Writing Cross-Genre, Selling Direct, And Serialising On SubStack With P.D. Alleva

How can horror writing help readers — and writers — work through psychological trauma? Why does cross-genre fiction take longer to find an audience, but pay off in the long run? Is running a direct sales store actually worth the inventory, postage, and learning curve? And how can SubStack work for fiction authors? With psychotherapist and award-winning author P.D. Alleva.

In the intro, thoughts on why in-person conferences are still worth it, even when they are a challenge for sensitive introverts! and tips for making the best of conferences [Self-Publishing Show].

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P.D. Alleva is the award-winning author of horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and fantasy books. He's also a psychotherapist.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below.

Show Notes

• Why horror puts the human condition on display better than any other genre
• Emotional trauma as the silent psychological killer most people overlook
• The pros and challenges of cross-genre writing and finding your audience
• Practical lessons from running a direct store, including integration and signed-copy fulfilment
• How a 3 a.m. writing routine keeps the writing separate from the marketing and admin
• Serialising fiction on Substack, multiple newsletters, and avoiding paid subscriber promotions
• Why Facebook groups, TikTok Lives, and the three-to-one rule are working right now

You can find P.D. at PDAlleva.com or on Substack.

Transcript of the interview with P.D. Alleva

Jo: P.D. Alleva is the award-winning author of horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and fantasy books. He's also a psychotherapist. So welcome, Paul.

PD: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. This is a great opportunity. I love doing interviews, and I love talking to great people.

Jo: Oh, good. Well, first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and being an indie author.

PD: So I've been writing since I was a kid, at least second grade and more than likely even before that. I've always had that creative itch.

Getting into indie author publishing, I published my first book in 2011. At the time I was also operating my own business, which took up about 24 hours of my time every single day.

Then I kind of got through that and sold that in 2016, and I'm like, you know what? The time has come. I'd always written books, poetry, short stories, but never really did anything with them because I just didn't have the time. So in 2017, that's when I really came out and said, all right, the time is now.

Indie publishing was doing great. The one good thing I do love about Amazon is they allowed us to come out there and start showing our craft to people. So in 2017, I just started—let's do this. Let's write full time. Let's put books out there. Let's be creative. Let's really get those juices flowing.

Plus, I was getting a little bit old, and I was like, now is definitely the time to do this. Since then I've been publishing consistently, and most of my books are horror books, but I dabble.

I have a sci-fi series, and I'm starting to get into psychological thrillers too. I've got a new psychological thriller that'll be published in early 2027 called Girl on a Mission. For the most part, I'm definitely into the horror genre—books, short stories, all that good fun stuff.

Jo: Right, so a couple of follow-ups. You said you're a bit old. Can you give us what decade you're in at least?

PD: Well, I'm 51, so born in 1971.

Jo: Oh, there you go. Same age as me.

PD: All right, good. See that? So we're going head-to-head there.

Jo: I don't think that's old at all. Also, you mentioned you sold your business in 2016.

So what was your business before?

Because I think business experience is so important.

PD: Agreed 100%. So I'm a psychotherapist, and I had owned a treatment centre for mental health and addiction. That was started in 2011, and in 2016 is when it sold. Since then, my wife and I started a private practice. So I still, even to this day—well, about a year and a half ago is when I stopped.

I specialise in trauma, PTSD, and addiction. Trauma mostly. Most of my caseload has always been trauma, PTSD, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, war-type trauma. I was doing that mostly individually since 2016 in private practice, and I'll still go into treatment centres and see patients there too, specifically for trauma.

About a year and a half ago is when I started wanting to do writing 100% full time. I thought about becoming a professor, maybe going to college, but then I wasn't sure if I wanted to get into that full time, as far as a caseload and school and everything like that.

So I decided to just do group therapy, group facilitation, and I've been doing that consistently since then. It may be 15 hours a week. I do love to give back, and to me, it's more what I teach.

I specialise in neuro-linguistic programming, bilateral stimulation or EMDR, hypnotherapy, science of mind concepts, psychopharmacology, biological bases of behaviour—which is pretty much how your brain works—ancient wisdom, quantum physics.

I do this in a drug addiction treatment centre mostly, also mental health. And of course, just living an addictive lifestyle is traumatic, too, in and of itself. So pretty much I'm teaching them. Behaviour modification is a big part of what I'm teaching during that time.

You'll see that, too, if you read my books. There's two things you can figure out from my books. You can figure out how to murder people and get away with it, and two, you can figure out how to overcome trauma as well.

The whole “murder people and get away with it” comes from my upbringing. I have a very sorted past, let's put it that way. My upbringing was very different than what most people grow up in.

Jo: Oh, can you give us any more than that? Now everyone's like, “Oh.”

PD: “What's going on with this guy, right?” So I grew up, let's say, quote unquote, “in an Italian New York family.”

Jo: Okay. All right.

PD: That might give people ideas, right?

Jo: That's going to give people a lot of ideas.

PD: If you've ever seen the movie Goodfellas, I kind of grew up in that atmosphere, and with even some of those people too. My family had connections to those people in that movie, which I find very funny. If you watch that movie with me, you get a very different perspective on what's going on in the movie.

Jo: Wow. So you're an interesting guy with an interesting background, with a very interesting backstory job as well.

Some people are like, “Well, of course he's writing horror because horror is just awful and full of slasher gore and all that.” I often have to say to people who don't read horror, “Look, it's not like that.” Maybe some of it is, sure. But most of it isn't.

Could you talk about how reading and writing horror can also be psychologically healthy? How do these worlds intertwine for you?

PD: Well, sure. It 100% can be healthy. Especially over the last few years, there's a trend going on out there right now where people are taking their trauma and putting it into a creative process through poems, short stories, and even novels.

They're taking their trauma and giving it a face, like a monster, where people are overcoming that monster within the creative process.

I always say that horror is the genre that puts on display, better than any other genre out there, the human condition. Why is that?

When people are in a terrifying situation, you really see who they are. You get to the heart of the matter of who that person is by putting them in these horrific but undefinable situations where it's like, what are they going to come out as?

That real true personality needs to come out, and that courage comes out. That's huge in horror, and I think horror gets such a bad name.

Now, I know there's the extreme horror and the splatterpunk, and that has its kind of role too in what I'm saying, but that's where horror is getting its bad reputation out there with the over-the-top type of gore.

For the most part, that's a small part of the horror genre. It's a subgenre for a reason. It has its readership, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with it. I read it all the time. I find a lot of joy in it, a lot of excitement.

However, for the most part, any horror novel that is not completely with the gore and stuff like splatterpunk can be seen as a psychological thriller, and a lot of psychological thrillers can be seen as a horror novel.

Look at books like The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon. That's horrific as well, but if you read the novel, it's in there. It just gets that bad rap right now, and it's not all gore.

Most horror novels that I read today are psychological horror. It's tame on the gore, and the psychological aspect is there. I always see that psychological aspect—it's like psychological trauma.

Most people, even in my industry, when people are out there and you mention trauma, PTSD, they're thinking about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or war-type trauma.

The silent psychological one—I once wrote an article called “Emotional Trauma: The Silent Psychological Killer.” The one that's out there is the psychological trauma, the emotional trauma that is widespread.

Most people go through that, and it could even be from parent to child, and most people don't understand that that's a traumatic experience. It's like a distortion of reality that you're experiencing that then creates a belief system in your brain, and you're constantly acting out that belief system.

That's where the psychological component of horror really comes out. People breaking through that psychological belief system that was created through a traumatic experience by reaching courage and coming out through a horrific situation.

Jo: Yes, it really annoys me, because with romance, of course people understand that romance is a huge genre. Something like a small town sweet romance is a world away from the bully romantasy, dark, or mafia. Mafia romance is a really big thing with very dark themes.

I'm like, well, how can you understand that romance is a huge genre with all these different subgenres, and not think that horror or thriller or fantasy or sci-fi all have so many different subgenres within them?

I personally read a lot of supernatural horror, but rarely the slasher gore kind of stuff. So I'm really glad you said that, and hopefully more people will open up a bit more.

I did also want to ask you about what you write. You write all these different things. You write standalone—I mean, often horror is standalone—but you also have some series. How do you balance it?

What are the benefits of cross-genre writing, but also the challenges of it?

PD: Okay. So obviously I love cross-genre writing. To me, I use fantasy to explain the supernatural elements. I blend mostly a tad of fantasy to help explain the supernatural components in my supernatural novels.

When I write sci-fi, specifically sci-fi, that has the fantasy element in it too, but there's also a tad of horror in there as well.

It's just who I am. When I grew up, I had a lot of different influences. I had Star Wars on one side, and then I'm watching B-rated '80s slasher films on the other side. Those two mixes just kind of followed me throughout my life, and that's why I like putting them into my novels.

As I tell my patients, don't limit yourself. Never limit yourself. If you're just limiting yourself to one genre, you're missing out on so much more that's out there. So I love the blend of mixing genres. It just gets my goat each and every time.

It is a challenge though. I remember when I first started getting into indie publishing, I was never big into Facebook and social media up until I started becoming an indie author.

Before that, with my type of upbringing, you don't advertise yourself. You don't advertise where you're going. That's a big no-no. So I always had this aversion to social media.

I'll tell you a funny story. It was the late 2000s, probably 2006. I was a full-time single father at that time, and I was living in Florida. My family—brothers and sisters-in-law—were living in New York, and my sister-in-law said, “Get a Facebook account so we can see pictures of the kids.”

I said, “Oh.” I didn't want to do it, but I said, “Okay,” so I did it. And I'm thinking, looking at this Facebook thing, “How do I put pictures on here?” So I figured out how to put pictures in folders.

Then I phone called her, and I'm like, “Okay, so they're on there.” And they're like, “Well, where are they?” I'm like, “I put them in these folders. You can go and look at them.” She's like, “No, you've got to post them.”

That to me was like, “I'm not posting pictures of my kids.” That was a big no-no. It didn't click.

When I got on there finally in 2016, 2017, I'm like, “Okay, so I need to figure out social media. As an indie author, I need to be on there, so I need to get through this aversion and get on there.”

I started noticing how people are so particular with their genres. If they're reading a romance, it had to be very specific with that exact type of romance, and if you deviated from it, they're not going to like it. So that was the challenge.

I was like, “All right, number one, I'm not going to dilute myself” and say, “All right, take things out of my writing or out of my novel just so I could cater to a certain type of audience.” I'm like, “I'm not going to do that.”

I know with me, myself, as a reader, I'll read everything. I don't limit myself to a specific genre. I'll read psychological thrillers. I'll read romance. I've been doing that all my life.

So I'm like, if there's a person like me out there—and look at this, I just met like four other people who also read cross genres—then I know that there's at least another 30,000 people, and I know that at least then there's 300,000, then there's three million people out there.

So just write the books that you're writing and find your audience. Now, that takes longer. So you've got to chip away. Chip away. You're going to find readers here and there, and then that reader kind of tells a few people about you, and then you've got a few more readers.

Then you keep going, and you go on these Facebook groups, and you do a whole bunch of different things, and then you gather a few more readers. Then they're telling some friends, and then you've got more. The process takes a lot longer, yes, 100% agreed, but I would say be true to yourself and you can never go wrong.

Jo: Yes, I agree. I write cross-genre as well, and I've browsed your collection. Golem was the one I was like, “Ooh, yes, I like that one.” I haven't read it yet, it's on my list.

I think when you're cross-genre, my people come to my store as well, and it's like, “Okay, I'm interested in lots of things, but this is the one by this author that I'm interested in.” Whereas with other authors who only write one type of thing, then I might not like any of their stuff.

So I think there are definitely pros and cons and different ways into our world.

I also wanted to ask you about the differences in business. Obviously you ran this treatment centre and there were physical humans on all sides, and now you've got a business as an author.

So what have you learned in business from what you used to do and what you do now?

PD: Okay. You're right. The treatment centre industry is very different from what I'm doing now, but it's still people.

Treat those people right, have integrity. If you say you're going to do something, follow through with it. My word is my bond type of thing. That definitely has fed into the writing and publishing industry that I'm in now in a huge way. Just connecting with people is, to me, the biggest part of it.

I mean, treatment centres, you've got to connect with people. When I would market the treatment centre, where would I go? I would go to hospitals, residential facilities, detoxes, and talk to them about my programme and why they should be referring clients there.

It's the same thing here. Why should you be reading my books? You get there through interviews like what I'm doing here with you. Other podcasts. You get there by doing Facebook Lives, TikTok.

I haven't started TikTok Lives yet, but I actually love that platform. I'm falling in love with it. IG Lives, anything like that where you're talking to people and you're making a connection with those people.

Through that, I've gathered so many different types of readers who are like, “Yes, I'll give this book a shot.” And then they read it and they're like, “Hey, this is really good, and I'm going to read another book.”

With my books, I have very different books. Golem is my psychological horror novel. It's my slow-burn psychological horror novel, heavily inspired by Frankenstein and the Pygmalion myth. It's my first true horror book that I published.

Then there's Jigglyspot and the Zero Intellect, which is inspired by B-rated '80s horror movies and the old grindhouse movies of the '70s, and it's mind manipulation. It's just wild and bizarre. And then The Sleepy Hollow Incident is my Gothic tale—it's like a dark romance mixed in with Gothic horror.

So I always try to put something for everyone that's out there. To me, when I'm writing, it's got to be about depth, psychological depth. I always refer to my books to be like peeling layers off a Texas-sized onion. The more you read, the more in-depth you get into not only the characters, but the story.

It's just something that comes out of me. It's part of me. That's the way I always have to do it. I always have to put that depth in there. To me, that's good storytelling.

When I grew up, I read a lot of classic literature. Yes, Edgar Allan Poe, but also Dante's Inferno, Milton's Paradise Lost, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Brontë sisters. Keep going. Ray Bradbury, Ayn Rand, Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson. Those to me are my books that I absolutely love.

So there's a sweet science in today's fast-paced, social media type of world in marrying the depth of the old classic literature and the entertainment value that is required today for being an author. There's that sweet science behind it, and I love just hitting that nail on the head every time.

Jo: So did you ever pitch traditional publishing, or have you thought about going that way?

Because I also find that a lot of horror actually sits very close to literary. Like, I read a lot more literary horror than I do in some of the other genres.

PD: Correct. So in the beginning, yes. Not in a long time. I maybe went to a couple of indie publishers, but as far as traditional, the Big Five publishers, I have an aversion to them for a big reason. I know people who have worked in that industry that have told me some pretty bad horror stories about those places.

So I haven't sent anything to that type of place in a very, very long time. Maybe close to 20 years.

Indie publishers, the small presses, yes, here and there, but even then, I'm always moving at a fast pace. So if I've got a book and I'm sending it out as a query letter, by the time that query letter is even read, I'm almost done publishing.

I love that aspect of it. The control of my story, where I know where this character's going. And listen, I've got my beta readers, I've got my ARC readers. They're there to tell me, “Hey, maybe you should change this or change that.” Whether I take that advice or not, of course my editor too, is really up to me.

I always put out the book that I know is the one I want to read. And to me, I haven't gone wrong in doing so. I know with traditional publishing, you sometimes get too many thoughts in the pot there. Let's put it that way.

Jo: Okay, so coming back to being indie then. You mentioned Amazon earlier, but you have a store where you sell direct. Many authors are doing this now, but it can be a challenge.

So what have you found are the pros and cons of your direct store? What's working? Any lessons there?

PD: Okay. So I use a place called Big Cartel. They're the platform where the books are on. They're hosting my website, PDAlleva.com.

The big challenge was actually just starting it. It was so overwhelming. How do I put this on there? At the time, I've got all these books, so how do I present them?

I'm even going to be doing another revamp with it too, because I want better pictures—taking pictures of the books, stuff like that, instead of just having the covers on there. I also have a lot of shirts that I'm selling.

So I think the biggest challenge is just getting on there and starting it. Then of course, you've got to learn a whole new platform, and the mechanics, and how people are going to be downloading, and how that's done on an e-book versus a print version of the book.

So it's a huge learning curve that you've really got to put your focus on and give it time.

What most people like in indie publishing is signed copies. It's a huge part of indie publishing, selling those signed copies. People love a signed copy, and that's primarily what my website is for. You can order signed copies from me.

I also use a place called IngramSpark, and they're more like a distributor. They're used by everyone. They've been around for a very long time. Traditional publishing uses them too, and they're just distributing your novel.

I'd say about a year ago, maybe two years ago, they started where you can sell your books on discount through them as well. So I have that on my website too, where you're just clicking on the book and you're pretty much going directly to their site and you're buying paperbacks and hardbacks at a discount. That's going well too.

For the most part, people are definitely coming to my site because they want the signed copies. A good thing with indie publishing is limited editions, first print copies, special editions. That type of stuff really just takes off. People love to see that, especially in the indie community.

You can sell them too. I go to a few different book conventions during the year, and the limited editions are there. Like I said, people love the signed copies. They love being a part of that and getting that signed copy. They treasure it, just like I treasure my books too.

I'm not referring to my books that I've written, but books that I have as well. I love my e-reader, don't get me wrong, but I still prefer the physical copy—the paperback, and even more so than the paperback, the hardback. So people love those signed copies, and that's why I created the website, to sell on there for them.

Jo: Yes, I mean, we're getting to a point now though where I think some people are questioning the pros and cons of it. For example, you doing the signed copies—I don't do that from my Shopify store because I don't want to hold stock and I don't want to deal with postage.

So I only do it when I do a Kickstarter. I've just finished one recently, Bones of the Deep, and I'm going up to the printer, and I'm going to sign a couple of hundred copies and then they do the postage.

That's the only way I'm willing to do it because of the pain of getting books to your house, signing them, getting them in the post.

So how do you manage that practically?

PD: Okay, so the inventory's there. I don't go and sign everything right away. I just keep the inventory. Once somebody buys the book, then I'll pull out the book, log it and all that good fun stuff, sign it, and then ship it out immediately.

Here in my country, we get discounts at the United States Post Office because they're books. So they pass that shipping cost over to the reader too, so it's a little bit cheaper for shipping.

I'll just take books once or twice a week over to the United States Postal Service and ship those books out. I don't sign them until I actually get that order.

Jo: How many do you have in your house? It's the holding stock of all the backlist that is the problem.

PD: Ooh, gotcha. All right. That's why I have a two-car garage. But here's the thing, I won't order 500 at a time. I'll order 20 at a time.

Jo: Okay. Right.

PD: When I see that inventory's getting low, I'll order another 20 at a time.

Jo: And you get those from IngramSpark?

PD: Correct. When the new one comes out, maybe at that time I'm just selling those, bringing those to conventions that I go to. Or maybe doing a sale on those books at that time to get rid of the inventory so it's not sitting around anymore.

Jo: I think that's so important. Then like you mentioned, you do T-shirts or shirts. That is also really hard because of sizing.

So is that all print on demand?

PD: Yes. So I don't really hold the stock on the shirts. When I get an order, whatever the size is at that time, I go directly to the place and order it. I use a place called Sublimation Station that's here in Orlando. They do great all-over print T-shirts. They're fantastic. I just did one for The Sleepy Hollow Incident.

So The Sleepy Hollow Incident is one long story, and it's broken up into four books. Each book has its own. The covers are fantastic. I use a lady named Cherie Foxley. She's a phenomenal cover designer.

So the shirts are, like, book one is on the front of one shirt with book two on the back, and then the second shirt is book three on the cover and book four on the back.

However, I can customise those. I just did a giveaway in my Facebook group and I let people know I could customise them, and she wanted book one and book four, so I just got that and sent it out to her.

Now, if people go ahead and order that on the website, I can just order it right away from them, boom, and that place will get it shipped right then and there.

Jo: Right, so they do the shipping. These are all sort of practical things that people need to answer because I feel like sometimes it's like, “Oh, yes, having a direct store is great,” but there's actually quite a lot of work that goes into it, isn't there?

PD: There is. There's a lot of work. You're pretty much opening almost like your own brick-and-mortar store at that point. You just don't have walk-in traffic coming in—your traffic is all coming online. So there is a lot to it, but it's worth it.

If you're a self-published author or even a small indie press, it's good to have. Because like I said, people love the signed copies.

Jo: When you say it's worth it, is it worth it financially or just because you like to serve the customers in that way?

PD: Both.

Jo: Right. So it is financially worth it for you?

PD: Yes.

Jo: I was talking to a friend of mine and saying, are you valuing your time in terms of things like taking the books to the post office and stuff like that?

Do you find it eats into your writing at all, or do you just manage it all separately?

PD: No, I manage it separately. So I'm an early morning riser. I get up at 3:00 in the morning, and that's when I write my books or do editing or brainstorming.

I'm about to write a new novella now called The Adam and Eve Story, which is actually based on a little-known CIA shelved book from the 1990s called The Adam and Eve Story as well. So I've been brainstorming that, and I was doing that this morning.

I get up at 3:00 a.m. and I do my writing, and by the time the kids are up and by the time the wife is up, it's like 8:00 a.m. is rolling around and I'm pretty much done at that point.

Then I have my days. Tuesday I'm completely working from home and I do my thing in the morning, and then the rest of the day is marketing, fulfilling orders, stuff like that.

On the days when I'm going to do group facilitation, I'll of course still get up at 3:00 o'clock in the morning, and then I'll plan out the day. I've got an hour between this group and I can go ahead and do that, and I'm already there so it's not a problem. The post office is right around the corner.

You kind of figure out all the logistics for yourself. There are some days, like on Monday, I don't facilitate groups until the afternoon, so I've got the whole morning to work on marketing and do other things, and fulfilment. Then of course Saturday's a big day for that too.

Jo: Oh, that's good. I feel like people always need to know how to balance their time, but it sounds like you manage, because at 3:00 a.m., as you say, there's not much else to do other than write.

You mentioned marketing, and you have a Substack, pdsalternativefiction.substack.com.

Talk about that and serialising fiction and how Substack works.

Because I feel like a load of people are jumping in but might not necessarily know how it works, especially for fiction.

PD: Correct. It is becoming quite popular out there. I think the one before that was Patreon, and Patreon is pretty big for that too, kind of the same thing.

I wanted to start something and just get the work out there. I was very interested when Amazon came out a few years ago with what was called Vella.

They kind of started that. I was like, “This is kind of cool.” Couple chapters at a time. I'm writing the books anyway, so why don't we kick this off and see how it goes—a type of experiment.

I had a lot of fun doing it. I started on October 4th, 2024. I've done four novels so far. One is still going, which is Volume 3 of my Dark Veil serie— that's a sci-fi series.

I wrote three other novels. The Hypnotist, which is a thriller, heavy on the sci-fi and a tad of horror in there too. And then I wrote Girl on a Mission, which is my psychological thriller, and then Cat Fight, which is a horror novel—all within that time.

I think I finished all three of those novels in January, and then the first week of February they were all pretty much done. Now what I'm doing is, I went paid recently on the Substack. It's like everything else that's out there—chip away, chip away.

I fell into that hole where they say, “Hey, we can promote you and get people to sign up for your newsletter.” And I'll be honest with you, don't do it. It's not worth it.

You spend money, and what happens is they're what I refer to as dead leads. They don't click. You wind up shuffling them off after three to six months, because they're just not clicking. Everybody gets a star rating, so you know—are they clicking, are they staying on, are they not?

So I got rid of pretty much all of those people, and I'll never do that again. It's got to be done organically. That's why when you read my books, especially the new books, towards the end it'll say, “Sign up for my newsletter.”

I do more with that newsletter too. If you're on the free tier, every month I do a monthly newsletter, which is just me talking about updates, things going on in the publishing industry, things going on with me.

My daughter puts together a weekly Horror and Sci-Fi Chronicles newsletter, which gives what's going on in new releases in the industry—sci-fi, horror, books, movies, television. She does deep dives into industry tropes, historical tidbits, and a weekly quiz.

I also do a monthly Terrors and Tales newsletter. I started this last year, and it was a quarterly newsletter. It's other authors who are new, upcoming, never been published before, looking to get published.

It's a chance for them to be on the newsletter where they have a flash fiction story or poem or even a short story that I publish for them. It's called the Terrors and Tales newsletter.

What happened is I would put out calls for submissions. And a place called Duotrope—I don't even know who these people are, but all of a sudden I got an email from them stating, “Hey, we found that you're looking for submissions, and we posted your link. We hope you don't mind.”

I'm like, “No, of course I don't mind.”

I got so many submissions from that one link. I'm like, “Okay.” Do I really want to deny people? I'm not like that. I want to help promote other authors. I know what it's like when you're new and upcoming, no matter what age you are, to say, “Hey, here's a platform for you to see your stuff in print.”

Obviously, I read through them just to make sure they're up to a certain standard, but for the most part, if you submit, you're getting in there.

With Duotrope, I'm like, I have enough here to put out one a month. So in May 2026, the first one goes out, and then I'll have one each month until December, and then who knows? In 2027 I might go back to quarterly. I might get enough submissions to just keep it going once a month.

So that's the Terrors and Tales newsletter, and it usually comes out towards the end of the month—the last two weeks. I have nothing to do with it in terms of content. None of my stories are on there. None of my poems are on there. None of my flash fiction.

It's all other authors, just for them to see their name in print, see their work in print, share it with their friends, and put something on their resume, and to encourage people to keep reading and keep the craft going.

Jo: When you say in print, you don't mean in physical print?

PD: Oh, I mean in the newsletter. I'm sorry.

Jo: I think that's important, or you're going to get a lot more submissions, and you will need to do publishing contracts and all that kind of thing.

I think that's the difficult thing with a Substack newsletter approach—it's difficult to know where to categorise it. Is it marketing? Is it publishing? It's all of these things, I suppose. A bit like this podcast, it's all kinds of things.

In terms of Substack actually making money on its own or leading to book sales that make money, do you think it does serve that purpose?

PD: I think I've gotten more book sales through it, and also ARC readers who are enjoying the books and giving reviews.

As far as the paid tiers, that's kind of a little bit slow, and that's where I'm saying chip away at it. Keep it up there. Keep it going. Over time, you're going to build that type of audience where it's going to be like, “Hey, this is financially feasible for me to continue to do this.” That's the response that I'm getting out there.

Jo: Yes. Before, you mentioned you were doing Facebook Lives and you're looking at TikTok, but—

Is anything else working for you in book marketing?

If people have a few books and they're like, “What is working for book marketing right now?”—what do you recommend?

PD: Okay. For me, the thing that has made the most sense is making sure the reader knows the book is out there through some sort of social media. I've had really good success on TikTok since the beginning of this year especially.

I started it about a year ago, year and a half ago, but then my father got sick and passed away, and it was a new venture and I put it off to the side. I really got the flavour going at the beginning of this year. February, March of this year.

It seems to be going really well, and I've noticed an uptick in sales from just getting the videos out there and getting it in front of people's eyes.

There's an event I'm going to in August called ShiverCon, which is a pretty big event. After that event, I'm going to look to see what type of inventory I have left over from the event, and I'm going to start doing TikTok Lives. I'm very comfortable being on camera. So I'm like, “Yeah, that seems like a good way to go.”

I know there's a few other horror authors who are doing it and having good success with TikTok Lives as well. A guy named Jason Davis is doing really well with TikTok Lives, and a few other authors too.

I'm like, “Yes, I could definitely do that.” I want to get up to a certain number of people, and I want these events. I'm going to one in July, and then ShiverCon in August. Once those are done, I'm going to have more time to do the TikTok Lives.

As far as Facebook is concerned, what I've had really great success with on Facebook is being in the groups and meeting other authors. That's not always about my book per se, but whatever books I'm reading, I'm posting my reviews about those books in those groups and meeting readers.

Then obviously, they always say the three-to-one rule. Post about three different books and then post about your own book, whether you're doing a sale or a new release or a re-release or whatever.

I've found success through that just by interacting with readers. When they post a book, I'll comment, “Hey, I've read that book,” or, “Hey, that book looks really cool. I like the review.” Commenting on it so you start these relationships with people who are out there in these Facebook groups.

I've recently started my own Facebook reader group. I kind of go with the same thing. Last night, we did a live reading for another author. I like other authors to be on there. I always like to think, what does the reader need? What do I want to see as a reader?

I would love to hear live readings from authors. So I kind of learn about them, learn about the book, and get a live reading. To me, that's a good way to go. So I started that recently, and it seems to be going well.

I've got a new folk horror coming out soon, and I put out a call for ARC readers and got a fantastic response from that.

That kind of drives the sales anyway, because when you get those reviews, then people see it gives credibility to the book, and then other people see it, and then they're buying it too. So that comes from the groups.

There's so many wheels to spin in this industry as an indie author when you're doing this, especially when you're doing 99% of it on your own. You've got to get out there. No one's going to know your book exists if you don't get out there and tell somebody about it.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, tell us—

Where can people find you and your books online?

PD: All right. Perfect. So obviously I'm on Amazon like everyone. Most of my books are worldwide, so you'll find them in Barnes & Noble as well. And of course, if you want the signed copies or discount print books, I always lead people straight to my website, PDAlleva.com.

Then, of course, if you go to my Substack, you'll get all the updates, and you'll get all the links to purchase or find out where they are on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and things like that too.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Paul. That was great.

PD: Thank you very much for having me. It was great chatting with you.

The post Writing Cross-Genre, Selling Direct, And Serialising On SubStack With P.D. Alleva first appeared on The Creative Penn.