Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 5

In the Mood for a Bad Romance?

Whether you like your space opera action sexy or you think the angel/devil romance of Good Omens stopped too soon, my novels have got your Valentine’s Day reading covered. If you think Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark conspiracy and your tastes run a little more unconventional, my short story collection Unsafe Words may have just what you’re looking for.

Inspired by one of my friends who created a heat map of her novels, I made a comparison chart for five of my books.

You can find all of my books on Amazon in paperback or ebook, or you can order a personalized copy directly from my bookstore.

Books for Sale

Did you know you can buy my books directly from me? I have a bookstore right on my website where you can order any of my novels, cemetery books, even the last issue of Morbid Curiosity magazine.

I have a handful of copies of my chapbooks, including the four-story collection I put together with Seth Lindberg, Claudius Reich, and Lilah Wild called The Paranormal Appreciation Society.

This is the only place you can get all of my cemetery books in one place: Death’s Garden Revisited, 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, Wish You Were Here, and the Cemetery Travel Notebook.

Books can be autographed or inscribed for you or to someone special.

Check out what’s on offer at https://lorenrhoads.com/shop/

222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die

My editor has given me the go-ahead, so please enjoy the lovely new cover of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. The book is an expansion and update of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die.

The cover photo shows the mortuary chapel in the Huguenot Cemetery in St. Augustine, Florida. Citizens of Saint Augustine began to use this acre of land as a graveyard in 1777. The last person was buried there in 1892. The fragile old cemetery is only open one day a month.

A book never feels real until the publisher begins listing it online. 222 Cemeteries is up for preorder on Amazon now. It will be out at the end of August.

Here’s the publisher’s summary:

Perfect for budding cemetery armchair travelers and serious taphophiles, this hauntingly beautiful guide to the world’s most interesting and unusual cemeteries has been revised and updated to include 23 additional locations. 

Every year, millions of tourists flock to cemeteries around the globe to uncover hidden stories of their residents and admire the incredible architecture, stunning landscapes, and even wildlife in these open-air museums.

In this lavishly photographic bucket list of the world’s most interesting cemeteries, author Loren Rhoads, who hosts the popular Cemetery Travel blog, details the history, eye-catching monuments, and other fascinating finds that make each destination unique. Entries include unforgettable cemeteries such as the Mount Koya cemetery in Japan, where 10,000 lanterns illuminate the forest setting; Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery which hosts gorgeous night tours of the Southern Gothic tombstones under moss-covered trees; and Il Cimitero Acattolico in Rome that is the final resting place of young poets John Keats and Percy Shelley.

Whether you are a true taphophile (cemetery enthusiast) who seeks out obscure locations or a tourist who likes to incorporate not-to-be-missed cemeteries like Paris’s Pere Lachaise and Arlington National Cemetery into your itinerary, 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die is both a useful trip-planning tool and a browser’s delight.

 

 

Death’s Garden contributor: Paul Stansfield

Winged skull photo by Loren Rhoads.

Back in the misty 1990s and early Aughts, I published a zine called Morbid Curiosity. It was a collection of confessional nonfiction essays that introduced me to people around the world.

One of the authors I met was Paul Stansfield, a contract archaeolgist who sent me a story about exhuming and moving a couple cemeteries. It was a clear-eyed retelling with a lot of self-reflection and a surprising sense of humor.

When I started to assemble Death’s Garden Revisited, Paul’s essay kept coming to mind. All of the other pieces in the book would talk about what was happening aboveground. Paul’s got into the nitty gritty about what was happening below the surface.

A Native New Jerseyan, Paul Stansfield spent 25 years working as a field archaeologist for his day job. As a writer, his work has appeared in such magazines as Bibliophilos, Morbid Curiosity, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, and The Literary Hatchet. His anthology credits include Shadowy Natures, Welcome to the Splatter Club, and The Other Side. He’s also an Affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association. Find out more about him at http://paulstansfield.blogspot.com

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

Dig them up! I’m partially kidding. I did love the exhuming jobs I did, but I also like walking around cemeteries, and observing the stones, etc. For historical, anthropological, architectural, and yes, morbid reasons.

Tell me about your favorite cemetery.

My favorite one was probably in northern New Jersey. I was part of the crew that removed it. I enjoyed it because it had a great variety of burials, with different grave goods, and of person of different ages, diseases, injuries, and preservations. It was very educational and fascinating.

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

The famous ones in New Orleans would be on my list. Or various ones in Paris. I did get to visit the Evans City, Pennsylvania one, that was famously in the beginning of the classic “Night of the Living Dead.”

What would your epitaph be?

I guess the famous, “I told you I was sick!” has already been done. Maybe one inspired by Gene Hackman’s character in “The Royal Tenenbaums”–a long winded and grossly inaccurate account of me saving lots of people in a natural disaster, or something. Or maybe something written in a completely obscure, dead language that few people will know how to translate, just for laughs, and to confuse people.

Do you have a favorite song about cemeteries or graveyards?

“Pet Sematary” by The Ramones, which was obviously in the Stephen King movie of the same name.

Loren again: The contributors to Death’s Garden Revisited put together a playlist of their favorite cemetery songs. You can check it out on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4S0255SPm7grf5NShTbLgT?si=4825e0a61b994bd0

You can treat yourself to a copy of Death’s Garden Revisited:

in fully illustrated paperback or hardcover on Blurb.comor as a color ebook for your kindle on Amazon.

You can also download a free copy of the Reader’s Guide from Bookfunnel. It includes discussion/contemplation questions, an interview with the editor, and a game to introduce readers to cemetery symbolism and encourage them to visit.

This Year’s Word

Every year since 2019 I’ve picked a word or a phrase to sum up my hopes for the year. That year, Facebook was advertising a company that would put a word of your choosing on a silver washer and make a bracelet out of it

I decided the advice I needed to wear was “Just Begin.” I wore the bracelet like a charm whenever I was nervous about something. All I had to do was begin. The ending would take care of itself.

In January 2020, I chose “Seek Joy” as my directive for the year. I wanted to ease up on myself, to remind myself to enjoy the process, to take pleasure in simple things. It was a good reminder as the world shut down around me.

For 2021, I chose the phrase “Hold on to Hope.” Vaccines were on the horizon. My elderly parents had survived the pandemic.

The word for 2022 was Complete. I liked its multiple meanings: lacking nothing, whole, entire, full, undivided, uncompromised or, as a verb, to make perfect.

Last year the selection was easier, strangely enough. My father was dying and I was getting advice from every direction. What I really needed was “Clarity.”

I decided that, rather than buy a bracelet every year, I would buy the kit from My Intent and start making my own bracelets.

I struggled to find a word or phrase to encapsulate my hopes for this year. What I wanted was more of a sense of Balance between work and life, instead of always feeling like I am neglecting one when I do the other. I had almost settled on Reflection, because I liked the sense of doing the emotional work I’ve been avoiding since I lost my dad.

Finally, after a lot of discussion, after a lot of trying one one word, then another, I settled on Satisfied.

I am never satisfied. I always feel like there is more I could’ve done, more I should’ve done. There’s always more left to do. You’ve seen those memes about how becoming a writer is choosing to have homework for life. That’s me, except that I feel like that in every aspect of my life: family, home, work, health… It’s exhausting, to be honest.

My perfect imperfect bracelet!

So I am going to try to give perfection a rest. I’m going to do my best and then try to enjoy the product without stressing over the places where it’s only adequate. I am going to attempt to feel satisfied. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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

Finish Still Wish You Were Here: More Adventures in Cemetery Travel finally. My hope is to have it out in May.Prepare for the release of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die in August.Start overhauling the first Alondra novel, The Death of Memory.

We’ll see how it goes. So far this year, I have resisted diving into Still Wish You Were Here, because there are some emotional essays to write yet. It’s only the 8th. I am going to give myself some grace and start reading over the things that are finished this week.

If you’d like to make a bracelet (or necklace) with your own word of the year, check out MyIntent.com. I’m not an affiliate and don’t make any money from the recommendation. I just like them.

If you’d like to have some support for bringing your own projects to life, check out the Spooky Writer’s Planner I created with Emerian Rich. If you like to move pages around and set up your planners how YOU like them, it’s available as a printable download on Etsy. There’s a grab-and-go paperback version on Amazon.

Books on Sale

For another couple of days, a handful of my books are on sale at Smashwords. Get yourself a copy of Lost Angels and Angelus Rose, if you’d like a dark infernal romance with shades of Goodfellas and The Exorcist.

Enjoy a smorgasbord of science fiction, horror, and fantasy in my LGBTQ short story collection, Unsafe Words.

You can even grab one of my favorite rock’n’roll ghost stories by Martha Allard, Black Light.

Move quickly, though. The sale runs through end of day on Monday January 1, 2024.

Never Enough 2023, part 2

This is the second half of this year’s year-end wrap-up.

Short Nonfiction:

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My essay about my collection of cemetery postcards appeared in The Deadlands: Year One anthology, which came out from Psychopomp in October. The book collects short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from the online magazine’s first year of existence — almost 400 pages of death-focused writing. Contributors include Alix E. Harrow, Vajra Chandrasekera, Arkady Martine, Fran Wilde, Isabel Cañas, Suzan Palumbo, Premee Mohamed, and R.B. Lemberg.

The paperback is only available from the Psychopomp store.

Coincidentally, a shorter essay about my collection of cemetery postcards came out in Collected #1. I originally submitted the essay in July 2011 — and the zine finally came out in November! I’m not sure where it’s available, but there are rumors of a second volume coming sooner.

My essay “How to Be Safe in a Cemetery was republished by the Horror Writers Association for their Halloween Haunts blog series in October. You can check it out here.

Normally, I’d have written a bunch of guest posts for other people’s blogs, but since I was being pulled back and forth to Michigan this year, I didn’t feel like I could promise anything. I did set up a book tour to promote the Spooky Writer’s Planner for this month. I wrote two posts for the tour:

Need some tricks for how to fit writing in around the holidays? Check this post out at Momma Says to Read: https://www.mommasaystoread.com/2023/12/bewitching-book-tours-deck-halls-with.html

I’ve also written about my favorite lentil soup recipe, to warm you up on these chilly days, for Fangtastic Books: https://fang-tasticbooks.blogspot.com/2023/12/spooky-writers-planner-by-loren-rhoads.html

The blog tour runs until the end of the week. You still have time to enter to win a digital copy of the planner.

Live Events:

In July I returned to BayCon, the San Francisco Bay Area’s major science fiction/fantasy/horror/gaming/costuming convention. I only signed up for one event this year, since I didn’t know if I’d get called away suddenly.

The Manor of Frights panel at BayCon 2023.

Saturday, July 1, 2023 HorrorAddicts.net hosted Manor of Frights

Contributors to the newest Horror Addicts anthology read from their stories and we chatted about hauntings, possessions, and out favorite frightening house tropes. Moderated by Emerian Rich, with Jonathan Fortin, Laurel Anne Hill, J. Malcolm Stewart, S.A. Bradley, and that’s me, down on the end!

I also hung out in the Dealers Room at the Liminal Fiction table. They are the nicest group of people. I always enjoy hearing what they’ve been working on.

On October 27, I joined Beth Winegarner, author of San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries, at the San Francisco Columbarium to discuss Why We Love Cemeteries.

Our conversation touched on cemeteries we’ve visited, places we’d still like to go, and why both of us ended up in a city that tore its cemeteries out in the 1940s.

In November, I was invited to contribute to the Memento Mori Market, which raised funds for the Order of the Good Death’s scholarship program.

I contributed three copies of Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, my first cemetery memoir. Winners of the auction will join me in January for an intimate Q&A. I’m really looking forward to meeting them and answering their questions.

Podcasts/Radio:

I had a great time talking to Angie Orth at the Traveling with AAA podcast. I love the tagline for the conversation: “If you haven’t already been adding cemeteries to your travel itineraries, then you’ve been missing out.”

[image error]The initial portion was broadcast on October 5.

They followed that up with a short “Digging Deeper” session on October 12, where I talked about five of my favorite cemeteries.

I was also a guest on America’s #1 Travel radio show, RMWorldTravel with Robert Carey. We did a lightning-fast interview about four cemeteries that people should visit for the autumn. This broadcast on October 14. I’m in the second hour, which you can skip ahead to: Seg 3 – With Halloween ahead in just over 2 weeks, Loren Rhoads unveils top Cemeteries in the USA to visit and experience some “spooks.” Listen at: https://rmworldtravel.com/podcasts/2023-2/

Horror Addicts featured me and a bunch of the Manor of Frights contributors on their season finale. Airdate: November 4, 2023. You can listen to the playback here: https://www.thebelfry.rip/blog/2023/11/4/halloween-season-finale-horror-addicts

Interviews:

Horror Addicts interviewed me about my story in Manor of Frights: https://horroraddicts.wordpress.com/2023/08/02/author-interview-loren-rhoads-manor-of-frights-nightbears/

Last year, Naching T. Kassa interviewed me for the Chilling Chat on HorrorAddicts.Net, but I forgot to add it to my Never Enough post. It was a great conversation! Check it out for yourself.

Miscellaneous Good Things:

The year started with the Publisher’s Weekly announcement of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die!

I made a Reader’s Guide for Death’s Garden Revisited. Designed to be used by individual readers or book clubs, Death’s Garden Revisited: A Reader’s Guide peeks behind the covers of the collection of essays to explore why anyone would choose to visit cemeteries. The Reader’s Guide includes an annotated table of contents from Death’s Garden Revisited, a master interview with the editor, discussion/contemplation questions, a soundtrack of cemetery songs, and a game to introduce readers to cemetery symbolism and encourage them to visit. Download your own copy for free from Bookfunnel.

Death’s Garden Revisited was a Finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in the Travel/Travel Guide division. The award came with a shiny medal!

The book also got some amazing reviews:

Chantal Larochelle made the book her first review of the year. Highlight: “This is such an enjoyable read that runs the gamut of emotions. I think there may be a story for everyone in here. This would be a great book for someone interested in learning more about why people are so drawn to cemeteries. It’s also a great read for taphophiles, especially for those who are looking for kinship. You are not alone. There is a whole community of people who love cemeteries, each for their own unique reasons.”

Sarah Elizabeth reviewed it on Unquiet Things and had this to say: “Loren put together a profoundly affecting, powerfully beautiful collection with this book. Who would I recommend read this? Absolutely everyone with a human body and a mortal life span.”

Horror Addicts gave Tales of Nightmares a nice review, too. My favorite bit: “Tales of Nightmares consists of a handful of horror tales, each wildly different from the other. Some modern, some period…they’ve got yokai, killers, werewolves, monsters, and haunted houses in here. There is sure to be something you’ll enjoy in this anthology. There are some real gems here.”

Booklists:

Sarah Elizabeth recommended Death’s Garden Revisited on her list of Hexmas reads.

Chantal also added it to her Gift Guide for Taphophiles, which was published last year.

This one was also published last year, but I forgot to add it to my wrap-up. Alexandra Kathryn Mosca added 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die to the list of her favorite cemetery books.

Blogging/Social Media:

I only put up 79 Instagram posts this year, compared to 110 last year. My favorite series was the 31 days of cemeteries I put up in October. You can watch where I go next @morbidloren.

I managed only 25 blog posts here in 2023, but last year I only did 30, so I wasn’t too far off the mark. I’m going to try again to post every Monday next year.

I posted 14 times on Cemetery Travel this year, compared to 17 in 2022. I’m going to work on improving that, now that 222 Cemeteries is coming out.

The biggest change in my social media is that I’m no longer using Twitter. My account is still up, because I don’t want my username to get hijacked, but I’ve switched over to Bluesky, where you can find me @morbidloren.

By the way, I have some Bluesky codes, if you’d like to check out another social medium. Hit me up via the contact form above.

I’ll leave you with my favorite tweet of last year:

RIP Twitter.

Never Enough 2023

Every December I recap the writing triumphs and disappointments of the previous twelve months. Just about every year, I feel like I haven’t done enough.

This year that sensation is hitting me particularly hard. My father died at the end of February after 30 years of struggling with heart disease. I stepped in as his executor and survived his funeral to come home to San Francisco and start work on a book I am really excited about… Then my mom had a stroke in April.

I got her moved into an assisted living apartment just in time for her 82nd birthday. Since then, I sold the farm I grew up on, my mother’s home for 55 years. I haven’t lived there since I left for university in 1983, but it was wrenching to let go of the woods and the pond and the creek where I spent my childhood.

I’m telling myself that I managed to write anything this year is a triumph. Still, it doesn’t seem like enough.

Book publications:

I only managed to publish one book this year, the ebook of Death’s Garden Revisited: Personal Relationships with Cemeteries.

Death’s Garden Revisited collects 40 powerful personal essays — accompanied by full-color photographs — to illuminate the reasons people 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.

You can find the ebook at Amazon or get a copy of the hardcover or trade paperback from Blurb.com.

Upcoming Books:

I spent most of the year working on an updated version of my most popular cemetery book. The new edition will be called 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die. In addition to 23 new cemeteries and a bunch of new photos, I’ve updated every entry in the original book. I’m not allowed to show you the cover yet, since the publisher is still finalizing it, but the book will be out in hardcover in August 2024.

Some of the new cemeteries include Milan’s Monumental Cemetery, the Cemetery of Monaco, and filling in the states I missed in the first edition.

I had really hoped to finish Still Wish You Were Here: More Adventures in Cemetery Travel this year, the sequel to my cemetery memoir which was published in 2017. The new book collects essays I wrote from Gothic.Net, Gothic Beauty, Morbid Curiosity magazine, and a lot of new pieces that will be original to this book. I hope to have it out in May, but I have a lot of work to do before then.

New Short Fiction:

“The Silence of Sirens,” an Alondra story set in the winter in Prague, appears in the Shallow Waters: Horror Flash Fiction Anthology (A Series of Supernatural Stories), edited by Joe Mynhardt and published by Crystal Lake in October 2023. The anthology was originally published as an ebook called Shallow Waters: A Flash Anthology, volume 1  in June 2019.

“Nightbears,” about fighting the monsters under the bed, appears in Manor of Frights, edited by Emerian Rich and published by HorrorAddicts.net. The anthology has a really clever concept: all the stories take place in the same haunted mansion, one for every decade that the house was occupied.

“The Devil’s Debt” appeared in Occult Detective Magazine #9, published in February 2023. It’s the first time my characters Alondra DeCourval and the succubus Lorelei cross paths. One of the reviewers thought the story owes a debt to Elmore Leonard!

Thanks to the Ladies of Horror Fiction Flash Project, I had three short flash stories out this year. You can read them for free:

“Crown Shyness” — an Alondra story that creeped me out! — was published in November 2023.

“Far from Home,” my favorite of the stories I’ve written for the Ladies of Horror  project, was published in June 2023. Alondra helps a stranded sea creature find her way home.

“Petrichor Gothic,” the shortest story I’ve written yet appeared online at Spreading the Writers Word by way of the Ladies of Horror Fiction flash project. It was published in May 2023. Alondra seeks out a haunting in Scotland.

Upcoming Short Fiction:

“The Ambush Hunters,” a brand-new Alondra story, will appear in 99 Fleeting Fantasies, edited by Jennifer Brozek, to be published by Pulse. It should be out in the first half of next year.

Readings:

I did my first reading (but hopefully not the last) fir the Strong Women, Strange Worlds crew on June 15. If you need a break from real-life horrors, I’ve got you. Jambalaya fixes everything.  You can watch my reading of “Dumb Supper” on Youtube: https://youtu.be/js0NK_NUvGk 

Elaine Pascale read my “Petrichor Gothic” for another Ladies of Horror Challenge. Sometimes all you want is to get out of the rain in a cozy little ghost story. I’ll embed it below, or you can listen to it on Youtube.

I joined members of the Wily Writers collective for a Facebook party on November 1. I read part of Lost Angels and gave away copies of some Lorelei booklets.

Angel Leigh McCoy played “Never Have I Ever” with the other writers and interviewed Jennifer Brozek. E.S. Magill read the beginning of her brand-new book Magica, and Kerry E.B. Black read from her new-to-me work, too. It was so much fun that we’re looking forward to doing it again.

My working year ended with the Strong Women, Strange Worlds Holiday Extravaganza on December 2. I participated in the Bluff the Audience game with Terri Bruce, Karen Hough, Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, and Anne Nydam, emceed by Lauren Teffeau. Each of us submitted a scene, then the others wrote alternate endings for it — and the audience had to choose which ending was the original. There will be a video of the game on youtube and, best of all, a choose your own ending booklet on Bookfunnel. I’ll let you know when those are available.

I had such a great time playing along that I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.

Strong Women, Strange Worlds Holiday Party

This Saturday, December 2nd, at 12pm Eastern, I’m taking part in the “Bluff the Audience” panel of the Strong Women, Strange Worlds Holiday Extravaganza.

Emcee Lauren Teffeau will read a part of scene, then I and four other writers will complete it. The audience will have to discover the true author. The scenes range from portal fantasy to paranormal romance, from high fantasy to hard science fiction. This is really going to be fun!

The other authors involved are Terri Bruce, Karen Hough, Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, and Anne E.G. Nydam.

The party will take place on Zoom. There will be prizes and free ebooks as the games continue throughout the day. Hope to see you there!

Preregister at strongwomenstrangeworlds.weebly.com.

Memento Mori Market

Open now until November 17 at 11:59 p.m. CST, the Memento Mori Market, a virtual auction of unique experiences that embrace life while contemplating death!

I am offering an exclusive experience: join an intimate online Q&A with me and a small handful of others where we will discuss cemetery travel, the history of cemeteries, the future of cemeteries, and more. Participants will receive a personalized copy of my cemetery memoir, Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel.

Other experiences available include learning to weave a willow urn, touring an aquamation facility or a memorial farm, exploring your mortality with best selling author Caitlin Doughty, and more!

The Memento Mori Market is a virtual auction to raise funds for The Good Death Fellowship, a grant program created by The Order of the Good Death, which is a nonprofit organization that aims to build an eco-friendly, meaningful, and equitable end-of-life through education, resources, and legislative advocacy.

The Good Death Fellowship is a grant program open to leaders in the Death Positive Movement addressing systemic and social problems to help everyone die better. The Order is currently accepting Fellowship applications through February 14, 2023 (I think this should be 2024, but the date came from their press release). Learn more about our 2022 Fellows here.

Check out the auction here: https://ordergooddeath.betterworld.org/auctions/memento-mori-market