Whisper House Press

de france

Notes from the desk of the editor are offered in the interests of personal posterity and transparency for writers and other potential editors who wish to learn from my experience.

the editor

The view is quite different, and the inspiration is running high, but the mission is the same: Publish high-quality horror authored by people whose perspective is different from my own, and to use the awfulness of the mundane to power the ship.

This month, I’ve focused largely on my own historical horror novel-in-progress, but I’ve done a bit of editorial work and marketing in support of the oh-so-close releases of Costs of Living and Dread Mondays.

Here’s what I’ve been working on:

• Worked on some programming details re: 10/25 launch date event at Utah Horror Day with Utah Humanities
• Confirmed last week that Stephen Graham Jones and Philip Fracassi will be in attendance as keynotes and featured panelists, so I want to use their appearance to boost the noteriety of Dread Mondays without suggesting their endorsement; I want to be respectful of them while making the most of the merely incidental association between me and them.
  • Utah Humanities encouraged me to launch the second anthology at this event when we began planning it back in March or April, and we just confirmed these two guys’ presence—it feels like that matters.
• Revamped the website to have a static webpage instead of dynamic, constantly updating stream of posts with “sticky” posts as features. Changed design and color scheme. I welcome your feedback!
• Determined I need to provide each individual author with a personalized marketing google folder that contains branded images sized and designed specifically for facebook and for instagram—personalized with author names and photos
  • I also created a generic facebook and instagram image pair to provide to all creators to share with others—these are suitable for anyone to share. Here’s a link to the generic kit.
• Reached out to Dread Mondays authors because, while I asked for and then received photos from the Costs of Living contributors, I failed to do so for the second book. I’m getting those trickling in throughout the week.
  • An unexpected (maybe should be expected) challenge is how many people don’t know what kind of image to send upon a publisher’s request for a “high-resolution author image” (they also had the option to decline entirely, of course!). Many people just don’t seem to know what the stipulation for “high resolution” means. I will need to frontload future communiques with authors to explain best practices for taking and then providing such an image.
• Re: Building our catalogue of individual authors
  • I’m building that catalogue with the intention of launching 5 or so novellas or novelettes next fall.
    • I’m reading a novella submission from a Dread Mondays contributor to see if we’d like to publish it in our initial catalogue of individual author works, slated for Fall 2026.
    • So far, I’ve got Jordan King-Lacroix (of both anthologies) signed, and I sent another contract to another author who pitched a novella and who appears in the Dread Mondays anthology.
    • I’m awaiting a pitch from another DM contributor, and I’m excited to see that.
    • I’m planning to take pitches for mundane horror at the Utah Horror Day event on 10/25.
• I sent the Dread Mondays proof to Kirkus, where I prepaid for a review back in January when they went on sale for $50 or $75 off the normal indie price.
  • Kirkus has sales about twice per year, so if you catch one and will need a review in the coming half year or year, buy it during that sale and submit your book later
• I wrote a mission statement, which you can see on our “about whisper house press” page at the top.
  • I also wrote a pithy single tag line to put on banners: “Mundane horror for the people.” I like that it captures the spirit of the common folk writing and reading horror based in their everyday reality.
• I contacted Publisher’s Weekly again to follow up on sorting out whether or not Costs of Living has gotten consideration for review. If it hasn’t, or if I can’t tell, I’m not going to waste my time with Dread Mondays on that publication.
  • The first time `round, I submitted Costs of Living as “fiction” rather than in their horror category, so that was my bad. I reached out to the lead editor for the publication, and he was super helpful in passing along the book to the correct editor. That was the last I heard from them, sadly. If it’s been rejected for review, I’d like to know that. I can’t tell, though. So I emailed again, respectfully, yesterday.
• I’ve gone through the first third of the proof for Dread Mondays again. I need to get this wrapped in the next week so I can submit it to more places.
  • I have a list of ARC readers who are waiting for the book.
• I pre-authorized payment to Meta for up to $100 spending on an ad associated with the Costs of Living launch event at The Printed Garden on September 5th, 2025.
• I spent four or five hours on a “tour poster” of all the events I’ll be doing this fall apart from the Mountains and Plains Independent Bookseller Association event in Denver. I had trouble fitting that on the poster, and you’ll see it doesn’t really fit anyhow. I did many iterations. Here are approximately half of those variants:

• I ordered 100 of these, 8.5″x11″, in PDF format (higher quality, 20-something MB) and CMYK-colors (instead of RGB, which isn’t ideal for printing) from a company called bannerbuzz. They’ve been decent and have a good review process.
• I also ordered a 6’x2.5′ vertical banner (pictured below) to hang at events along with a table runner, sales terms for booksellers (and a QR code attached to a sales order form) on an 8.5″x11″ color printout, new 5″x2.5″ stickers to hand out at events, and new business cards. I stopped short of ordering themed Whisper House Press restaurant-style menus, but I was tempted.

The best thing about this residency is that I’ve gotten time and space away from my regular life to focus on writing. The second-best thing is that I’ve gotten the extra space to work here and there on the publishing side of things. I’ve been good to my word and haven’t used much of the time for this secondary goal, but what time I’ve spent has been invaluable.