House of horror St. James bookstore specializes in spine-tinglers By: Ben Waldman Posted: 4:40 PM CST Thursday, Jan. 18, 2024

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This article was published 18/01/2024 (973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After several years working a humdrum job in finance, Winnipeg’s Chelsea McKee-Trenchard woke up to realize her dream job was one filled with the stuff of nightmares — ominous clouds, mysterious figures and cracked tombstones tilted askew in abandoned graveyards.

So last year, McKee-Trenchard, 37, decided to take a plunge into choppy waters, leaving her somewhat cushy career behind to enter the first phase of a corporate afterlife: opening an independent bookstore specializing in her favourite genre, horror.

“I always wanted to work in a bookstore as a retirement dream, and I realized I was done working in the corporate world for someone else,” she says from the sunny storefront of Raven’s End Books, which opened earlier this month at 1859 Portage Ave., in St. James.

“But the unique, niche thing I wanted to do wasn’t going to just come along. I had to make it happen myself.”

Raven’s End is only the second bookstore in the country dedicated to the horror genre, Mckee-Trenchard says, following Toronto’s Little Ghost Books. Despite the popularity of horror across media — in film, podcast and literary formats — the owner noticed it was exceedingly difficult to find horror books to purchase in local stores or take out from the library.

Sure, the big names — Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker and R.L. Stine — could be found without much trouble. But other writers McKee-Trenchard loves — Adam Neville, Paul Tremblay and Grady Hendrix — were often only available for purchase online. McKee-Trenchard, who wears raven earrings and kitten slippers in her store, is a reader who needs to peruse.

“It just seemed unfortunate,” she says. And not in the way the lifelong horror reader prefers. After discussing the lack of a local horror marketplace with her sister-in-law, McKee-Trenchard recognized a need in the city for customers looking for well-crafted frights on cold winter nights.

As a budding reader, McKee-Trenchard was a frequent visitor to Fear Street, Stine’s best-selling thoroughfare.

“I had visions of being a writer, recreating the work of R.L. Stine. I spent my recesses reading behind the doors, rather than being active, which is still absolutely what I would choose to do,” she says.

“But the unique, niche thing I wanted to do wasn’t going to just come along. I had to make it happen myself.”–Chelsea McKee-Trenchard

She favoured stories that were odd, macabre and teeming with murder. She even tried her hand at writing her own story, The Slumber Party Massacre.

“It was all murder, zero plot,” she laughs. “I gave it to my Grade 8 geography teacher Mr. Courchaine. It wasn’t an assignment, I just did it.”

Her literary aspirations led her to get a degree in film studies, followed by a bachelor’s degree in education. She spent a few years teaching before becoming a director of family services for Blackwood, a firm that works with multi-generational family companies. While there, she started volunteering with the Friends of the Winnipeg Library, which reminded her of her bookish ambitions.

After transitioning out of her job, McKee-Trenchard started putting together her business plan, contacting the owners of Little Ghost in Toronto and of Winnipeg’s dedicated mystery bookshop, Whodunit? Those owners encouraged her to not be afraid of entering the bookselling fray.

But McKee-Trenchard was continually confronted by those who insisted that horror was a genre best ignored. People kept telling her readers weren’t interested in gore.

“But horror is so much more than gore. A lot of people insisted there wasn’t a lot of interest and fixated on that taboo,” she says.

Within the horror community, though, Raven’s End is a welcome addition to Winnipeg’s bookselling universe.

“I think it could be a very important centre for readers, fans and writers to gather,” says horror author David Annandale, a senior instructor of literature, film and video games at the University of Manitoba.

Annandale, who has written nearly 50 books in the horror genre, says the category does struggle with respectability. In many bookstores, horror is relegated to a single shelf, he says.

With Raven’s End, “Books that otherwise might vanish in a big box store have a new chance of being seen,” he says.

 

“Books that otherwise might vanish in a big box store have a new chance of being seen.”–Horror author David Annandale

That’s McKee-Trenchard’s mission: increased visibility for the genre, its authors and, ultimately, its fans, who usually have to make special orders or spend months on library wait-lists for a chance to read a horror author’s latest.

Inside, Raven’s End doesn’t feel so scary.

“I wanted it to feel like an old, classic salon with none of the cobwebs,” McKee-Trenchard says.

She sits behind a giant oak desk. At the front of the store, customers can sit in a pair of stately wingback chairs. On the shelves are new books by Manitoba authors such as Chadwick Ginther (Graveyard Mind) and J.H. Moncrief (Those Who Came Before), plus a growing supply of used horror books. (Raven’s End buys them, too).

The store also has a Y.A. section, graphic novels and a number of books about witchcraft and the occult. The Art of Ectoplasm, a local hit edited by Serena Keshajvee, is prominently displayed. So too are several black-and-white photos of McKee-Trenchard’s family and her own life-like dolls.

“Most of the decor is from my house,” she says.

For now, the owner is focused on getting the word out about her shop, but plans for the future include silent book clubs (group reading events), craft nights and ghost story open mics.

Despite challenges faced by independent booksellers, McKee-Trenchard is optimistic her store will find its audience: she knows she can’t be the only one on the hunt for a spine-chilling story.

And although she’s scared of the ocean and outer space, she insists she isn’t afraid of taking a chance on her own dream career.

“I always like a story with a thrill,” she says.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com