Ian Rogers is a writer, photographer, artist, graphic designer, and web developer. At the age of twelve, his comic strip “Styx & Stone” was a regular feature of the Whitby Free Press. He has written film and book reviews for print and online publications, created a film-study website that received a favourable review in Entertainment Weekly, and worked in radio broadcasting as guest co-host of “Strange Days… Indeed” on NewsTalk 1010 CFRB Toronto. He has also worked as webmaster for the award-winning horror-fiction website Chizine.com. Ian has published stories in markets such as Cemetery Dance, Shadows & Tall Trees, Broken Pencil, and Supernatural Tales. His stories have also appeared in several anthologies. He is the author of the Felix Renn series of supernatural-noirs (“supernoirturals”), including “Black-Eyed Kids” from Burning Effigy Press. A website devoted to this series can be found at TheBlackLands.com. His first book, a collection of dark fiction called “Every House Is Haunted,” will be published in October 2012 from ChiZine Publications. A collection of Felix Renn stories called “SuperNOIRtural Tales” will follow in November 2012 from Burning Effigy Press. Ian lives with his wife, Kathryn, in Peterborough, Ontario.
Every House is Haunted by Ian Rogers
Ian Rogers must love Shirley Jackson, for his stories are often like hers, gentle on the surface, but with a knife thrust from below. In Every House is Haunted, his debut collection, Rogers writes about haunted houses, yes, but more often about haunted people, or shadows of people. Rogers sometimes has trouble finding appropriate endings, but his stories are always engaging.
The collection is divided into sections named for rooms in a house: the vestibule, the library, the attic, the den, and the cellar. There is not often a relationship between the tale and the room in which one finds it, however. "Aces," the first story in the collection, is an example; it hasn’t got a darned thing to do with a vestibule. It is about Soelle, a girl who indirectly kills a classmate and has no guilt or sorrow over the act. She just wants her confiscated tarot cards returned to her. She talks about ... Read More
