It’s not writing related, but as a history buff I couldn’t help but acknowledge that today Vanity Fair magazine revealed that the Watergate informant known as Deep Throat was, in fact, W. Mark Felt, a former "number-two official" with the F.B.I.

Confirmation comes from reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who in addition to former Washington Post executive editor Benjamin C. Bradlee, were the only ones who knew Deep Throat’s true identity.

Back in the ’70s, Felt had been passed over for the position of director of the F.B.I. by Nixon while he was in office.

Payback’s a bitch, eh?

Ian

Howdy, gang. Sorry I haven’t updated much lately. Ever since I went on my internet fast I’ve been spending less time on journal entries and more time on short stories and my novel. But that’s a good thing, right?

My new novella, "17 Ashley Avenue," is drawing closer to completion. It’s the first in a series of ghost stories set in Toronto that I plan to write. It’s not a project I’m working on exclusively, nor are the stories themselves connected except by location, but it’s my hope that one day I’ll be able to publish them as a collection. I don’t know if there’s a market for Canadian horror fiction, much less one for Toronto horror fiction, but that’s not going to stop me from writing the stories. Whether or not anyone wants to read them is something I’ll find out later on.

I’m also working on outlines for some stories set in the Maritimes, chiefly in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. My mother and her family are from Cape Breton and I have fond memories of the few family trips I’ve made there. I have tentative plans to go back next year, which should give me the final push to get to work on these stories.

It may only be wishful thinking, but it would be funny if I ended up doing for the Maritimes what Stephen King did for New England. I’m not consciously trying to become "Canada’s Stephen King," a phrase about as dumb as "the future of horror," but writing horror fiction set against backdrops like Cape Breton and Newfoundland feels natural to me. It feels right.

Again, I don’t know if there is a market for such stories, but then who would’ve thought of New England as a setting for horror fiction before Stephen King came along?

Ian

Sort of in-between journal entries right now, but I got a new rejection to post on the website today and figured I should probably write something here at the same time.

I just finished reading the 10th Anniversary Edition of Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls, a very good book, Ms. Brite’s first, and in an edition that includes all kinds of nice extras. The one I found the most interesting was a collection of correspondence between Brite and the editor who eventually bought the book, with the two of them discussing points in the novel that may need to be changed, deleted, re-written, and so on. Very interesting to see this kind of insight into the creative process of a novel that did so well and launched a great career.

Right now I’m about one hundred pages into the Grant edition of Peter Straub’s Mrs. God, a very atmospheric novella about a university teacher who travels to an elite library in the gloomy woods of England to research a unique project. A very good read, so far.

On the writing front, I’m close to finishing a new short story that will be called either "17 Ashley Avenue" or simply "The House on Ashley Avenue." I’ve seen a lot of "The House on …" story names, so I’m leaning toward the former. Unless I can come up with something entirely different. Exciting stuff, I know. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Ian

I enjoy the work of Poppy Z. Brite, not just because she’s an excellent writer who isn’t afraid to write whatever she wants and not be pigeonholed by labels or genres, but also because we share so many of the same views on publishing and the so-called "horror community."

Reading the posts on her Live Journal is like catching up with an old friend. And while I have no delusions about ever being Ms. Brite’s friend, I thought it was particularly serendipitous the other day when I happened to read an entry on how she is banning herself from the internet. The post, which can be found by following this link and going to the May 2 entry, came at a time when I was preparing a journal entry to say the very same thing about myself.

Like Brite, I feel the internet is making me dumber, and I think it’s even harming my writing to a certain degree. Harming it in the sense that I spend too much time reading writer’s blogs and posting on writing message boards, even though I visit only a few blogs and post regularly on only one board. Still too much, my writing self says gruffly.

So I’m cutting out – or rather, I’m cutting it out; it being the internet. From this moment on, I’m going to use the web only for e-mail and the research and reference websites I’m already using to assist in my writing. The result should be an increase in my output and a decrease in distractions.

Yes, running a website could be considered a distraction, but only if I were using it as an interactive tool or if it were completely irrelvent to my work. I like to think of Lit Noir as a tool – my virtual writing desk, for lack of a better term. When I want to look something up, I go to the Links section instead of my web browser’s bookmarks. When I want to look up the status of one my stories, I go to the Stories section instead of rooting around in the Bermuda Triangle that is my filing cabinets. It makes life (and writing) easier.

So that’s it. No more surfing. They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. So maybe whatever doesn’t distract me will make my writing stronger.

It feels right. But, as usual, time will tell.

Ian