Here we are again.

Fear Zone closed its doors a few months ago, back in early December 2009. The reason for shuttering was due entirely to weak advertising on the web and not at all with traffic; we were still a top rated site, with "clicks" that most horror sites - particularly those which concentrate on horror fiction - would kill for. But with no ad revenue, the site owner could no longer afford to pay me to be editor, or our wonderful contributors, or the tech support crew. There's a reason why the trailers and videos here are ancient...

I've continued to post news of my own projects here, and I noticed that whenever I Google those projects, the Fear Zone posts rank higher than those on most other sites. Out of curiosity, I checked our traffic ranking on www.alexa.com, and was stunned to learn the site is still generating tremendous traffic, no doubt to the impressive archive we built up over Fear Zone's two year run.

Not one to pass up an opportunity, I've decided to revive the site in a limited form. The new Fear Zone will be more community driven; a horror democracy, if you will. I'm doing this strictly as a volunteer, because I want to support horror creators who get little exposure otherwise, authors and filmmakers who often have to beg for any coverage on sites.

Don't send me your books. Don't send me your movies. In general, this will not be a review site.

Don't send me your press releases. I'm not any more interested in posting the same news that appears on other sites.

Here's what I want: excerpts from new or upcoming novels; blogs from horror creators discussing their projects in a manner designed to be entertaining; and if anyone wishes to submit a book or film review, send it on.

But make sure everything is properly formatted as follows: send me Word doc RTF file, single spaced, with double spaces between paragraphs, using the following codes:

(Text) for italics

(Text) for bold

(URL Name) for links

If you ignore any of these guidelines, I won't post your piece because I don't have time to edit other people's work, and I won't email you to ask you to follow the guidelines. I'm just too busy.

I also need a j.peg of your cover. A j.peg! Look at the size of the images you see accompanying every post on this site; if you send me a postage stamp size image, it will upload as a postage stamp size image, so don't email me asking me why the image you sent me looks so small! All images should be under 1 MB or they won't upload.

I'll post material that comes my way on a first come, first serve basis, and I'll post it when I have time. I won't put anything in my life aside just to make sure there's content up every day. And I'll continue to post my own stuff here without any worry of compromising journalistic integrity. I'm not a journalist, I'm a novelist and a filmmaker! If you are too, then please take advantage of the site.

We'll see how it goes.

Greg Lamberson
glamberson@verizon.net
April 15, 2010