It looks like the eBook version of The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5 has arrived a few weeks ahead of the trade paperback release. This one features my novelette, “The House on Ashley Avenue,” reprinted from my collection Every House Is Haunted (and recently nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award!). Here’s the cover and table of contents:

“Nikishi” by Lucy Taylor
“Little America” by Dan Chaon
“A Natural History of Autumn” by Jeffrey Ford
“Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson
“Tender as Teeth” by Stephanie Crawford and Duane Swierczynski
“The Callers” by Ramsey Campbell
“Two poems for Hill House” by Kevin McCann
“Mariner’s Round” by Terry Dowling
“Nanny Grey” by Gemma Files
“The Magician’s Apprentice” by Tamsyn Muir
“Kill All Monsters” by Gary McMahon
“The House on Ashley Avenue” by Ian Rogers
“Dead Song” by Jay Wilburn
“Sleeping, I Was Beauty” by Sandi Leibowitz
“Bajazzle” by Margo Lanagan
“The Pike” by Conrad Williams
“The Crying Child” by Bruce McAllister
“This Circus the World” by Amber Sparks
“Some Pictures in An Album” by Gary McMahon
“Wild Acre” by Nathan Ballingrud
“Final Exam” by Megan Arkenberg
“None So Blind” by Stephen Bacon
“The Ballad of Boomtown” by Priya Sharma
“Pig Thing” by Adam Nevill
“The Word-Made Flesh” by Richard Gavin
“Into the Penny Arcade” by Claire Massey
“Magdala Amygdala” by Lucy Snyder
“Frontier Death Song” by Laird Barron

I also received some nice comments from Ellen in her summation of 2012. In addition to singling out my Felix Renn stories “Midnight Blonde” and “Out of the Blue” as notable tales in Supernatural Tales and the Fungi anthology respectively, she had this to say about the two collections I had published last year:

Ian Rogers had two collections out in 2012: Every House Is Haunted (ChiZine Publications) was his debut collection, with twenty-two stories, seven published for the first time. His best stories are suffused with the perfect creepiness so many horror aficionados crave. One is reprinted herein. SuperNOIRtural Tales (Burning Effigy Press) collects four reprints and an original novella about Felix Renn, a paranormal investigator. Mike Carey provides a brief introduction and Rogers gives a history of his creation, the Black Lands, a parallel dimension to ours, darker and inhabited by all sorts of supernatural creatures.

Not too shabby, eh? Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5 is currently available as an eBook on Kindle, Kobo, and Nook. The trade paperback will be out at the end of August.

Very excited to announce that I will be an author guest at this year’s Fan Expo / Festival of Fear, which takes place August 22-25 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I’ll be selling and signing books, and probably spending a large part of my time prying Kathryn off of Nathan Fillion. Personally, I’m looking forward to a Katey Sagal sighting, hopefully in her Peg Bundy leopard-print pants. Oh, and Ron Pearlman, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Gina Torres, Linda Hamilton, and Carrie Fisher will be there, too (among others). Hope to see you there!

The table of contents for Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing has been posted. My story, “Aces,” has been selected from my collection Every House Is Haunted. I also received six honourable mentions, including one for my Felix Renn story “Midnight Blonde” (which originally appeared in Supernatural Tales). This is a great series featuring many excellent Canadian authors, and I strongly recommend picking it up.

Next weekend, March 9th and 10th, I will be signing books at Toronto ComiCon. You can find me at the Burning Effigy Table. Copies of SuperNOIRtural Tales will be for sale, and I’ll have a few copies of Every House Is Haunted and Deadstock, as well, from my personal stash. It looks like it’s going to be a great con, so come out and say hello and maybe buy a book or two.

I’d also like to direct you to the excellent website, Speculating Canada, where some book club questions for SuperNOIRtural Tales have been posted.

In other news, Lurid Lit recently reviewed “Temporary Monsters,” calling it “brash, brilliant, and salivating.” Check out the full review on their website.

Derek Newman-Stille over at Speculating Canada reviewed SuperNOIRtural Tales. Here’s a little of what he had to say:

Rogers plays with the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extraordinary, illustrating how ordinary people can learn to cope with the introduction of the Weird into their everyday lives… Ian Rogers ‘Weirds’ the home, disrupting the safe blanket of domesticity that has become the foundation for Western modernity. Houses become things that can attack people, that can kill, that can be possessed… and even the bricks of the home itself can become infused with the ‘Weird’. They can be tainted spaces, infused with the miasma of the Black Lands.

Read the full review at Speculating Canada.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a general news roundup. The past few months all I’ve really talked about are my two collections, but there’s been some other stuff going on that, unfortunately, has gotten kind of pushed to the wayside as a result.

I’ve got a couple of new short stories out. A dark comedy, “I Hate Needles,” in the eBook anthology Strange World, published by the talented crew over at Biff Bam Pop and available exclusively for the Kobo eReader. And there’s “Out of the Blue,” a new Felix Renn story available in the Fungi anthology, which features stories by many other excellent writers. The book is available in trade paperback, eBook, and a hardcover edition that has some extra stories. The publisher has created a snazzy website devoted to Fungi, with all kinds of fungusy fun.

I sold a new story over the holidays, a dark wilderness tale called “False North.” It will appear in an anthology called Shadows Edge, edited by Simon Strantzas and published by Gray Friar Press.

“Temporary Monsters,” the first Felix Renn novella, is still available as a free eBook. You can download a copy for your eReader of choice at Smashwords, or read it online at Wattpad or Scribd. (And if you enjoy TM, you might want to check out the Felix Renn collection SuperNOIRtural Tales.)

And finally, I will be on Trent Radio tomorrow night, January 15th, from 7:00-8:00 p.m., talking about books, writing, Felix Renn and the Black Lands, coffee, the woods, and anything else that might come up. If you’re not in the Peterborough area, you can still listen to the show online. Hope you can tune in.

Correction: We’ll be recording the show on the 15th, but the show will air at a later date that has yet to be determined.

The first collection of Felix Renn stories, SuperNOIRtural Tales, is now available for sale!

Featuring all three Felix Renn chapbooks — “Temporary Monsters,” “The Ash Angels,” “Black-Eyed Kids” — as well the short story “My Body,” and a brand-new, 50,000-word novella called “The Brick.” As well as story notes, a history of the Black Lands, and an introduction by Mike Carey, author of the Felix Castor novels and writer for the DC/Vertigo comic book series Lucifer, Hellblazer, and The Unwritten.

If you’re curious about the book and the series, you can check out the first novella, “Temporary Monsters,” for free!

My bud, Rio Youers, tagged me to be a part of this online q&a called The Next Big Thing. The idea is to answer ten quick fire questions on your blog, and then tag five other writers, and so on. It’s a good idea, and a nice way to drum up interest in your latest work. Rio tagged me and you can read his answers on his website. Here are mine:

1. What is the working title of your next book?

My next book is titled…. UNTITLED FIRST FELIX RENN NOVEL. Actually, I know the title of the book, but I’m not ready to reveal it here. If you really want to know, I mentioned it in the story notes in my Felix Renn collection, SuperNOIRtural Tales. It just came out, so let’s talk about that book instead, okay?

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

SuperNOIRtural Tales is a collection of five stories featuring a recurring private detective character named Felix Renn. I don’t recall where the idea for Felix came from, except that I’ve always enjoyed supernatural fiction and detective fiction, and thought it would be fun to combine them in one story.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

I suppose some people would say it’s urban fantasy, but UF has become synonymous with paranormal romance these days, so I tend to refer to these stories as supernatural noirs, or supernoirturals (hence the title of the book).

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I think Ryan Gosling could make an interesting Felix. And I think Alicia Witt would do well as Felix’s ex-wife/assistant, Sandra.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Felix Renn is a private detective in a supernatural world.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The book was published by Burning Effigy Press.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The collection is the culmination of three years’ worth of stories. The longest story, “The Brick” at 50,000 words, took about three months to write.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Hmm. Tough question. I think of Felix as more Harry D’Amour than Harry Dresden, so I’m reluctant to compare the book to others in the field of urban fantasy. The Felix Renn stories actually owe more to detective fiction than horror, so while I would compare the story to something like Everville, by Clive Barker, I’d also include the Lew Archer series by Ross Macdonald and the Spensers books by Robert B. Parker.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My love for detective/supernatural fiction mash-ups.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Well, I think Felix Renn and the Black Lands series stands out among others in its subgenre, if only because I don’t self-identify as an author of urban fantasy. It’s not about marketing. I think if you read these stories (and you can read the first one in the series, “Temporary Monsters” for free), you’ll see that they stand very much on their own.

So there we go. Quick and painless. Unfortunately, I’ve only managed to tag one other author so far. Orrin Grey is up next in the hot seat one week from today.