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CRUSHED VELVET: POEMS OF HORROR & BEAUTY features the best of Mark McLaughlin's poetry throughout his career. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, websites, and anthologies. His books include the novels, HUMAN DOLL, THE HELL NEXT DOOR, and INJECTABLES. McLaughlin was also one of the authors of THE GOSSAMER EYE, a collection that won the 2002 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry category. Three authors were featured in THE GOSSAMER EYE: Mark McLaughlin, Rain Graves and David Niall Wilson. The three authors represented in this collection wrote in numerous speculative genres, with an emphasis on horror and dark fantasy. McLaughlin is also the author of many other poetry collections, including PROFESSOR LAGUNGO'S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES, which was a nominee for the 2003 Bram Stoker Poetry Award. "I have always felt that dark verse has to feature more than just gore, gloom, and violence," McLaughlin said. "There has to be some profound human element. That element can be love, humor, irony, a contrasting appreciation of beauty, or any combination of possible options." CRUSHED VELVET features a wide variety of McLaughlin's poems from various anthologies, magazines, and collections of his work. Poems you will find in this collection include "Now Is The Winter Of My Discontent Pterodactyl," "Death Is Coming For You, My Friend," "I Had A Dream And You Were In It," "Mom And Dad Went Insane And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt," "Older Than Dirt And Twice As Ugly," "The Return Of Lizard-Lips," "Steamroller Concerto (In B-Flat)," "A Dream Of Shrieking Insects," "Consummate Blasphemy Of The Rustmad Technogod," "Caligari, Inc.," "Scandalicious," "The Snickerer In The Snack Machine," "Internet Witches," and "A Flaming Death Is Not For Me."