Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 2

Still Wish You Were Here update

Ooh, it’s getting close! I’m almost done with the text of my next cemetery book: Still Wish You Were Here.

Here’s the book description (just written this morning!):

You can take the girl out of the graveyard, but you can’t take the graveyard out of the girl.

Loren Rhoads stumbled unexpectedly into a cemetery in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the 1980s. That led her to explore burial grounds from the California Gold Country to Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo, and beyond. Whether uncovering history, searching for celebrities, chasing ghosts, or facing the reality of death, Loren invites you along on her adventures.

This cemetery memoir—part travel memoir, part cemetery history—contains 35 graveyard travel essays that visit more than 50 burial grounds, churchyards, and gravesites around the globe.

What’s been going on?

I’ve just about finished the text of the book! I still need to perfect the essay about my family graveyard and finalize the introduction. Then I’ll give the whole thing one more read-through so it can go off to my first readers. Once I get their notes and make their changes — hopefully, there won’t be many — it will go off to the proofreader.

My hope is to run a Kickstarter next month to generate some preorders. I’m trying to come up with some fun rewards and stretch goals, so if there’s anything you’d like to see me offer, please let me know.

[image error]In the meantime, I stopped by The Ordinary, Extraordinary Cemetery podcast to talk about the book. You can watch me:

Website: https://www.theordinaryextraordinarycemetery.com/episode-223-for-the-love-of-the-cemetery-a-chat-with-author-loren-rhoads/

YouTube: https://youtu.be/qc5bo7K4G7I?si=uXAQ0zyBrE6fKMtD

Or catch the audio version wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

The phrase for 2025

For the past 6 years, I’ve picked a word or a phrase to sum up my hopes for the year.  Sometimes I can distill everything down to a single word. I chose “Complete” in 2022. I liked its multiple meanings: lacking nothing, entire, undivided or, as a verb, to make perfect. In 2023, when my father was dying, what I really needed was “Clarity.”

Last year, I settled on the word “Satisfied.” Usually, I am perpetually unsatisfied. There is always more I feel I should’ve done. I hold myself to the highest standard and accept only perfection, which left me unhappy in every aspect of my life: family, home, career, creativity, health… It was exhausting.

My perfect imperfect bracelet!

So last year I decided to give perfection a rest. To be honest, it was a revelation.

In fact, it was fine when my bookstore events weren’t overwhelmingly crowded like they were in the days before the pandemic. If a handful of people came and they were interested and engaged — and bought books — I felt satisfied.

If the recording of my speech for the Association for Gravestone Studies had some weird timings in it, it didn’t matter. I was passionate about the subject — and the editorial board asked to reprint the text in the AGS Quarterly newsletter. I felt satisfied.

I didn’t get Still Wish You Were Here finished last year, but between the 6 months of construction on the house and the release of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die — and being invited to speak on NPR, be interviewed by Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura, chat with Patricia of the Morbidly Curious Book Club, and have my book mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, I am satisfied.

2025’s phrase is born out of rage. After I decided to leave my primary care practitioner in November, she scheduled me for a whole lot of fear-inducing, time-consuming, and completely unnecessary medical tests. I don’t know why she thought I needed these tests — and neither do the specialists I’ve gone to see. But I let fear guide me — what if there really WAS something wrong? — and that meant I wasted time and energy and shortened my life with anxiety to rule everything out.

From this moment on, my bracelet will remind me to Ask Why. It’s applicable to all things, not just medical appointments. I think WHY is something that I don’t think enough about. Why am I making this date? Why am I accepting this invitation? What are my expectations? What do I hope to achieve? How much time and energy is this going to take to prepare for? What will I have to give up to make time or space for this? How will I know when I’ve succeeded or accomplished what I set out to do? This year, it’s time for me to be more intentional about my life and work.

Once the rain finally broke yesterday, I hauled the bracelet-making kit out to the front step and stenciled my bracelet. It’s so…well, satisfying…to whack the stencils into the washer. So what if they’re not perfect?

If you’d like to make a bracelet (or necklace) with your own word/phrase of the year, check out MyIntent.com. You can order your bracelet premade (and they do a really nice job) or get the kit and pound out your own perfectly imperfect jewelry. I’m not an affiliate and don’t make any money from the recommendation. I just like them.

While I’m at it, my goals for 2025 are:

Finish Still Wish You Were Here: More Adventures in Cemetery Travel.Run my second Kickstarter campaign.Start overhauling one of the unfinished Alondra novels, so I can send it to my agent.

We’ll see how it goes. I got asked by my editor if I’d be interested in doing another book for Black Dog & Leventhal, but nothing is signed yet. If we work out the details, that book will also be due this year, too. I’m sort of limbo until I know if we’re good to go or not.

What is your intention for the year?

It’s time to do that creative work you’ve been putting off

I don’t know about you, but I’m already starting to think about next year. Part of it is that I’m ready to put this year behind me. The other part is that I’m worried about what the new year (the next four years) will bring — and the only way I can imagine surviving it is to get busy, get organized, and write.

During the Covid lockdown, Emerian Rich and I created a planner designed for writers but usable by all creative people. It has special pages for listing your monthly goals, weekly check-in pages so you can keep track of how things are coming, and month-end pages so you can celebrate each success. It allows you to track contacts, reading periods, brainstorms, and more.

Today is the Spooky Writers Planner’s fourth birthday.

The Spooky Writer’s Planner includes:

13 months of monthly and weekly spreadsMonthly goal and recap sheetsWeekly check-ins and note pagesWriting challenges, planners, and instructionsSubmission, published work, and contact trackersMarketing, newsletter, and blog plannersCheck-off sheets for website maintenance, social media profiles, and expensesFun sheets to generate writing ideas, track your favorite TV series, and to be read or watched listsHOW CAN YOU GET ONE?

DIGITAL: Get one immediately from Etsy! The quick-download version gives you a digital copy so you can print the pages you want, print multiples of those you think you’ll use the most, and leave those you won’t use. These pages are designed to be printed on 8.5 x 11-inch paper. You can put them in a three-ring binder or bind them with disks or a spiral, as you choose. You can even print different sheets on different colored papers. Create your own Frankenstein’s Monster of a planner!

PRINT: Order a paperback copy from Amazon! The Spooky Writer’s Planner is perfect-bound with a glossy cover, printed on high-quality 8.5 x 11-inch paper. Everything you need is included in one handy book that you can just grab and go. Have book, will travel!

Witchy chapbooks for long dark evenings

I realized that after I wrote my last blog post about the newest Alondra DeCourval story that I haven’t written the Alondra collections in a while.

I’ve been writing about elemental witch Alondra DeCourval for decades now. When I started, she was just a little bit older than me. Over time, Alondra has aged more slowly than me, but I’ve been fascinated to watch her change and grow.

In the beginning, Alondra had a lot of anger. She went through a phase where she took risks that she shouldn’t have, a period when she told herself that she didn’t care what happened to herself, as long as she went out swinging. As time has gone on, she’s grown more and more compassionate. I really love that about her.

I’ve put together four three-story collections of her stories, although there are many more yet to be collected. They’re available on Amazon very inexpensively.

They don’t have to be read in order. You can click on the banners to be taken to each of these short books.

Alondra’s Experiments collects the sexiest of Alondra’s adventures. In this book, she walks through Golden Gate Park with a vampire, accidentally combines absinthe and alchemy in Prague, and tries to harvest a valentine for her teacher in Oslo. These stories aren’t shy to take risks.

Alondra’s Investigations contains the first stories where Alondra works as an occult detective. While she is visiting LA, there is a massive earthquake and it seems to have been caused by “The Fatal Book.” “A Curiosity of Shadows” was inspired by my first weekend at the Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat, when I wondered what would frighten ghosts. “Last-Born,” the very first Alondra story, sees her making a painful sacrifice to help ghosts take their revenge in New Orleans.

Alondra’s Adventures is the third novella-length chapbook of The Alondra Stories.  These lean more heavily into horror, although “The Fox and the Foreigner” was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association Award. “Sakura Time” was inspired by Japanese movies like Ring and Pulse. “The Drowning City,” about a centuries-long vendetta in Venice, was republished in one of the Best New Horror anthologies.

Alondra’s Exploits, the most recent collection asks, “When humans encounter the supernatural, who are the monsters?” Alondra gets called in to the California Academy of Sciences to figure out what is attacking the scientists. She travels to Michigan’s Mackinaw Island to put an end to a chain of murderous events. Finally, something has awakened beneath the Golden Gate Bridge…and it is hungry.

I’ve loved writing these stories. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them.

Behind “Protection Spell”

My latest Alondra story was just published on The Fabulist magazine online. You can read it for free here.

This one is a little ghost story. It was inspired by author Jenny Bitner, who treated herself to a writing retreat in a lovely old hotel in the Gold Country a couple of years ago. The story also takes inspiration from my time at the Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat ten years ago. I didn’t have anything loom over me while I was in bed, although other writers did. I did, however, have something touch me in the middle of the night. That was freaky enough. (You can read that adventure in my essay collection, This Morbid Life.)

I’ve been writing stories about Alondra DeCourval pretty much my entire life. I started a novel about her in high school, then actually “finished” a novel about her after I moved to San Francisco in the late 1980s. I keep thinking I will revise that and see about getting it published, but it keeps being preempted by my nonfiction work.

“Guardian of the Golden Gate” appears in my ebook, Alondra’s Exploits. Find it on Amazon.

In the meantime, I’ve written almost 30 stories about Alondra as she travels the world meeting supernatural creatures. The first story with her girlfriend Stella in it was actually written for the first volume of The Haunted Mansion Project anthology. In that story, Stella is a guest at a writers retreat, investigating the things that ghosts fear. She invites Alondra up to help clear the atmosphere.

Most of the time, Stella works in Curios and Candles, selling magical jewelry, and lives in an apartment on the corner of Haight Street. She shows up in my story about the creature that lives beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and in the story about the Feejee mermaids climbing out of the surf.

“Protection Spell” is the first Alondra story from any point of view other than Alondra’s. It made sense for Stella to tell the story, since she sees just how hard Alondra works to solve the supernatural mysteries people bring to her.

It’s a love story, too. I hope you’ll check it out.

Black Cat Tales

[image error]

Cover design by Kealan Patrick Burke

I have a brand-new Alondra story coming out in an anthology that’s funding on Kickstarter this week. They’ve already reached their initial goal and they’re stretching for an audiobook now.

Here’s the book’s description:

A black cat approaches… Do you let it cross your path or run in the opposite direction? From the superstitious to the unlucky, from a witch’s familiar to a soul-stealing grave robber, black cats have captured our imagination and remain solidly in the realm of the dark.

Join 39 authors from around the world for never-before published horror, dark fantasy, and mystery stories and poems about the beloved, feared and mystical black cat.

Check out the kickstarter and preorder a copy of the book!

Cemeteries and Stories This Week

This week I’ve got four events to which I’d like to invite you, even if you’re outside of California.

First off, on Tuesday, October 22, I’ll be in conversation with Josh Wilson, editor of The Fabulist, talking about cemeteries as a mirror of the societies around them. We’ll explore history and talk about the future. You can join us in person at Green Apple on the Park in San Francisco or watch online. Here’s the link with all the details: https://greenapplebooks.com/event/2024-10-22/9th-ave-loren-rhoads-joshua-k-wilson

On Wednesday, October 23, I’ll be on NPR’s Morning Edition show, sometime between 5-9 AM Pacific. I spoke to host A. Martinez about cemeteries as tourist destinations — and as the best place to take a date in Southern California.

On Saturday, October 26, I’ll be joining the crew of The Fabulist for San Francisco’s Licrawl. We’ll be at Shotwell’s at 20th and Shotwell Street in San Francisco’s Mission District from 5-6:30 PM. I’m going to read a brand-new Alondra short story, which is being published by the Fab the day before (October 25). The other readers include Chris Carlsson, MK Chavez, Mukethe Kawinzi, and TK Rex. The details are here: https://litcrawlsanfrancisco2024.sched.com/event/1mMf9/the-fabulist-presents-cosmic-debrisan-evening-of-passionate-conviction-and-informed-skepticism?iframe=no

Finally, on Sunday, October 27, I’m going back to San Francisco’s glorious Edwardian Columbarium for SFinSF. Doors open at 7, show starts at 7:30. Tickets are $10 at the door, to support the upkeep of this beautiful space. I’ll be joined by Francesca Maria and Emerian Rich to talk about cemeteries and read a little from Death’s Garden Revisited as well as talk about our other books. I hope you can join us! Details are here: http://www.sfinsf.org/?p=2849

Cemetery Events this week

My mechanization failed! The first event is tonight.

I’ve got two events scheduled this week. First up:

[image error]I have the honor of interviewing author and photographer Paul Koudounaris tonight over zoom for the Mark Twain House and Museum.

Faithful Unto Death: Pet Cemeteries, Animal Graves, and Eternal Devotion is Paul’s brand new book. Once again, it features his beautiful photographs (one of which you’ll recognize from being repeatedly posted on the internet). The book explains how pets shifted from being servants or companions to becoming parts of our families. He explores the development of pet cemeteries from the gatekeeper’s garden at Hyde Park to the final resting place of Hollywood’s animal movie stars. This book is a gift.

You can join us via Zoom on Wednesday, October 16 from 7 – 8 PM Eastern, thanks to the Mark Twain House and Museum in Connecticut. Here are the details. Tickets are $10 or free for members.

Next up:

[image error]

 

Sunday, October 20, 2024 at 1 pm: I’ll be doing my first event ever at the amazing bookstore Book Passage in Corte Madera, California.

I’ll be showing photos from the book (including the newly added cemeteries) and talking about cemetery travel. Bring your cemetery travel questions!

Afterward, I’ll be signing books. The event is free. All the details are here.

Spooky Stories Night

Let’s get October started! This Saturday night (October 12) at 7 PM, I’ll be joining Francesca Maria, Tamika Thompson, and Alex Brown at Telegraph Hill Books to read you some spooky stories.

Telegraph Hill Books is in a beautiful airy space at 1501 Grant Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.

Doors open at 6:30, if you like to mingle.

Get details and your free ticket via Eventbrite.

I’m not sure yet what I’m going to read…probably something from my collection Unsafe Words. Something to raise goosebumps, I promise.

They should have copies of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die for sale, too, if you’d like to take a look at it.

I’m really looking forward to it. I’m excited to hear Francesca Maria read finally. I’m overdue. And I haven’t met Tamika or Alex yet, so that’s going to be fun, too. Unfortunately, L.S. Johnson isn’t going to be able to join us, but she’ll be there in spirit, I’m sure.

Hope to see you there!

Catching up with 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die

Last Saturday, I hit another milestone. Matthew Kronsberg interviewed me for the Wall Street Journal. The story appeared on Saturday as “When Did Cemeteries Become Tourist Attractions and Hot-Date Spots?”

The Petaluma Argus-Courier wrote about “Digging Tombstones: A Grave Pastime in Words and Pictures” in advance of my book-signing at the Word Horde Emporium of the Weird and Fantastic.

Author, podcaster, and world-traveling taphophile Tui Snider had some really sweet things to say about 222 Cemeteries on her patreon. My publicist’s favorite part?

I have a lull this weekend before the month gets really busy with cemetery events, but you can see what’s coming up here: