chosen as the backdrop for this story, is rendered with crisp detail. Having lived and served my military term here, I saw my long lost mountains again and remembered the eccentricities of the neighborhoods and their demographics (the book was published in 1994, eight years before my arrival). The world of tattooing—arguably the most important element or theme—is also told in a convincing manner. As someone with less than 50% of his skin remaining for ink, I thoroughly enjoyed playing voyeur as Roberts, an ink virgin, develops his nagging desire for a tattoo into to a full-fledged obsession. Surrendering to whim and growing in the process, the vulnerability of a grown man and the companionship found in unlikely places is one of the book’s many great feats.
If more horror writers were provided important novels like Grave Markings, I imagine we would soon see the gore-spattered maws of oversexed vampires, sensual werewolves, and completely psychotic everyday normal guys retreat back to the 80’s and cheap horror flicks. Arnzen raises the bar by creating a believable tale of mental illness, selective subculture, and the lasting consequences of trauma. Like any good story, horror or otherwise, an important question is provoked: can a victim of violence ever learn to trust again? Live without fear, or suspicion of treachery in the hearts of their fellow man? Echoes of Paul Tillich’s work regarding what words and symbols actually mean are most definitely at play, and even as the protagonists feverishly labor to understand the killer, the reader is also tasked with deciding exactly what the power and significance of images are, without words.
Grave Markings deserves every award and all of the praise it has garnered. As a writer of horror fiction, as well as a devout consumer, I already feel indebted for the wise and entertaining lessons it has imparted. A rock solid 5 stars.
January 23, 2016
Visceral yet psychedelic. Not sure how to explain this one, but if we ever meet, I'll show you the marks it left on my flesh. Yep. You'll feel yourself being inked up as you read this, and along the way there's a statement about art and obsession that I could easily relate to. It's a meaty book, and the version I read came with a handful of articles at the end that really spoke back to what I read, and made it all complete. A Bram Stoker winner for first novel
January 30, 2023
Grave Markings is a dark, intense book. It's rife with rich detail, and I quite liked it.
April 29, 2017
The horror-potential of tattoos is not new to me. I once read a comic-book where a tattoo of a monster would come to life. This book, one of the Stephen King-endorsed Dell line of horror novels from the early 90s, is a remarkable first novel from Michael Arnzen, adding some really spectacular (read, beautifully grotesque) imagery to a serial-killer plot, the best of them being a window pane fixed to a girl’s belly after removing the skin, making her belly-dance in that fashion, watching the play of her innards and blood.
It’s sordid and stunning by turns, often simultaneously, even though I didn’t like any of the three main characters except Roy Roberts, the newsman, who realizes the potential of tattoos and what they could mean to someone after getting one on his upper back. Tattoos can symbolize not just a person’s philosophy of life, (sometimes involuntarily, as it happened with me, the spur-of-the-moment blue-rose tattoo on the underside of my left wrist becoming a symbol of my untrammeled belief in the power of fantasy, rather than a monument to haste and stupidity) but become a companion unto death, their permanence and never-wilting freshness mocking the mirror which only serves to show the stamp of age upon our helpless bodies.
I have some issues with flashbacks (except the one with Polly, the teacher who paints in the nude), the insights into the killer’s past that seem to justify what he has become. He is a lover and champion of true art, so why not have him as the guy-next-door, the person you have tea with and socialize with, without a whiff of him being the tattoo-killer who is out to mark people with the horrifying pictures hanging on the walls of his mind?
The bonus material at the end of the 20th anniversary edition -published essays and articles by the author himself - was very interesting. I love it when writers choose to share their life with the reader (Stephen King does it best). It’s sometimes depressing (he says he got lucky with his first book when only 1% of the manuscripts received by agents and publishers eventually get published) but there is always the ray of hope in the form of words like these: A writer should try to put herself in as many possible places for the potential of luck to happen (Poppy Z. Brite to John Betancourt’s Horror magazine).
He also tells us how he had to fight for including the belly-pane scene in the book, his firm belief in it eventually getting the better of naysayers, even when he had to justify that it wasn't as distant from reality as his readers might believe it to be.
It’s sordid and stunning by turns, often simultaneously, even though I didn’t like any of the three main characters except Roy Roberts, the newsman, who realizes the potential of tattoos and what they could mean to someone after getting one on his upper back. Tattoos can symbolize not just a person’s philosophy of life, (sometimes involuntarily, as it happened with me, the spur-of-the-moment blue-rose tattoo on the underside of my left wrist becoming a symbol of my untrammeled belief in the power of fantasy, rather than a monument to haste and stupidity) but become a companion unto death, their permanence and never-wilting freshness mocking the mirror which only serves to show the stamp of age upon our helpless bodies.
I have some issues with flashbacks (except the one with Polly, the teacher who paints in the nude), the insights into the killer’s past that seem to justify what he has become. He is a lover and champion of true art, so why not have him as the guy-next-door, the person you have tea with and socialize with, without a whiff of him being the tattoo-killer who is out to mark people with the horrifying pictures hanging on the walls of his mind?
The bonus material at the end of the 20th anniversary edition -published essays and articles by the author himself - was very interesting. I love it when writers choose to share their life with the reader (Stephen King does it best). It’s sometimes depressing (he says he got lucky with his first book when only 1% of the manuscripts received by agents and publishers eventually get published) but there is always the ray of hope in the form of words like these: A writer should try to put herself in as many possible places for the potential of luck to happen (Poppy Z. Brite to John Betancourt’s Horror magazine).
He also tells us how he had to fight for including the belly-pane scene in the book, his firm belief in it eventually getting the better of naysayers, even when he had to justify that it wasn't as distant from reality as his readers might believe it to be.
Want to read
July 21, 2011Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:
"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."
"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."
May 27, 2012
Wonderfully twisted, occasionally surreal, beautifully dark. Arnzen is horror standing on its head and sticking its tongue out at you. Dark humor seeps from the pages of all his work, to one degree or another. I recommend anything he writes.
October 9, 2008
There are some truly wild scenes in this one!
October 12, 2007
A very spooky (but non-supernatural) thriller, with more information and speculation about tattoos than anyone ever imagined. An excellent first novel.
December 14, 2016
Love this book.
October 19, 2023
Reading the foreword, I was intrigued. A writer without tattoos crafting a story dependent on that very art? As a fellow tattoo-less wonder, I dove in.
The setting of Colorado Springs was top notch. As a CO native and former resident, I greatly enjoyed reading about the mountain city. It lent itself well to the story.
Abused child becomes tortured artist, an antagonist unlike any I’ve ever come across. Bent on sharing his work and version, he targets folks in the community, setting his sights on a tight knit friend group. Once I started the book, I plowed through, excited to find out what came next.
Horror fans should add this book to their shelf… it’ll stay with me like a tattoo except on my brain.
The setting of Colorado Springs was top notch. As a CO native and former resident, I greatly enjoyed reading about the mountain city. It lent itself well to the story.
Abused child becomes tortured artist, an antagonist unlike any I’ve ever come across. Bent on sharing his work and version, he targets folks in the community, setting his sights on a tight knit friend group. Once I started the book, I plowed through, excited to find out what came next.
Horror fans should add this book to their shelf… it’ll stay with me like a tattoo except on my brain.
October 8, 2019
Buh, what a mess of a book. The story rambles a lot, circles back in on itself multiple times, doesn't feel particularly original, has a habit of telling rather than showing, and it's full of lackluster characters. It's not interesting, it's barely engaging, the narrative feels awkward and clunky, and some of the dialogue is so stilted it makes me cringe. It has touches of sexism and misogyny, too, which is disappointing, even for a book that was published over twenty years ago.
To the author's credit, he owns up to most of these foibles. He writes (and writes and writes and writes ... there are 5-6 essays about the book included as bonus material in this edition) about this being his first novel, and how much luck was involved with it getting published at all. He even states his regret for the misogyny, but I have to give him more credit for leaving it in, when he could have taken the opportunity to revise some of the worst parts.
Arnzen seems to want to defy those who dislike the book, which ... okay, as an author, you have that right, but man, if you can identify bad parts of the book, how can you defy those who don't like it as a result? I feel like the book suffers for all of Arnzen's philosophizing about it, because his whole perspective on things puzzles me. Maybe I'm mixing up the different essays, some of which were written closely after its original publication, others following as much as twenty years later, but he comes across as both self-effacing and arrogant about the book. I feel like books need to stand on their own without apologies or defenses from the authors.
I hate to give it just one star (it's not as bad as the Ron Dee and Rick R. Reed dreck that also populated the Abyss imprint, and which fully deserved the one-star ratings), but whoah nelly, it's not a two-star book by any means. It's times like these when I wish Goodreads would allow zero or half stars, so I could at least rank all these books in relation to each other.
Abyss #42
To the author's credit, he owns up to most of these foibles. He writes (and writes and writes and writes ... there are 5-6 essays about the book included as bonus material in this edition) about this being his first novel, and how much luck was involved with it getting published at all. He even states his regret for the misogyny, but I have to give him more credit for leaving it in, when he could have taken the opportunity to revise some of the worst parts.
Arnzen seems to want to defy those who dislike the book, which ... okay, as an author, you have that right, but man, if you can identify bad parts of the book, how can you defy those who don't like it as a result? I feel like the book suffers for all of Arnzen's philosophizing about it, because his whole perspective on things puzzles me. Maybe I'm mixing up the different essays, some of which were written closely after its original publication, others following as much as twenty years later, but he comes across as both self-effacing and arrogant about the book. I feel like books need to stand on their own without apologies or defenses from the authors.
I hate to give it just one star (it's not as bad as the Ron Dee and Rick R. Reed dreck that also populated the Abyss imprint, and which fully deserved the one-star ratings), but whoah nelly, it's not a two-star book by any means. It's times like these when I wish Goodreads would allow zero or half stars, so I could at least rank all these books in relation to each other.
Abyss #42
September 23, 2008
I guess I'm just not in the mood for psychological horror these days...This book had a fascinating premise but frankly, the horor of it all just bummed me out so I couldn't even finish it! Go figure...
February 29, 2020
I guess even the Dell Abyss line wasn't immune to lame books. Grave Markings is just...okay. Too okay and middling at least, for it to be published by Dell Abyss. It feels more like something that a smaller house like Critic's Choice or Leisure would put out.
It's got some cool ideas buried in there for sure, but most of the book just rambles along and it feels very, very bloated. I gave up reading all the way through at the 200-page mark and just skimmed the rest, not finding much that I hadn't expected from the story.
Only worth a read if you're a Dell-Abyss completionist, and even then, a dedicated one.
It's got some cool ideas buried in there for sure, but most of the book just rambles along and it feels very, very bloated. I gave up reading all the way through at the 200-page mark and just skimmed the rest, not finding much that I hadn't expected from the story.
Only worth a read if you're a Dell-Abyss completionist, and even then, a dedicated one.
Want to read
May 26, 2024I am sorry to leave a comment here under reviews for a book that I have not read yet but I wanted to assign a date for this book and the date set functionality of the website currently seems to be broken. If they get this working I will use this and delete this review.
09-25-2017
09-25-2017
September 13, 2022
Abyss Mass Market 90's Paperback. The plot revolves around a tattoo artist that's a serial killer. He wants his work to be known. Great characters and some gore. Very interesting story.
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