Christmas, the Dark, and Two Years of Dark Holme Publishing

I always think it’s funny that Christmas is meant to be about light, when it’s the darkest time of the year.

The days shrink. The nights creep in early. Everything goes quiet in that strange, end-of-year way where time feels thin around the edges. Maybe that’s why Christmas ghost stories have always worked so well. This is the season when the dark feels closest—and when people are most willing to listen.

Which makes it feel like the right moment to say this:

Dark Holme Publishing turns two years old this Christmas.

That still feels a little unreal to write. Dark Holme didn’t start with a grand business plan or a neat publishing blueprint. It started with a love of dark fiction and horror stories and a stubborn belief that there was room for something quieter, stranger, and more atmospheric in the world of independent horror publishing.

Stories that didn’t need to shout.Stories that trusted silence, tension, and the reader’s imagination.Stories that stayed with you long after you’d closed the book.

Somehow—quietly—that idea found its people.

Over the past two years, writers have trusted me with their work: short horror fiction, unsettling tales, and dark speculative pieces that linger rather than rush to explain themselves. Readers have shown up, stayed, and proved there is an audience for horror that values mood, craft, and emotional impact over noise.

That support has meant more than I can neatly wrap up with a bow.

So this isn’t really a post about milestones, metrics, or publishing buzzwords. It’s simply a thank you.

Thank you for reading.Thank you for supporting indie horror publishers.Thank you for sharing stories, leaving kind words, and stepping into the dark with us—without immediately asking where the light switch is.

Christmas, despite all the forced cheer, has always understood horror better than we give it credit for. The oldest Christmas traditions were full of ghosts, reckonings, and shadows. Dickens knew it. So did everyone gathered around a fire, telling stories to keep the dark at bay.

Dark Holme belongs to that tradition.

As the year winds down and Christmas settles in—with all its warmth, weirdness, and quiet unease—I just wanted to wish you a genuinely peaceful one. However you spend it. Whatever it looks like for you.

The doors at Dark Holme will still be open in the new year. The lights will stay low. And there are plenty more dark stories, horror anthologies, and unsettling fiction waiting just beyond the threshold.

Happy Christmas—from the Holme, and from me. 🖤