A Golden Ghoul Award for ‘What the Daemon Said’

What the Daemon Said, my collection of essays, introductions, and interviews on horror fiction, film, and philosophy, has received a Golden Ghoul Award from the Serbian horror blog Cult of Ghoul, as seen in the trophy image added to he book’s cover above.

The blog is run by Dejan Ognjanović, who writes about horror for, among other venues, Rue Morgue magazine. He wrote a feature on What the Daemon Said for the magazine’s November/December 2022 issue. Previously, he interviewed me for the magazine in connection with the publication of my horror literature encyclopedia.

Dejan is extremely knowledgeable about current goings-on in the horror world, so it’s an honor for my book to be recognized at his blog.

Bradbury’s book people, Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex, and piano music for Dracula

An update on recent activity at my newsletter that may be of interest to all my readers:

First, a few days ago I published a reflection on Eisenhower’s dire warning about the military-industrial complex and the way his words actually proved to be a prophecy about where America was headed. In this post, I suggest that in our present-day, real-world dystopian scenario, the “monastic option” that Morris Berman famously laid out in his book The Twilight of American Culture—that is, the choice to deliberately preserve and pass down to a future generation some form of knowledge or way of living that can serve as the seed of a future renaissance—seems a valid and even necessary life path to adopt. By way of illustrating the point, I refer in my post to one famous fictional example of this monastic option in action: the “book people” in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Second, just today I published a recording of my own personal piano setting of the famous opening theme from director Paul Morrisey’s Blood for Dracula, sometimes known as Andy Warhol’s Dracula, along with the story of why I love this music and how I came to create a piano version of it nearly 30 years after I first started trying:

Click on either image above to open the corresponding post.

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Coming in 2024: Spanish translation of ‘What the Daemon Said’

  • Post category:Book News
  • Reading time:2 mins read

I recently signed a contract with Dilatando Mentes Editorial, the Spanish publisher of beautifully designed and illustrated books of weird and cosmic horror fiction, for a Spanish translation of What the Daemon Said. In 2021 they published a translation of my To Rouse Leviathan under the title Hizo de las tinieblas su escondite (“He Made Darkness His Hiding Place”), which proved to be a stunningly gorgeous piece of work. I look forward to seeing what they’ll do with Daemon.

Here’s their social media announcement:

Translation: “It makes us very happy to inform you that @_MattCardin will once again be part of Dilatando Mentes Editorial. Next year we will publish his essay collection ‘What the Daemon Said: Essays on Horror Fiction, Film, and Philosophy,’ a work that we consider essential.”

Website relaunch

  • Post category:Website
  • Reading time:3 mins read

Welcome to the new MattCardin.com! Today marks the relaunch of this site with a fresh design and a completely reconceived approach and page structure. It’s a transition that kicks me down 14 years of memory lane.

I originally launched a static HTML website at this address in 2009. It had a format that I kept unchanged for the next eight years:

Image of original 2009-2017 mattcardin.com website

By 2017 that was feeling kind of stale, so I redesigned and relaunched it looking like this:

Image of 2017-2023 MattCardin.com website

That one lasted six years, until once again, very recently, I started feeling the need for an overhaul. After some research and soul searching, what finally emerged was the site you’re reading right now, with a blog in the middle and a sleeker overall appearance and approach to content organization, making it easier for me to keep you updated on my books and other projects.

I’ll use this blog to share publishing news, career updates, information about my interviews and media appearances, advice on writing and creativity, and other thoughts and insights along the way

At the same time, I invite you to subscribe to my Substack newsletter for a more in-depth stream of essays and articles:

I hope you like the new look of things around here. Check back regularly for fresh posts and updated content.