After Enter, Night was out and doing well, ChiZine asked me what I wanted to do next, and I told them about the book that eventually became Wild Fell. It was in gestation for so long that my best friend Ron Oliver, who is a film director and notorious wag and wit, started to refer to it as Darkwing Duck. I was entranced by the line, “Darkling I listen and, for many a time/I have been half in love with easeful Death,” since the theme of being in love with death, or at least having a relationship with Death (certainly in a metaphorical sense through the protagonist’s relationship with the haunting) is very much a theme in the novel. At one point, the working title was Darkling I Listen from the poem “Ode to a Nightingale” by Keats.

I’d had the idea of this ghost story for a number of years, though it went through all sorts of variations in my mind, and in my notes, since the early 1990s. MR: I was actually in discussions with ChiZine about my second novel before Enter, Night came out.

JKM: Please tell me how Wild Fell came about. MR: I hadn’t! But let’s be very clear: the lyrics are for “Enter Night,” not “Enter, Night.” I claim authorial ownership of the title based on that all-important comma! You might like it since you entitled your first novel Enter, Night.

JKM: Have you seen the video for Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” which features the lyrics “enter, night”? If not, here it is for your perusal. Moran describes Rowe as a “gentleman of the highest order” who “wields a darkly wicked sense of humour and a rapier wit.” Moran, who once interviewed Rowe for Daily Xtra, chatted with him by email earlier this summer. Wild Fell was a finalist for this year’s Shirley Jackson Award as part of a lineup which included Joyce Carol Oates and Andrew Pyper. He published his second novel, Wild Fell, in 2013, also with ChiZine, to further acclaim. Rowe called Enter, Night his unabashed 1970s vampire novel. Some big names in the horror field took note, notably Clive Barker, who hailed Rowe in 2002 as having “changed forever the shape of horror fiction.” Rowe published his first novel, Enter, Night, with ChiZine Publications in 2011, garnering critical praise and a Sunburst Award nomination. The stories (predominantly written by het writers, ironically) spotlighted queer protagonists. In addition, Rowe created and edited the Queer Fear series, which changed the landscape of horror fiction. He was the first-tier Canadian correspondent for Fangoria for seventeen years. Michael Rowe is an award-winning Toronto journalist, essayist, and novelist. Michael Rowe’s “Wild Fell” was nominated for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award.

Wild fell michael rowe