Congratulate me…I finally know what I’m doing. It was easier coming up with a name for this blog — a darker moon, all lower case — than a purpose. Yes, it was to be horror-concerned, since I’m a horror writer. But…then what?

My first post was about my dealing two horror novels to Samhain Publishing. BLOODTHIRST IN BABYLONwill be released on January 3 and MALEVOLENT in July, 2012. So I used that first blog post to preach  the importance of never giving up on your neglected book manuscripts. Mid-preach, it sort of dawned on me that I was, well, preaching. Or teaching, as I prefer to think of it. Influencing. Coaching. Whatever you want to call it.

And a calling, it became. I’m going to use this soap box to connect with horror writers and readers. This might include twenty-year vets with a lot more experience and success than me, as well as wannabes with a collection of rejections slips voluminous enough to paper a wall or two.

And readers, God bless ’em. I said readers. Of horror fiction.

Wondering about those emphatic italics? I use them to underscore the defining difference between this blog and many other sites that are peripherally concerned with horror. I don’t want to talk about how Dawn of the Dead kicks Night of the Living Dead’s ass. It might, but I don’t want to talk about it here. I want to exchange views with readers. Men and women and teenagers who’ve actually read (as opposed to seeing the movie) Peter Straub and Edgar Allan Poe and Dan Simmons and Poppy Z Brite and Shirley Jackson and Robert McCammon and…you get the idea.

Ask questions. Express strong opinions. Exchange tips. Point out new markets and agents and editors who will actually read your manuscript versus agreeing to perhaps eventually glance at your elevator pitch a year or two after their stated deadline. I’ll even start things off with a shout-out to Don D’Auria at Samhain Publishing. Check out his submissions guidelines at samhainpublishing.com.  Yes, he actually wants to see your full manuscript.

See what I mean? It’s about learning something you maybe didn’t already know about reading or selling horor fiction. Or offering a word of advice or encouragement to others trying to make a go of it in that scary field. Let’s build a community of horror…

…fiction…

…readers…

…writers…

…and enthusiasts. 

Eh?

David Searls is the author of horror novel Bloodthirst in Babylon, to be released in January, 2012.