Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 4

Going to BayCon 2024

I hadn’t expected to attend BayCon this year, but they’ve scheduled me for a couple of panels, so I’ve got to go!  Look at these goodies:

#CemeteryLife
6 Jul 2024, Saturday 14:45 – 16:00, Salon 8

#CemeteryLife: Let’s talk cemeteries. What has been, what is, and what will be the way we bury, mourn, and remember? Join authors Emerian Rich and Loren Rhoads as we share our experiences, talk about our favorites, and discuss what it’s like exploring, writing about, and working in cemeteries. Bring your cemetery questions. Is there anything you always wondered? Ask away without judgement!

This should be lots of fun. Emerian worked at a group of historic cemeteries and you know I have lots to say on the subject.

HorrorAddicts.net Panel/Party
6 Jul 2024, Saturday 17:45 – 19:00, Sierra

Come geek out with us horror-style! Let’s discuss horror and listen to some horror readings. Panelists include moderator Emerian Rich (the hostess of the Horror Addicts podcast), Laurel Anne Hill, Loren Rhoads, and R. L. Merrill.

I think I’m in the mood to read my bird flu epidemic story, set in Golden Gate Park. There may be giveaways, too.

BayCon is being held from July 4-7 at the Santa Clara Marriott, 2700 Mission College Boulevard, Santa Clara, California 95054.

Get your tickets here!

Canceling my cemetery book sale this weekend

I’ve waffled back and forth for several days, but this morning I decided NOT to vend at the Mystique in Midsummer event in the historic City Cemetery in Sacramento this weekend.

The weather report is calling for 105 on Saturday. I’m not used to that kind of heat at the best of times — our high temperatures in San Francisco hover around 70 in the summer — but I’m on a med that makes me really sensitive to the heat. It’s just not safe for me to spend 8 or 9 hours outside in that.

I am deeply disappointed. I was so looking forward to seeing my Sacramento friends and showing off my sample copy of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. We’ll have to do it some other time.

As far as I know at this moment, the event is still going on. Here’s the images I have for it:

 

Get more information at the Facebook page.

In the meantime, I am stocked up on Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, the Cemetery Travels Notebook, Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues: True Tales of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox, and Unusual, This Morbid Life, and the last few copies of the black edition of 199 Cemeteries To See Before You Die. I would love to sell you something to read!

Deirdre Swinden’s Somnium

Author Deirdre Swinden stops by my blog to tell us about the inspiration for her new novel.

Wandering while Dreaming: Confessions of a Childhood Sleepwalker

By Deirdre Swinden

When I was a child, I had a memorable stint of two or three weeks where I was caught sleepwalking. Trapped somewhere between dreams and waking, my young body would head off on the adventures of my drowsy mind. At first, no one really noticed. I would wake myself up at some point during my wanderings and head back to bed. When I woke again, I had little memory of my nighttime antics.

One morning, my mother came downstairs to find our dog, Charlie, lounging on the deck in front of the closed screen door. Fortunately, it was summer and we had a fence, so Charlie was about as happy as she could be—but my mother was obviously concerned. When I joined her for breakfast and she mentioned the mystery, I had a vague memory of coming downstairs to let Charlie out.

One embarrassing night, I completely missed not one but two bathrooms, and headed into my parents’ closet to do my business in the hamper. Another night, I woke in the back seat of my father’s car, certain we were supposed to be going somewhere. In the hope it might help, my mother closed my bedroom door each night. Soon after, the barrier was enough to stop my wanderings.

Instead I experienced something much more sinister: sleep paralysis. In these dreams, my mind was conscious, but my body could not move. I woke often with the feeling that I was not alone in my room, or that someone—or something—lingered close by.

Such dreams are not uncommon. According to a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, the “prevalence of sleep paralysis in the overall population is estimated to be around 7.6 percent” and “to date, there is no direct treatment strategy” for the condition. The dreams may be triggered for a variety of reasons, including anxiety and other mental health issues.

In my novel Somnium, Gillian Hardie suffers from extreme anxiety. When she is triggered by a piece of technology, she is certain to have a nightmare—and unlike most people, Gillian’s nightmares can kill. To survive, she’s mastered the art of lucid dreaming, but when an accident traps her in the nightmare realm, she will need a few new tricks to live through the night.

Have you ever walked in your sleep or suffered from sleep paralysis? Share your story below!

Description:

Immerse yourself in a terrifying blend of psychological horror and high-tech science fiction in this riveting novel where dreams can kill. Gillian Hardie experiences nightmares so intense they threaten her very existence, thanks to a glitch in Somnium Corporation’s groundbreaking dream advertising technology. Every night, her sleep unleashes monsters that her body reacts to as if they were real, pushing her to the edge of despair.

Armed with her lucid dreaming skills, Gillian battles these horrors, but when an accident traps her in a perpetual dream state, she must rely on Nathan Keller, a nightmare warrior, and Dex Cooper, an Operator, to navigate this nightmarish reality. With her darkest fears manifesting like never before, Gillian faces a race against time to survive a threat that could unleash unimaginable horrors from the depths of her mind.

Get your copy here!

Trigger Warnings:

This novel includes a brief depiction of sexual violence, gore, and nightmare imagery.

Author Bio:

A successful writer/editor in the corporate world for more than two decades, Deirdre Swinden is currently living and writing in North Carolina. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University and has published short stories in Griffel Literary Magazine and Grim & Gilded. Early in her writing career, she won the Popular Short Story Contest at the 2000 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference with her short work, “Shooting Televisions.”

Learn more about Deirdre’s work:

Website – https://deirdreswindenauthor.com

X/Twitter – @DeirdreSwinden

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/deirdre.swinden5

Sleep Paralysis Reference:

Farooq, M., & Anjum, F. (2023, September 4). Sleep paralysis. StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf.

Going to StokerCon

This weekend — May 30-June 2, 2024 — is the Horror Writers Association’s StokerCon down in San Diego, California.

I’m planning to spend most of the convention in the dealers room this year. I’m sharing the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter’s table with Francesca Maria, L.S. Johnson, and Roh Morgon. I’m bringing my cemetery books, so now’s the time to fill in your collection.

On Saturday morning at 9 am, I’m on a panel called Stranger than Fiction about creating compelling nonfiction. Sadie Hartman will be moderating. My fellow panelists include Andy Boyle, Sarah Faxon, and Anne Heyward. I’m really looking forward to it.

The convention will be held at the Marriott Mission Valley at 8757 Rio San Diego Drive in San Diego, California. The dealers room will be open to the public Friday and Saturday from 9 to 6.

Still Wish You Were Here update

Sometimes I come back to my blog and have to shake my head at the naive optimism I find there. Last time I posted, I was working along on my next book of cemetery essays, Still Wish You Were Here. I expected to get it out in time for StokerCon, which is at the end of this month.

Oh, sweet summer child…

Since that post, I have made great strides in finishing the book. I’ve also spent 10 days in Michigan, looking after my mom. Last weekend, my family + two cats moved into a temporary apartment (I’m thinking of it as living in exile) while the ground floor of our house is demolished and rebuilt to make it more earthquake safe. I’ve also signed up for a study at the University of California in San Francisco because I’ve been taking care of everyone for so long that I neglected my own health. Apparently, I can’t keep burning the candle at both ends. Who knew?

So… Still Wish You Were Here is not going to be ready in time for StokerCon. I am (desperately) hoping that I will have the finished books by the Mystique in Midsummer sale at the Sacramento Historic Cemetery late in June.

In the meantime, I have two essays I haven’t touched yet, three essays written but not assembled, five essays done that need to be proofed, and the introduction to finish writing. There’s also all the fiddly stuff, like the bibliography and previous publication data, that needs to be collected and entered and formatted and proofed. The photos to collect up and scan. The thanks to write…

Then sometime this month, I need to write and record a speech for the Association for Gravestone Studies conference while getting myself prepared to attend StokerCon.

It’s all doable and I am just the person to do it. I just have to remember to exercise and get some sunshine and optimize for sleep, so I don’t hurt myself in the process.

Being human is such a challenge sometimes.

Still Wish You Were Here

Since I turned in the final changes on 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die in November, I’ve been working on finishing another cemetery memoir. Like Wish You Were Here before it, this book will collect a bunch of my previously published cemetery travel essays. I’m also writing a whole bunch more new pieces for the book.

Still Wish You Were Here covers more time than the first book: three and a half decades. It starts with exploring the garden cemetery in Ann Arbor, before I moved to California, and ends with buying my dad’s headstone last year. Along the way, I visit the California Gold Country, the Bone Chapel of Kutna Hora, the Gate to Hell in Kyoto, the Kiss of Death in Barcelona, and the city-sized graveyard of Pompeii, and so much more.

In all, Still Wish You Were Here contains 35 cemetery travel essays, which visit more than 50 cemeteries, churchyards, and gravesites around the world.

I’m more than halfway done with the book, which I’m still hoping to have out in time to take to StokerCon at the end of May. It’s going to be a headlong rush to get done in time, but I’m excited about the challenge. Wish me luck!

 

Cemetery book clubs

I love that there are so many book clubs reading cemetery books these days!

This week, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the Tombs & Tomes Book Club, hosted by the Congressional Cemetery. They’d read Peter Ross’s Tomb with a View, a book I really enjoyed. They liked it less than I do, but their comments were really fascinating. They gave me lots of food for thought. I look forward to sitting in on another of their meetings sometime soon. They meet both in person at the cemetery and online. You can find out more here.

Talk Death has an online book club that’s brand new. I haven’t had an opportunity to join them yet, but I’m looking forward to it. You can find out more about what they’re reading here.

The venerable book club of the Association for Gravestone Studies is meeting next weekend. They are reading my book Death’s Garden Revisited. After the discussion, I’ll join them for the final half hour to answer questions and talk about the upcoming publication of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. I’m really excited about it.

Do you know of other cemetery or death positive book clubs I should check out?

I created a Reader’s Guide for Death’s Garden Revisited that anyone can download. It’s got questions for reflection, a playlist of cemetery songs, and a bingo game to be played while exploring the cemetery. Please treat yourself to a copy here.

Tucson Festival of Books

Next weekend, March 9 and 10, you’ll be able to pick up some of my books at the Tucson Festival of Books. Whether your taste runs to dark fantasy, space opera, or the full spectrum of horror, I’ve got a book for you.

My books will be joining Angel Leigh McCoy, E. S. Magill, Marsha DeFilippo, and Yvonne Navarro at the Wily Writers table, #232. They’ve kindly offered to handle the sales for me.

Just a hint at what’s ahead of you:

Email subscribers: Click through if you don’t see the poster.

Thanks so much to Angel for designing this lovely poster for me! Wish I could join you in Tucson.

New Short Stories out

Available now: The ebook of 99 Fleeting Fantasies just came from Pulse Publishing. Similar to last year’s 99 Tiny Terrors, this book — edited by Jennifer Brozek — will collect 99 fantasy stories that pass in a flash.

Contributors include Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Premee Mohamed, Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Wole Talabi, and me!

My story “The Ambush Hunters,” is an Alondra story set in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was inspired by the recurrence of mountain lions passing through the city.

Here’s the universal sales link: https://books2read.com/99FleetingFantasies

The ebook will be followed by a Kickstarter for the limited edition hardcover sometime in the first half of the year. I can’t wait to see it!

I also have another new Alondra story up at Spreading the Writers Word.

This time, Alondra investigates a ghost town in the Arctic Circle. You can read “Harsh to Us is Home to Them” for free. Here’s the link.

Something to warm you up

Today is blustery and alternating squalls of rain with vivid sunshine: California in winter, in other words. Still, from my office window I can see the neighbor’s redbud tree in glorious bloom, so spring is on its way.

Rain or shine, today is a good day to cuddle up with a hot cup of tea and a book. Did you know I’ve made teas to represent the succubus and angel in the As Above, So Below books I wrote with Brian Thomas?

The main character of Lost Angels and Angelus Rose — to my mind, although Brian might argue — is Lorelei.  She’s a “young” succubus, who remembers the French Revolution. She worked the rock bands in LA in the 1960s and 70s, when Asmodeus was taking over the music industry. (Those short stories have appeared in my collection Unsafe Words and Tales of Evil, edited by Angel Leigh McCoy and Alison J. McKenzie.) Those form the backstory that led her to the angel Azaziel.

If Lorelei drank tea, it would be a spicy chai. I started my blend with Adagio’s Masala Chai as a base. In the novels, Lorelei’s signature cocktail is vodka and cranberry juice. I decided to add dried cranberries to the tea, along with dried apple pieces to symbolize temptation. Then I boosted the ginger in the chai to make it a bit spicier. Finally, I added cardamom as a nod to Asmodeus, Lorelei’s boss, who was traditionally a Persian demon.

Lorelei’s tea has a wonderful spicy aroma, full of cinnamon and clove. It tastes slightly fruity, with a buzz of ginger at the finish.

On the other hand, Azaziel is an angel who fought on the Fields of Heaven when Satan and his followers rebelled. Azaziel fought hand to hand with the demon Nebiros and cast him into Hell.

Afterward, Azaziel was sent down to Earth to watch over humans before the Flood. He befriended a group of Cain’s granddaughters and fell in love with one of them. When the command came to abandon Earth to the Flood, Azaziel couldn’t allow his beloved Anah to drown, so he tucked her up under his wings and carried her to another planet — according to Lord Byron in Heaven and Earth, A Mystery.

Because he disobeyed, Aza has been sentenced to Earth. He isn’t a Fallen angel, but many of his angelic siblings have never forgiven him for ever loving anyone other than God. In consequence, Aza is terribly lonely. Then he crosses paths with Lorelei.

Azaziel’s tea has a base of Adagio’s Assam Melody tea, to which I added Adagio’s vanilla-flavored Cream Tea. (I’m not sure Azaziel is all that vanilla, but I wanted to indicate Heaven and purity.) The tea is flecked with petals of pink peony, blue lavender, yellow marigold, and red rose, to symbolize the Fields of Heaven.

It is a really pretty tea, with all its flower petals. It has a wonderful flavor, friendly and welcoming, and makes a nice contrast to Lorelei’s spicy, fruity tea.

You can buy the teas online from Adagio.com. Adagio allows you to try a sample tin of each tea, which is what I’ve photographed here, or to buy a 3-ounce pouch or a 5-ounce tin. The teas are available individually or in “ships” that give you a discount when you buy both of the 3-ounce pouches. My preference is the reusable 5-ounce tins, which are really handsome.

Lorelei’s chai: https://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/blend.html?blend=162653

Azaziel’s floral tea: https://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/blend.html?blend=162654

You can check out all the rest of my tea blends, too:  https://www.adagio.com/signature_blend/list.html?userId=566763LR

I created the tea after the novels were finished, but I’m so pleased with how they turned out that I wish I’d written them into the books.

Speaking of which, you can pick up the novels in paperback or ebook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Indie Bound — or you can buy the “boxed” set of paperbacks directly from me and I’ll include a little gift. Here’s the link for that: https://lorenrhoads.com/product/as-above-so-below-set/