Of all people, actor and author David Selby knows you can’t go home again.

“I tried that several years ago,” the 63-year-old celebrity said on a recent visit to Morgantown, his hometown. “I was going to buy a little farm, but it fell through at the last minute.”

Now, Selby and his children have become accustomed to life in California’s balmy San Fernando Valley. But his separation from West Virginia hasn’t stopped the writer and actor from waxing poetic about his birthplace. Selby will be in Charleston on Sunday to talk about his new book, “A Better Place,” as part of the West Virginia Book Festival, Oct. 23, in the Charleston Civic Center.

“It’s sort of a memoir, but it’s also a social commentary on what’s going on in the state,” explained Selby, who was visiting Morgantown recently to visit his father.

Born and raised in West Virginia, Selby is probably best known for his role on the campy gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” which ran from 1966 through 1971. The show proved enormously popular and became a cult classic, much to the surprise of those associated with the low-budget show.

“When we were doing it, we didn’t have a clue what was going to happen,” Selby recalled. “They still have these huge conventions about everything ‘Dark Shadows.’”

Television producers have entertained reviving the series from time to time, including a recent TV pilot that was rejected — ironically — because it was so bad.

“It was pretty bad to begin with,” Selby mused about the original program. “But it was at the forefront of doing a lot of special effects on television. And it was live.”

Selby still works regularly — as an actor you work until you don’t want to work anymore — and begins shooting a new film next month. He has written a play, four books (mostly poetry) and several screenplays, but “A Better Place” is his homage to home.

“It’s really about what home means to all of us,” he said. “I’ve been working on it, I guess, since I left West Virginia, but when 9/11 happened I started thinking a lot about home and West Virginia. I started thinking about what home meant to me.”

In the book, Selby explores home, family, the economics of West Virginia, effects of mountaintop removal mining and his own feelings for the Mountain State, which he tries to visit a few times each year.

“Not too many people in California know anything about West Virginia,” he said. “Everybody knows something about California.

“I thought maybe by the end of it I’d have a better idea of who I was,” he said. “That’s why I started writing it.”

To contact staff writer Rusty Marks, use e-mail or call 348-1215.