One Year of The Living Dark

On TLD's first birthday, a look at where we've been and where we're going.

Welcome to The Living Dark. I’m Matt Cardin, and this is my blog/newsletter on creativity for writers, situated at the intersection of religion, horror, nonduality, apocalypse, dystopia, consciousness, and the numinous unknown.

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Dear Living Dark readers,

The older I get, the more the passing of time seems like a numinous mystery. Holidays and milestones, which we use for marking and hallowing time, amplify this feeling.

That’s why it is with a sense of strange half-vertigo that I observe today’s anniversary: The Living Dark is now one year old.

Exactly 365 days ago, I launched this blog/newsletter with the following post:

The fact that I wrote and published those words a full year into the past, and that you and I are both here, now, observing the occasion a full solar orbit later, feels impossible. And yet it’s true. Therein lies a deep lesson.

In honor of the day, I offer the following brief reflection on where this has all been, and where it’s all going.

Looking back

Here’s a partial list of items—things published, changes made, milestones reached—from TLD's first year:

• Launch date: I launched on September 14, 2022, with a welcome post.

• Original title: This publication was originally titled Living into the Dark.

• Title change: In April 2023 I changed the title to The Living Dark.

• Publication history:

  • In a span of 12 months, I published 55 essays and curated links posts on writing, creativity, religion, horror, nonduality, and more, plus various housekeeping announcements and updates.

  • I published one podcast episode plus an accompanying enhanced transcript.

  • I shared two of my original piano compositions, plus my own piano arrangement of Claudio Gizzi's classic music for the film Blood for Dracula.

• Shift in central focus: In April 2023, along with the title change, I shifted the overall theme toward a central, sustained focus on writing, creativity, and the daemon muse, while continuing to write about other subjects as well. The primary purpose of The Living Dark is now to serve as an ongoing guide to the inner genius for writers and other creative individuals. My main mission here is to help writers learn to cooperate and collaborate more effectively with their muse or daemon, their unique creative identity, mission, and destiny.

• Reader questions: After this change of title and focus, I started to receive questions from readers about their personal creative struggles. This happened both here and over at Twitter/X, where I made a similar shift. I have now begun providing answers to these questions. Going forward, this will continue in amplified form (see the “Looking Ahead” section below).

• Subscriber growth: In its first year, The Living Dark gained more than 1,000 subscribers, including nearly 100 paying subscribers, with a sharp acceleration occurring this past summer.

My personal and authorial life has also interacted and intersected with this project. In the past 12 months the following things have happened:

• I published 30 years of my private journal entries in two volumes.

• I spoke on a panel about monsters at the World Fantasy Convention 2022, alongside fellow panelists Nathan Ballingrud, Catriona Ward, and Victor LaValle.

• I gave interviews for several podcasts.

• I completely redesigned and relaunched my author website.

• Beginning in May/June of this year, I upped my game seriously over at Twitter/X, turning my account into a direct adjunct of TLD. The explicit purpose of my X presence is now to help writers find and focus their unique voice and vision. The response has been gratifyingly enthusiastic. I invite you to join me at @TheMattCardin.

Looking ahead

Here are some things that are currently on tap and in development, both for TLD and for my related writing/publishing life—the latter of which will of course play into what goes on here:

• I’m deep into developing a book proposal on the writer's daemon to shop around to a literary agents. In two decades of writing and publishing, I have never worked with an agent. My daemon is leading me to seek one for this new book project. I will of course keep you updated on developments. In fact, I’ll write some of the book itself in public, right here.

• I’m currently nearing completion of a PDF ebook for all paying subscribers to this blog, both current and new. It will run 50–60 pages and will contain several essays by me, all of them previously uncollected. The tentative/working title is Voice and Vision: Seven Essays on Writing and Creativity.

• More original TLD essays are lined up and in development. Some of these will be tied to the book project.

• More podcast episodes are in development. This is slow work, but there will indeed be future episodes, pending reader interest and subscriber support. The amount of time and effort it takes me to produce a podcast episode of the interview variety is significant. I’m obligated to calibrate my investment of time/effort according to what’s warranted.

• I will be launching narrated/audio versions of TLD posts for paid subscribers. ‘Nuff said.

• I will be launching a separate but thematically connected email newsletter. Yes, you already receive TLD posts in your email (sent from me at matt@livingdark.net). But TLD is for medium- to long-form content. I have many other things to talk with you about in shorter form on a variety of topics. So, as a companion or complement to TLD, I will be launching an email newsletter to share these short-form thoughts of around 200 to 300 words each. It will be based at matt@mattcardin.com. All Living Dark subscribers will be given the opportunity to opt in. This is coming very soon.

• I will be launching a Living Dark reader referral option. You’ll soon be able to earn rewards—such as several months of free paid-subscriber access—for referring others here.

• I will be launching a creativity mentoring service for writers. On the principle that people will let you know what your calling is—what you’re meant to do, where you’re meant to go—by what they consistently ask of you and come to you for, I’m going to start offering vision or muse mentoring to writers on a formal, paid basis. I’ll say more about this later.

I’ll close this anniversary “looking backward and forward” post by stating how pleased I am to have you along for the journey. In TLD’s inaugural post a year ago, I said:

The direction of this endeavor is entirely unclear. Its trajectory is indeterminate. The path forward will be something that you, the reader, and I, the writer, uncover and discover together.

The point about this being an open-ended project will always hold true. But in a year’s time, we have certainly learned something about the trajectory TLD wants to take.

In a span of 12 months, it has taken us down some very interesting paths and brought us to a very fruitful place. Who knows what another year—or another decade—will bring? I look forward to finding out with you.

And if you’re a writer or artist/creator who hasn’t yet subscribed, but who finds the vibe and purpose around here to be resonant with your own creative spirit and goals, I invite you to join us. Read the About page. Enter your email to subscribe below. Help us grow and determine TLD’s direction for the next year.

Warmly,

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