Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 10

Death’s Garden contributor: Francesca Maria

Francesca Maria is a member of my local Horror Writers Association chapter, but we haven’t yet met in person. I’m hoping to pick up a copy of her Black Cat Chronicles comic book at the Bay Area Book Festival in May.

Officially, Francesca Maria has been penning horror stories since she was able to pick up a pen and write, at the age of six. This fascination with horror was spurred by her insatiable need to uncover what was haunting her childhood home – a need that continues to this day. She’s the author of the Black Cat Chronicles comic. You can follow her work at francescamaria.com/.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

I love to take in the beauty of cemeteries: the cold, inert stone structures of the various tombs, mixed with vibrant green grass, trees, and nature. It creates the perfect balance between life and death.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

My absolute favorite is Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. Not only is there incredible history buried within its hallowed grounds: Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Georges Bizet to name a few, but there lies an incredible array of magnificent tombstones, monuments, and statues all surrounded by sweeping trees and cobblestoned paths. When I meander through the grounds, I feel like I’ve been transported into another world, as if the world outside its gates no longer exists.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

I have always wanted to check out the burial site in Graceland, home to the King of Rock and Roll – Elvis. His entire home is a mausoleum dedicated to his legacy. There’s something special, magical even, about his life and career and it would be a thrill to walk where he walked and soak in his energy.

If you have any say in the matter, what would your epitaph be?

I’m not your stepping stone.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

“Pet Sematary” by the Ramones.

Loren again: The Kickstarter for Death’s Garden Revisited is winding down now. You can preorder a copy for yourself until April 16. This beautiful full-color book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out here — and please share this link with your cemetery-loving friends: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

Death’s Garden contributor: Trish Wilson

Six years ago, Trish Wilson’s alter-ego Elizabeth Black interviewed me about about my work on CemeteryTravel.com and the Death’s Garden project I’d started putting together on the final episode of her podcast The Women Show. She went on to contribute two essays to Cemetery Travel. One of them, her piece about visiting Edgar Allan Poe’s grave as an inquisitive child, will appear in Death’s Garden Revisited.

Trish Wilson, using the pen name E. A. Black, has written horror for numerous anthologies including Zippered Flesh 2, From The Depths, Wicked Women: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers, Teeming Terrors, The Horror Zine’s Book of Ghost Stories, and more. Using her real name, Trish Wilson, she is the Media Director for The Horror Zine. Check out her website at http://eablack-writer.blogspot.com.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

I don’t hang out in cemeteries, but if I did, here is what I would love to do: Drink champagne with my husband and friends at night and look at the stars. It’s even better if there is a meteor shower. We’d enjoy a picnic and watch the heavens.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

Obviously, based upon my article, my favorite cemetery is the one at Westminster Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Edgar Allan Poe and his wife Virginia are buried there. It’s customary to leave a penny on the grave monument.

My other favorite cemetery is the one in Druid Ridge in Pikesville, Maryland (just outside Baltimore), the home of the statue Black Aggie. This statue is a life-sized figure (presumed to be female) of a seated woman dressed in a shroud. As far back as the 1960s (possibly earlier), rumors abound about that statue. Her eyes glowed red at night. If you returned her gaze, you were struck blind. Pregnant women crossing her shadow miscarried. If you said her name three times, she’d slash your face. Grass refused to grow around her.

I later discovered this very statue at the Dolly Madison House in Washington, D. C. She was stunning – and spooky. According to legend, if you left coins in her palms you’d have good luck. I left a coin. What is it about coins and gravestones?

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia. I want to see the Bird Girl statue that appears on the cover of the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I own a replica of this statue. She’s called “Little Wendy.”

I also would love to see the catacombs beneath Paris. Then there is Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Oscar Wilde is buried. I read he haunts the place. It would awesome to run into his ghost and hang out with him.

It would be great to visit the cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana, where voodoo queen Marie Laveau is buried.

I live in Massachusetts where there are all kinds of burying grounds that date back to the 1600s. I’d love to make rubbings of the tombstones and their symbolic carvings.

If you have anything to say about it, what would your epitaph be?

God, this is Trish Wilson. Try to not piss her off. (Apologies to the movie City Slickers LOL)

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

I don’t have a favorite song of that sort, but I love to listen to dark ambient music, which is perfect for cemeteries. It’s also perfect as background music while I’m writing horror. I’d recommend “Stalker” and “The Place Where the Black Stars Hang” by Lustmord. I also recommend “Nostromo” by Sleep Research Facility. Redshift is more good dark ambient music. I also enjoy Philip Glass. Then there are movie soundtracks like Jerry Goldsmith’s “Alien” and Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho” and “Vertigo.” I like creepy music, which is perfect for cemeteries.

The Death’s Garden Revisited Kickstarter is in its final 10 days now. After the book reached its initial funding goal in 8 hours, it’s available for preorder. This beautiful full-color book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out — and please consider pre-ordering a copy for yourself: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

Death’s Garden Party

No joke!

Tomorrow, Saturday April 2, I’ll be hosting a party on Facebook from Noon to 3:00 PM Pacific to celebrate the successful Kickstarter for Death’s Garden Revisited.

Some of the contributors will stop by to discuss their favorite cemeteries and the stories they added to the book. There will be cemetery-focused prizes and lots of like-minded souls.

Make yourself a cup of tea or pour a glass of cordial and join us at the Cemetery Travel page on Facebook. Here’s the direct link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1416064368811830

Death’s Garden contributor Rena Mason

I’m pretty sure I met Rena Mason at one of the World Horror Conventions back in the day, but I got to know her in 2012 when we both attended the Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat. I was honored to edit one of her incredible horror stories for the Horror Mansion Project: Year Two.

Rena and I both wrote f0r the Horror Writers Association’s monthly newsletter. I wrote about cemeteries, of course, and Rena wrote about her travels. The piece she has in Death’s Garden Revisited is expanded from one of her HWA columns. It’s about the Hill Church Cemetery in Sighisoara, Romania.

Rena Mason is an American horror author of Thai-Chinese descent and the Bram Stoker Award® winning author of The Evolutionist and The Devil’s Throat, as well as a 2014 Stage 32/The Blood List Search for New Blood Quarter-Finalist. She currently resides in the great Pacific Northwest with her family. Learn more about her work at https://www.facebook.com/rena.mason/

Her newest book is Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, which will be out in July.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Sit on a bench.

I love that! That plays a large part in your essay. If you have anything to say about it, what would your epitaph be?

I’m to be cremated and my ashes spread in the South Pacific, but I like the quote, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”― Carl Sagan

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

I don’t know if it’s specifically about a graveyard, but I like “The Kill” (Bury Me, Bury Me) by 30 Seconds to Mars.

I added it to the Death’s Garden Revisited playlist on Spotify.

To read Rena’s beautiful essay about Sighisoara, go preorder Death’s Garden Revisited on Kickstarter now. This beautiful book is full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out here — and please consider joining the other backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

Death’s Garden contributor Angela Yuriko Smith

I haven’t yet met Angela Yuriko Smith in person, but we keep intersecting online. I interviewed her for this blog four years ago, after her book The Bitter Suites came out. She published my story “The Arms Dealer’s Daughter” in her Space & Time magazine. Both of us write for the Horror Writers Association’s monthly newsletter. Last year we swapped columns for April Fools Day: I wrote about author newsletters and she wrote about Woodlawn Cemetery in Independence, Missouri.

That essay expanded into the lovely, fierce essay “Wedding Vailes” for Death’s Garden Revisited. It’s about the marriage she solemnized for two friends during the pandemic.

Angela Yuriko Smith is a third-generation Uchinanchu-American and an award-winning poet, author, and publisher with 20+ years of experience in newspapers. Publisher of Space & Time magazine (est. 1966), a three-time Bram Stoker Awards® Finalist, and HWA Mentor of the Year for 2020, she offers resources for writers at angelaysmith.com.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Eat cake, especially if I’m feeling down. Enjoying a treat with those that have passed away reminds me that no matter how big my problems seem at the moment, it’s not the end. I can recover from it. I can still eat cake.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

So many cemeteries I love… but my current favorite is Woodlawn Cemetery from my essay. It’s within walking distance from my house, so convenient. It’s a nice mix of history and mystery: there are some tombs with no identifying names. There are a few that glow in the dark—that was a surprise during my first midnight trip! There is a chicken that wanders the edges sometimes and gates that lead nowhere… we assume. But mostly I hope to one day catch a glimpse of lonely Mrs. Vaile, the Grey Lady, looking for friendship.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

I would love to visit the turtle back tombs of Okinawa. I have family in some of them. Called kameko-baka, they are shaped like a woman’s womb because it’s believed in death we return to where we came from. Once a year, the blood relatives gather at the family tomb to honor the those that have gone before. They eat, drink awamori, and celebrate. Maybe eating cake by a grave is something I inherited with my genetics.

If you have any say in the matter, what would your epitaph be?

Be right back.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

FAVORITE: grandson – Bury Me Face Down. I also like The Wytches – Gravedweller and Dead Moon – Walking on My Grave.

Loren again: I would love it if you’d check out Death’s Garden Revisited, which is on Kickstarter now, available for preorder. This beautiful book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out here — and please consider joining the other backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

One Week into the Kickstarter

The last week has been a whirlwind! Death’s Garden Revisited went live on Kickstarter last Thursday morning. It reached its initial funding goal of $1000 eight hours later. Such a relief!

The next day, Kickstarter chose Death’s Garden Revisited as a “Project We Love,” which means it gets recommended to backers other, similar projects. That was unexpected and lovely.

Since then, backers to the campaign have funded the conversion of the black & white interior to full color, added two commissioned essays, additional photographs, and increased the payment to the contributors.

The next stretch goal is to fund a reading from the book by the international contributors. I really hope that funds because I, for one, would really enjoy seeing it.

After that, if the campaign reaches $4000, I’ll finish the sequel to my cemetery memoir, Wish You Were Here — and all backers will get an ebook copy.

There are 22 days left to go, so anything is possible.

In the meantime, I wanted to share some links.

The Fabulist magazine did a really great interview with me, connecting the Death’s Garden project to Morbid Curiosity magazine. Please check it out here.

Jennifer Brozek let me stop by her blog to tell her how I fell in love with cemeteries.

Joanna Penn gave the kickstarter and my cemetery books a lovely shout-out of her Creative Penn podcast. Joanna was the campaign’s first backer!

Image by Lex Vranick. Quote by me.

If you’re collecting the whole set, I interviewed Death’s Garden contributor Sharon Pajka over at my Cemetery Travel blog.

And just now, Lex Vranick of Write and Wine posted an interview with me about cemeteries and the Kickstarter.

If you haven’t checked the kickstarter out yet, you can preorder a copy of Death’s Garden Revisited and check out the other fun things on offer. Just click on the image below or follow this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries/description

Death’s Garden contributor: Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito

I met Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito through the Horror Writers Association during the pandemic. The timeline is hazy in my mind, but her wonderful, compassionate, beautifully described horror stories still haunt my imagination.

When I asked her to write something for Death’s Garden Revisited, Frances responded with an essay about uncovering the unmarked graves of the Chinese and Chinese American pioneers who helped to build Portland.

Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito is a Chinese American writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her writing has appeared in Nailed Magazine, Red Penguin’s Collections, Buckman Journal, Flame Tree Press’s Asian Ghost Stories, Strangehouse’s Chromophobia, and anthologies through Moms Who Write and Not a Pipe Publishing. She can be found at

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Walk through the various plots and look for clusters of families. It’s nice to think of families and friends being able to rest together. I also enjoy looking for unusual structures or plants/trees, especially for historic cemeteries.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

My favorite is Lone Fir. There’s so much history.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

Shirley Jackson’s gravesite.

What would your epitaph be?

Remember me by the words I left behind and the memories of how we took care of each other.

Loren again: I would love it if you’d check out Death’s Garden Revisited, which is on Kickstarter now. The book reached its initial funding goal in 8 hours and is now available for preorder. This beautiful book will be full of 40 amazing essays about why visiting cemeteries is important. Check it out here — and please consider joining the other backers: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries

Death’s Garden contributor: Priscilla Bettis

I “met” Priscilla Bettis several years ago when the Horror Writers Association put us in touch. She is a voracious reader whose blog is a fascinating record of her interests and pursuits. Her haunting novella The Hay Bale came out in January.

Priscilla contributed an essay called “Not a Tourist Attraction” to Death’s Garden Revisited, a collection I edited of 40 essays about visiting cemeteries around the world. The book reached its funding goal on Kickstarter and is now available for preorders. Treat yourself to a copy here.

Priscilla Bettis read her first horror story — The Exorcist — when she was ten. The Exorcist scared Priscilla silly and she was hooked on horror from that moment on. Priscilla is an excellent swimmer, which is good because vampires are terrible swimmers. Priscilla grew up in Alaska where her essay takes place. Keep up with what she’s been reading — and publishing — at priscillabettisauthor.com.

What’s your favorite thing to do in a cemetery?

Leave flowers for a stranger because strangers need love too.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

The Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia, is my favorite cemetery. It covers twenty-seven acres and has vibrant antique roses next to somber Civil War graves. The contrast leaves me speechless each time I visit.

Is there a cemetery or gravesite you’ve always wanted to visit?

I think it’d be interesting to visit more small-town cemeteries. There are always historic, little facts to learn. Recently I learned about a terrible gas explosion in the little town of Ranger, Texas, in the early 20th century.

If you had a say in it, what would your epitaph be?

Priscilla doesn’t lie here because she donated her body to science.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

I feel sorry for people whose loved ones simply disappeared due to crime or war or natural disasters. So I choose “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by Johnny Cash for all those whose bodies don’t have a final resting place.

Live on Kickstarter

Death’s Garden Revisited hasn’t quite been live on Kickstarter for an hour — and it’s already a third of the way to its funding goal. That does my heart so much good.

The first backer came through in the first two minutes — and she’s an author who’s been such an inspiration to me! It means the world to me that she would buy into my passion project.

If you would like to check out the campaign, here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries/description

First-day backers can get a discount on both the 8×10 paperback edition and the hardcover coffee table book. This is going to be a beautiful book, full of powerful essays about what it means to visit cemeteries. I cannot wait to bring it to life.

If we surpass our first stretch funding goal — which is a mere $1200 — all the books will be upgraded to full-color photographs. I think there’s a good chance that will happen.

Death’s Garden Revisited is an anthology of cemetery essays from genealogists and geocachers, tour guides and travelers, horror authors, ghost hunters, and pagan priestesses about why they visit cemeteries. Spanning the globe from Iceland to Argentina and from Portland to Prague, Death’s Garden Revisited explores the complex web of relationships between the living and those who have passed before.

Editor Loren Rhoads is the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and the death-positive memoir This Morbid Life. She was also the editor of the award-winning Morbid Curiosity magazine.

Contributors include horror authors A. M. Muffaz, Angela Yuriko Smith, Christine Sutton, Denise N. Tapscott, E. M. Markoff, Emerian Rich, Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito, Francesca Maria, Greg Roensch, Mary Rajotte, Melodie Bolt, Priscilla Bettis, Rain Graves, Rena Mason, Robert Holt, R. L. Merrill, Saraliza Anzaldua, Stephen Mark Rainey, and Trish Wilson.

 

 

 

Why I’m trying Kickstarter for my next book

Well, funding on Kickstarter in 7 days.

Ever since Automatism Press published the first volume of Death’s Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries in 1995, I have wanted to put together a sequel. I wanted the second book to range farther abroad, to include more diverse voices, to be more beautiful in design and execution.

I also wanted it to be a full-color hardcover with glossy pages.

I knew I could assemble the contributors and pull together some amazing, lovely, powerful text. In order to make the books everything I envision them to be, however, I needed funding.

I’ve been a patron of Kickstarter since 2011, when I funded Mark Ballogg’s glorious hardcover book about Pere Lachaise Cemetery. I’ve backed more than 60 campaigns, mostly books. I’ve learned all I could from the backer side of the site.

Last year I started doing as much research as I could. I took a couple of online courses from people who’d successfully run kickstarter campaigns. I read as many articles as I could find aimed specifically at writers and small presses who wanted to fund their books. I solicited as much advice as I could from people I knew who’d been involved in Kickstarter campaigns from every angle.

Last month, I finally started building my campaign page. There are so many moving parts: from making a video to pricing out reward tiers to calculating postage on a book that won’t exist outside a computer for six more months.

Then the world started to come apart at the seams. What with everything going on in the world right now, I wasn’t sure this was the best time to raise money for a book of essays about visiting cemeteries. I turn to graveyards when I am feeling lost or sad. The green grass, the wind in the trees, the birdsong, and flowers always lift my heart. But would other people feel that way, especially now?

Then Brandon Sanderson began his campaign to fund publication of four new novels. By the end of the first day, he’d raised $15 million. As of today, the campaign is at $26.5 million and still climbing. He’s got 21 more days to go.

The Death’s Garden Revisited campaign isn’t going to raise anything approaching that. I’m grateful to Sanderson for another reason: the success of his crowdfunding campaign showed me that people are still hungry for books. They’re still willing to fund art and stories. So I set the date for Death’s Garden Revisited to go live and the countdown began.

You can click on the image below to be taken to the Death’s Garden Revisited pre-launch page. There you’ll see a button that says “Notify me on launch.” If you click on that, Kickstarter will send you an email on March 17, the day the campaign goes live. 

The direct link is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries.