If you’re interested in a particular topic and there does not appear to be a blog carnival on the topic, then it may be a good opportunity for you to start a carnival on the topic yourself if you have a blog. However, there are a few things that you should probably do before starting up a new carnival:

• Check to see that there is not already a carnival on your chosen topic. Check Google and BlogCarnival.com to make sure someone hasn’t already started it up. You will probably not get all that many posts if you compete against someone else’s carnival. One exception to this is if there’s a very broad carnival and you are interested in starting a carnival on a much narrower topic. In this case there might be room for the extra carnival in the fray.
• Give yourself some time to launch the Carnival. When I started the Carnival of Debt Reduction I gave myself two weeks before actually posting the first edition. You may want to give yourself more time. Give yourself enough time to do a good launch.
• Decide how often the carnival will run, and on what day it will be published. This is your baby! Do you want a weekly carnival? Every other week? Monthly? Do you want to have it published on a Monday or a Friday?
• For the first edition or more, look for posts. Initially don’t count on a flood of submissions. I think that I went out to get more than half of my first carnival’s posts.
• Submit your new carnival to BlogCarnival.com. This is a free blog carnival aggregator/submission form/manager that is home to hundreds of blog carnivals. This submission will start the buzz since they highlight new carnivals with a special New! icon.
• Contact bloggers that might be interested in the carnival. (Contact — not spam!) Invite them to submit a post, or suggest a post that might be good. (Or tell them that they’ve been included already!) If you have a relationship with the bloggers, ask them if they want to host future editions.
• Don’t be too concerned if the floodgates are slow in opening. It takes time. If you’re behind a car trying to push it, it will have resistance initially, but once you get more people behind the car it will start rolling, and eventually drive itself.