Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 64

Morpheus, At the End

My poor rumpled boy

I was on a cemetery tour I’d organized for the Obscura Society on Saturday, when my phone buzzed.  I didn’t check the message until the tour had ended and I was getting back into the car.  My husband’s text said, “I think Morpheus needs to see the vet. When will you be home?”

I texted, but when that didn’t get an immediate response, I called.  Still no answer.  I was an hour from home, if traffic was in my favor.  I tried not too worry and hoped my husband had the sense to call a cab.

Instead, he’d waited for me to get home.  Morpheus had a blockage and was crying any time someone looked at him.  My daughter made him a nest in my grandmother’s afghan.  He purred briefly as I petted him, but he couldn’t get comfortable.  His cry sounded like, “Mom!”

Our vet couldn’t see us, so they sent us to another vet in the neighborhood.  I gathered Morpheus’s medicines and all the paperwork I’ve collected over the 16 months we’ve owned him.  Off we went to the new vet.

The nurse seemed to grasp what I was saying about Morpheus’s allergies to chicken and grain and kitty laxatives, but the doctor, when he bustled in, immediately discounted the last year and a half that I’d struggled to find a cat food that wouldn’t poison my cat.  “Oh, they always say it is a food allergy,” he said, waving his hand.  “Have you had him tested?”

No, I said.  My vet said those tests were expensive and unreliable.

“I am treating three cats for mold allergies and they are doing very well.”

I argued, trying to tell him all the different things we’ve tried with Morpheus, all the medicines he’s on now.  The vet spoke louder and faster, drowning me out.  He kept talking over me until I gave up.

18-month-old Morpheus had a urinary blockage, probably caused by the high protein no-grain diet he’s on to treat his allergies. The doctor planned to send him home with a special diet for his bladder problem.  The diet only comes in chicken flavor, one of the things to which I think Morpheus is allergic.  The doctor said, “It doesn’t matter if he’s allergic to it. You don’t know for sure he’s allergic to chicken, because you haven’t had him tested.  The diet for his urinary problems is more important than his skin.”

Which would be true in another cat, I’m sure.  But when he has a reaction to something, Morpheus pulls out his own fur by the mouthful.  He licks his skin until it splits, until it gets infected.  I have dragged him to the vet over and over for EGC outbreaks, which he’s suffered since we first brought him home from the SPCA.

If I had been alone, I might have had the courage to ask the doctor to put Morpheus to sleep.  He hasn’t had his vaccines in the last year, since he’s an indoor-only cat with a compromised immune system.  He’s on three daily medicines to boost his immune system.  His body is resorbing his teeth, which need to come out.  His body is attacking him from mouth to bladder.  We’ve spent thousands of dollars on this cat since we brought him home at Christmas 2012.

My husband okayed the surgery to clear Morpheus’s bladder, even though it meant anesthesia, two kinds of catheters, and two nights stay at the vet.  I hoped he wouldn’t bring home anything to our healthy cat.

The vet left us alone while he prepared for surgery.  We talked to our daughter about taking Morpheus back to the SPCA after this is over.  Our hope is that someone with veterinary skills will be looking for a cat who needs two daily pills, cortisone rubbed into his ears once a day, small measured feedings four times a day, and whatever kind of magic diet that won’t inflame his allergies but will also keep crystals from building up in his bladder — oh, and who can also afford to have his teeth pulled out. We’re hoping for a miracle worker.

All his meds

Morpheus came home from the surgery last night.  He’s got three more medicines to take now.  His foreleg has a horrific bruise where the IV needle went in.  His fur is greasy from lack of grooming.  Our other car keeps hissing at him because he smells so weird.  Despite the ibuprofen, he’s in too much pain to climb onto the furniture.  Mostly he’s dragging himself from one sunbeam to another to nap today.

I’ve visited the last two vets who’ve seen him and gotten Morpheus’s files.  I’m trying to remember all the different cat foods he’s had.  I’ve gathered all his drugs together.  Now I’m waiting for the SPCA to return my call and tell me if they will accept him back, if they think there’s any home for him where he’ll be an only cat and someone can stay will him all day to doctor him.  My fear is that he’ll live out the rest of his life in a hospital cage, quarantined from all other animals.

I’ve been crying about this for days.  I wanted so much to fix him.  I think I may be too sensitive to have pets.

My boy in better days

Spotlight On: Loren Rhoads #ASOT2014

Loren Rhoads:

I contributed Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues to Authors Supporting Our Troops and in return, I got this nice post featuring my newest book. Thanks, Armand, for all you’re doing!

Originally posted on Armand Rosamilia:

SPOTLIGHT ON: Loren Rhoads

 

How did you get involved in the Authors Supporting Our Troops event?

I saw the announcements popping up everywhere, but once Sumiko Saulson participated, I was inspired to follow in her footsteps.

 

What is your latest release and what genre is it?

I’m co-author (with Brian Thomas) of As Above, So Below, an urban horror/fantasy.

 

Quick description of it.

As Above, So Below is the story of Lorelei, a succubus who sees an angel across a crowded bar and decides he’ll fall for her, no matter what she needs to do. It’s also the story of Azaziel, an angel who came to Earth as a Watcher before the Flood and has searched for the perfect love ever since. Aza rescues the soul of one of his mortal charges and uses it to possess Lorelei – which drags in a defrocked priest to perform…

View original 135 more words

Vacation plans

It was really hard for me to go on vacation last week and leave work at home.  Usually, I carry my laptop, so I can blog — like I did at the Death Salon in LA last fall.  Or I bring a book I’m working on to edit, like I did when Mart and I went on retreat to Gilchrist last August.

This time I left the computer at home.  I’m waiting for The Dangerous Type to come back from the editor, so while I have some unfinished books I could be working on, nothing is pressing.  I haven’t wanted to get engrossed in any large writing projects, since I could be pulled away at any moment.  Rather than give up on the idea of work altogether, I made a list of blog posts I could research or write while we were traveling.

Of course, before we left, I scrambled around to write a week’s worth of Tumblr posts and get them all scheduled to go up like clockwork.  I wrote and scheduled the posts that appeared here last week.  I meant to write a Cemetery of the Week entry to go up on 4/9, but I ran out of time before we left.

Once we arrived in DC, I only managed to write and upload one blog post from the hotel room: the Weekly Morbid.  It took forever to find all the links and copy them into WordPress on my iPhone.  The whole process was frustrating and time-consuming and did not encourage me to attempt the much more complicated COTW format.  In fact, by last Wednesday, I was coming down with Mason’s cold and couldn’t even manage my phone well enough to post a place-holding “here’s a reprint” post.

The upside of all of this is that the vacation was much more like a true vacation than I’d planned. I did have some working time in the mornings, while Mason and our daughter Sorrell slept in, but I spent those hours reading books on my kindle app, catching up on Pinterest, twittering, and reading Facebook.  I didn’t bring — or buy — a booklight, so I couldn’t even write in my notebook in the darkened hotel rooms.

In the evenings, while my daughter watched the Disney channel, I read travel magazines and graveyard books, researching markets and new cemetery columns.  To be honest, it was work, but work of the relaxing and entertaining kind.

In the end, I did much less writing that I would have in the old days, when Mason and I traveled with no electronics at all.  Back then, I wrote pages and pages of notes and observations, analyses and histories.  We even hung out in cafes so I could write.

This trip, I was much more content to let the experiences flow over me.  I still researched Rock Creek Cemetery (albeit after we visited). I drafted what I think will be my next Scoutie Girl column about Sorrell’s love of the flight simulator at the National Air and Space Museum. I drafted a long blog post about my writing schedule.

I don’t have much work to show for a 10-day vacation.  To my surprise, I’m okay with that.  Maybe it’s good to ease off now and then.

What do you think?  Do you check your email when you’re on vacation?

In Praise of Party Girls

Click to order from Amazon

Where did the character of Lorelei come from?  She was inspired by a woman I met at university.  Kimmy lived across the hall from me in East Quad.  She was beautiful: large very dark eyes made bigger by mascara, long mahogany hair flipped back from her face just so, heart-shaped face. She wasn’t very tall, but she was seriously stacked. I wasn’t surprised to find she’d done catalog modeling in high school.

Mostly what I remember about her was her presence.  Kimmy was a light.  She had a huge laugh.  Just by arriving, she made everything more fun.  When she came into a room, every head turned toward her, but she wasn’t obnoxious about it.  She didn’t seem to crave attention; she just accepted it as normal.

Kimmy had a way of singling out people and drawing them into her circle.  During my second day in the dorm, she cornered me as I was about to skulk into my room. She and her roommate were going to play quarters with some other people on the hall so we could all get to know each other.  Why didn’t I come?

Which is how I met Mason, who’s been with me pretty much ever since.  Kim drew him in, too.

Kimmy was always ready for anything.  When Playboy came to town, looking to photograph Girls of the Big 10, she considered it. When she met another girl who had been contacted by a Greek millionaire who was looking for pretty girls to come lounge around on his yacht in their bikinis, she considered it.  I think her curiosity about that lifestyle was matched by a small-town naivety that didn’t really guess what that kind of deal would demand in return.  In consequence, I felt protective of Kimmy.  I didn’t want her trusting nature to lead her into a situation she couldn’t charm her way out of.

Lorelei came directly out of that feeling.  I wanted to explore the possibilities laid out in front of Kimmy, but know that Lorelei would survive them.  I wanted to give Kimmy a happy ending and a boyfriend she wanted just as much as he wanted her.  And I wanted to guarantee she’d never lose her fearlessness or sense of fun.

As Above got its first review!

Thanks to Jeremy Price, my first novel got its first review.  In a word: sizzling.

Here’s the whole thing, fom Up All Night Horror Fiction Review:

04/02/2014

As Above, So Below (2014) by Loren Rhoads and Brian Thomas is a sizzling twist on the ensuing struggle between Heaven and Hell.  This is a first novel by Rhoads, whose passion for visiting graveyards spawned Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel (2013), a collection of essays on her travels to many of the world’s most intriguing cemeteries.  Thomas’s expertise in the subjects of religion, death, and unconventional brutality has been invaluable to the success of programs including The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Rhoads and Thomas worked together previously during the ten-year project that was Morbid Curiosity magazine.

As Above, So Below tells the story of a supernatural romance between Azaziel, an angel, and a succubus named Lorelei.  The book is set in Los Angeles, a city turned playground for a legion of angels, a bunch of jaw-dropping succubae, and a pair of hungry, troublesome harpies.  Lorelei is prowling through the club seeking her prey when she spots Azaziel, an angel cast out from Heaven, but not quite fallen.  Taking pride in her job, Lorelei sees Azaziel as the ultimate catch.

Blinded by pride, Lorelei quickly finds herself at the mercy of her prey.  Azaziel had plans for Lorelei all along.  Before Lorelei realizes what is happening, Azaziel places the soul of a young unsaved junkie named Ashleigh into Lorelei.  Young Ashleigh, feeling she had nothing to lose while alive, had offered up her soul to Azaziel in exchange for a brief experience of his unqualified love.  Azaziel is making love to Ashleigh’s ghost in the succubus’s flesh when Azaziel’s sister interrupts their unusual three-way.  Caught in the taboo act, Azaziel is startled and releases the succubus into the world with Ashleigh’s spirit trapped inside of her.

The plot unfolds while Azaziel tries to justify his actions before his angelic brethren and Lorelei roams the streets of Los Angeles seeking to purge herself of Ashleigh’s mortal soul.  To make things worse, Lorelei’s demonic master Asmodeus, a fallen pastor, and a horde of Hell’s minions enter the picture to hinder Azaziel and Lorelei’s efforts to remedy their own situations.  Lorelei keeps pursuing Azaziel’s fall while struggling under the burden of Ashleigh’s soul.  Meanwhile, Azaziel works to clean up the mess that he has made, while bringing both Ashleigh and Lorelei to the light.

The battle between Heaven and Hell is definitely one of temptation.  Aside from the framing of the war between Heaven and Hell through well-developed characters and a familiarity with theology, Rhoads and Thomas’s depiction of temptation make this book.  Sometimes the mix of horror fiction with romance and erotica in literature leans mainly toward horror, or pulls the primary attention of only one gender of reader (both of these scenarios can be great).  However, As Above, So Below is not that story.  Any fan of erotic horror fiction, male or female, is going to have fun reading this one.  As Above, So Below has a creative plot, vivid descriptive imagery, relentless temptation, graphic horror, and fiery, fun sex.  I think that sums it up.

I give this book a rating of 4.5 / 5 stars.

As Above, So Below is available now in many digital formats from Black Bed Sheet Books and in paperback or for Kindle at Amazon.  Visit Loren Rhoads.

 

The Weekly Morbid

Blogging from my phone this morning. We’ll see how I do.

Armand Rosamilia was kind enough to feature my novel As Above, So Below on his blog, in connection with Authors Supporting Our Troops 2014: http://t.co/gNrV5fPL

As Above got its first review — at Up All Night Horror Fiction: http://www.upallnighthorrorfictionrev...

I was invited to guest blog about Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel on the Western Legends blog: http://wp.me/p2P6mK-4qhttp://wp.me/p2...

I’ve been exploring Savannah’s lovely Bonaventure Cemetery at cemeterytravel.com and tumblr/blog/morbidloren.

And today I am off on an adventure, as soon as everyone wakes up. I can’t wait to get started!

Adventures in Cemetery Travel

Loren Rhoads:

The publisher of Wish You Were Here invited me to explain how I found all the cemeteries I visited in the book. Here’s my answer.

Originally posted on Western Legends Publishing:

Click to order!

How did I pick all those cemeteries I visited in Wish You Were Here? That’s a funny story…

I visited the first cemetery by accident. I found a lovely book of cemetery photos — who knew such a thing existed? — in the bookshop at London’s Victoria Station. That was toward the end of our unexpected stay in England, but my husband Mason decided he would rather see beautiful, overgrown Highgate Cemetery than the Tower of London. It was the right choice.

We’d already planned to work Pere Lachaise Cemetery into our trip to Paris, because Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and so many other famous people were buried there. I’d found a cemetery guidebook (my first!) called Permanent Parisians in the Rand McNally store in San Francisco. That book also led us to the cemeteries of Montparnasse and St. Vincent and the Paris Municipal Ossuary…

View original 349 more words

Interviewing Armand Rosamilia about Authors Supporting Our Troops

Armand Rosamilia, modeling a limited-edition t-shirt

Last month, I discovered a charity collecting books for America’s soldiers overseas.  I sent a handful of Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues — and have watched the project getting bigger all the time.  I was curious about it, so I decided to interview the brains behind it, Armand Rosamilia.

What’s the history of Authors Support Our Troops?

The idea for the actual event came from author Joe McKinney, who did a similar idea last year. He knew a soldier overseas and collected books from authors to ship. I gave him a few books. When I read an old interview with him talking about it, I asked if he was going to do it again. Luckily the soldier was no longer overseas, but I asked if I could pick up the ball and run with it. He thought it was a good idea. I thought it was going to be a small event with a handful of authors willing to send me their books and a couple of boxes to be shipped. My girlfriend’s godson is heading to Kuwait, so I wanted to send him some boxes so he could pass the books out and have something other than my books to read.

How many authors are involved so far this year?

Over 250, and the collections won’t end until May 15th. I have no set goal for how many authors will participate. I had no idea so many would be so generous so far.

Do you have any idea how many books that is?

We’re closing in on 1,900 author-signed books and could add another few hundred in the next few weeks, which would be amazing. This is grassroots, so I am finding actual soldiers in Kuwait, Afghanistan, etc. and shipping directly to them. They are kindly handing the books out. It’s just a matter of boxing up a mix of books and mailing them.

A fraction of this year’s book donations.

What can people do to help at this point?

Authors can still send us their author-signed books. Non-authors (or those feeling generous) can send donations to me to help with the shipping. We also have limited-edition event shirts, with the profit going directly to the shipping bill.

The t-shirt design comes in a variety of colors.

Will you do it again next year?

I am looking forward to beginning the process again on January 1st, 2015. This first year was the learning curve and we’ve figured out most of the kinks in our system. The second year should be easier and — hopefully — even bigger with collecting books and donations.

Are you getting any writing done in and around this enormous project?

I am still getting my writing in, which is a small miracle with everything going on. I have several projects ready for release, three different movie projects as well as working on the revamped “State of Horror” anthology series for Rymfire Books with editor Jerry Benns. This has been a fabulous year for many reasons.

Then you know the drill: bio and links!

Facebook event page

Armand Rosamilia is a New Jersey boy currently living in sunny Florida, where he writes when he’s not watching the Boston Red Sox and listening to Heavy Metal music. Because of him, they won the 2013 World Series, so he’s pretty good at watching!

He’s written over 100 stories that are currently available, including a few different series:

“Dying Days” extreme zombie series

“Keyport Cthulhu” horror series

“Flagler Beach Fiction Series” contemporary fiction

“Metal Queens” non-fiction music series

He also loves to talk in third person… because he’s really that cool. He’s a proud Active member of HWA as well.

You can find him at http://armandrosamilia.com for not only his latest releases but interviews and guest posts with other authors he likes!

E-mail him to talk about zombies, baseball and Metal: armandrosamilia@gmail.com

Thanks so much for doing this amazing thing. And thank you for allowing me to interview you about it.

No, thank you!

 

The Weekly Morbid

It’s been a busy week for your humble narrator:

Tonia Brown interviewed me for her Backseat Writer blog. You’ll get an adult content warning if you click the link, but my interview is safe to read.

“Anatomy Lab,” an essay about my first day in the cadaver lab from the upcoming memoir This Morbid Life, appeared on the Gravecast Blog today.

I recapped the first cemetery tour I arranged for the Obscura Society on Cemetery Travel.

Tickets for the second cemetery tour went on sale on the Atlas Obscura.

I wrote my 130th Cemetery of the Week entry. This one is about the incredible Wooldridge monument in Mayfield, Kentucky.

I raved about last weekend’s Publishing University in San Francisco on the Red Room.

I donated a handful of copies of Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues to Authors Supporting the Troops.

I’ve been poking around the graves of famous men this week on Cemetery Postcards.

Oh, and if you missed it last week, my daughter and I explored the Detroit Institute of Art, where the art was in danger of being sold to pay the city’s debts, on Scoutie Girl.

In Defense of Dialog Tags

The English language has an amazing array of synonyms for “say.”  Characters can tease or shout, whisper or boast, promise or argue.  ”Ask” has nearly as many shades of meaning, from begging to negotiating, demanding to inquiring. I love the way a writer can convey personality by the way their characters communicate.

I know there’s a whole school of writing that believes one should never use anything more than “said” and maybe occasionally “asked.”  These writers believe that dialog tags should be invisible.  I say, if they’re invisible, they should be left out.  I find few things more boring than reading said over and over and over.

Replacing “asked” — or other interrogatory words — with “said” just looks ignorant to me:  ”What do you mean?” he said.  No, I can hear your voice rise on that question mark, instead of falling at a period.  That usage is just wrong. Next thing I know, you’ll be banning question marks themselves. No. Just stop.

All that aside, I don’t believe every line of dialog needs a tag.  If there are only two characters speaking — and you’re punctuating correctly — it’s pretty easy to figure out who is saying what.  A good line of description before or after the line of dialog can also clarify things when necessary.

Things get trickier when you have two characters of the same gender conversing.  You don’t want to repeat their names every paragraph: that gets awkward quickly.  That’s where good dialog tags add the spice that makes the stew.

In As Above, So Below, I did a lot of characterization of my succubus through the dialog tags.  She coos and purrs and hisses, because she’s not human. She chooses to speak dramatically, because people expect that sort of behavior from the kind of girl she pretends to be.  When she drops the act, whenever she talks straight to someone, things are getting serious.

You’d lose all that if you bring all the dialog tags down to “said.”