Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. This week, it’s officially the newsletter’s first birthday!

The first week of April 2025, I scheduled the very first issue of Scare Me! to go out at 6:00am PST. I’d recently read Sara Gran’s Come Closer and I had THOUGHTS that I needed to put somewhere!

From there, I meandered a little until I found my footing. I experimented with a multi-part reading journal about Stephen King’s It (and later found this worked better on TikTok, where I published a series of weekly vlogs about House of Leaves). I published monthly reading/viewing recaps, until I realized that would quickly consume my precious weekly writing opportunities. I discovered that I loved writing about books much more than TV or movies.

It’s strange feeling, starting something new. By the time I launched this newsletter, I'd had a vision in my head for about a year, of a regular writing project that could help me meet new pen pals and restore a little of the old internet’s blogging magic. But would anyone want to read it? I had no clue what to expect.

I eventually hit my stride publishing Q&A’s with interesting people in the horror space. This should not have surprised me, given how much I’ve loved doing freelance journalism for the past decade-plus—but I don’t think I believed I had the stamina to publish 20+ interviews in a single year. Turns out, I do! And I love it!

Now it’s somehow been 52 straight weeks, no skips. To my surprise and delight, I’ve found an ever-growing community of horror fans who have joined me week after week.

I’m so grateful, giddy, and humbled that you’ve welcomed me into your weekly newsletter rotation.

To commemorate this anniversary, I spent some time this week reflecting on what it’s all meant to me, and a few things I’ve learned along the way. For those who have joined recently, consider this an introduction to the person behind the screen! I promise I’m not usually this self-indulgent.

If you’re thinking of starting your own horror newsletter (or just feelin’ nosy), I’ve also gathered up a few stats about the newsletter that I’m sharing publicly for the first time.

P.S. Scroll to the end to see a special announcement! ✨

Thanks for reading Scare Me! Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to receive a new edition every Thursday.

When I commit to a project, I like to define a clear, singular goal. For this project, it was extremely simple: I wanted to find community.

I knew there was a thriving horror community out there—but I didn’t know where to look. Scare Me! was my way of not showing up empty-handed. I came to the internet seeking community, but I also tried to offer something in return.

I have genuinely met the smartest, most interesting, and most welcoming people this past year. I’ve done buddy reads, discovered new authors, bought subscriber-recommended perfume. I’ve received kind notes and DMs, beta read a debut novel, and even met some of my favorite horror authors. Scare Me! helped pave the way into my current book reviewing gig with the wonderful people over at Macabre Daily.

I’m convinced that some of the best people on earth belong to the horror community. Being part of this space has changed my life for the better. The newsletter was never about clout or building an audience or “monetizing my content.” It was always about making friends and loving horror.

It’s been over a decade since I started writing professionally—but writing never came easily to me. I used to labor over a single sentence for hours at a time, struggling with self-doubt and second-guessing every letter.

That all changed with Scare Me! I’ve never reached a flow state so easily or consistently before. When I sit down to write the newsletter each week, it’s not uncommon for an hour or two to simply vanish before I even notice.

The difference (aside from a lot of therapy, Zoloft, and three months of The Artist’s Way) is that I finally have something to say. I love getting to celebrate and delight in the horror genre, and I feel renewed and energized by spending time in this space.

I treat Scare Me! like a part-time job. If I’m writing a simple post, I can sometimes knock it out in three or four hours.

But interviews are more complicated. By the time I schedule an interview, I’ve usually already researched the person I’m speaking with (which sometimes involves reading a full novel or short story collection). The conversation usually lasts 30-45 minutes, which results in a 7,000-8,000 word transcript that I painstakingly condense into a tighter and (hopefully) more compelling conversation.

I try to write on Sundays, preferably with a cup of tea and a oversized pastry from our local farm stand. (Cinnamon chocolate chip cookies have been my go-to lately.) But when things get hectic, I’m sometimes finishing late at night and scheduling the newsletter to go out just a few hours later.

Me and Substack, we have some history. I was writing on TinyLetter when Substack first launched. The company was so tiny that Hamish, the founder, personally called me to pitch his new platform. I moved my newsletter over to Substack and all seemed great…at first.

Then Substack took VC funding. I remember chatting with Hamish at a Substack party in New York City and hearing people tease him about how he immediately went out and bought a Tesla. (Lest this seem like a brag, my social anxiety was off the charts and I spent most of the evening hanging on the edges of conversations I wasn’t part of.) Cynically, speedily, Substack began recruiting the hate mongers and transphobes who had been booted out of traditional media.

Not only did Substack replatform these losers—the company often offered them a starting payment of $250,000+ to help them relaunch. This was hugely profitable for Substack, and I believe, hugely detrimental for humanity.

I also don’t like that Substack’s design options are so limited. I’m not trying to spend 15 hours a week creating something unique and special only for it to reinforce Substack’s brand! I’ve been very happy with beehiiv and would recommend this platform for its flexibility, frequent product launches, and referral network.

To be clear: I have zero shade for creators who use Substack. That would be like saying no one should be on YouTube because YouTube also fuels the alt-right pipeline. (Which is true, but there are also tons of people making valuable and interesting videos they host on YouTube.) I subscribe to some wonderful Substacks! But for this project, I wanted to start fresh.

For the sake of full transparency: I use a tool called Otter to produce rough interview transcripts. Its core functionality predates the generative AI tech that’s currently being rammed down our throats. (I’ve been using Otter since 2017-ish.) If you have an iPhone, it’s the same kind of functionality that gives you an iffy, stumbling transcript of your voicemails.

The transcripts are never perfectly accurate. I listen to every interview from top to bottom on 1.5x speed so I can correct typos and proper names. Then I go through everything again, sometimes twice, and do a pretty hefty edit so it reads nicely. I also spend a weird amount of time finding fun links that will probably never be clicked, but I enjoy hiding little secrets so it’s worth the time to me.

While Otter now has generative tools, but I do not use them. I will never use generative AI for writing this or any other personal creative project.

I started the newsletter with 45 subscribers who came over from my past indie media projects, Scavenger and Summerhouse. To my OGs: Thank you for being here and supporting me from Day 1!

As of April 1, Scare Me! has an astounding 252 subscribers. I sometimes try to picture all of us in a movie theater together, something scary on the big screen and plenty of popcorn and Junior Mints to go around. I’m so thrilled every time someone new subscribes!

Growth has not been linear, and I’ve hit multiple plateaus over the past year when no one new seemed to be finding the newsletter. Becoming more active on TikTok and Instagram has been fun and definitely helped me meet new internet pals who have eventually made their way over to this space.

But I’ve also had my fair share of unsubscribes, including someone who unsubscribed from my Black History Month newsletter. My OCD brain spiraled for a few days about whether I’d rooted out a racist or accidentally said something offensive. I have to accept that I will never know what drives people away.

I’m human, so I do fret sometimes about being boring or lame or annoying. But most of the time I try not to take it personally and just keep moving forward. My all-time open rate is just over 65% and my all-time click rate is 7.6%. Those numbers have been dropping recently as the subscriber count ticks up, which is normal and not affecting my ego at all.

There are so many fun things ahead for 2026. In June, I’ll be attending Stokercon for the first time! I’ll be bringing along a print zine featuring five interviews from Scare Me! If anyone is interested in getting a copy, hit reply—after Stoker, I’ll try to figure out whether I should print a second round, send out free digital copies, all of the above, etc.

This month will also bring my first time hosting the Macabre Daily podcast, for a conversation with Nat Cassidy about his new Stephen King-endorsed collection, I Know a Place. I’ve been a real menace on NetGalley recently, and the next few months of book reviews are going to go crazy—I promise!

And in a few weeks, I’ll have a very special announcement about a new horror venture I’m working on with my friend Maya Rector over at The Weird Girl Edit (one of my all-time favorite newsletters—definitely subscribe if you don’t already!).

Are you promoting a self-published novel? Are you a writer looking for beta readers? Are you publishing a podcast that will give us nightmares?

I get emails and DMs from so many cool people—too many to cover in this weekly newsletter. Enter the Subscriber Spotlight! Once a month, I want to send out a bonus edition of the newsletter featuring creative projects from our community.

The rules are simple:

To participate, fill out my super simple Google Form:

Next week, we’ll be back in interview land for a conversation with LaTanya McQueen, whose (possibly) supernatural Southern Gothic When the Reckoning Comes got way under my skin a few months ago.

There will be a few spoilers, so if this book has been on your TBR, let this be your sign!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.