Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 38
September 17, 2017
4-Question Interview: Loren Rhoads
Tim Prasil was kind enough to interview me about my Alondra stories for his site, The Merry Ghosthunter.
In a recent online discussion, I tried to boil down the difference between occult detective fiction and urban fantasy to simple math: “5 vampires per 7 billion humans = occult detective. 1 billion vampires, 1 billion werewolves, 1 billion zombies per 4 billion humans = urban fantasy. There’s an error margin of + or – 17.”
Loren Rhoads is blurring that formula — as well as the division between those genres — with her occult detective fiction. On her website, she explains that she’s written “a series of urban fantasy short stories about Alondra DeCourval, a young American witch who grew up in London. Alondra travels the world, battling monsters.” But the author’s take on urban fantasy doesn’t seem quite so monster-heavy as my formula suggests. She explains this while answering the 4 questions that I’ve asked of many writers keeping the occult detective tradition very much alive today.
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September 14, 2017
Death Salon Seattle
[image error]It’s taken me all week to decompress from my jam-packed weekend in Seattle. This was the seventh Death Salon (the third I’ve attended) and I met so many amazing, curious — dare I say morbid — people from around the country. They were social workers and death doulas and librarians and student morticians and one Anglican priest from Canada… academics and artists and all of them fascinating, open, and friendly. For someone who’s spent the last nine months at home, finishing a book and tending a sick kid, it was mind-blowing.
The weekend began with a tour of Lake View Cemetery, hosted by Seattle’s branch of the Obscura Society. As I walked up from the bus, I discovered the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery of Seattle. It made a lovely quiet place to sit for a moment, catch my breath from the march up the hill, and put on some sunscreen. Later I learned that the GAR Cemetery is one of the most haunted places in Seattle. To me, it was one of the most peaceful.
[image error]Last time I visited Lake View, the cemetery was green with winter’s rains. This time, it was golden. The skies overhead were dramatic with pent-up rain and the smoke from surrounding forest fires. Thanks for Jared Steed, we learned Seattle history, met a pair of the city’s fabled madams and a Native princess, heard a ghost story or two, and ended up at the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. The tour was the perfect introduction to the city and the Death Salon.
I wish I’d introduced myself to some of the others on the tour and joined them for dinner, but I’d gotten up at 4:30 and hadn’t been able to check into my hotel room yet. I planned to stop in to Elliott Bay Books and look for cemetery books, but my directions were garbled. Eventually I gave up, went back to the hotel, had an amazing solo dinner at Thai Tom, and struck off in search of a bottle of wine.
On my way, I discovered Gargoyle Statuary and the cemetery photography of Dan Westfall. The owners are incredibly nice people — and should be carrying 199 Cemeteries next month. Directly after I met them, I went back to my room to collapse.
The Death Salon began in earnest in the morning with Sarah Chavez‘s talk about the history of women’s work with the dead and the future of the Death Positive movement. I couldn’t take notes fast enough! I am fascinated by the idea of women working with death as an act of resistance.
[image error]Sarah’s talk, as were all the rest all weekend, was illustrated live by Silent James, who also designed the Death Salon Seattle logo. He is truly amazing.
Lunch took place over at the School of Social Work. The Death Salon Director, Megan Rosenbloom, had invited me to facilitate a discussion over our delicious box lunches, so I joined a bunch of strangers to talk about cemeteries.
In the afternoon, Taryn Lindhorst discussed the symptoms of oncoming death. She was followed by Angela Hennessy, who introduced me to a range of contemporary artists whose work examines the intersection of race and death. Her lecture was so engrossing that I hope the recording will be available so I can watch it again. The afternoon ended with Caitlin Doughty, founder of the Order of the Good Death, talking about pet funerals. Her slides were lovely.
[image error]After a quick dinner break, I came back to the School of Social Work to help set up the evening session. The highlight of the evening was Paul Koudonaris’s lecture “The Unbreakable Bond,” about pet cemeteries and animal memorials. I expected his spectacular photography, but I didn’t expect his speech to be so emotional. People around me were sharing packs of tissues.
The next morning began with Megan Devine, author of It’s OK that You’re Not OK, talking about grief: both how to survive it and how to support others who are grieving. It was an important subject, one I was surprised hadn’t come up earlier in the weekend.
Another highlight of the day was when Brian Flowers, designer of The Meadow Natural Burial Ground, described new rituals families have developed around green burial. He was passionate and compelling. Oddly enough, though, his talk made me more convinced that cremation is the way I want to go. For me, there’s something magical in the purifying flame.
We trekked back to the School of Social Work for a classroom-style discussion over lunch. Part of the discussion ranged over the cultural and classist assumptions inherent in a “good death,” “green burial,” and the way that a lack of memorialization leads to erasure: lots of food for thought.
In the end, the conversations that I had with other attendees were the highlight of the weekend for me. We are all grappling with death: our own, our loved ones’, and how to honor those fears and losses. I’m comfortable that the answers must be individual and hard-won.
The next Death Salon will take place at Mount Auburn Cemetery in September 2018. You can find more information here. Mount Auburn, if you haven’t seen it, is one of the most beautiful places in America.
September 3, 2017
New Horror Bites series from Horror Addicts
[image error]HorrorAddicts.net launches its new Horror Bites series with an Alice-inspired story by Adam L. Bealby.
When he met Alice, he wasn’t prepared to go down the rabbit hole. His love for her pushes him into the uncomfortable realization she might be mad. He wants to keep her safe, but what if that’s not what Alice wants?
“Adam Bealby has written a mini masterpiece that explores mental illness, drug addiction, and real life horror.” –David Watson, The All-Night Library
Horror Bites: Alice’s Scars
by Adam L. Bealby
Just 99 cents at Amazon.com
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A look inside… Alice’s Scars by Adam L. Bealby
When I first met her she was Katie, soon to be Alice. It was her first day at Uni—my second—and her scars intrigued me. They lined her cheeks like tribal markings. The way she caked her face in foundation, you could tell they were forever on her mind. It helped, of course, that she was a beautiful Goth girl. I wanted to save her, share her pain, kiss her, and fuck her, too. I asked her what she kept in the drawstring purse around her neck.
“Money,” she said dismissively, turning away to talk to someone else at the bar.
She disappeared soon after. I only found out later how drunk she got, how she spent the rest of the night over a toilet bowl with Jackie holding her hair clear of her mouth. Her first and last run-in with alcohol. Alice had too much else going on in her life to get any more screwed up.
I dogged her all through freshers’ week. Instead of dorms, she’d been accommodated in a little house just off campus. A new friend I met lived there too, so it was an easy thing to fall in with her motley crew, drawn together by circumstance as we were. I became a regular in their kitchen, smoking weed and trying too hard—as we all did—to be quirky and cool.
We struck up conversation over a jar of pesto. I didn’t know what it was and she couldn’t believe it. I strung it out, made it appear I was more ignorant than I actually was, and I got her laughing. When I said her pesto looked like rabbit food, she blushed, right through all that paint and powder.
“You don’t know the first thing about rabbits,” she said, and she showed me what was in her drawstring purse. It was a tiny white rabbit’s foot. It freaked me out and yet I felt even more attracted to her. It was my in, a secret shared. Looking at the severed foot, I felt myself getting hard and I had to sit down for fear she’d notice.
She ran away that evening. We were all stoned and a bit drunk, talking about our parents, being glib, critical, or overly generous. She burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen and into the night, not even bothering to put her shoes on. We made an extravagant show of hunting for her, shouting her name up and down the street. Pete the Poet, as we later christened him, came out to help from next door. The way John shouted Katie’s name in his Irish accent, Pete thought we’d lost a cat. We had a good laugh about that.
But it wasn’t funny when we found Katie. She was hunkered down by the bushes on a bit of common area at the end of the row.
“Katie? What are you looking for?” I asked as we gathered round in a concerned hub.
“He was here,” she muttered. She’d been pawing at the dirt. Her fingers were black. “I saw him, but he got away from me.”
“Who was here, Katie?”
She looked up. The glare from a passing car lent her eyes a lustrous sheen. “Alice. Call me Alice from now on, okay? Do you know what time it is? The days all seem to blur into one.”
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[image error]Adam L. Bealby writes fantasy, horror, and weird fiction for both adults and children. His short stories and comic work have been published in numerous anthologies, including Spooked (Bridge House Publishing), Pagan (Zimbell House Publishing), Darkness Abound (Migla Press), Once Upon a Scream (HorrorAddicts.net), Sirens (World Weaver Press), World Unknown Review Vol. 2, rEvolution (MiFiWriters) and Murky Depths magazine. He lives in Worcestershire, UK with his wife and three children, and a harried imagination. Catch up with his latest ravings at @adamskilad.
Once Upon a Scream, featuring “The Other Daughter” by Adam L. Bealby
Once Upon a Scream…there was a tradition of telling tales with elements of the fantastic along with the frightful. Adults and children alike took heed not to go into the deep, dark woods, treat a stranger poorly, or make a deal with someone—or something—without regard for the consequences. Be careful of what you wish for; you just might get it. From wish-granting trolls to plague curses and evil enchantresses, these tales will have you hiding under the covers in hopes they don’t find you. So lock your doors, shutter your windows, and get ready to SCREAM.
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August 31, 2017
All cemeteries, almost all the time
[image error]In the last week, I’ve been offered a Headstone of the Week feature at Legacy.com, invited to speak to a class called Over My Dead Body at the California College of the Arts, interviewed about 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die for From the Bookshelf on KSCO radio (which will air in October), and asked to facilitate a discussion about writing about death (and cemeteries) for next weekend’s Death Salon.
And I said yes to all of them.
My life has been in a holding pattern since I turned in 199 Cemeteries. It’s been a round of doctor’s visits, calls to nurses, and trips to pharmacies, but finally my daughter is back to school. She’s survived the first three days, so fingers crossed. I think things are about to get really busy.
[image error]Good things have happened recently. Last Saturday, I joined Rebecca Gomez Farrell to celebrate the release of her new novel Wings Unseen at at the Octopus Literary Salon in Oakland, California. What a great place that is! I read what I think of as the Ray Bradbury scene from No More Heroes. Considering how flustered I was, I think I did okay. It felt kind of like getting back up on the horse, anyway.
Although the column I was writing for Gothic Beauty fell through, I was invited to write about graveyards for the Horror Writers Association newsletter. The first of those Grave Fascinations columns just came out. I’m excited to share what I know with other horror writers and see how it inspires their work.
Occult Detective Quarterly accepted an Alondra story that is close to my heart. “Something in the Water” is set at the California Academy of Sciences-in-exile, which used to be down South of Market. I’ve always loved the story, but it had trouble finding a home. I’m thrilled to see Alondra standing amongst the other occult detectives, where she belongs.
[image error]And the Strange California anthology is finally coming out! Another Alondra story — about suicide and the Golden Gate Bridge — appears in that book. It’s one of the most challenging stories I’ve written about Alondra, so I’m excited to finally see it in print. I haven’t seen a copy of the book yet, but you can order one on Amazon at the link above.
August 22, 2017
Reading this Weekend in Oakland
[image error]I’m joining Rebecca Gomez Farrell to celebrate the release of her first book on Saturday, August 26 at 4 p.m. It’s my first visit to the Octopus Literary Salon at 2101 Webster St @ 22nd, Oakland, California 94612.
Octopus has food, drink of all types, and is a great space for the creative community in Oakland. Becca will read selections from Wings Unseen and I am going to read from No More Heroes, the last book of a space opera trilogy set in a galaxy where humans are a minority. Books will be available for purchase at the event and Becca and I will be happy to sign them.
Also joining us is Daniel Potter. After obtaining his PhD in vascular biology, he began exploring fictional magic and spiritualism using his own particular scientific lens. Daniel published the webcomic Walking the Lethe from 2010-2012 and is an active member of the East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meet-up group. His debut novel, Off Leash, is just the first in his Freelance Familiar series.
Wings Unseen, an epic fantasy, will be out on 8/22 from Meerkat Press. Here’s some advance praise:
“Wings Unseen is an enthralling female-driven fantasy debut. The world, magic system, and terrific characters – with two complex, multi-layered heroines along with the male protagonist – drew me in and kept me rapt… Compelling, entertaining, and enlightening, Wings Unseen is a fantastic read!” – Jeffe Kennedy, award-winning author of The Twelve Kingdoms series
“With a talon-like hook, Wings Unseen will grab you and not let you go.” – Mur Lafferty, award-winning author of The Shambling Guide to New York City
“Wings Unseen marries intrigue, unique worldbuilding, and political machination in a fast-paced story that will surely appeal to high fantasy and historical fantasy readers.”
– Jaym Gates, author of Shattered Queen
Hope to see you there!
August 11, 2017
Summer is fading fast
[image error]This is not how I thought the summer would go: full of doctor appointments and hospital visits. I assumed that the neurologist we saw four days after school got out would have all the answers. I suspected my daughter’s headaches were allergy-related: the cats, mold in the walls, food-triggered like my father-in-law’s. We would find the cause and get her some medicine that worked and she would attend theater camps all summer and I would write.
She made it four days before she couldn’t get out of bed any more.
This week alone, we’ve seen three doctors. The first showed us the results of my daughter’s MRI. No abnormalities, thank goodness, but now I’ve seen her brain and her eyes staring out from inside a cage of metal.
There’s still no certain cause of the headaches that have trapped her dark rooms all summer. It’s probably hormones and she’ll probably outgrow them, which is where we started in December.
The doctors have prescribed a number of hardcore pharmaceuticals and biofeedback counseling. School begins again in two weeks. I hope desperately that the new regimen will do the trick. She needs to get back to living. I need to get back to work.
I haven’t written anything worth mentioning in months. I have the concentration of a gnat. I’ve barely been out of the house or away from my desk, whittling the hours away with social media and research. I need a break. I need to work. I need life to go back to normal.
My only experience with serious care-taking was almost 25 years ago, when Blair died at his home of AIDS. I was only there for the last two weeks of around-the-clock morphine pump pushing. Being available 24/7 for months on end, counting pills and recording pain levels, putting a good face of terrifying conversations, standing in an icy room to comfort my weeping child as she slides into an MRI tube…
Not being able to make things better, not being able to see the end coming, is awful.
And yet I know how lucky we are. When we faced the MRI, I was certain there wasn’t anything structurally wrong with my daughter’s head. I knew she didn’t have brain cancer, since her headaches attack and ease, moving around her skull. I was grateful to have that knowledge, when I knew other mothers had stood where I was standing, hand on their children’s knees, giving comfort through a thin cotton sheet. My daughter isn’t dying. She’s only suffering and there have been good days, days were we went to Hot Topic or out for ice cream, moments when she felt like singing again or I heard her laugh.
Bodies are stupid and fragile and it’s so hard to see someone you love in pain. I am worn out with hoping this will all be over soon.
I already know that every day aboveground is a precious gift. I know the sun will shine again, probably in September. Better days are coming, if we don’t all perish in a nuclear fireball first.
July 25, 2017
Signing at Barnes & Noble in Flint
Even if you’re not into casually visiting cemeteries, come support my favorite Barnes & Noble and say hi. I would love to see you.
If you can’t make it during the signing, you can call Barnes & Noble and ask them to reserve a book for you. I can sign it on Saturday while I’m there. Their phone number is (810) 732-0704.
Almost every tourist destination has a graveyard: Yosemite National Park, Mackinac Island, London, Manhattan, Tokyo, Prague… Jim Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery ranks in the top five tourist sites of Paris. Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel contains 35 graveyard travel essays, which visit more than 50 cemeteries, churchyards, and gravesites across the globe.
“Loren Rhoads started visiting cemeteries by accident. It was the start of a love affair with cemeteries that continues to this day. In Wish You Were Here, Rhoads blends history with storytelling and her photos accompany each essay.”—American Cemetery magazine
When: Saturday, July 29 at 1 pm
Where: Barnes & Noble Flint, Genesee Valley Mall, 4370 Miller Rd, Flint, Michigan 48507
What: The store’s events listing for Meet Loren Rhoads
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July 24, 2017
Goldy in Memoriam
[image error]When my daughter was almost 5, we bought her a starter pet: a pair of goldfish. She named them, so of course the plain orange one was Goldy. The white one with orange and black blotches was Poppy (I had some input on that name). Goldy was a bully who chased Poppy away from the food at the top of the tank. He chased her around the artificial plants and plaster pillars. It wasn’t a surprise that she didn’t live long.
We waited a while to see if Goldy was sick, but when he appeared to thrive, we bought him another tankmate. The bullying process picked up again. The third fish — Rainbow — did not last long, either. After that, Goldy remained a bachelor.
As he matured, he turned into a fantail lionhead. He tore his tail on the plaster columns, so the decoration had to be removed. He only had one fin, like Nemo, but he could swim like crazy, when he took a mind to. His colors changed, so he wasn’t plain orange any more. He took on a deeper orange, while his belly glowed like mother of pearl. He came to the surface to beg whenever he saw me come into the living room.
At one point, years ago, Goldy sucked a pebble up into his mouth. It got caught behind his lips and he couldn’t cough it out. He hung forlornly in the tank, head downward. I could see a flash of pink in his mouth when he turned his head. I read up on the internet, took a deep breath, and gently applied the Heimlich maneuver. My goldfish coughed once and spat out the pebble.
I felt like a super hero. I saved my fish’s life.
He outlived every other fish I’ve ever kept. Those earlier fish threw themselves out of the tank or were eaten by cats or developed ick or eventually floated to the top of the tank to swim no more. It seemed that Goldy would live forever.
Then, in the spring, Goldy started to fade. He spent long hours with his head against the wall of the tank. That progressed to floating head downward, as if his bulbous head was too heavy to hold up any longer. Eventually, he would flip himself right side up when he swam, but as soon as he relaxed, he ended belly up. I tried complete changes of his water. I tried antibacterial baths. I tried making him fast and feeding him mashed peas. All I did was postpone the inevitable.
Dying, once it was clear that was what my fish was doing, took a surprisingly long time. His scales, once so shimmery, began to look rough and jagged, standing away from his bloated abdomen. He developed bruises around the bases of his fins and tail. His gills looked bloody. I wondered if, instead of swim bladder disease, he had cancer.
I read up on the internet about euthanizing a fish. Experts suggested clove oil, to anesthetize him, then putting him in the freezer. I wasn’t clear if he went in the freezer in water. It seemed to me that he would suffocate, otherwise. Anesthetized or not, that seemed cruel. I couldn’t bring myself to put the poor thing out of his misery. I waited, keeping vigil through his suffering.
He died yesterday morning. I think he was 9.
He was a mute critter that I only held once. All the same, we took pleasure in each other’s company. He will be missed.
[image error]July 10, 2017
Family Obligations
[image error]A month ago, while we were having lunch in Japantown, my daughter started to cry. She had pain in her chest, pain so bad it frightened her. We took her to the emergency room at the hospital where she was born. They sent us on to Children’s Hospital.
Hours later, the diagnosis is that all the painkillers she has been taking for headaches over the last six months have starting chewing holes in her esophagus. We left with two prescriptions and the assurance that her heart is healthy.
Four medicines later, the reflux pain is nearly gone. The headaches aren’t responding as well. So far, none of the prescription medicines has made them stop. At this point, she’s taking three supplements and a prescription, but none of those prevented two bad headaches this past weekend. We’ve seen a neurologist and an allergist, without getting any answers why her head hurts all the time. We’ve got an MRI scheduled for next week.
Her grandfather suffered from allergy-triggered migraines, but all the doctors we’ve seen so far have shrugged that off. Despite that — and because none of the medical suggestions have yet done any good at all — we’re trying an elimination diet to see if that will help. This week she’s avoiding gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, things in the nightshade family, beans, citrus, and processed sugar. She is determined to find some relief, so she’s committed. I hope this will help.
We’re not to the end of things to experiment with, if it doesn’t. I want her to come to the floatation tanks with me. She thinks that sounds terrifying. There’s still acupuncture, massage, Chinese herbs…so many things we can try.
[image error]While we’ve been trying to sort this all out, my dad has been at the Cleveland Clinic, waiting for a new heart valve to replace the one they installed five years ago. My mom has been staying alone in a hotel. I want desperately to be with them, but I kept hoping that my daughter would feel better and be able to travel. Instead, she’s regressing to the point that she doesn’t ever want to be alone. One way or another, I will be back in Michigan before the end of the month.
Summers are always hard for me in San Francisco. The fog and the cold weigh on me. The cure is to get out, walk in the light, see the ocean and trees, but it’s all I can do to pry my daughter out of bed. Now I can’t even lure her out with the promise of a treat, because all treats are forbidden.
Wednesday is the 15th anniversary of my brother’s death. His memory always hurts a little, but this summer, I could have really used his help. His absence feels like I’m missing a limb again.
I will survive this. I’m actually getting close to finishing the revision of Wish You Were Here, finally. I’ve gotten back to the point where writing is an escape again. My dad will either have another amazing medical reprieve, or he won’t. My daughter will eventually find some relief from her headaches and return to the amazing, talented, fun person she really is. I believe that. In the meantime, I know that depression lies. It is my true enemy. For the sake of my family, I will do what I have to, in order to fight it.
June 17, 2017
San Francisco Ghost Hunt
[image error]I escaped the house Thursday evening to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time: take the San Francisco Ghost Hunt Walking Tour! Borderlands Bookstore organized the outing for its sponsors and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. After the week I’ve had, it was a gift to be able to get out of the house, explore the city, and learn about its history as the sun set.
The tour leaned heavily on the life of Mary Ellen Pleasant, who came to San Francisco as a free woman, bought property, funded the raid on Harper’s Ferry, rescued people out of slavery and found them jobs in San Francisco, became known as the city’s voodoo queen, and eventually lost everything. Even her home is gone now, but six of the trees she planted still line Octavia Street, where our tour began.
The ghost stories about her incorporated crows, barking dogs, and people being pelted with gum nuts from Mary Ellen’s eucalyptus trees.
[image error]The only house I’d been inside on the tour was the former Mansions Hotel, once owned by silver mining millionaire Richard Chambers. His niece Claudia was killed in a bedroom in the turret in what the death certificate called a farm implement accident. No word on what the farm implement was doing inside Claudia’s bedroom.
The house underwent extensive renovations and was cut into a pair of condos. Still gracious and lovely inside, the one I visited is apparently no longer haunted, according to its owner.
We stopped outside the home of Gertrude Atherton, whose stories have unfortunately fallen out of fashion. She palled around with Ambrose Bierce and Oscar Wilde — and her collection of stories called The Bell in the Fog is legitimately scary. The ghost story was delicious, too.
[image error]The tour wrapped up at the Hotel Majestic on Sutter Street. We didn’t go into the haunted room on the fourth floor, but in the room across the hall, the lights flickered and strange breezes wafted through. I wish I could have stopped in the hotel’s lovely bar for a drink, but I hope to go back another time. Apparently they serve spirits inspired by the ghost tour.
Maybe I’ll even spend the night.
The San Francisco Ghost Hunt Walking Tour goes out five nights a week, Wednesday to Sunday. You can find them on Facebook or at their homepage. Christian, the guide of our tour, has a wealth of history in his head and knows how to tell a spooky story, too.
He’s got a one-man magic show coming up next weekend: Obscura at Z Space.
