So I thought I’d spruce up the website a bit, give it a title page, add a small dash of color to the navigation header, and delete a whole bunch of junk I’d been meaning to get rid of for awhile. The result is (I feel) a slicker, faster, more streamlined website.

I hope you like it.

Ian

Seeing as how it’s a long holiday weekend and I’ll be out of town, I thought I’d leave you with something that would make you say Aw, Ian thought of us while we were painting eggs and . . . eating ham . . . and worshipping the great god Pan or the Easter Bunny . . . or whatever the hell people do at this time of year.

Anyway, I decided to do something I never, ever do on this website (or anywhere else on the ‘net, for that matter). I’m posting a very short excerpt from one of my stories. This is from "The Dark and the Young," the story you’ve been hearing a lot about just lately. A little something for those of you who visit the site . . . and especially for those of you who continue to support me without having ever read any of my work.

I hope you enjoy it.

From "The Dark and the Young":

There was only a single book in the entire room. It lay closed atop a wooden pedestal, looking very important underneath a glass case like the kind used in restaurants to preserve cakes and pies. A single pot-light in the ceiling cast a soft, orange glow on its dark cover.

“You can take it out of the cradle,” Vanners said from the doorway. He seemed either unwilling or unable to enter the room.

Wendy carefully removed the glass lid and picked up the book.

She half expected it to molder and crumble in her hands, as some Egyptian mummies were said to have done after their crypts were opened and exposed to fresh air. But it didn’t.

It was heavy — unusually heavy, she thought, for something the size of a hardcover novel but as thin as a newspaper. Deep furrows like the claw marks of some animal were etched into the front and back cover, and although the binding was in good condition, the edges were ragged and frayed.

The spine crackled and popped as she opened the book. She was startled to see that each page was remarkably devoid of the curling and yellowing that was the eventual fate of all pulp products. And none of them seemed to be in danger of falling out, which was completely unheard of.

Wendy’s awe was so complete that she scarcely paid any attention to the contents. Crude pictograms and symbols that showed little regard for the concept of margins and proper typesetting. Some of the text ran vertically along the edge of the page, some wound themselves into drunken spirals, and a few even started on the left side of the page and ran across to the right side. Her overall impression of the thing was of a shoddily constructed scrapbook. Something a disturbed kindergarten student might have made.

Ian

So, while my new short story "Intervention" sits and stews and waits for its final re-write before submission, I thought I’d look around and see if I could find a home for my long story, "The Dark and the Young."

I happened upon The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, usually the first place I send my new stories, and noticed that they take submissions up to 25,000 words!

One cover-letter and a trip to the post office later, and "The Dark and the Young" is back out there. I haven’t sent a story to F&SF in a little while, but they’ve sent me some encouraging rejection letters in the past. Here’s to hoping they remember me.

(Speaking of remembering, I also want to thank everyone who has e-mailed me this past week to congratulate me on "The Tattletail" getting accepted for Book of Dark Wisdom. I’ve gotten several messages from family, friends, and even people who I know only through this website. Thank you all very much for your kind words and support. It means a lot.)

Ian

New links: The Antigonish Review, ByLine, Event, Exile, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Matrix, The New Quarterly, The SF Site, Spicy Green Iguana, and Zahir.

Finished another short story today. It’s called "Intervention," and it’s another nongenre/mainstream piece (unless the genre is older-brother-tries-to-save-sister-from-brainwashing-cult). It’s a good story, I think, very different from a lot of what I’ve been writing lately, much like "The Kid Pool."

"Intervention" marks the third short story I’ve finished this month (and one of those stories, which clocks in at ten thousand words, can’t really be called "short"), and I have to say I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve been working very hard lately — and not just because "The Tattletail" was accepted for publication. The news about "The Tattletail" was just one more shovelful of coal into the furnace of my brain, prompting to work even harder.

I’m convinced that writing fiction is what I was put on this planet to do. I know I should stop and appreciate what is certainly my first taste of success, but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. I’ve never been an idle person. I have an appreciation for the quiet times, but my working life has always been a perpetual tornado of activity (a particular apt metaphor if you’ve seen the state of my office). Getting "The Tattletail" accepted by a great magazine like Book of Dark Wisdom was a truly great thing, but I have a lot of other stories and each one is itching for its own moment in the limelight.

In other news, a few more books I ordered via Abebooks.com came this week, including Wormwood, by Poppy Z. Brite, The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World and Strange Wine, by Harlan Ellison, a first-edition of Stephen King’s Night Shift, and a first-edition of Joyce Carol Oates’ extremely rare horror-story collection Night-side. That’s some good readin’. I know what I’m doing this weekend. Taxes!

Ian

So you remember that crazy day I had yesterday? Remember the update where I reported, around 8:00 p.m., that as of this writing, the day isn’t over yet. Well, I sure wasn’t kidding.

No sooner had I updated the website did I receive another e-mail from the editor of Book of Dark Wisdom.

It turns out he enjoyed "The Dark and the Young" so much that he decided to go through their slush pile and hunt down my other submissions. He found "The Tattletail," a short story I had submitted last November, and had this to say about it:

"Once again, your writing is very good – you have a talent. I say this as a writer, editor and a professor of English literature … Writing about children and demons in a horror magazine is risky … in your case, you pull it off …"

And yes, friends and neighbors, it happened. I made my first sale. Most writers say they get anywhere from 70 to 100 rejections before they make a sale. I had 16.

I’ve been in something of a daze ever since. I’ve called family and friends, sent out an e-mail bulletin to my online chums, and had to actually restructure Lit Noir to include something I had completely overlooked in the original design – namely, an Acceptance section.

But it’s there now, and I can only hope it will continue to grow.

Thanks to William and Deborah at BoDW for giving me my break, and thanks to everyone who has visited this website over the past two and a half years.

I couldn’t have done it without your support.

Ian

New links: Wildside Press, Horror Express.

I’ve written a thousand-word piece in the News section of the site. Usually that space is reserved for monthly or bimonthly updates of my writing activities, but this update details just one day in the Writer’s life — today, actually.

It was a pretty crazy one, by most standards. When it rains, it pours is the popular idiom, and although the day was dry and mild, there was a veritable thunderstorm of activity going on in my life. Nobody died and everyone’s healthy, so I guess all’s swell that ends swell.

Check out the news section and read all about it.

Also saw the trailer for Revenge of the Sith this morning, and it looks like it’ll be lots of dark, disturbing fun.

Oh, and I said I would post the cover to Dean Koont’z sf-pulpy first novel. Dig on this, kids.

Ian

What a day.

My crazy day (which, as of this writing, still isn’t over yet) actually began yesterday as I was coming home from work.

Upon entering my apartment building, I noticed a pink sticky-note addressed to me stuck to the lobby door. The note was from a courier company called Canpar, informing me that a delivery-person had been by to drop off a package. They would be coming by again tomorrow, and if I wasn’t home at that time, the package would be returned to the sender. Apparently if you play ball with Canpar, it’s two strikes and you’re out.

I knew what the package was. I had order a few books via Abebooks.com, which is a great place for finding those rare, out-of-print titles, and had been told one of them was being sent by courier.

So I get up the following day (today), and e-mail work to let them know I’ll be a little late this morning. How late? Well, it all depends on Canpar, bless their hearts.

To pass the time, I jump on the computer and cruise the newswires, curious about a rumor I heard the other day from a friend who works at Global Television. The rumor turns out to be true. Jetsgo has declared bankruptcy. Not good.

Guess who bought tickets to Newfoundland last week? Guess where we bought them from?

$500+ later, we are rebooked on Canjet by the girlfriend who organizes the whole deal with steam pouring out of her ears. She had just come back from the gym and the news of Jetsgo’s demise has left her a little, shall we say, perturbed.

After this is done, the girlfriend informs me she’ll be working from home today and that she’ll wait for my package (so to speak). So off to work I go. It’s not a long walk — more of a stroll, really — and by the time I arrive, my phone is ringing. The package is here!

Ex-cellent , I say, and get back to work — which consists mostly of telling my co-workers a little story called How I Got Raped by Jetsgo. I take it all in stride, though, much better than the girlfriend, who wants to go after Jetsgo’s board of directors with a hammer and some very long nails. But she cools down by lunchtime.

I come home for a quick toasted bagel and to unwrap my package (so to speak). Inside is The Ideal, Genuine Man , by Don Robertson. I’ve never read anything by him, but he comes highly recommended. Many authors cite him as an influence and one of them, Stephen King, is such a fan that he used his own company, Philtrum Press, to publish this particular book. As such, the book includes a forenote (not an introduction, King firmly points out) by King himself.

In addition to The Ideal, Genuine Man, which is produced on the finest quality paper I’ve ever seen and is possessed of an unidentifiable yet pleasing smell (mmm, pulpy!), I also received another package in the mail. This one contains another book I’ve been looking forward to reading – a paperback original called Star Quest. Published in 1968, it is the very first novel by a fella named Dean Koontz.

The book was unusually cheap ($10 Canadian) and in excellent condition, which leads me to believe the store-owner was unaware of exactly what it was he was selling. (The cover of the book is such classic ‘60’s sci-fi pulp that I’ve included a scan of it in today’s journal entry. Koontz sure has come a long way!)

So now we come to the end of my lunch hour. The bagel is eaten, the package is unwrapped (so to speak), and it’s time for one final check of the e-mail before I don my topcoat (which I don’t even need today it’s so nice out) and stroll back to the office.

But wait! There’s new e-mail, from the editor of Book of Dark Wisdom magazine and the forthcoming anthology Horrors Beyond, to which I had recently submitted a story.

Readers of my journal (all three of you) will remember that last week I wrote a 10,000-word story for this antholog

y — noteworthy only because I wrote it in two days and because I didn’t abhor the final result, as I usually do upon completing a story.

I won’t keep you in suspense. Hell, if you want to read the e-mail for yourself, you can find it on this website . . . in the Rejection section.

Yes, "The Dark and the Young" was turned down for Horrors Beyond.

I’m not upset, though. Mr. Jones wrote what I described in the aforementioned section as "the most thoughtful and cordial rejection letter I’ve ever received." He was so complimentary that I almost forgot it was a rejection letter. This was probably because he liked the story – thought it was "wonderful," in fact – and wasn’t rejecting it based on the quality of the writing or the story. The problem was that it didn’t fit in with the other stories already accepted for the anthology.

After complimenting the story’s "great timing" and "strong, rounded characters," Mr. Jones suggested a couple of other magazines that might be interested in publishing it. This was by no means a direct referral, but that’s not the point. The point is that this editor, to whom I’ve never sold a story, thought my work was good enough to deserve a constructive rejection letter and suggestions on alternative avenues of publication.

I’ve sing-songed a lot about how a personalized rejection letter is the next best thing to an acceptance, and this is the proof. There’s a certain irony, or more accurately, a dichotomy, of how a rejection letter could make me feel better about my prospects as a career novelist, but it does.

I guess us writers are just strange like that.

Finished another short story today, my first piece of mainstream fiction, called "The Kid Pool." It’s a darkly funny piece with a wee bit of social commentary. As my first lit’ry story, I decided to submit it to one of the bigger, better known magazines – in this case, McSweeney’s.

If you haven’t heard of them, you should seriously consider checking them out. In addition to producing one of the most overt magazines, they have also published two wonderful short-stThe ory anthologies, easily identified by their deliciously pulpy cover art – McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. The latter is the book with the Joyce Carol Oates story I mentioned a few entries ago, "Fabled Light-house of Viña del Mar," as well as Stephen King’s latest short story, "Lisey and the Madman." In fact, all of the stories in both books are excellent, so get out there and pick them up!

I’m not sure if McSweeney’s will like "The Kid Pool," but I thought it might be right up their alley.

It would be ironic if this story ends up being the first one I sell, which then results in my going on to have a successful career as a writer of nongenre, mainstream fiction.

But as Bugs Bunny says, It’s a living.

Ian