So I’ve got some pretty huge news to report. My story, “The House on Ashley Avenue,” from my collection Every House Is Haunted, has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award in the novelette category!

The winners will be announced at Readercon in Burlington, Massachusetts — a convention I’ve been to many times before and count as one of my favourites — and I will definitely be attending this year.

I can’t describe how excited and how utterly and completely stunned I am right now. This nomination means so much to me on so many different levels. Not only is it the first time one of my stories has been nominated for an award, but the fact that it’s in honour of one of my favourite authors, one who has had a direct influence on my own work… well, I’m simply blown away.

And you know something? I truly, honestly don’t care if I win. It sounds like such a cliché, but it’s true. It really is an honour just to be nominated.

• Currently reading: John Dies at the End, by David Wong

So my book Every House Is Haunted has been out for about six months now. It wasn’t a best-seller and Hollywood hasn’t come by with a truck full of cash, but I’m still very proud of it. The book seems to be selling well, and while I may not be rich in terms of money, I definitely feel richer for the experience.

I’m not writing for a living just yet, but I still live to write every day. I’m currently finishing the rewrite on a sci-fi comedy that I’ve been pitching as “The X-Files” meets “Arrested Development,” and I’m working slowly but steadily on the first Felix Renn novel.

Some days the writing doesn’t come easily. The good days are good and the bad days are pretty damn bad. But I’m fairly certain this is normal for all writers.

Whenever I have doubts, or if I’m just feeling depressed in general about my writing career, I look at this picture and remember why I’m doing it in the first place.

I don’t do it for the money or the cred, not for the reviews or even the fans (although the ones I have are very much appreciated). I do it because I love it and I love her and nothing is better than seeing this expression on her face.

I’m very excited to announce that the anthology Shadows Edge is now available for pre-order. Edited by the multi-talented Simon Strantzas and published by Gray Friar Press, this book is sure to be a great one.

Here’s the cover and the table of contents:

“Echoland” — Joel Lane

“The Penury” — Michael Cisco

“Tinder Row” — Richard Gavin

“The Falling Dark” —Daniel Mills

“The Old Church” — Gary McMahon

“…he was water before he was fire…” —D. P. Watt

“False North” — Ian Rogers

“Morning Passages” —Lisa L. Hannett

“At the End of the World” — R. B. Russell

“Within One Ruined Realm” — W. H. Pugmire

“Stabilimentum” — Livia Llewellyn

“Some Other You” — Michael Kelly

“Lost in the Garden of Earthly Delights” — Steve Rasnic Tem

“The True Edge of the World” — Peter Bell

“Bor Urus” — John Langan

Between this line-up and the one for The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5, I have to say that I’m totally blown away by the truly incredible company I get to keep this year. It really is an honour to share a book with so many great authors whose work I not only enjoy, but has been an inspiration to my own writing.

I was going to discuss the scope of the book and what the stories are about, but my friend and fellow contributor Richard Gavin already beat me to it, and did a much better job than I ever could.

So visit his website for a very informative read on “numinous horror,” and then swing over to Gray Friar Press and pre-order a copy of Shadows Edge. You won’t be disappointed!

• Currently reading: Boneland, by Jeffrey Thomas

I’m excited and honoured to announce that my story, “The House on Ashley Avenue” (featured in my collection Every House Is Haunted), has been selected by Ellen Datlow for The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 5, due from Night Shade Books in June.

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.

2012 was a slow reading year for me. Probably on account of those two books I wrote and edited. By the end of the year, I’d read 44 novels, 17 novellas, and 93 short stories.

Once again, instead of limiting my lists of favourites to ten or fifteen titles, I’m putting down everything I liked. So here they are, my favourite reads, in no particular order. (As usual, not all of these were published in 2012.)

Favourite Novels

Chance — Robert B. Parker
The Goodbye Look — Ross Macdonald
Dead Bad Things — Gary McMahon
Sins of the Father — Lawrence Block
Eight Million Ways to Die — Lawrence Block
The Wind Through the Keyhole — Stephen King
Dead Harvest — Chris F. Holm
The Guardians — Andrew Pyper
The Long Lavender Look — John D. MacDonald
The Croning — Laird Barron
The Light Is The Darkness — Laird Barron
A Drink Before the War — Dennis Lehane
Darkness, Take My Hand — Dennis Lehane
Roadside Picnic — Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Elsewhere — William Peter Blatty
Monstrocity — Jeffrey Thomas
Everything Matters! — Ron Currie, Jr.
Already Gone — John Rector

Favourite Long Fiction / Novellas / Novelettes

Blackwood’s Baby — Laird Barron
The Siphon — Laird Barron
The Black Sun Set — Lee Thomas
All You Despise — Tom Piccirilli
This Little Light of Mine — Nate Southard
In the Tall Grass — Stephen King and Joe Hill
Alice Through the Plastic Sheet — Robert Shearman
Near Zennor — Elizabeth Hand

Favourite Short Stories

“Mrs. South” — Richard Gavin
“The Third Always Beside You” — John Langan
“Mr. Kneale” — Simon Strantzas
“Miri” — Steve Rasnic Tem
“Shelf-Life” — Lisa Tuttle
“Black Hill” — Orrin Grey
“Charcloth, Firesteel and Flint” — Caitlin R. Kiernan
“And Lead Us Not Into Penn Station” — Amy Hempel
“On the Mountain” — John Mantooth
“Our Town’s Monster” — Paul Tremblay
“Almost, Majic Man, Posters and Doors That Never Lock” — Chesya Burke
“The Jew of Prague” — Nicholas Kaufmann

• Currently reading: Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, by Sara Gran

A couple years back I thought about stopping these year-end reviews. I believe my reasoning at the time was that not much was happening in my writing career of late, so who needed yet another struggling writer summing up what amounted to a whole lot of nothing?

Well, as it turned out, 2012 finally gave me something to talk about. A few things, actually.

The biggest event of the year was without a doubt the publication of my first book, Every House Is Haunted. A year and a half had passed between the time of the book’s acceptance at the World Horror Convention in Austin, Texas, and its publication, but my excitement certainly hadn’t waned.

There are so many memories of this experience I will cherish forever. The party thrown for me by my good friend Michael Rowe. The photos posted by family and friends of my book in stores across the country. My first reviews in publications like Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. And of course, holding the book in my hands for the very first time.

This milestone was followed closely, figuratively and literally, by the publication of SuperNOIRtural Tales, the first collection of Felix Renn stories. Composed of reprints and one very long new tale, “The Brick,” the collection served as a nice companion piece to Every House Is Haunted.

The support for both books has been tremendous, and I’d like to thank everyone who has bought one or both of them, posted reviews, recommended them to friends, and so on. In this day and age when it seems like everyone and their dog has a book out, it can be extremely difficult for one’s voice to be heard. If my career received any kind of bump forward this past year, it’s because of you.

I only attended two conventions in 2012, but they were both goodies. The first was the Wizard World Toronto Comic Con, to which I was invited as a guest. I had my own table, set up directly across from Amy Acker, which I certainly didn’t mind. I sold a lot of books and met a lot of great people. The other con was the World Fantasy Convention, which ended up being the best convention I’ve ever been to. This was due in large part to the launch of Every House Is Haunted, which took place at a room party held by ChiZine Publications. There was also a number of excellent readings and panels, and hanging out with new friends and old friends. WFC is definitely a con I plan to attend again in the future.

The year ended with a whimper instead of a bang. The whimper was a tired one, the result of almost two straight months of promoting my books. Of course, the promo never really ends, but the initial hoopla has come to an end, and boy am I exhausted.

Now it’s time to crawl back into my cave and get to work on the next book, which will be the first Felix Renn novel. As such, I suspect 2013 will be a much quieter year for me than 2012. A year spent behind the scenes, as it were, writing books and hopefully selling them. Getting an agent would be nice, too. I’ll do my best to check in every now and then to let you all know what’s going on.

See you on the flip-flop.

Another big review came in recently, this one from Library Journal. Here’s what they had to say:

From “Aces,” a chilling tale of siblings Tobias and Soelle, whose relationship revolves around the possibility that Soelle possesses magical powers that Tobias can’t always explain away, to the palpable yet subtle terror contained within the tale of an aging couple’s fading memories (“The Candle”), the 22 stories in Rogers’s debut collection demonstrate the author’s talent for finding the terrifying in the seemingly ordinary. Arranged in sections that correspond to rooms in a house (The Vestibule; The Library; The Attic; The Den; and The Cellar), the stories comprise a guided tour of homes, lighthouses, cabins, and other buildings, while recognizing that the true hauntings are found within the human psyche. VERDICT: This work of classic horror in the style of Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, and early Stephen King should attract fans of a more refined kind of horror.

Not too shabby, eh? Check out some other reviews of the book at EveryHouseIsHaunted.com.

Also, while all the craziness with Every House Is Haunted has been going on, another book has come out, a collection of Felix Renn stories called SuperNOIRtural Tales. You can find out more about it at TheBlackLands.com.