Every House Is Haunted tales by local writer

Ian Rogers

By day he is a mild-mannered webmaster and communications assistant for the City of Kawartha Lakes.

But on weeknights and weekends, Peterborough's Ian Rogers enters a much darker world.

Rogers recently sold his book Every House Is Haunted to Toronto-based Chizine Publications.

He is expecting the edits on his book to arrive in March, which will determine which short stories will go into the collection and the editing of the individual stories.

He uses words such as "contemporary dark fiction" and "thriller" to describe the work, but emphasizes this is no Twilight or Harry Potter.

It all came about in a rather remark- able way. Rogers was attending a book conference in Texas last March when his title was surprisingly announced as one of Chizine's fall 2012 releases.

To say he was shocked would be an understatement.

Over lunch at Common Grounds in Lindsay, Rogers said it had now sunk in a bit but there is still a feeling that all of this is "surreal."

He excitedly talks about the hardcover, limited edition, signed and numbered book that will come out first with bonus material. Chizine's resident graphic artist will soon begin work on the cover while Ian is planning to build a website for promotion of the book.

He said that just before Christmas, the audio rights to the book were sold - even before the book has come out. In addition to the signed, limited edition hard- cover, Chizine will also be publishing trade paperback and e-book versions of the book. There will likely be a book launch in Toronto and an event in Peterborough where Rogers and his wife live

With roots in the Maritimes, Nova Scotia and Cape Breton in particular (and his dad's cousin being the late Canadian folk legend Stan Rogers), a few of the stories are set there. One is entitled The Man From the Currents.

Rogers said he'd like to do to the Maritimes what Stephen King has done to New England. He said he is putting modern stories to areas rich in folklore Closer to home, one story is entitled The Candle. It is set in a house on Mcdonnel St. in Peterborough that Rogers and his wife rented. The story is based on their nocturnal trips though the century-old house to ensure the candle they lit at night had been blown out. The story references the smell of oats from the Quaker factory and the defunct I See France lingerie shop.

With a day job, Rogers said he devotes evenings and weekends to his writing, even getting up early on winter mornings to write before work.

"Writing is probably the most disciplined of the arts," he said. "It doesn't matter if you are a nobody like me or Stephen King, you are the one person doing the work. You find the time."

He's never had writer's block. In fact, he has so many ideas he does not doubt that he would be prolific given more writing time.

His love of writing started at the age of 12, doing a comic strip for the Whitby Free Press. He met Ben Wicks around about this time. He went on as a teenager to write for a zine and "was bitten by the bug" loving horror, mystery and suspense.

One of his favourite writers is Ross Macdonald,.who invented private investigator Lew Archer. Paul Newman acted in an adaptation of one of Macdonald's books, Harper.

He considers horror writers King and Clive Barker as influences.

Rogers has also produced a novella called Deadstock.

He is also excited about another project he is currently working on, an urban fantasy series entitled The Black Lands and featuring Toronto-based detective Felix Renn, who investigates supernatural phenomena. But that is a story for another day. — Lindsay Post