Just 15 months ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me a job posting: a NYC based company was looking for someone to help create, launch and edit a horror entertainment website. "Too bad you don't live in New York anymore," he snickered. Well, I'll be damned if that wasn't enough to fire me up and go after that job. One year ago today, Fear Zone went live, and I'm proud of what we've accomplished in just one year.

I recently had reason to go to www.alexa.com, a third party site which analyzes traffic on the web, and did a comparison of Fear Zone's traffic ranking with other horror entertainment websites. Here are the rankings I discovered, according to Alexa (please note that these rankings are among all websites, not just horror entertainment sites):


Bloody-Disgusting - 10,951
Fearnet - 24,394
Dread Central - 35,270
Fangoria - 72,163
Fear Zone - 76,458
Icons of Fright - 96,619
Rue Morgue - 147,446
Horror Yearbook - 205,043
House of Horrors - 221,263
Horror World - 314,068
Pretty-Scary.net - 513,884
Fatally Yours - 630,473
Hellnotes - 766,949
Storytellers Unplugged - 884,581
Horror-Web - 1,687,976
Horror Watch - 1,218,704
Chizine - 2,107,091
Dark Scribe - 2,541,023
FearsMag - 2,578,466


There are some pretty major players on that list, and I'm proud to be standing alongside them. I don't want to get maudlin on a site devoted to its share of blood and guts (but a lot more than that), but we owe our success to you for checking us out and coming back for more. THANK YOU!

We covered much more than horror films during our first year: on any given day, you can find the same horror news press releases regurgitated on site after sight, occasionally reworded. That was never our goal.

We covered horror literature, both mass market and small press, and a week hardly goes by when we don't feature at least one interview with a horror writer. I'll take it a step further and say that those interviews and reviews are incredibly in depth. Low budget film composer Mars reviews music that might appeal to horror fans, and Michael Louis Calvillo's very cool video game reviews feature numerous literary and pop culture references. And our Gallery Zone features tours through the work and mind of talented artists.

I'm also proud of our columns. It's been a blast to see L.L. Soares and Michael Aruda's hilarious dueling critics' feature, CINEMA KNIFE FIGHT, back on-line. Norman Rubenstein's MACABRE MUSINGS offers in depth analysis of the finest small press horror fiction being published today. Angeline Hawkes's THE CAULDRON examines different trends (and monsters) in horror pop culture. It's fun to listen to Brian the Bad Movie Guy's TUESDAY TERRORS every week. And I'm especially pleased to feature John Maclay's HUMOR ZONE; Maclay is a longtime professional writer, editor and publisher, and he has plenty of insight into the world of horror. It's been eclectic, to say the least. And another mighty THANK YOU to all of our contributors, as well as to the folks who work on this site behind the scenes.

Look for more columns in the very near future. Nicholas Kaufmann, who has conducted several interviews and written reviews for us, will be tackling THE STATE OF THE GENRE this week. Gemma Files, whom we recently interviewed, will be discussing things COOL AND DARK. Mario Dominick, who regularly reviews obscure indie DVDs for us, will now host MARIO'S INDIE HORROR GALLERY. Molly Celasci will perform similar chores with MOLLY'S MOVIE MAYHEM. And Gabrielle Faust, another reliable reviewer/interviewer, is also designing a column.

Nicanor Loreti lives in Argentina, and works on numerous film productions there. Because he's on the mailing list for so many separate DVD distributors (that's a separate editorial) , he's been reviewing DVDs for us, and because he gets into movie screenings ahead of our other critics, who have to pay after a movie's opened, just like you and me, he's reviewed movies, too. What a waste of a valuable resource! From now on he'll be concentrating on SOUTH OF THE BORDER, a look at South American horror which he is uniquely qualified to offer. So look for more personality driven features in the future.

Of course, not everything we've attempted has been a smash success, and we'll continue to experiment. One of my initial directives was to feature plenty of Scream Queens on this site, but I've had a hard time finding someone familiar with these actresses and reliable enough to provide us with a steady flow of content. To be perfectly honest, I'm not disappointed that this has been the case. One of my "secret goals" with this site has been to give female authors, editors, publishers, and filmmakers more attention than they typically receive elsewhere. Look through our archives and you'll see we've been at least partially successful, particularly in interviews conducted by Queenie Tirone.

An area I'm happier with, but which proved financially prohibitive, is our AUTHOR VIDEO READING SERIES. But fear not, I'm planning another set of these readings for the end of this year.

Stick with us for Year Two and spread the word. I promise it will be better than your typical horror movie sequel!