Loren Rhoads's Blog, page 98

Morbid blog tour: Kimberlee Traub

Kimberlee Traub provided the most illustrations for Morbid Curiosity: 37 over the course of the magazine. Her work spanned from the cipher collage of "This is the Zodiac" to the high romanticism of "Death Carries Off Another Victim." Victoriana, Art Nouveau, Neo-Burlesque, tribalism, and ancient mythology all influence Kimberlee's rapidograph pen & ink creations. Presently she ...

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Morbid blog tour: Timothy Renner

Artist and musician Timothy Renner worked with Loren on her earlier book, Death's Garden: Relationships with Cemeteries. Tim's depiction of the girl lifting up her skin to reveal her skeleton -- an unused design for The Process -- became an icon of Morbid Curiosity magazine, serving to illustrate issue #2 as well as advertisements, calls for submissions, invitations to open mics, and the ...

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Morbid blog tour: M. Parfitt

Artist and writer M. Parfitt has been "throwing stuff together" all her life. Her mixed-media work incorporates fabric, paper, blood, hair, lint, nails and other unexpected materials. She has exhibited her collages and assemblages in over fifty shows since 1985, in galleries all over the United States. Her nonfiction essays also feature the unexpected: a toy box filled with garbage, a ...

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Momentary hiatus

This morning's interview is the last until Monday, when I'll start to feature the artists of Morbid Curiosity.In the meantime, I'm headed up to Seattle.  Tonight at 7, I'll be speaking at Elliott Bay Book Company, one of my favorite bookstores in all the world.  I plan to discuss the humble beginnings of Morbid Curiosity, as well as its transition to a book by a big New York publisher.  Please ...

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Morbid blog tour: Kimberly Poeppey-Del Rio

Kimberly Poeppey-Del Rio is an antique dealer and paranormal investigator from Milwaukee. Some of her sightings have been published in the books Hunting the American Werewolf by Linda Godfrey (Trails Media Group, 2006), Weird Wisconsin by Linda Godfrey and Richard Hendricks (Sterling, 2005), and in Loren Coleman's revised edition of Mysterious America: the Ultimate Guide to the ...

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The Best Holiday of the Year

I grew up on a farm, a mile down the road from the farm where my dad lived as a child.  My parents knew everyone "on the mile":  where they went to church, where they worked, whether they had kids.  There were a lot of young families like my parents, who'd bought a couple of acres in the midst of farmland, built a ranch-style house, put down sod and planted trees.

Almost no one decorated for Halloween.  The holiday was much less about scares, when I was a kid, and more about community.  The emphasis was on giving.  One farm wife made popcorn balls: caramelized popcorn shaped bigger than a fist and wrapped in cellophane.  Because the apple orchard was farther down the road, homemade candy apples were popular gifts. One neighbor offered a mixing bowl full of pennies and encouraged each child to take a fistful.  (This was when you could actually buy two pieces of Bazooka bubblegum for a penny.)  Neighbors would invite you in to warm up with a cup of hot chocolate so they could get a good look at your costume.

Halloween seemed magical to me then.  The neighborhood was a wonderland of houses with their porch lights on, inviting and friendly.  We neighborhood kids traveled in packs, carrying brown paper grocery sacks and pillowcases.  Our costumes were homemade and seldom p.c. -- hoboes and cowboys and Indian princesses, gypsies and soldiers -- things made by hand by our mothers or pulled together from our parents' closets.  There were no racks of shiny rayon costumes at the sole grocery store in town.

Because I have such rosy memories of Halloween -- before the scares of razor blades in apples and tabs of LSD given out as stickers (neither of which I took seriously until it was MY four-year-old going door-to-door) -- it was hard to learn to take my daughter trick-or-treating.  We don't know our neighbors beyond the houses immediately adjacent. Porch lights are resolutely switched off in this neighborhood on Halloween, where the neighbors are more likely to celebrate Dia de los Muertoes or Qingming than Halloween. I knew that there were parts of town where parents dumped their kids by the vanload, but I wasn't interested in being run down in the crush.

The first year we trick-or-treated only from the nurses in the hospice where my great aunt lay dying.  The year my daughter was three, we only begged from places I shopped at on West Portal Avenue.  We tried Potrero Hill the following year, but the neighbors were so besieged that they'd grown surly.  Some just left bowls of candy on the steps and retreated, so they didn't have to interact with the children at all.

Last year, we hit the jackpot.  The neighbors of St. Francis Wood compete with each other, turning their yards into Oz, complete with Dorothy's house atop the witch, or setting up a life-sized pirate ship, captained by a skeleton.  Kids and adults all seemed to have a good time.  Lenore was particularly impressed by the man doling out chocolate body parts, who gave her a blue eye because she was "such a pretty princess."

I'm excited about Halloween this year.  One of the families in her class is hosting a Halloween party -- Lenore's first -- before the kids go out to trick-or-treat together. This may be the most magical night of her life.  I look forward to recapturing the sense of community I felt as a child. It's strange that I have to think beyond our neighborhood to do it.


Get more on Loren Rhoads at SimonandSchuster.com

Can curiosity cure the blues?

Three years ago, Borderlands Books held a wake for the cult nonfiction magazine Morbid Curiosity. To celebrate the release of a new book drawn from the magazine's pages, Borderlands hosts a reading on October 10 from 3 to 4:30 p.m.

Featured readers:

* Simon Wood crashes his car
* Katrina James drinks blood
* A. M. Muffaz endures an exorcism
* Seth Flagsberg defends a murderer
* John Domeier survives Valentine's Day
* Sacramento blood artist M. Parfitt explains why
* Emceed by editor Loren Rhoads

Borderlands Books is located at 866 Valencia Street, between 19th and 20th in San Francisco. Check them out online at www.Borderlands-Books.com. Telephone (415) 824-8203.

Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues: True Stories of The Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox, and Unusual collects 40 of the editor's favorite tales previously published in Morbid Curiosity magazine. Come cures your blues.

"A wild, exhilarating ride into the darker side of the human experience." -Rue Morgue magazine

More info? www.charnel.com/morbidcuriosity


Get more on Loren Rhoads at SimonandSchuster.com

The promotion begins

I went down to KFOG to do my first radio interview this morning. I've been interviewed by Peter Finch, the news director, twice before. The first time he came to my home. The second time we spoke on the phone. This time, I actually got to set foot in the studio!

I'm going to have to get up to speed with the radio interviews fairly quickly. This Sunday, I'll speak with KFJC (a college station) and the Ghost Man and Demonhunter show, which is internet radio. Next week, I've got my first pirate radio interview.

As my husband pointed out, it doesn't matter what you wear on the radio. Still, I got dressed twice and put on lipstick. Sometimes it's about how you feel.

This morning's interview was for the Beat of the Bay program, a local public affairs show. I'll find out when it's supposed to air and let you know.


Get more on Loren Rhoads at SimonandSchuster.com