The first time I ever published on Halloween Love was nearly a decade ago now, on November 11th, 2009, and I only registered the halloweenlove.com domain just a few days before that. But, why? Why in November? Why didn’t I create it in the more relevant month of October, that was just one month earlier?
Because the initial desire to create Halloween Love came out of the very fact that October and Halloween had already passed; and that strange loneliness, sadness, and disappointment that I felt (and feel) each year had set in when Halloween came and went so quickly, just as it’s already quickly coming and going this year. 
It’s my favorite time of the year, and I just wasn’t satisfied; I wanted more; so I made what, at its true core, is really a shrine to Halloween. Only on the surface, has Halloween Love ever been something more mundane or basic, just another publication, a blog, or a horror news site. The truth is that it’s always been something more, and something different from the Bloody Disgustings, Dread Centrals, and iHorrors (who I love, don’t get me wrong) of the world.
Most people, even if they like Halloween, are really only interested in it each October, which is a perfectly okay and sane way to be about it. But, for many of us, we essentially celebrate it year-round. This love of ours can often concern those around us; their concern being that it’s not healthy for our minds, but I argue that it’s a very healthy outlet, and a creative outlet at that.
On the subject of creativity, I think every single human has creativity in them and can be creative. Creativity and art come in many, many forms, whether shared with the world or not. Do you doodle when no one is around, sing in the shower, make up songs about your pancakes as you slap them with your spatula? These are all forms of creativity and expression. Something doesn’t need to be grand to be “art.” In that sense, everyone is creative.
But, in another sense, you can differentiate “creative people” by their need to create. On the outside, we might be quiet, not share much, or possibly even appear to be boring to others, but inside our minds, we’re constantly generating new stuff: stories, poems, ideas for games, curiosities, etc. It’s like brainstorming, but all the time, and on auto-pilot. We keep lists, because we need to make room for new ideas, we wake in the middle of the night with ideas and have to jot them down, and we have an incessant need to actually execute.
In terms of business or financial success, the way our minds work can actually be counterproductive. I think the most detrimental reason for this is that we get bored with an idea very quickly. Now, when I say bored, I would like to clarify that we don’t get bored or complain about being bored in the general sense, like others do. Like the song says:
“Countin’ flowers on the wall, that don’t bother me at all.“
By the way, I never realized how perfectly that song summarized my life and the way my friends and family view me. No, we don’t get bored like “I’m booored…,” our minds are too busy for that; we get bored with our own ideas, almost as soon as we create and execute them. I have dozens of projects going at any time, and rather than truly embracing any single idea, working hard on it, and promoting it, I can quickly push it to the back-burner to make room for a new idea.
And that’s the crux of it; we have this need to get it out of us, but not necessarily to nurture it. Halloween Love is the only project that has truly transcended that bad habit and that will exist and be nurtured as long as I exist. I often think to myself, if I had to choose, I’d gladly burn down all my other projects and focus on just HL. However, passion and profit are rare bedfellows.
We’ll still be here in November and the month after that and the month after that, but if you’re just here for October, thanks for taking a look at my shrine and Happy Halloween!
🧡🧡🧡
Photo Credit: “It’s Nearly Halloween” by our own Martyn Stembridge
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