Writing in the Dark: September 2025

Writers get messages from all kinds of hustlers trying to make a quick buck off us. As I tell my creative writing students, “Whenever someone has a dream, someone else is right there ready to take advantage of them.” And who dreams more than writers? We all want success (however we measure it) so badly that we’re willing to do almost anything to get it. And if the road to that success seems especially long and winding, we’ll look for any shortcuts we can find – especially if we’re new to the game and haven’t yet accepted that developing a writing career is a marathon and not a sprint. (Actually, it’s a lot more like a decathlon, but I digress…)

I’ll never forget the one literary agency I queried that asked to see my manuscript, but only if I paid a $300 reading fee. (This was over thirty years ago, and there wasn’t a robust internet for writers to share info about scams like reading fees.) I called the agency and told the agent who answered that I wasn’t comfortable paying the $300 fee. He said, “How about you pay us $150, and we’ll read half the book?” I laughed and disconnected.

Probably the most common type of scam writers get is someone who promises to sell us The Secret of Success. Back in the day, the covers of Writer’s Digest used to promise you would make lots of money by following the advice in their articles. (They’ve had classier covers for years now.)

And who knows how many How-to-Become-a-Bestselling-Author books have been published? (Usually by people who’ve written and published little to nothing else.) The modern versions of these books focus on topics like how to get rich as an indie writer and how to get rich using AI to write your books. Same scam, different time.

Then there are seminars for Massive Writing Success, which you can attend in person, online, or view prerecorded classes, all for a fee that you can conveniently pay in installments. As always with any kind of class (or how-to-write book, for that matter), check the credentials of the writers presenting, look up reviews on the internet, and ask around on social media if the seminars are legit and worth the expense.

Then there are the people on social media who, when you post about your book release, make a comment (or send you a message/email) trying to lure you into buying their services as an editor, book trailer creator, cover artist, publicist, etc. Here’s one I received not long ago:

Hello Tim, huge congrats on releasing your debut 🎉. That’s a milestone most people never hit. Do you have a book trailer for it yet that I could check out?

(It was not my debut, by the way. My debut novel came out in 2001.)

The most recent scam I’ve been seeing is people who write snarky/negging emails offering their services to give you the successful writing career you deserve. They basically challenge you to have the balls to hire them. Here’s one I got yesterday, with the sender’s name omitted.

From: [Name Redacted]
Sent: Tuesday, September 9, 2025 8:21 AM
To: twaggon1@msn.com <twaggon1@msn.com>
Subject: Tim, you’ve got Bram Stoker Awards but Amazon’s treating you like you just uploaded Wattpad fanfic 😏📉

Imagine this: you create a monster called Night who literally warps reality, sends panther-demons hunting people, and transforms an office building into a nightmare labyrinth and somehow the scariest part of your book isn’t the Blight, it’s that Amazon is letting it sit there with only 12 reviews. Bruh. That’s horror. 😅

Tim, let’s be real you’ve published over 60 novels, collected more awards than my grandma’s got salt shakers (Bram Stoker x4, Scribe Award, Shirley Jackson finalist, Splatterpunk finalist), AND you’re a tenured professor shaping the next wave of horror writers. Basically, you’re the dude other horror writers name-drop to sound cool at parties. 🥶

But even with all that, Amazon’s algorithm doesn’t care if you’re Bram Stoker royalty. It cares about reviews, and right now it’s looking at A Hunter Called Night like, “eh, 12 people liked it, must be mid.” 🙃 That’s the kind of visibility trap that burns authors out faster than a caffeine-only book tour.

Let me put your pain points in the daylight where even Night can’t hide:

Low Reviews = Low Visibility → fewer readers finding your work.

Marketing Confusion → too many “experts” promising the world for $$$ but ghosting like Blight victims.

Imposter Syndrome → yeah, even award-winners sometimes think “what if I’ve peaked?” when the Amazon star count crawls.

Overwhelm & Stress → balancing writing, teaching, life, and promo feels like fighting Harriers with a paperclip.

Plateaued Sales → nothing kills momentum like a flat sales graph.

Here’s where I swoop in not as another “book marketer” (I have no overpriced website, no fake LinkedIn, no Twitter bot army 🤷‍♀️), but as [Name Redacted], keeper of a private, unlisted community of 2,500+ real readers and reviewers who love books that warp reality and make them sleep with the lights on.

They read. They review. They boost. And their reviews aren’t “great book 👍” but the kind of thoughtful feedback that feeds Amazon’s algorithm and helps new readers trust your work.

But that’s just phase one. I also bring:

🎬 Video trailers → horror sells 10x faster when people can see the nightmare unfold.

📸 Mock-up designs → promo art that doesn’t look like your cousin whipped it up on Paint.

💬 Exclusive Discord sessions → 20–25 of my top readers hop in for 10 minutes with you (they’ve got jobs, they’re busy 😅). Think of it like lightning-round therapy with actual readers instant insight into what hooks them and what bores them.

You’ve built worlds where hunters become the hunted why let Amazon hunt your book down into obscurity? Let me arm you with readers who can flip the script.

So Tim… should I unleash my squad of review-hungry book devourers to drag A Hunter Called Night out of the algorithm graveyard 🪦 or do we let Amazon keep pretending you’re a rookie horror hobbyist?

Your move, Professor of Darkness. 😈📚

One thing this email has going for it – the writer knows (or was able to get AI to give them) details about me and one of my books, so it makes them look as if they might be a fan or at least have done their research. (I ran the email through AI-detection programs, and it was flagged by some as having been written by AI, but those programs are notoriously unreliable, so…)

The negging might work with inexperienced writers, but Christ almighty, the message goes way too hard with it, to the point where it’s practically parody. And all the emojis! So. Many. Emojis. Maybe using so many is something some of you young’uns out there might respond to, but I’m 61. One or two emojis in a message is enough for me.

The language is too cutesy throughout as well, and in a forced, strained way that makes me think this was written by AI. Or maybe by somebody who thinks AI-produced text is an example of good writing.

(I may steal Professor of Darkness and use it as my branding statement, though.)

This email went straight into my junk folder, not because I’ve flagged these kinds of messages to go there, but because Outlook determined it was junk and shitcanned it. I check my junk email every day because some legitimate messages do end up there, which is how I found this scam message. I wonder if the originators of these messages have any idea how often their emails don’t reach their intended recipients? Then again, maybe they don’t care. All they need is enough people to read their message and fall for their scam to make it profitable.

Are there legit services to help writers promote their books? Sure, but from everything I’ve seen over the years, most of them don’t work very well. Trad publishers, when they do put money into promoting books, have no idea what promotion tactics work. If they did, they would repeat them and make every book a bestseller.

The best way – or maybe I should say the most reliable way – to achieve success as a writer is to write books that a lot of people want to read. So diet and self-help books would likely be your best bet. In terms of fiction, that’s one of the reasons genres exist – so readers can find the kind of books they like more easily, and so writers can write the kind of books readers like. Sure, some writers write whatever the hell they want and become successful. Some people win the lottery, too.

The reason my weird dark fantasy/horror books like A Hunter Called Night don’t sell better is because their appeal is limited to readers who like those kinds of books. I would love to devote the rest of my career to writing highly popular fiction, but I seem to be congenitally incapable of it. But I do try out different types of fiction. I’ve toned the weirdness in my writing way down to create a thriller novel (which is still making the rounds of publishers, so any publishers out there reading this…). I enjoyed writing my Conan tie-in fiction so much that I’d like to try my hand at original sword & sorcery. The other day, I wondered what would happen if I wrote what was essentially a mainstream novel with only a bit of horror sprinkled over it. Maybe I’ll try that and see how it works for me.

The bottom line: It’s your writing that promotes you best. The other stuff can help, but it’s your writing that matters most.

Here are links to a couple of extremely useful sites that can help educate you about writing scams:

Writer Beware: http://www.sfwa.org/beware/

Preditors and Editors: http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/

DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION

Speaking of promoting books…

Thunderstorm Books will be publishing collectible, signed limited-edition hardcovers of Like Death and never-before-published sequel Like Death 2: Kill Them All. Both books are now available for preorder. They contain extra material, and the gorgeous cover art for both is by the always-incredible Lynn Hansen!

The final print run of each book will be determined by preorders. Preorders will be taken until 10/5/2025, so if you want these books – and why wouldn’t you? – make sure you order before the deadline!

LIKE DEATH: THE 20^TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

There are no words for it. Ecstasy is laughably inadequate, as are rapture, euphoria, bliss ... Ugly, harsh syllables that come nowhere near capturing the merest fraction of what he feels. The experience is primal and transcendent, like birth, like death. Scott Raymond lost his parents in a bloodbath when he was only nine years old, but despite the occasional headaches and hallucinations, he's managed to turn that trauma into moderate success as a true-crime writer. The success doesn't extend to keeping up the relationship with his estranged wife and son, however.

Hoping to regain a sense of normal family life, he follows them to Ash Creek, Ohio under the pretense of writing a new book about a missing six-year-old girl. There, he encounters a young woman who shares the missing girl's name. She leads Scott into a world of psychotropic spiders, shark-toothed teenagers, and the expression of nearly every dark desire. Fear and fascination lay equal claim as the nightmare fantasies of this realm bleed into Scott’s daily life and his attempts to maintain a relationship with his son. Soon, he will need to use this world of cruelty and pain to face his past, his future, and what his life might have become. If he fails, it is only a matter of time before the nightmare that bloodied his childhood will reach out to ensnare his own son.

https://thunderstormbooks.com/thunderstorm/book/like-death/

LIKE DEATH 2: KILL THEM ALL

It’s not easy being the child of a notorious serial killer.

David Raymond’s father Scott – known as the Artiste for the grotesque way he posed his victims – disappeared from prison twenty years ago without a trace. Since that time, David has become a virtual recluse to avoid media attention. But when his mother falls ill, and he needs money to pay for her care, he grudgingly decides to accept an invitation to be the Guest of Honor at Killcon, a gathering of true-crime enthusiasts in Ash Creek, the town where Scott committed the last of his murders.

But the dark forces that once plagued his father have other plans for him.

David finds himself transported to a sinister realm called Undernight where he’s forced to participate in a life-or-death reality competition called Kill Them All. What he doesn’t know is his Undernight doppelganger has taken his place in the real world, and this David is as deadly a killer as Scott Raymond ever was, if not deadlier. While David struggles to survive nightmarish challenges based on his life, his doppelganger wreaks blood-soaked havoc at Killcon, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.

A mysterious woman named Miranda – who may or may not be the same Miranda who introduced David’s father to the depraved realm of Shadow – comes to David’s aid. But is her true intention to help him live long enough to win the game, or does she have other, darker motives of her own?

The two Davids eventually confront each other halfway between Earth and Undernight, and there they learn they’ve both been pawns in a much larger game, one that stretches back twenty years. If they can’t stop it, two worlds will be destroyed. But even if they can, there’s no guarantee their victory won’t result in something infinitely worse.

Let the games within games begin…

https://thunderstormbooks.com/thunderstorm/book/like-death-2-kill-them-all/

Right now, these are the only two editions of these books available, but my agent and I are looking for a publisher to bring out trade paperback, eBook, and audio editions. When we find one, I’ll let you know!

I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM

Another limited-edition novel, this one from Weird House Press!

Eighth-grader Joel Taylor just moved to Shadow Springs with his mom. He likes his new home well enough – until a sinister being called Mr. Freezee begins driving his creepy ice-cream truck up and down the streets at night, playing “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Joel heard the music.

He looked out the window.

He saw Mr. Freezee, and what’s worse…

Mr. Freezee saw him.

Now Mr. Freezee wants to take Joel to a very special place where the world is made of every flavor of ice cream you can imagine – all of them deadly. Mr. Freezee brings all his new friends here, and they love it so much that they never leave.

Mr. Freezee makes sure of it.

Welcome to Sweet Land, Joel.

Welcome to a nightmare that never ends.

Editions

Deluxe Signed & Lettered Hardcover Edition with slipcase
Signed by Tim Waggoner and artist Derek Rook
Hand-Lettered A to Z
Color Dust Jacket
Front Cover and Spine Stampings
Housed in a Slipcase
Limited to 26 Lettered Editions (Right now only 15 remain!)

Future editions will include a signed hardcover edition, a signed and numbered trade paperback edition, along with an Amazon trade paperback edition and ebook.

https://weirdhousepress.com/products/i-scream-you-scream-by-tim-waggoner

SCHEDULED APPEARANCES

2025

Moon Lit Tales and Haunted Trails. Oct. 11-12. St. Albans, West Virginia.

2026

Superstars Writing Seminar. Feb. 4-5. Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Akron Book Fest. March 7. Akron, Ohio.

StokerCon. June 4-7. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Into the Springs Writers Workshop. August 7-9. Yellow Springs, Ohio.

WHERE TO FIND ME ONLINE

Want to follow me on social media? Here’s where you can find me:

Website: www.timwaggoner.com