Writing At The Wellspring: Tapping The Source Of Your Inner Genius With Matt Cardin

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Writing At The Wellspring: Tapping The Source Of Your Inner Genius"

The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Host: Joanna Penn
Guest: Matt Cardin
Episode #856 | March 30, 2026 | [Interview starts at 25:03]

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Overview

In this episode, Joanna Penn interviews writer and academic Matt Cardin, whose work sits at the intersection of horror, religion, and creativity. They discuss the nature of creative genius and the muse, the value of silence and stillness in the writing process, embracing darkness and uncertainty, and developing a relationship with one's inner, perhaps unknowable, creative source. The conversation delves into both practical techniques and philosophical perspectives, drawing on mythology, psychology, and personal experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Introducing Matt Cardin & His Path to Writing

• Matt’s Background:
  From childhood, Matt was enchanted by books and storytelling, influenced by his father despite him not being a professional writer (25:24).
  Developed interests in fantasy, horror, and science fiction, later gravitating towards religious and philosophical themes.
• Professional Path:
  Has always kept writing as an avocation—main career in video/media production and then education (teaching, then academic administration) (26:55).
  First paid publication in a Lovecraftian anthology; later authored collections and edited academic volumes.
  Values the separation of financial necessity and creative drive:

  "Not having my primary creative, spiritual and philosophical drive hooked to what I earn my bread by has been a blessing. I don't want to take this thing I love and make it be how I have to grind to earn my money." (29:19)

Creativity, the Muse, and the "Genius"

• Conceptualizing Genius and the Muse:
  Matt distinguishes between the modern notion of “genius” (as a label for exceptional people) and the ancient view (a creative force that visits or inhabits someone) (33:13).

  "In ancient Roman culture ... the genius was the spirit that might say, live in an artist's studio ... [it] was the spirit that provided inspiration." (33:54)

• Muse, Daemon, Daimon—Ways to Engage:
  Advocates seeing the source of creativity as an "other" within, whether or not literally believed. Collaboration with this inner voice can be fruitful regardless of whether it’s seen as metaphor or metaphysics:

  "Productively, with practical, measurable results, you can learn to relate to your creative impulse as if you are collaborating internally with someone else." (37:26)

• Recommends Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED Talk on "Your Elusive Creative Genius" (33:29).

The Importance of Stillness and Silence

• Silence as Gift or Resistance:
  Many writers find external and internal silence difficult or even threatening (38:13).
  Matt suggests that unwanted stillness (writer’s block, inertia, etc.) may be valuable and fruitful if accepted rather than resisted:

  "There's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us ... The more important silence is not whether your outward conditions seem like they're a clamor ... it's that inner silence." (41:44)

• Practical Approaches:
  • Early mornings for meditation, free-writing, or morning pages (43:05)
  • Dialoguing with the muse/daemon in writing (43:18)
  • Allowing germination, trusting insight will surface in silence

Creative Input vs. Incubation & Embracing Discomfort

• Balancing Input and Incubation:
  Both hosts agree on the value of input and research, but note the necessity of quiet periods where creativity is allowed to process subconsciously (44:10).
  Joanna describes walking in silence, letting ideas arise naturally.
• The Fear of Silence & Encountering the 'Other':
  Connection made to cosmic horror—facing uncertainty and the unknown self is daunting but necessary for deep creative work.

  "We each comprise our own cosmos ... a lot of the noise that we make ... is unconsciously trying to stave off confrontation with the otherness that is outside the barrier of our personal sense of self." (46:45)
  Creativity often requires crossing this threshold.

Living Into the Dark and Embracing Uncertainty

• "Living Into the Dark":
  Inspired by Dean Wesley Smith's "Writing into the Dark" (a method of writing without outlines), Matt discusses embracing the unknown as a philosophy for both creativity and life (51:21).

  "None of us knows where anything is going, that much is obvious. But living into the dark goes farther than that, to embrace this understanding." (51:43)

• Five-Year Plans and Illusions of Control:
  Matt underscores the reality that the present moment is all we have, and our sense of control is largely illusory.
• Synchronicity:
  Jung’s idea of meaningful coincidences is cited as support for paying attention to intuitive alignment:

  "When you really ... get in tune with this present moment ... sometimes strange coincidences do happen." (54:45)
  The "library daemon" or "genie"—finding the right book or idea at the right time—is offered as an example.

Writing in Public: Essays, Substack, & Books

• Matt’s Substack (The Living Dark):
  Publishes essays on creativity, horror, and spiritual themes; uses newsletter writing as a generative space for future books (58:34).
  Finds an “organic relationship between substack writing or any kind of blogging writing and the writing of books.” (62:01)
• Offers advice to other writers:

  "Maybe you have things that can guide you to a book that already exists and you just haven't realized it." (62:06)

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Notable Quotes

• On the Gift of the Muse:

  "It is really important for her [Elizabeth Gilbert and for writers] to seize on the older model ... where the genius was the spirit that might ... provide inspiration." (33:29, Matt Cardin)

• On Silence:

  "I really think there's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us ... that's valid to heed." (41:44, Matt Cardin)

• On Creative Fear and Cosmic Horror:

  "The weird thing is that that otherness is actually in us ... There's a horror, a fear, a dread effect that comes when we feel like we're out of control ... creative questions have become inseparable from spiritual questions." (48:16, Matt Cardin)

• On Living Into the Dark:

  "Living into the dark is living with full-on contact with and awareness of and embrace of this fact: we don't know what's coming up ... My posture toward it ... is what's going to determine my experience of it." (52:10, Matt Cardin)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 25:03 - Interview with Matt Cardin begins
• 26:55 - Matt on career path and balancing day job with writing
• 33:13 - Discussion of the muse, "genius," and ancient perspectives
• 38:13 - On silence, writer's block, and resistance
• 41:44 - Valuing the silence; practical suggestions
• 44:10 - Balancing research and incubation; fear of silence
• 46:45 - Metaphor of the self as a cosmos; the 'other' within
• 51:21 - "Living into the dark" as a creative and life philosophy
• 54:45 - Jungian synchronicity and creative intuition
• 58:34 - Substack/essay writing and its relationship to books
• 62:10 - Where to find Matt Cardin’s work

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Where to Find Matt Cardin

• The Living Dark Newsletter: www.livingdark.net
• Author Website: www.mattcardin.com (with links to books and essays)

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Tone & Takeaways

The conversation is thoughtful, philosophical, and often poetic, blending the mystical with practical strategies for writers. Both Matt and Joanna urge writers to embrace mystery, value the fertile gaps in their process, and integrate both darkness and light in creative work. They advocate curiosity, humility toward inspiration, and being real about where one’s motivation and fulfillment come from—whether or not it aligns with commercial aims.

Perfect for writers interested in depth, the unconscious, and the intersection of art, meaning, and the unknown.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots [e-mail] and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 856 of the podcast and it is Sunday 29th March 2026 as I record this. Yes, it is the end of Q1. Can you believe it? As we move into April now. So in today's show I'm talking to Matt Cardin about writing at the Wellspring, Tapping the source of your inner genius. We discuss the concept of the genius and the muse, how silences like potential blocks or inertia might be gifts, living into the dark and embracing uncertainty, and much more. So Matt and I connected around my writing the Shadow book, and we're both fans of the Jungian concept of the shadow and I blurbed his book and so I really hope you enjoy our discussion, which is coming up in the interview section in Writing and Publishing Things. So I went to a Bath networking lunch last week, which I do occasionally, but this one was specifically to hear Robert Topping speak, who is the owner of Toppings Independent Bookshops, certainly one of the best bookstores in Bath and other bookish cities. Now, he did a Q and A and was very charming and a little eccentric as you would expect, but clearly an astute businessman as he has grown his stores over the years and has always been a bookseller, starting out with Waterstones and other stores. Now, one of his comments was that he enjoys working with delightful colleagues who are bookish. And I thought this phrase was wonderful. And I definitely feel this way a lot, not all the time, but most often because working with authors and readers, people in the publishing industry, we are bookish people. We are whether people are delightful or not, bookish colleagues are a pleasure and we are often introverts and we love reading, we love physical books and we have that in common, despite what we might agree on and disagree on. And I feel like this is so important because there's a lot of drama in the author industry, but also amongst the publishing industry and online and politics and all of this stuff. Now, we might disagree with people, but if we have at least books in common, then there's something we can talk about. And that's a bit of a tip for networking events with bookish people, which is what Are you writing or what are you reading or what books do you like? And that will start a conversation. So I thought that was very cool. Also, he said the cost of the book is the time it takes to read it. This is the cost of the book for readers. Of course, he said the cost of the book is the time it takes to read it. Because of course, books are not generally expensive, although of course some academic textbooks or very special hardcover editions or whatever like that. But generally for the reader, it's the time it takes to read it is the cost. So we need to make sure our books are worth the time. He was also asked about digital sales and online things and ebooks and digital audio. And he said a few things that were frankly wrong. But I didn't mind since his business is selling physical books. But I really think this is worth keeping in mind. When people speak or they're quoted, or you are asking for advice or you're looking on social media, you need to know who people are and their context and their experience doing the thing you're asking about. So in that example, Robert Topping, he's absolutely like 100% the expert on selling physical books in physical stores. But of course he doesn't. His business is not doing digital sales. His business is not doing online marketing. He doesn't need to sell books online to readers all over the world, which is what we do. And I've just been hearing, I think a lot of it is around the AI stuff, right? People will spout frank nonsense that they have read in something or another without even trying these things. And then someone like me who's essentially been using this stuff a lot every day since it's happened and has been talking about it since 2016. I'm essentially on Claude Code every day now. I'm building skills. I mean, I'm using this stuff in all over the place. And I hear people say things and I'm like, that's actually really wrong. But they are well behind and they've just kind of listening to various media reports rather than even trying these things. Or you hear people who say, oh, well, you know this around, making a living as a writer or that. Or so I just want us to have more discernment around who we listen to on what topics and also follow the money. Like, how are people actually making money? So, for example, you should know by now, if you're a regular listener, how I make money from this podcast, which is we have corporate sponsors, which I shall do the ad read in a minute. And corporate sponsors are companies I work with. So I know them. I know the people, I know the products, I use the products and I'm happy to represent them on the show. And yes, they pay for advertising, but also, yes, they are good company. So I know them and that's why I bring them to you. I don't have random ads. I have these personally chosen ads. Plus I have my patrons, thank you, patrons. And that's how this podcast is free for most people, is because I can support my time and the costs for all the things it takes to run a podcast by that sponsorship. So something to consider if you are listening to anybody, is to think about, okay, how do they actually make their money? So Robert Topping makes money from selling books, physical books, in physical stores. So yes, you can trust him on that. So on this, I was laughing because he says he is appalled by non book product. Now that made me laugh. So non book product, he won't stock games or toys or notebooks or anything else that you might see in other bookshops. Toppings is full of books only. And this also made me laugh because of course, sometimes authors can get carried away with non book product. But at the end of the day, we are authors. So that is where we should really be focusing. Then, of course, while Toppings is full of books, it certainly sells books. The danger is obsolescence. So he said the books have to sell. They cannot stay on the bookshelf forever as there is limited physical space for one. But also, regulars come in every week to buy new books and they want to see things change. They want new stock to come in, they want to browse areas that maybe they haven't for a while and find new things. So this is the thing a physical bookstore has to think about, how they actually make their money. And they make their money from books going out the door. So when authors get books into bookstores, remember, they don't stay there often. They're returned sometimes within three weeks. A month, books will get returned. So some things to keep in mind if you want to sell to physical bookstores, which I don't particularly. In fact, I on the table I was sitting on for the lunch, someone said to me, oh, are you here to pitch them? And I'm like, no, I'm not pitching them. They want 55% discount. And one, I just don't want to do that. But two, I'm not actually interested in being a local author. I mean, you are far more likely to get in to bookstores and libraries and all that if you are local. And that's your sort of point of difference. And of course that is wonderful if you enjoy that, but it's not something I want to do. And the 55% discount, of course we do that on Ingram Spark as well, but that makes it very hard for us. So that's not something I want to do. But of course from their perspective, from the bookstore perspective, that's how they make their money. So just really thinking about the reality of the money game is important then talking about the business. Toppings does a great job with multiple streams of income. They have several events per week with authors and if you buy a ticket you often get the hardback book or the paperback book, many of them signed. And they also get a whole load of extra ones signed and they sell wrapped signed first edition hardbacks at higher prices. So this is the experience economy at work. People want to hear the author talk about the book or several authors in conversation. People get an evening out in a lovely location. And Toppings in Bath really is a lovely location. If you have visited it in the past, it is now in a new area where from where it was before. It used to be up the hill and now it is right next to the cathedral and the Roman baths. And it is in this beautiful old Quaker chapel with gorgeous high ceilings and lots and lots of books. And there is a basement full of more books, a very big poetry collection. They have everything. I mean it's really an excellent, excellent bookstore. So that is Toppings in Bath and also in other bookish locations around the uk. And then of course, physical events and interacting with people in the real world are the ultimate double down on being human in an age of AI, which we all need to do more of. And on the Wish I'd Known Then podcast last week, Jamie and Sarah have an episode on 20 Ways Authors can signal Humanity and build reader trust Trust. Some of the ways include showing your face and using your real voice. Even if you hate being seen and heard, it is a good time to be real. And yes, there are AI avatars for video. And yes, there are AI voices. In fact, you'll have heard my own voice clone on the tips episode a couple of weeks ago or for my audiobook fiction. But it's still my voice. But this of course is human me. I hope you can tell the difference. I would never do this intro with my voice clone. And of course if you hear me laugh like this, then it is me. It's not my voice clone which doesn't laugh at the moment at least there's so much I do on the fly when I do the podcast, although of course I I do all the prep and I write a lot of this out first. But it's not just narration as you can probably tell, and any kind of AI voice just narrates what is written at the moment. Again, of course I'm sure it can do on the cuff off the cuff stuff in the future, but for now at least it is far more as to what has been designed. Although immediately I'm thinking of NotebookLM where you can interrupt the hosts and they will talk with you on the fly. So yes, if you do the NotebookLM generation of audio interviews and discussions you can actually interrupt them. But for now this is not my voice clone. So back to the Wish I'd Known Then episode. Other tips include producing beautiful physical books which we all love and many items signing them since AI definitely can't sign books yet. And again, even when they do the AI doing it or the robot doing it, that's not the same. Many businesses that are AI first and doing a lot of digital books are not spending the time and effort on beautiful physical editions. Also other tips share your work in progress and talk about it along the way. And I've always done this, not the actual words in progress. I'm never going to do that. But I talk about where I am with my books, the ups and downs, sometimes the very long process that's involved. For example, by the time my Gothic Cathedral book happens, you'll know long term listeners will know it's been going for at least six or seven years at this point. But my Shadow book took a decade. So yeah, sharing about things along the way, the very human aspects. I mean anyone who's generating a book with however they want to do it is not going to take a decade. Jamie and Sarah also talk about sharing personal human stories and if you've listened to their show you'll know that Jamie has talked a lot about grief and how that has affected her after her sister died, which brings listeners closer. And of course it's not sharing in any calculated way, it's real human sharing of experience and hoping that helps other people too. Other tips include curating content for readers and of course I do this here and on my fiction email list where I share what I'm reading. Fiction wise I read fiction every night in bed so I get through a lot of books and there are lots more tips over on Wish I'd Known Then podcast, which is a great show and I know Jamie and Sarah are real as we've hung out at conferences together for more than a decade now. I also think this double down on being human is also about doing more human things as well. It's not just about doing work things, about doing more human things. And I know some people love having AI generate all this stuff like it can do a lot of work for you, whether that's words or social media posts or images or whatever. But I just don't see the point in this. I do not see the point in just going faster and working more with AI tools. We need to use the opportunity to do more personal things and more human things. So yes, I am an AI assisted artisan author, but at the moment I am spending time, as I mentioned, I'm building skills. I'm working with Claude code with the entire aim of automating so much in my business that I can do more walking, I can do get out more. I was in Oxford at the weekend at another event I'm trying to be out more walking along the canal again now the weather's got better. And just in general making like not being a machine. Don't be tempted to behave like a machine and churn out more and more, faster and faster, but spend the time being a human. So I have a quote that I come back to when I feel like I'm possibly doing busy work. It is by Pico Iyer, who is a travel writer and he has a book called Learning From Silence. Learning From Silence. And he says the point of being here is not to get anything done, only to see what might be worth doing what is worth doing what is worth spending your limited amount of human time on. What is worth doing for you. And that is my question for you this week. Feel free to leave a comment or let me know or email me. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com and one of the areas of course that is worth doing is writing and editing. And that is my attempt at a small smooth transition into ProWritingAid has a spring sale running 1st of April to the 13th of April, so it starts this week offering 25% off all annual licenses as well as story editing credits for manuscript analysis, marketability analysis and virtual beta reader reports. So that is prowritingaid. You can use my link which helps the show. Yes, I'm an affiliate. Thecreativepen.com prowritingaid thecreativepenn.com prowritingaid and I use prowritingaid myself. I still think it is fantastic. So in personal news, I'm working hard on my essays for the masters. I really this week I have to get these two finished one on theological approaches to assisted suicide and the other on death in Modern Orthodox Judaism. I fully intend to finish those this week. I've definitely found this course has helped me think more deeply about things and quite differently actually. When you study these topics and read a lot more widely. I can certainly recommend a Midlife Masters if you're thinking that you would like to. I don't know, it's not even a change of direction really now I feel like it's just underpinning a lot of the things I think about and has helped me. Yeah, I mean it's given me lots of ideas and in fact one of the ideas was for Bones of the Deep and I did finish the audiobook last week with my Voice cologne and I just need to do the book trailer and the launch video for the Kickstarter. But given the essays, looks like I will now push the launch into probably mid to late April. I was going to do it after Easter weekend, but no, next week has to be essay week and the following week will probably be Kickstarter week and then I will be moving into my dissertation as well. I've even started the writing on that which is on digital necromancy and I will tell you more about that another time. But it takes such a different headspace to do academic work and book trailers. These are two very, very, very different things. So yes, if you're interested in Bones of the deep jfpenn.com bones coming soon and as I mentioned, I have been building Claude skills for repeatable publishing tasks using Claude code and I'm working on a plugin for translation. It's essentially a set of skills that can be run in sequence to do a particular job. And I've just started experimenting with turning my books my non fiction book skills so you can use them more usefully. Now if you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, don't worry, I will be explaining this more. I'll be showing patrons how to do this. I think it's going to be a very interesting way, especially for kind of self help non fiction to help people use the book in a far more practical way. And on this I asked Damon at BookFunnel about delivering Markdown files. Now if you know a bit about the AI stuff, a lot of the the work is done in markdown files and so he has said that hopefully this will be a thing in the near future. So I would be planning on maybe selling skills selling books as markdowns so that you can use them with AI tools, that kind of thing. So as I said, if you're a patron, I'll be doing some demos soon. I am planning to do an AI webinar probably may June at this point, depending on other things in terms of timing. But for a couple of years now we've been talking about the promise of AI agents and now we are there. We're certainly there with what is super, super useful. And I've been doing a bit of consulting around helping people build skills for their businesses, which has been really fun. Again like something I'm thinking of maybe adding on as a income stream in my business. So yeah, if you are doing something similar, if you are building skills and plugins in claw code, or if you're interested in this kind of consulting, email me. Joannathecreativepen.com I don't have a clue right now as to if I'm the only one really looking at this kind of thing. Obviously there are other people looking at things like automations, but what I'm looking at is kind of done for you, stuff that you can just side load into your Claude and then work is done for you. I mean I think it's, it's just very, very interesting, fascinating stuff. Much more to come on that. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. ActNatural 952 on YouTube said on Anne and Neil's interview, what a great interview. For some reason with this one I really felt so strongly your skill as an interviewer. Thank you so much for saying that and I really appreciate the kind words because interviewing two people at once is so hard. It is really difficult and I generally say no. Like people will say oh I co wrote this book with so and so and I'm like well I'm only interviewing one of you because interviewing two people is a nice nightmare. But I clearly couldn't say that to Neil and Anne. And also they used the same mic, which does help because they talk over each other less but also how could I say no? So I'm glad you enjoyed it. Okay. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes atthecreative pen.com or on the YouTube channel. You can email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard. Joannathecreativepen.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. And I've also heard from some people recently who have got emails from supposedly me but actually an AI scammer using my name and they have known that it wasn't me. So that's really good. I will not be pitching you to come on this podcast is very, very unlikely to happen. And in fact if you get pitched by anyone with a famous not that I'm famous, but in a small niche on the Internet, people know who I am. But you may hear from, I don't know Elizabeth Gilbert, or you may hear from James Patterson, or you may hear from a top agen at Penguin Random House or a film director at Disney and they'll be like your book is amazing and here's all the ways your book is amazing. I would love to work with you and that is very likely to be a scam. I'm so sorry about that. But these things, goodness me, I get probably 10 to 20 a day at the moment of scam emails. So please be very careful out there. And my email is joannathecreativepenn.com so if you do hear from supposedly me, please do email me and ask me if you are concerned. But it is probably not me me right? So today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital which I use to publish ebooks wide to stores like Apple Books and Nook and also library services. I also use it for payment splitting with my co written book the Relaxed Author with Mark Leslie Lefebvre. And payment splitting is super useful if you're co writing. You don't have to deal with splitting the royalties manually, they also do Print Are you an indie author in need of an easy and efficient print on demand service backed by a world class customer support team? Look no further than draft 2 digital print D2D print now I'll just duck into the ad there and say customer support. This is the main reason you would use draft 2 digital in my opinion around Print. If you've used other companies around Print and want help, you won't get any basically or it will be much, much harder. Whereas D2D print do have customer support, with D2D prints you can convert an ebook to a Print on Demand file with just a few clicks, turn an ebook cover image into a full wraparound print cover in seconds, choose from dozens of beautiful interior layouts, choose from a variety of industry standard trim sizes and formatting options. Distribute worldwide. For your print on demand books you can use free RBNs, you can order author copies within 32 countries and they will not have the proof stamped on your book and you can use free change tokens tokens every 90 days to make updates to your published print books. All of this and more with no setup or recurring fees. Print on Demand is a game changer for indie authors because while brick and mortar bookstores can't physically stock every book, they can check for the print on demand availability when a customer requests it. If you only publish digital books, you could be missing a huge opportunity to reach more readers. Let's fix that with D2D prints. That's draft2digital.com this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating this show is sponsored by my [e-mail] thecreativepenn thanks to the 12 new patrons who've joined over the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio on writing, craft, author, business and AI tutorials. Last week I shared the monthly Q and A extra solo podcast episode where answer questions on all kinds of things. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePenn Right, let's get into the interview. Matt Cardin is the multi award nominated author of eight books at the Convergence of horror, relig and Creativity. His latest book is Writing at the Wellspring, Tapping the source of your inner genius, which is fantastic and I actually blurbed it as a guide for writers who welcome the dark and hunger for meaning. If the page is a threshold, this book will show you how to cross. It is a great book. So welcome to the show, Matt.

[B]

Well, thank you Joe. It's really a pleasure to be here, especially since as you and I were briefly acknowledging before we started recording, have overlapping interests to a great degree. So as I say, it's really great to make official contact with you.

[A]

Yeah, indeed. So first up, before we get into the book itself, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing.

[B]

Well, I'm one of those people whose story is probably typical in some ways in that I really wanted to do it from the time I was a child. My father was a great writer, although he was an attorney, he wasn't a professional writer writer and something about books and reading when I was a child really seriously enchanted me. I was very frustrated when I was so young and I vividly remember this that I couldn't read because I loved the books that were read to me and I craved being able to read them for myself. So as soon as I gained that ability in school, it was off to the races, so to speak. And for some reason, a desire to tell stories myself came along with that. So it really being a writer, quote unquote, was one of the earliest life desires, job or career desires that I expressed. I was one of those young people really into fantasy, horror and science fiction. So I was reading a lot of it and trying to emulate it and write a lot of it. And there was a cinematic component. I was a movie fanatic as well. I won a local Authors Guild short story writing contest when I was a senior in high school and began trying to write stories seriously in college. And then interest in horror and religion and became dominant over time and that's what I ended up writing about.

[A]

And how has that come into, I guess, paid work? That's the other thing, because there's an interest and then there's making writing more of your income and your business.

[B]

Right, right. Well, actually, although I have made and do make money from my writing, it has always, always, always remained on the side my main career as far as my money making life first started off in video and media production, which is formally what I got my undergraduate college degree in, and then switched into education. I taught high school for some years and then now, for the past, good Lord, 18 years I have been in higher education, first as English faculty who also taught some religion courses, and then now for the past several years in administration. I'm vice president of academic affairs at a college. And my rising writing has been something that I pursued as an avocation. And as far as earning money from it, that didn't happen even with my first publication, which happened on the Internet in 1998, I believe with a horror story titled Teeth. It was just free. I didn't get paid. But that led to paid publication of that story. Was it three years later, four years later, when it appeared as my very first print publication in a horror, a Lovecraftian horror anthology from Del Rey titled the Children of Cthulhu. It appeared as the final story. And that was the first time I had received a paycheck and it was a professional per word rate. And since then, you know, I've had several books published and more stories and essays and that kind of thing. And I've had income sometimes and from writing and sometimes I haven't. My first book came out of that story. I attended the World horror convention in 2001. Actually, before that, Lovecraftian anthology was published, but it had been placed. And at the World Horror Convention, which was in Seattle that year. And I met one of the two editors of that book. And that led to me having my first short story collection, Divinations of the Deep, which was not for much money, but it attracted a lot of, of good attention and some good reviews. And it's been like that all along. I mean, I've made a couple of runs. Maybe it's saying I would love to just be an author, as it were, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards for me. And honestly, honestly, I'm glad it's not. I have made the most money from some academic editing projects that I've done. You know, I, I created Slash edited a two volume encyclopedia of the history of horror literature, for instance, for a big academic publisher. And those are work for higher projects that I get paid for the making money on my own creative vision and my own creative work and such has been intermittent and so on. And it really has proven over time that not having my primary creative, spiritual and philosophical drive hooked to what I earn my bread by has been a blessing. I don't want to take this thing I love and make it be how I have to grind to earn my money. I want to keep it in a protected space that has been spontaneously what's happened with my writing career.

[A]

Yeah. And I think as you say, there are a lot of benefits of that. And especially where you're writing at this kind of convergence of horror, religion, creativity, your writing is very deep. I would say it's on the edge of academic. Like I don't want to say it's completely academic because a lot of people will find that difficult. But I think writing at the Wellspring is, goes very deep, but it's still open to non academic readers. And as you say, I think if you had had wanted to make a living with your books, you would have had to have, I guess, gone in at a lighter level perhaps. I don't know. Do you think that that makes sense?

[B]

Yeah, I know what you mean and I don't think either. I want to specify, I know that neither you nor I are saying anything about this as any kind of criticism or condescension or something to anyone who does make their living as a writer. Right. I mean, I know, I believe you do do.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

And that's fine. And you know, there really are people who have had significant commercial success from books or other things they've written that don't appear to be making huge concessions to Being commercial. Right. You can, you can make a living as a writer, I think, and really follow your muse and not feel like you have to pander or cater or cheapen it or something. And there. But then there are people who, who have perfectly, happily decided to commercialize their work and tune it in whatever way is currently popular, that's fine. You know, I mean, there's no. It's like every writer, every creative person should do what is right for him or her, in my opinion. But in my particular case, I think what you said is right. I said all that to get to this. It's like I do think that I might have needed to change some things, to back off, to, to word them differently. And I like whenever I've tried to exert deliberate control like that, it just turns out that it's not, it's not something that, that my creative spirit wants to do. I don't really feel like I'm in contact with the work anymore. And I'm fine with that, as I say. And I don't think I'm doing a sweet lemons type thing. It really, at the moment, it really is the way it just needs to be. If it ever proves that, that me doing it strictly with a view to doing it how I want to do it and go however deep I want, regardless of trying to appeal to a paying readership, if it turns out that, that at some point aligns with boatloads of money coming in, that's. That's fine. That's perfectly fine.

[A]

You'd be open to that?

[B]

Yeah, I would be open to that.

[A]

Yeah. Well, let's, let's talk. I mean, you mentioned muse there. And I think, I mean, writing at the Wellspring. The subtitle is tapping the source of your inner genius. And I think this, this is a good place to talk about it as you ment, then you're kind of leaning into your muse and your inner genius and you use other terms, demon or daemon. And I think sometimes people find the word genius particularly very difficult because it has the connotation of brilliance in, in some form. So how can people think about this and how can we lean into this side of ourselves?

[B]

Honestly, one thing. Thing that I would suggest people do is I would, I would refer them to the TED talk that Elizabeth Gilbert gave some years ago back in. Oh, was it 2009, 1011? It's one of the more popular TED talks and Elizabeth Gilbert spoke about. I think it's. Sometimes it's given the title your elusive creative genius or something like that. But her whole talk is about the way in her own creative life. And as she recommends to others, it has been very important for her to seize on the older model that we're talking about, where the most clear articulation of it is that it used to be the case. And we're talking about in ancient Western history, back to the Romans and even earlier to the Greeks, that genius. Genius was not something that you identified a person as being. It was something that a person had, and I would also say importantly, maybe had that them. But to. In ancient Roman culture, surrounding art and poetry and that kind of thing, the genius was the spirit that might say, live in an artist's studio and would provide the same service to that artist, you might say, as the Greek muses provided to someone who was writing epic poetry or history or something like that. And that understanding of it has continued in various ways down through history. But there was a kind of a fateful transition as Western culture went through what we commonly call the Enlightenment and the Renaissance as well, where the term genius, while it didn't lose all those connotations of being sort of an inspiring spirit, like something that a person both has and maybe has hold of, them did become internalized to the point where we speak of people as being geniuses, which is exactly what you're talking about, in which I agree some people listening to this probably would have some reservations about they don't want to call themselves a genius because we tend to mean that's a super brilliant person, some kind of prodigy who is possessed of amazing artistic, creative or intellectual skills. Again, that is the result of a cultural, philosophical, psychological, historical transition that, that occurred several centuries ago. And you still see the older meaning of it being attached sometimes. And I know, I know you're familiar with that, where you think of people who we call geniuses kind of being touched by something sometimes. Well, the older version, where you think of the genius, which in the way I use it in this book and also in my first book on creativity, which was titled A Course in Demonic Creativity Activity, the genius is equivalent to the muse, which is equivalent to that other figure that you mentioned, the demon or the daimon. And it refers to a separate, what seems for all the world to be a separate center of intelligence or entity or influence, the thing that gives you both your creative drive and also your ideas, serves as the source of what you. Of what comes to you naturally to write. And it's more than just ideas. When you talk about the ancient Greek daimon, there was a whole well developed tradition of that in ancient Greek philosophy and religion, a daimon was in one famous sense, a spirit that you were born with, that the gods had given you. And it was like your. Your double, like your higher self. And it was the thing that represented your character, your interests, the blueprint and the outline that your life was supposed to follow, Follow. And there are great books written about that. There's a book called. Well, it's by the psychologist James Hillman. It's titled the Soul's Code. A lot of people have read it. It lays out the daimon theory and gives it application to modern instances. The idea is that everybody has a genius or has a muse or has a daimon. And for writers, my recommendation is to say whether you believe it or not, whether you take it as a metaphor, which is fine, or whether you want to get somewhat mystical and delve into the idea that maybe there's really a spirit or something, it doesn't matter. Productively, with, with practical, measurable results, you can learn to relate to your creative impulse as if you are collaborating internally with someone else. And it's the center of why you're interested in writing, what you want to write, why you want to write, write how, the way you want to write, and even the types of things that unfold in the course of your career, both your. Your creative career and the rest of your life, kind of in the mold of the ancient daimon. I have found that to be a vein of great power and meaning in my own life. And I do it exactly the way I'm describing. I don't actually believe it, but I don't disbelieve it. I find that in experience, it really doesn't matter. It works, and it may as well be true.

[A]

I mean, obviously the book has a whole load of ways we can kind of tap into that. But I did like that you talk about stillness and silence, because I feel like that is actually increasingly difficult as authors. I mean, one, obviously it's noisy online, and we're meant to be doing things like social media or we're meant to be doing. Interacting with people online? And then also the world is. Is just noisy. The news is noisy. There's lots of things. And so how can we use the sort of idea of stillness and silence and also any other. Other ways we can practically tap into this side?

[B]

Sure. One thing that wanted to say itself in this book was some things I had been thinking and feeling about silence for a long time. And as you say, it can be difficult these days to. To find what feels like the silence. That we need to. To even get our work done. We're talking about the muse or the genius or that kind of thing. How can we even hear it when it seems like the clamor of all the pulls that we have on our outward attention has become truly a cacophony, which we have opted for in many ways by various means through which we engage with social media or other things, but in other ways seems like it's been thrust upon us. What I want to point out that has been of extreme importance to me is that many silences come into our lives as creatives that we resist. It's not just that we can't find the silence in the space that we feel like we need to not drown out our creativity. It's that we have unwanted silences come in, like writer's block, or even if it doesn't feel like a block, just inertia, just a stasis. I don't know about you, but I have many times, many times found myself grappling with what just for all the world feels like a totally natural, organic sense of wanting to slip into complete inertia, just total stillness. And that feels like it has been in conflict with my creative drive. It's like I have this residual desire and also sort of a sense of duty or something that I. I really should be writing. You know, maybe. Maybe I have an idea in mind and I'm just not working on it. Or maybe I'm in the middle of a project and I feel like I'm abandoning it. Or maybe nothing's coming up, but I feel like it should be. Like I'm pushing myself. But there's a division in me where I also just want to leave it alone. Whether whether that means actually just sitting there silently at my writing table or in meditation, or maybe just going about regular daily life and forgetting about trying to fulfill this creative calling. I really think there's a vein of gold to be tapped in the silences that come to all of us. Because, as I said, that can be in the middle of daily activity. We have this kind of franticness, some of us, about our creativity. We get wrapped up in it, we feel bound to it. And the things that so much of the time we want to think is a gift, and we're. We're proud of it and we cherish it, and we like our writing also becomes a burden. This fantasy of just chucking it all. I'm just saying I would love to be free of it. It's like a. It's like something that's weighing me down. I would love to just kind of. I'm sorry that I roped myself into it. You know, I would love to just kind of sink into complete silence, this sort of meditative thing, or just mutinous. Hey, that is valid to hear. That's valid to heed when it comes up. I mean, sometimes we have gotten ourselves into things where we have situations, where we have external responsibilities and deadlines, and it's important to try and honor those and not be sort of a bad person, so to speak, on the level of just fulfilling practical obligations. It's also important to recognize you've got silence offering itself to you in all kinds of ways. The more important silence, which is paradoxically the one that we so often resist if we're creative people and feel like we have to be making the more important silence is not whether or not your outward conditions seem like they're a clamor and they're chaotic and they're distracting and they're full of pressure. It's that inner silence. So I recommend paying attention to when it comes up. And for practical ways, they are endless. Take advantage of early mornings. A lot of people have found great value in getting. Getting up earlier than they are used to and making a practice of that and either just meditating or free writing. Maybe using, for example, Julia Cameron's favorite famous practice of morning pages, which has been valuable to me sometimes, or doing things like it's helpful to sometimes person, like I've said about the muse and the genius and the demon, personify your unconscious mind and maybe write down down a dialogue between yourself and your creative spirit, whether about your current project or just about your. Your life and your creativity as a whole. There are various tricks to get in touch with this for, to use another term, this unconscious part of you, and I really am convinced out of practical personal experience, that it's not necessary to have outer silence and outer spaciousness when you can find it within yourself. And you can find it through some of these exercises for getting in alignment with what your creativity wants to do. And you can get in touch with it maybe through paying attention to what you might not recognize as a gift, offering it to yourself. If things go quiet and you think, oh, no, I should be doing something, why not let that be a place where things can germinate? Why not that be the silence that you might not be able to find on the outside?

[A]

Yeah, and I, I'm feeling guilty here because, of course, we are producing a podcast episode for people to listen to, and I find Personally, that one of the places I can find silence is when I walk. So it's not obviously silent outside, but I am definitely guilty of always listening to podcasts, often listening at, you know, very fast speed as well. And sometimes when I go for a walk, I just deliberately do not listen to anything, like don't listen to an, an audiobook, don't listen to a podcast, and a lot comes up there and I, I have my phone with me and I, I just find when I get back from those walks and I was just jot down things that come up in my mind, I will have like so many notes of things that have come up in my brain during the walk. And it's really difficult, isn't it? Because I know you also love input. You do a lot of research. As I said, your books have a lot of research in. And so we both like doing the research. But also I definitely find like, that has to be balanced with the time for letting it come out again in some form with, as you say, that mental silence. And also you talk about being uncomfortable. And I feel like sometimes that silence can be uncomfortable as well.

[B]

Yeah, it can be. There's no telling what might come up when you, when you, you are faced with silence again. It's one of those things even, even the outer kind that we think we crave, sometimes it's a bit frightening when it comes up, which is why we try to fill it with things like, like this podcast episode, for example. There's a threshold that you can notice you cross sometimes where what was a natural desire to connect with something that you heard about that found interesting becomes a bit frantic. Where now really, what might be good is if you shut off, didn't go for the next podcast episode, or didn't, didn't go for click to the website. If you just shut the browser and just sat there and did something else. But you're kind of with a little desperateness trying to fill the void, right? What you, what you described about needing to get quiet and let things happen, like, yes, I like, I love reading and research, but the classic stages of the, of the creative process that were first, I think they were first codified, as it were, by Graham Wallace, if I remember correct correctly. They still work. They're really. It's really good sometimes to have a model and understand how it works. You know, you have what's sometimes called the preparation stage. All the input, all the research, all the brainstorming, all that kind of thing. And the incubation stage can then be vastly, vastly important. And that can get. It can get frightening. Both because the silence seems somehow threatening, like something about you is going to be exposed, or maybe that you're going to lose the thread of whatever it was, was, and it's never going to come out. But really, if you just sort of stop and let your muse, let your genius do its thing, let your unconscious do its thing, it will suggest itself again. The real it'll come up on its own, right? Ideas will come back. You'll realize, oh, that was. I didn't know what I was going to do with that character. I didn't know how these ideas were going to come together. I didn't even know what this idea for a story, a book or an essay was going to. To be. It comes back up, and it's. With you working with it, it kind of says it shows what it wanted to be all along. This whole thing about doing the preparation and then allowing it to incubate and germinate and then sprout when it wants to, that still works. Part of the reason that we're scared of the silence is, I'm convinced, because each of us sort of operates as in our psychological selves, as a closed system. System. And it's like we each comprise our own cosmos, so to speak. I know you know that I am. And as you've mentioned, I have worked in horror literature, the literature of cosmic fear, that kind of thing. And in cosmic horror, as laid out by the likes of Lovecraft and others, the basic effect has been analyzed as sort of constituting a disturbance of the universe or something. That. That's the. That's the horror. Horror of cosmic horror. Like the world is sort of transformed into this nightmarish thing in a cosmic horror story, where there's sort of a haunting, threatening presence that's out of the ordinary and it's somehow bound up with, you know, the narrator's interior world and sort of life reveals itself as supernaturally or ontologically something nightmarish. You know, there are some sort of awful forces that are about to erupt all the time. And whether anybody's into cosmic horror or not, I think it's pretty accurate to say that if you want to look at it this way, we each constitute our own world, our own cosmos. And a lot of the noise that we make, the mental noise and the complications we introduce into our own lives is trying to unconsciously, usually trying to stave off confrontation with the otherness that is outside the barrier of our. Our personal sense of self. The weird thing is that that otherness is actually in us. And in fact, we can approach it in the figure of the demon or the daimon or the muse, you know, so creativity is fraught. You're dealing with something that you might want to think, oh, this is great. It's going to give me. It's going to be the source of my ideas, it's going to fulfill my creativity. Well, yeah, but there it is frightening to think about the fact of something about yourself being beyond yourself and perhaps being out of your conscious control and somehow guiding your destiny or something like that. A lot of people have trouble getting along with their own unconscious, which is another way to put it. But there's a horror, a fear, a dread effect that comes when we feel like we're out of control. And, you know, we all face that ultimately, like when it comes to our death, for example. Example. There are some spiritual traditions that talk about dying before you die, being that. That being basically the way to enlightenment in those traditions, recognizing and. And coming to terms with the fact that this thing that is you, that you call yourself is transitory and is and is only there by being enclosed within and kind of, kind of swamped from without by this thing that is not you, which is a sort of this void to which you'll return. Turn in the book I deal with some of that and I talk about it from a non. Dual spiritual viewpoint because ultimately for me, these creative questions have become inseparable from spiritual questions.

[A]

Yeah, and I obviously, I mean, people know about my book Writing the Shadow, which is how we really connected around this Jungian idea of. Of the shadow and the darkness. And I agree with you. And there's some really interesting things at the juxtaposition of. Of all of these topics which we could talk about for a long time. Now I do want to ask you around your idea of living into the dark, because I feel like you do take things beyond just the writing into this kind of more idea of living into it. So maybe talk a bit about that. And I mean, obviously synchronicity, which is a Jungian psychology concept.

[B]

Mm. Living into the dark is the thing that. That forms sort of the overarching ethos or perspective for me of all this. And I got the term term from Writing into the Dark, which actually comes from the American science fiction and fantasy author Dean Wesley Smith. He wrote a book titled Writing into the Dark, and it's subtitled Writing without an Outline. It's a great book. I recommend it to anyone. And it is about forsaking and foregoing the felt need to Outline writing in advance and to trust your creative mind to be able to make up a story in real time that actually draws on the deep nature of storytelling to come out right and therefore right into the dark. As if you're walking down a road where you have a lantern and you can only see one step ahead. You know, you haven't mapped out the territory. It was a great metaphor. I had already been thinking in that direction about life and about creativity for some time when I first came across that book. And I devoured the book and recognized it described how I had already been writing anyway, which is one reason it was so powerful for me. But then it edged out into a broader understanding for me that I had also been coming up with that I just ended up calling living into the dark. None of us knows where anything is going, that much is obvious. But living into the dark goes farther than that to embrace this understanding. I think of this in connection with what so many people, either just personally or because of jobs they have where they're required to think like this. I think of this in terms of the famous five year plan that so many of us want to draw up. There's nothing wrong with a five year plan or a ten year plan or a one year plan. You can come up with that for practical purposes and try and chart where you're going. But we too often forget that that's just a fantasy exercise. We are not actually thinking into the future future, nor are we ever actually thinking into the past. Remembering the past, predicting or projecting the future are both events that are happening right now in this moment, which is always now. It's no less now than it was when you and I first started this conversation a little bit ago. It's those are those past and future are just projections, mental projections right now. And everything is unfolding in the present present in real time, which effectively means what's going to come next is coming out of. We don't know where. It's coming out of darkness. Living into the dark is living with full on contact with and awareness of and embrace of this fact. We don't know what's coming up. And that encompasses all of life and all of creativity. And that that same darkness, if, if it's helpful for you to take on this emotional tenor which it is for me can relate to the darkness of that sort of outer darkness outside the cosmos. And in cosmic horror fiction or to some of the rich traditions of darkness like in Taoism, you know, with the yin is contrasted with yang. Yin is the sort of the dark Moon, feminine aspect of things. That the receptive source of the universe. Universe. This idea of living into the dark, of just accepting that we're all on this journey, on a path where we can only see one step ahead. Even if that far has been meaningful to me, it's been meaningful to my creativity, and I kind of recommend it to anybody to whom it appeals. And I feel like it sort of takes a lot of pressure off. I think that's a guiding meta theme for me, is trying to take the pressure off us of trying to control things that can't be controlled, controlled and more step into that flow of understanding. What's going to come to me is going to come to me. And my. My posture toward it, whether I align with it or not, is what's going to determine my experience of it. And you mentioned synchronicity. It's. It's interesting. It's verifiable. And I know a lot of people have verified it for themselves. Maybe some people listening to this have that it's verifiable that when you really kind of get in tune with this present moment thing and get in tune with your creativity, and you can tell when you're aligned and not when you feel blocked or when you feel resistance or not, you know that when these things sort of align on their own, sometimes strange coincidences do happen. You know, Jung talked about synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle, right. That. That was probably due to the fact that the psyche is not separate from the fabric of the world that gives rise to it. So that we might have subjective things, impressions, fantasies, dreams, whatever, that we rather uncannily see mirrored in objective events. Like the famous thing that sort of clarified, coalesced that for him was that psychotherapy session with a patient who was describing a dream she'd been having about a scarab beetle. You know, and then he heard a kind of a tapping at the window of his office. And he went there and opened, opened it. And there was a European beetle, it was kind of a scaraba beetle that was much like the Egyptian scarab that was there. And he held it up and said to the woman, is this your beetle? You know, here's your beetle. And it just blew her mind. It opened new levels of the therapy that she was receiving. Those kinds of things happen. I've had them happen. If you're. If you're a longtime writer or reader, you're familiar with the Library Genie, the Library Demon, we sometimes refer to it as the book that just at the moment you Think of it and realize, oh yeah, you're doing your study and it doesn't have to be a library. It could be on the web or whatever. You're like, oh, yeah, you really, you finally realize what it is that you, you need, what you've been looking for. And it in some cases literally falls off the shelf onto someone's head. What do you make of those? When those happen, at the very least, it rattles your cage. You might enter a state of suspended judgment about whether we really are living in kind of a magical cosmos full of things that are real correspondences. It's kind of like, kind of like the Demon Muse. Is it a metaphor? Is it just kind of an interpretation? Or is it something real? Probably the best place is one of profoundly, actively embraced agnosticism and just take it for what it is.

[A]

Yeah. And leaning more into your intuition, I think you, you definitely demonstrate that in, in the book as well. And we're really exploring a lot of very interesting topics now. We're almost out of time, but do have a substack, the Living Dark, where you publish essays and you've also got all kinds of really interesting books. And I want people to go have a look at some of the other stuff you've written, especially if you enjoy horror and religion and all of that kind of thing. So just how do you decide when something is an essay on the Living Dark and how do you decide when you're going to put it in a book or in some other way? Because I feel like a lot of authors are thinking about, about substack, but don't necessarily know what to put on it. And I think I first connected with you on your sub stack where I was like, oh, this guy's writing interesting, weird stuff. So how do you use substack as opposed to writing for your books?

[B]

Sure, you know, let me, let me answer by first talking about what happened previously with that first book on creativity that I mentioned. A course in demonic creativity. Creativity. I had all kinds of thoughts and ideas coming up, seated over many years of practice and reading about the demon and the Daimon and the genius and the muse. And in 2009, I founded a blog and it was just a WordPress blog and I titled it Demon Muse. And I attended it for two to three years and I got. A lot of people ended up reading it and I, I really did not have any plans. Not even any, any, at least not any that I was conscious of. Not even any back burner plan plans of taking the material that I published in Posts there about this way of creativity and making it a book. I did realize about a year and a half in that essentially I had a book I had already written in those posts and so it took some work and I spent six months making it all into a coherent book. Which by the way, that book was only ever published as a PDF which is still free on my website Matt Carden.com Although plans for the first ever print edition of it are in motion Ocean right now. That was published in 2011 when I went to Substack and I and I started my newsletter there in 2022. And by the way, it wasn't originally called the Living Dark. My first title under which I started it was Living into the Dark and then I changed it about a year year and a half in But I kind of am doing the same thing. It's been a while since I I took anything and thought I'm writing a book with it. I write what comes to me to write. And you know how Substack Notes is Substack zone verse social media, right? Kind of like Twitter used to be or like X kind of is now. I it happens all the time that I write things that I just stay in contact with people as a substack note, some short thing and then I realize I wanted to say more about about that or you have what happened just this morning, three or four hours before you and I were talking, I started writing a sub stack note and it got so long I realized I had something that could be a post to the Living Dark. So I switched over and finished it that way. The book writing at the Wellspring came together after I had written things for a couple of years at the Living Dark and realized that I could trace a path through about a third of the posts that I had ever published, published there, and had the makings of a book. So that plus other material from earlier in my life. There are things from my private journals from years ago in writing at the Wellspring, plus some new material ended up turning into that book. So I'm not thinking about the difference is what I'm saying. I find writing at my Living Dark newsletter to be a needful and enjoyable creative outlet. Partly because I have I have like some 3, 800 readers now and it feels good to be in contact with them and to have that audience and to know that there's that eye on what I'm writing and partly because I just have the freedom to work it out to my satisfaction and publish it there. Then I already can see and I'M already halfway forming another book that will be of a different focus to come from things that I have published there. So for me, there's an organic relationship between substack writing or any kind of blogging writing and the writing of books. And I think that's something. If people haven't thought about that, they might want to consider it. If you have one already, or if you're thinking of starting a blog on substack or anywhere else. Maybe you have things that can guide you to a book that already exists and you just haven't realized it.

[A]

So where can people find you and your books and everything you do online?

[B]

Well, the Living Dark that we're talking about is at www.livingdark.net and it does require the three W's at the beginning to get there. And then my author website is matt cardin.com and you can go to the books page there to get a link to all the books I've published and read about them.

[A]

Great. Well, thanks so much for your time, Matt. That was fantastic.

[B]

Thank you Joe. I really appreciate the invitation.

[A]

So I hope you enjoyed the interview with Matt and I'd love to know what you think and what resonated either from the interview or from the introduction. So please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com and please send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday I'm going to share editing tips for self editing, working with an editor, and editing for audio, since this is an area that keeps coming coming up. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show [e-mail] podcast and you can get your free Author [e-mail] Blueprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen, or on Instagram and Facebook @jfpenauthor. Happy writing and I'll see you next time.