Dear Living Dark readers,
I’m writing today with a special announcement about the future of this newsletter, or rather, about the future of the creative impulse that originally gave rise to it, and how that impulse is now leading me away from The Living Dark as the primary home of my writing, and away from Substack as the center of my online presence.
Four years ago this month, I launched The Living Dark—originally under the title Living into the Dark—as a new home for my essays and reflections on creativity, consciousness, religion, horror, culture, and the examined writing life. That home is now changing.
I’ve mentioned the transition in a couple of recent Notes, but I want to explain it clearly here, especially what it means for this publication, its archive, and your subscription.
The short version is that The Living Dark is ending as my primary, independent publication, and my new writing is moving to a completely renovated MattCardin.com.
I hasten to add that this doesn’t mean I’m abandoning the subjects or impulses I’ve spent four years writing about here. In fact, quite the opposite. What has happened is that, over time, maintaining TLD as a distinct identity alongside my author site has begun to feel like an artificial division within a total body of work that increasingly wants to become whole.
Those of you who have been with me here for any length of time know that my books, essays, and various creative preoccupations have always arisen from the same source: the muse, daimon, daemon, inner genius, the undivided creative center that exists in you, too. I think it was this inner fact that eventually made the division between two online identities feel not only unnecessary but positively draining to the focus and energy I want to devote to my writing.
And so, in culmination of a long-simmering decision, I’m bringing everything together under my own name.
The new MattCardin.com
The rebuilt site is already live. I gave it a soft (or perhaps stealth) launch a few days ago, and I plan to launch it officially on September 12.
It is now the central home for my books and writing, including essays, reflections, and occasional short dispatches on the same themes that I have pursued here, from creative calling and spiritual awakening to horror, consciousness, and the darkly numinous.
In addition to information about my books, the renovated site includes dedicated archives for The Living Dark and its predecessor, The Teeming Brain. Those archives are still mostly empty, but they will grow gradually as I restore and republish selected material.
You can visit the new site now at MattCardin.com, where I invite you to browse around and read the welcome post. If you’re already familiar with my longstanding web presence there, be advised: as of a few days ago, everything looks distinctly different.
What will happen to The Living Dark?
This complete Substack publication and its existing archive will remain available. I’m not deleting the site or removing its posts.
Its permanent Substack address will become what it was during the first few months of its life, before I gave it a custom domain: mattcardin.substack.com
The familiar LivingDark.net address will also continue to lead here, so existing links and bookmarks won’t just be abandoned.
I may continue to maintain some activity here by publishing occasional selected material, maybe republished pieces, archival items, excerpts, or other things. My new work, however, will originate at MattCardin.com. I don’t intend to maintain two separate and competing publication schedules or publish the same complete pieces in both places.
In other words, The Living Dark will remain as an archive and occasional satellite of my main author site instead of continuing as a separate center of gravity, as it has been for the past four years.
What will happen to your subscription?
On September 12, I plan to add the active email subscribers of The Living Dark to the new MattCardin.com subscriber list.
A few points of clarification:
You will be added as a free subscriber.
There’s no charge, and I’m not creating a paid subscription for you.
Your existing TLD subscription and archive access at Substack will remain in place.
If I recently converted your paid subscription to a permanent complimentary subscription, you will retain that complimentary Substack access.
Future messages from MattCardin.com will include their own unsubscribe link, so you can manage the two subscriptions independently.
To be completely clear, I’ll be importing your email address into my own MattCardin.com subscriber list. It won’t be sold or added to anyone else’s publication. It’s still me, continuing the same body of work under my own name and at my longstanding author website.
If you’re happy to continue with me, you don’t need to do anything.
If you would prefer not to be added to MattCardin.com, simply reply to this message and tell me before September 12. You can also unsubscribe from The Living Dark before then, but replying is the better option if you want to remain subscribed here while declining the new list.
Finally: Thank you
It feels simultaneously strange and exhilarating to be making this transition.
The Living Dark has been a vitally important chapter in my writing life. Among other things, it gave me a focused place and a refreshed attitude for exploring subjects that had occupied me for years. It introduced my work to new readers. It gave me many new friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. It drew out of me a stream of writing that became both Writing at the Wellspring and The Living Dark Reader. Speaking of the latter, I’ll be saying more about its future in an upcoming post at my author site.
Maybe most importantly, The Living Dark helped me understand even more clearly what all the different strands of my creative interests and fascinations are actually about. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has read, subscribed, replied, shared my work, or supported it financially.
In sum, this transition is a natural consequence of what TLD helped me to recognize: that these writings all belong together, and their most natural home is the one bearing my own name.
Thank you for being here. I hope you’ll join me for what comes next.
With gratitude,
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On the deeper sources of creativity:
“[An] intimate journey into the mystery of creativity and spirit.” — BookLife review (Publishers Weekly)
“A guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. — Joanna Penn, author of Writing the Shadow
“I can’t think of any [other books] that link the creative act so uniquely or persuasively with spirituality.” — Victoria Nelson, author of On Writer’s Block and The Secret Life of Puppets
READER REACTIONS:
“This isn’t a how-to book about writing. It’s a book about why writing matters, and what it’s actually touching when it’s real.”
“One of those magical texts that voices the Truth I secretly always knew.”
“It easily earns its place on my shelf of texts that have challenged and changed how I think about writing and the creative life.”
“If Colin Wilson and Krishnamurti and ST Joshi had written a tome on the essentials of creativity, it would be something like this.”
“There is potential here to change your life.”