Be Yourself… Or Be A Cat (Daily Journal 1/3/26)
Woke at 5 this morning from a stress dream in which I called Stephen King but then couldn’t remember why I’d called and thus, I ended up being an annoyance and wasting his time. Clearly my subconscious was telling me that I am still too busy and this pace is going to kill me if it doesn’t change soon, particularly since three different medical professionals agree that my cognitive issues are a direct result of too much stress and not enough sleep. (Had a glitch on New Year’s Eve in which I confused Jamie Flanagan and Jamie Sheridan, but Somer Canon was kind and gentle enough to let me catch and correct it myself).
Either that, or my subconscious is telling me that way too many goddamn people have my cell number. But joke’s on you, subconscious. I ddidn’t need you to tell me that.
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Yesterday’s journal entry and last night’s two Patreon essays (here and here) all seemed to really strike a cord with folks. Engagement in both places was way up, which tells me that the old ways are still the best ways, and if you give people something worth their time, they’ll come to you on their own, and not on the currents of some arbitrary algorithm.
Of course, the problem with that is that I’m speaking from a place of enormous privilege, having had 30 successful years to build an audience. Over on Instagram, JD Savage asks: How do I get more people to sign up for my newsletter Cemetery Things what did you do when you first started out?”
The very first thing to put me on the map, before the publication of NO REST FOR THE WICKED or 4X4 or THE RISING, was — in fact — a weekly email newsletter called JOBS IN HELL, which launched in 1999 and earned me my first Bram Stoker Award win in 2001. JIH featured a mix of things:
A weekly editorial column by me (the very early installments of what became Hail Saten) as editor-in-chief.
Market listings for magazines, publishers, and other venues seeking horror fiction, poetry, and art.
Articles by staff writers Regina Garza Mitchell, J. F. Gonzalez, Tom Piccirilli, Mike Oliveri, Rain Graves, Michael T. Huyck, Geoff Cooper, Mark McLaughlin, Gene O’Neill, a very young Kelly Laymon, Weston Ochse, and others.
Interviews with people in the business, about the business.
Now, there were certainly other venues offering these things — Janet Fox’s Scavenger’s Newsletter and Kathy Ptacek’s Gila Queen were both monthly print zines in the same vein, and Paula Guran’s Dark Echo was an email list that did the same. And all three were great. But those first two were playing catch up with the brand-new and quickly growing internet age, in which information was instantaneous rather than monthly, and the latter was The Establishment, while that motley crue of young, up and coming staff writers were decidedly not the establishment.
For example, while literally everyone else in this business (other than Nancy Collins) was either looking the other way involving the allegations and rumors regarding Edward Kramer, or not speaking up out of fear of damaging their careers, we had zero qualms about publicly digging into the allegations and rumors. We were threatened and cautioned for our efforts, and then harassed, which just made us double down.
This email newsletter run by a bunch of wild young rebels and pirates began to pick up steam and notoriety and more and more subscribers, and with that, we continued to give people content they weren’t getting elsewhere. We were responsible for helping get Richard Laymon elected as HWA President. On 9/11, we emailed updates throughout the day and evening, as New Yorkers like Jack Ketchum, Gerard Houarner, Linda Addison, Peter Straub, Ellen Datlow, Don D’Auria, Nicholas Kaufmann, and others checked in, marking themselves safe and disseminating the information not via social media (which didn’t exist yet) but via JIH.
Eventually, I sold JIH to Kelly Laymon so I could focus more on writing and also helping run the old Horrorfind Weekend conventions, but I took Hail Saten with me, and turned that into a successful daily Blog, sort of like this thing you’re reading right now. Hail Saten ran for a decade, and was very, very popular. The reason for that was that I was myself.
Being yourself, and presenting your newsletter or Blog in your voice goes a long way toward attracting readers. The other thing is to give them a reason to keep coming back. It can’t just be promotion. The internet is full of authors promoting things. And yes, that’s a necessary part of what we do — but it can’t be all that we do. Nobody wants to sign up just to be spammed. Talk about things that are important to you that aren’t the book you’re trying to promote. You’ll notice I talk about books I’m reading, music I’m listening to, nature observations here along the rural Susquehanna River, and things like that. Sometimes I will use these as a gateway into talking about my own books. Sometimes I don’t. They key is to not force anything. Whatever you’re delivering should be natural and genuine.
And also — pictures of cats or dogs, particularly cute ones — are like free crack to the algorithm bound. Case in point.
I took this picture of Josie yesterday. I guarantee you if I include it with this Blog entry, and then use it to promote this link on social media, I’ll get more click throughs. Granted, the people are coming here to see the cat (and how could they not, because look at that adorable face from a prior feral wasteland wanderer) but once they’re here, they’ve read through this whole thing. And if I did the things I mentioned above — if I gave them unique content they aren’t getting elsewhere?
They’ll be back.
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Mary’s coming home today, after being in New Jesrsey for the last couple of weeks, so I’ve gotta get the house cleaned up and then get to work on a short story and the 500 other things that all need to be done this month. But hope this helped!