Moran lives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinabe Algonquin Nation, now called Ottawa.
Q: How long have you been in Ottawa, and what first brought you here?
I came to Ottawa in the fall of 1992 to start university, majoring in journalism with a minor in film studies at Carleton University. Oh … so that’s what, 30 years, give or take, between stints crossing the country and living in London, England? Ottawa seemed not too far from home, Cornwall, but far enough to get away and grow up and hopefully self-realize. I knew I wanted to write but was unsure of what form that career or calling would take.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community here?
Let me unpack this in two bits. First …
Q: How did you first get involved in writing?
I first got into writing about the time I could put words to paper.
In about grade two, at Central Public School, a rough-and-tumble early 1980’s time for primary schooling in Cornwall, the teacher, Mrs. Bartle, had us tell her a story and handwrote each one on oversized foolscap, which she posted around the classroom. After that, I got into writing loving pastiches of Star Wars or the 1958 creature feature The Blob or superhero stories, as I was reading comics as a kid, much of The Incredible Hulk and Superboy and World’s Finest and Legion of Super-Heroes.
I would recast all the characters with my friends. There was me co-piloting the Millennium Falcon with my classmates. Then there was me as Captain Marvel with Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Junior fighting the teachers who were trying to take over our minds using fluoride (daily fluoride rinsing was a daily school routine in the early 1980’s in Cornwall). Then there was me as Superboy with my gang of secret superhero chums. I always ground these stories with my pals (and sometime enemies) as characters and shamelessly borrowed the fantastical mythos that I enjoyed. Now they call it fan fiction. Then, we just called it having fun, like playing with the toys.
By grade eight and nine, I wrote my first “novel,” which I finished longhand on foolscap in a nearly illegible HB-pencil scrawl. Some might argue my penmanship hasn’t changed that much. It totaled about 125 pages, soaking wet, between typed and handwritten pages. The novel was about a darkness that falls over my hometown. Me and my grade eight buddies, holed up in our grade school, fight off monstrosities coming out of that darkness. And a lot of us don’t make it out. It was my riff on Stephen King’s novella The Mist (I had discovered his Skeleton Crew and Graveyard Shift collections in grade eight, for which Mr. McDiarmid, my grade-eight English teacher, singled me out in class as having an advanced reading level. Like I wasn’t having enough trouble with the regular bullies and tormentors who saw my last name as mockable with a sample misspelling). So, “Darkness” was a sort of coda to grade eight, I realize now. I didn’t, then. A few in my circle of friends went off to different high schools. We were all growing up.
My writing flourished in high school, encouraged by English teacher after English teacher thrilled to see a student attacking assignments with aplomb and going well beyond the curriculum just to write (I was penning short stories all the time, reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five in grade nine to see what all the fuss was about). I was also under the undue influence of King, of course, but Ray Bradbury, J. R. R. Tolkien, Clive Barker, and poets e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, and Al Purdy. In grade eleven, at age 17, I began writing a novel, The Train of the Damned, with a mentor and friend. He started a fantasy novel. We would trade chapters once a week and write each other a fresh chapter. Hugh wanted a postmodern fantasy yarn, and I was locking into Lord of the Ringsesque tone, and we never finished it. But the train book, we did. For the next 15 years, I would revise and rewrite it until it became my first novel, Town & Train. In grade thirteen, I submitted my draft of Train as my Independent Study project, a nascent draft that my teacher Elaine MacDonald was kind but merciless to in her critique. By then, I discovered the whole raft of Beat Generation writers. And so continued my love affair of literary, genre, and poetry writing across the board.
… and then this bit …
Q: and subsequently, the writing community here?
In third-year university, I attended a reading at the National Library because someone I was dating wanted to go (when I was completely unsure of my writing at the time). Local fantasy novelist Charles de Lint was reading from his new book involving a painter character. I mention my date because they wore a black beret, so it was accidentally a very bohemian scene to an outside observer. I had never read de Lint but whilst I was imbibing during my first year at the Rusty Pelican at Bank and Sunnyside (long before it was reborn as Patty's Pub), a local mentioned his work. At de Lint’s National Library reading, an impressive crowd attended, with certainly more than 50 of us. He did a great job, too. I was also impressed by his references to an Ottawa-that-was-not-Ottawa in his books.
The other reading series I found during my late university days in about 1995, bravely on my own, was at Zaphod Beeblebrox, a nightclub in the ByWard Market. On that particular Sunday afternoon, the venue was tumble-weed-rolling-deserted early, with the ever-present fug of stale beer rising from the sticky floors. I remember even calling the organizer beforehand to do some sort of reconnaissance. He disabused me of any notions that beat poetry was the only thing the series offered because while beat poetry was often about “chicks and dope”, he insisted his reading series held a broader view of things. At the reading, I recall hearing poetry being read about ruminations on intercity bus rides and hangovers and love affairs.
(Editor’s note: Since writing the above, I confirmed that this was the Vogon Reading Series run by none other than Warren Dean Fulton, whom I spoke to beforehand. He even recalls our phone conversation, which is no surprise, given the local media coverage of the series at the time. Ottawa Xpress, a free local entertainment weekly, had recently interviewed him. Warren mentioned beat writers, sort of to his chagrin, because the reporter focused on that topic and as a result, Warren had since received lot of callers asking about beat-writer content at Vogon.)
Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all?
I eventually connected with, and found, my people, whether they were poets or spec-fic writers or lit’ writers. Bear with me for a moment, please.
In high school, I started attending short-story workshops, run by Robert McLeod at Glengarry District High School, and even once, I sat in the Tri-Country writers’ group. There, I was the only person there under 30. I workshopped “Showdown”, about two writers, avatars for Ray Bradbury and Hemingway, having a writing duel in the street to see who was the better.
Through Mr. McLeod’s workshops, I met a certain “Robbie” McLennan (who only had medium-length hair) when I was in grade nine. Robbie was ahead of me by a few years. We sat around the table in a room (at the Civic Complex that fall for some reason) where he workshopped a short story. His “The Basic Canadian Short Story” went on to win the Carleton University writing contest for high-school kids. If a young writer showed some promise in their work, Robert always recommended that they submit their story to the contest. Wes Smiderle, an Ottawan I was yet to meet, also made an honourable mention in Carleton’s contest later in my high-school career. I myself placed as an honourable mention in Teen Generation Magazine’s national short-story contest for my sci-fi piece, “Migremation Complication”, a cautionary environmental tale, which I workshopped either when I met this Robbie, or shortly thereafter. My grade eleven French teacher, who also taught English, had my story copies on larger sheets and displayed on the bulletin board in our school library, alongside the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder article in which local staff Sultan Jess interviewed this kid about his story.
Fast-forward to Ottawa in the late 1990’s. I have finished my university degree. I’m working various private-and-public sector jobs, mainly in communications. Just before returning to Ottawa, living in my hometown post-university, I ran two short-story workshops of my own at my alma mater, St. Lawrence High School, in about ’96-’97. But in Ottawa, I decided to explore a Sunday reading at the Dunvegan Pub in Sandy Hill again, insisting on going it. Perhaps in my romantic imagination, I considered myself a rogue?
As I nursed a hangover (typical of one such as myself in my early twenties on a Sunday), Lynne Alsford, one of the organizers of the Sasquatch Reading Series, announced, “Attention, everyone, rob mclennan is in the building. He will be reading in the open mic.”
My surly and muttered response was, “Who the fuck is rob mclennan?” I was riffing on the opening line of Blake Nelson’s novel, Exile, about a self-styled downtown Baudelaire whose career is on a downswing. And also, I had no idea who this rob was. Until he read in the open mic. I recall rob reading from stanzas about flashes of light and colour, and about moving downhill through his neighhourhood (Ed. note: I wanna say along Booth Street). I recognized him, but it had been five or six years, so I didn’t quite make the connection, and he had grown his hair out significantly.
After that, I became curious, continuing my furtive forays into readings, mainly on my own, such as ghost-story readings and poetry readings, but I didn’t know anyone else at them, and wasn’t really connecting with other audience members.
Then I lived in London, England, for eight months in ’98, working at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, writing a case study for creating a Commonwealth Studies unit at the university. Being 25 on my own for the entire time, except for one Canadian friend who visited (thanks, Steve Blois!), I proved a prodigious drinker and carouser in Soho and the gay/theatre district of Old Compton Street. But I also had the reading-series bug. So, I inspected reading series in Old Blighty, from poetry slams to open mics, becoming a regular fixture at the Poetry Café in Soho hosted by a certain John Q. Citizen, an affable rhyming poet who looked sort of like a cross between Elvis Costello and Moby. There, I met other Canadian expats, but also many other local regulars, from Americans to Brits to Scottish to Irish and got to hear their works-in-progress. I remember that time very fondly, as an expat. I wrote short stories the morning before hopping on the bus and then the tube to get to work, including the first draft of A Canadian Ghost in London, which appears in my short-story collection Fear Itself, just out from Lethe Press.
I returned to Canada in December ’98, with a renewed interest in local readings, and sought them out. So began my sojourns to the Tree Reading Series, the Dusty Owl Reading Series, the factory reading series, Sasquatch, the Ottawa International Writing Festival. I even organized a few reading events along the way such as at Screaming Mimi’s, a queer-run café on Bank St. that lasted a hot minute. In my travels around town, I renewed my acquaintance with rob. We eventually figured out we knew each other from before. (Ed. note: Which is kind of hilarious that we didn’t immediately recognize each other from Cornwall.) And rob also presumed I was gay because I was always drinking at the affectionately nicknamed Skid Oak (Ed. note: The Royal Oak Pub at Bank and MacLaren; where else?) with my roommate Stefan. Stef and I were admittedly spending a lot of time together, either sweeping out the stands at JetForm Park, where he was supervisor, sharing an apartment in a high rise on Baywater Ave., or drinking together. rob was close, but no cigar (spoiler alert: I’m bi). Stef and I were simply fast friends. However, in rob’s defense, he always saw us carousing together.
But getting to know rob again, instead of as simply as the clever older kid across the workshop table, was a joy (He had a kid and everything! From high school! Gasp!). He would be writing in Dunkin’ Donuts on Bank St. when I walked by. He would be writing in the Skid Oak. To paraphrase Churchill—he would be writing in the streets; he would be writing in the ditches; he would never surrender his writing vocation. So, this was rather striking. Who the hell was this working poet? If rob was writing with someone else, I would try harder to leave him be. I mention him so much because rob should come with a warning label (perhaps several?). He’s admittedly a gateway drug into Ottawa’s writing community and CanLit poetry in general. Rob also deserves kudos for encouraging so many other writers, believing in them, fostering them and publishing them. As well, he struck me as an ardent, artful conversationalist and a prolific drinker. I endearingly considered him “rob, the Walking Event”, because of his public-writing sessions and the reading events he continually organized, and the above/ground poem leaflets he would press into your hands whether or not you wanted them. above/ground just turned 30 last fall. Does anyone else know of a poet, editor, organizer, and publisher who has been at it for over 30 years in the nation’s capital? Through rob, I met so many other writers, from Laurie Anne Fuhr, Stephen Brockwell, Stephanie Bolster, and Neil and Sean and Kira and Thea of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, where I began volunteering as well.
Because of him, and regular attendee Zachary Houle’s urging, I took over the Tree Reading Series in 1999 when the director, distracted by doing a PhD, simply stopped showing up. I asked the audience, in mid-January 2000, if they minded if I took over the series, and did anyone want to help? Darry Wright came up to me afterwards and volunteered immediately.
Not long after, rob formed an informal writers’ group, including beloved best friend Clare Latremouille, jwcurry, Stephen Brockwell and Bruce Harding. That same night we all met, I met a certain AJ Dolman, who eventually had a tremendous impact on my life. Harding, at our first meeting, was a little shell-shocked by his son having just come out of the closet to him earlier that day. The group was nameless at first. We did imbibe generously (as was the usual protocol) and one evening, we all wore silly hats at Claire’s insistence. Not long after these shenanigans, we met at AJ’s, a line up an pile of possessions, an estate, really, from clothes to boxes of various and sundry, stood along the curb in front of AJ’s apartment on Metcalfe across from the Museum of Nature. Obviously, someone had passed away or was evicted suddenly. rob found a pillow, a lavender one embroidered with The Peter F. Yacht Club. He searched for any information about this elusive PFYC in vain. However, he liked the name very much and thus christened our group the Peter F. Yacht Club. The name stuck.
And while we were yachting, the Tree Reading Series was a boon to everyone involved, in my opinion, from scribblers daring to stand up for the open mic set to established writers, to scribes just getting their chops. I ran it with Jennifer Mulligan, Darryl Wright, Kerry McNulty, Zachary Houle, Matt Peake and Chris Krepski over five years. In the audience, there was Wes Smiderle, Kate Heartfield, Jim Larwill, Michael Blouin, Sylvie Hill, Bob Mosurinjohn, Pearl Pire, Amanda Earl, Charles Earl, John Buja, Steve Zytveld now Deacon Steve), Cathy Zytveld, Tanis, Johnson, Grant Wilkins, Pam Bentley, Kris Northey, Suki Lee, Baird McNeill, and many others. We would often overlap with the Sasquatch organizers and regulars who attended, including Colin Morton, Juan O’Neill, and so many others! I hope I didn’t miss anyone. If so, apologies. And my thanks. Many of us went on to publish poetry, short fiction and novels.
A free series, Tree had a democratic open mic, followed by a featured writer. Anyone could read in the open mic. I always applauded anyone who had the guts to get up there. I still do, at any open mic set, anywhere. They deserve the applause, and your attention. I heard a lot of open mic readers, and dozens of featured readers. In the open mic, I read a lot of my poetry, much of it published eventually, and what would become my debut horror novel Town & Train. I also read several early drafts of the stories featured in my first short-story collection Fear Itself, just out from Lethe Press. I went through jobs and loves and affairs (torrid would not be an understatement) and experiences while running Tree. But the conversations, the feedback, the carousing after the readings, was all convivial and energizing—in short, Tree was a changing experience for me and hopefully for many.
Q: What do you see happening here that you don’t see anywhere else?
Good question. I don’t know about other major Canadian cities, but there is a vast and wide and supportive writing community here. For the most part, I think the community welcomes newcomers. Like any family, we have our share of disagreements, but there is also widespread collaboration and support. Ottawa’s writing community remains vibrant, organic, changing, almost imperceptibly, over time. Reading series and events come and go while some, like Tree, trade stewardship every few years and continue well into their forties. The stalwarts, from walking events such as rob, or organizers seasoned and green, or impassioned magazines such as Arc: Canada’s Poetry Magazine, step up regularly to organize readings. Some lie dormant and rise again, as the Canadian Conference on Speculative Fiction (Can*Con). I’ve been a part of this life cycle of readings and events and will likely be again.
However, I remain a stalwart supporter of events when I can do so. I also support my peers as much as I can, mainly with my writers’ groups, the Little Workshop of Horrors where we carve speculative fiction and poetry into the shape it is meant to be, or Queer Speculations, which workshops 2SLGBTQ+ or works from far and wide, or simply aspiring to be a mensch in person.
Q: What does Ottawa provide, or allow?
Venues to find writerly folks and a stack of events to choose from attending and a raft of possible publication venues, from the grassroots level to respectable pay markets. I come from a long tradition of chatty, friendly writers who organize events or workshop their writing or simply bring people into the group. It’s a thing I do; I bring people into the fold, when I can, and see how it all plays out. That person sitting in the back could Michael Blouin. Maybe they have a stack of stories and books under their belt but have remained unpublished for over a decade and are attending Tree just to keep their hand in the open-mic set (true story). On that note, I like to think that Ottawa’s reading series and organizers provide an open door into the literary community. What people want to do when they get there is often up to them. They can be event volunteers, readers, avid fans, prospective authors, budding poets, new emerging novelists or simply enthusiasts.
Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements here?
Most of them!
So, my time with Tree, the Peter F. Yacht Club, and these above writers’ groups I founded have all had tremendous influence in the development of my work, whether it was poetry I tested out in open mics as in the earlier days, short stories that are now in Fear Itself, or excerpts of what would become my novel Town & Train, read at the Blue Monday Reading Series or other venues. All of the exposure of my work, the kicking of the tires, so to speak, and the drive to develop other writers’ ideas and craft and ultimately push their work out in the world, has had an untold impact on my own writing across the board. I hope that members from my writers’ groups and reading series feel the same.
In short, it’s a conversation. It keeps going. And, along the way, the result of these conversations sees print. Poems, short stories, novellas, novelettes, novels, and essays, oh my!
Q: How have the city and its community, if at all, changed the way you approached your work?
In 2012, I founded the Little Workshop of Horrors, an Ottawa writers’ group that carves speculative and literary work into the shape it is meant to be. I also run Queer Speculations, which workshops 2SLGBTQ+ or queer-themed stories from far and wide.
Often, audience members or other authors would give me invaluable immediate feedback, such as when I read from an abandoned novel, “Closeted”, at the Dusty Owl Reading Series at The Elmdale House Tavern and prefaced this by saying I couldn’t place my first horror novel and had started this one, which involved the protagonist crying openly in solitude, pondering why men needed a deeply seated motivation to cry. Phil Jenkins told me afterwards that there was no reason this excerpted novel shouldn’t be published.
At an early-days outing at Tree or Sasquatch Reading Series, I read some Kerouac in the open mic set and, in my excitement, hastened through the run-on sentences. Open-set regular Baird McNeill approached me afterwards with unsolicited advice, urging me to slow down in my reading. Later on, he also told me that a scene with my hungover Det. Mackenzie character simultaneously drinking water, taking some acetaminophen, drinking coffee, from Train, was overbaked.
Of course, rob mclennan continually inundated me with a fairy infinite list of poets to read as well, and suggested Tree readers, so there was no shortage of poets to read, and there still isn’t.
Often, whether reading poetry or prose, others encouragement to keep going. At the time, I might have forgotten that I was a writer, or fallen out of faith, but others hadn’t. So, then I kept going instead of stopping with the writing.
Q: What are you working on now?
Topmost thing is working with voice actor and playwright Gavin Annette on completing the audio version of my Lethe Press short-story collection Fear Itself. We have a routine down, and it’s going well, and it is often amazing to hear an actor interpreting my stories.
I’ve returned to revising my second horror novel, Monstrous, which has had its ups and downs these past few years.
As the title belies, the novel is about monsters and human monsters who are arguably even worse than monsters. Monstrous occurs 25 years after Town & Train and involves some of Train’s characters. It’s not a sequel, but a whole other story. In Monstrous, a disparate group of characters, from seeming drifter John Newman to expat and feared ghost-hunter Sara Jasmine to Scottish warlock Miguel MacIntyre to queer student Dave and his bestie Joshua to conspiracy-theorist Dwight, is summoned to the opening of a codicil, or the alteration to a will, by William McMammon 5 at a retrofitted inn near Picton County. What William reveals in the codicil changes things inalterably for all of them. It’s not safe for William or any of this seemingly unrelated circle of people at the inn, who were called there for a reason. Monstrous is about the past and how we can move forward from it, carry it with us, or let it go. And of course, there are gothic horror elements, including my hermit character Drake, wandering around small-town Brandon at night with his silver-strung guitar. There’s a gothic small-town feel with Brandon (loosely based on Cornwall), storied characters, and plentiful flashbacks from a pivotal event in 1989 that altered all my protagonists’ lives. There’s a mythology underpinning this narrative and it’s taken me some time to make sure the current storyline is as rich as the flashback storyline. But it’s getting there.
I’m very tempted to do a blog post in the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut’s direct dialogue with his characters. My characters would all be standing around after the codicil reveal, outside the Auld Dubliner Inn, looking at one another questioningly. Then they would turn to me, imploringly, waiting for me to revise their next scene and next scene and next scene.
I’m also working on something for local publisher Renaissance Press. Can’t say much about it, except that it too is a gothic project. It’s about a well-known folk tale set not far off from the Hudson River.
In addition, I have a stack of short story ideas that demand development. Been meaning to get to them. I have also been meaning to revive either my Little Workshop of Horrors or Queer Speculations writers’ group for over a year. But I have been swept up with grief (a death in the family in November 2022), a new job and revising my short-story collection Fear Itself.
As well, I have enough short stories in my workshop to assemble another collection. Looking around for a market. It would be another mix of not only horror, sci-fi, and fantasy pieces, like in my brand-new collection Fear Itself (from Lethe Press), but also some literary pieces.
Recently, I have returned to penning poetry. (I decided, some years back, to only do poetry when I thought I had something to say. That has resulted in an on-off relationship with the idea of writing poetry, but suffice to say that with enough self-doubt, lack of focus, grief, and sadness behind me already, I am tentatively trying poetry again.)
I have an ongoing project called To The Young Men of Cornwall, where I write poems—eulogies, really—about the series of untimely deaths of guys I knew who were about my age in 2012. There was a tragic motorcycle accident in San Francisco, a death from drunkenly fishing off the coast of B.C., a tragic bicycle accident in Iraq, a heart attack, and others. It was a bad year for many people I knew, and one of them I didn’t even like (they died from brain cancer). I have drafted and even finished several of these poems. One, “At the corner of Pitt and First, where I Last spoke to J.P.” appeared in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Anthology from Mansfield Press. Another poem is currently out as a submission.
So … I circle back to Young Men so often. It’s fairly heavy. Amanda Earl has strongly encouraged me to keep at it.
For freelance writing (I’m also a part-time journalist), I’ve been doing book reviews for Strange Horizons Magazine and Arc: Canada’s Poetry Magazine. I will also soon review Daniel Allen Cox’s new memoir, I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah's Witness for Canada’s only queer literary magazine.
So, that is what’s on my writer’s desk right now.
And thank you so much for this interview.
