This Morbid Life

by Loren Rhoads

What others have called an obsession with death is really a desperate romance with life. Guided by curiosity, compassion, and a truly strange sense of humor, this particular morbid life is detailed through a death-positive collection of 45 confessional essays. Along the way, author Loren Rhoads takes prom pictures in a cemetery, spends a couple of days in a cadaver lab, eats bugs, survives the AIDS epidemic, chases ghosts, and publishes a little magazine called Morbid Curiosity.

Originally written for zines from Cyber-Psychos AOD to Zine World and online magazines from Gothic.Net to Scoutie Girl, these emotionally charged essays showcase the morbid curiosity and dark humor that transformed Rhoads into a leading voice of the curious and creepy.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Death

200 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 22, 2021

About the author

Loren Rhoads is author of 222 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, and its sequel Still Wish You Were Here: More Adventures in Cemetery Travel.

Loren is also author of This Morbid Life, a morbid memoir, and Unsafe Words, the first full-length collection of her edgy, award-winning stories.

She's the co-author of Lost Angels and its sequel Angelus Rose. She's also author of the space opera In the Wake of the Templars trilogy: The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes.

Finally, she's editor of Tales for the Camp Fire, which raised money for survivors of 2018's devastating wildfire in Butte County, California.

Reviews

[Sherry Fundin · Rating 4 out of 5]

#1, Loren Rhoads was born in my hometown of Flint, Michigan. Gotta support another Michigander. #2, I couldn’t resist that cover.

Right out of the gate, I felt a kinship to Loren Rhoads. I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, and this was like going home. I went to Mott Community College. I know Dort Highway very well, because I worked at the AC Plant, after being laid off from the Chevrolet Plant downtown Flint. I do love a walk down memory lane.

Loren Rhoads found inspiration from her personal experiences…you never know where it will come from. We need to be open to all our experiences.

HOLD ON TIGHT!f These essays are dark and gritty, filled with truth. Loren lays herself bare. This Morbid Life is an apt title for the book and is not for the feint of heart. She lets it all hang out and I loved every minute of it.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of This Morbid Life by Loren Rhoads.

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[Sherron Wahrheit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just in time for Halloween, this book writes this author’s colorful life beginning as an intrepid goth girl in Michigan and culminating in the singed smoke-grey California wildfires and COVID-19 of today.

This collection of essays is not an objective Mary Roach-style humorous portraying the science of the icky and macabre. Nor is it filled with the spooky, spiritual, and subjective frights from the other end of the spectrum. It does, however, contain elements of each but with much more subtlety and with less of the self-satisfied certainty of easy categorization. I myself am not particularly a fan of the macabre, especially the “woo woo” type, but I did want to challenge the boundaries of my comfort levels, and NetGalley obliged my request with this book. In return, here’s my review!

The very first stories—teenage photo ops in cemeteries, pierced genitalia—were rough for me to get through. They seemed just an ill thought out attempt for wild kicks and sensations. In fact, i need to call them stories, vignettes, or memoirettes instead of essays, because my engagement grew as I began to understand her heart more than her mind. The essays became more and more gripping and I wasn’t able to stop until I had finished the very last story.

Yes, the stories were fascinating. What sets this collection apart as a five-star book is the honest examination life-changing capacity of these stories. The author presents stories with an straightforward clinical unflinching analysis and a reflection on ethics rather than exploitation or shame. Not just the physical world but also the apparitions, human spirit, spirits of humans. Adding to my enjoyment, the stories/essays are well-written, condensed, interlinked nuggets that logically proceed in a chronological fashion.

Her fascination with the taboo, morbid topics of pain, sex, blood, death, cadavers, are presented non gratuitously, and more and more thoughtful as she matures. The stories surrounding death in her family of origin that spur her to bring life into the world seem an emotional climax. As she proceeds, she shares painful, yet healing stories. About friends who died at the beginning of the AIDS crisis and the ethics of assisted suicide and the subsequent documentation, about the life and death of cadavers who donated their bodies to science, they reveal the beauty of their gifts of life, about facing fears.

I noticed that each story closed with a brief summary of lessons learned, each a wryly humorous takeaway, but you can also see what she’s learned through experiences she shares, the words she chooses, and the emotions she shares through the actions she shares. Also highly visibly is the lack of stories about her husband, whom we know is around because she tells us. This is her story. Care is taken in story selection, as we see two framing stories about claustrophobia that brace the inner stories and show her ability to to take on negative emotions and work with them.

Tender, delicate, vulnerable, introspective. You see her handling a cadavers heart, the electrical pump of life and realize the morbid as an expression of love. The morbid as a metaphor for love, life, and flow of energy.

She opens her heart and shows her vulnerability.

[Roxanne Rhoads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Candid, raw, unfiltered...Loren's essays about death, dying, and really living are utterly fascinating - completely engrossing.

I picked up the book to read one or two chapters and before I knew it I had completed 3/4 of the book. I just couldn't put it down.

What really hooked me at first was the familiarity. The first essay takes place in Flushing and Flint- right where I live.

Loren grew up just a couple miles from me in Flushing back when it was more of a small-town farm community. Many of the places she mentions in her essays I know- Flushing, Flint, Sunset Hills Cemetery, Glenwood Cemetery... but I'm seeing them through a completely different lens because her teen and twenties experiences were in the late 70s and 80s while mine was in the 90s and 2000s.

But what really fascinates me is her stories after she left Michigan. She got out and lived a big life in San Francisco and traveled all over the world.

Weird, wild, morbid...it's all in the book. I love it. It is completely different than anything I've ever read before. I can't wait to read more.

[Carole Tyrrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death is the one certainty in life and one that we may have no control over. As a character in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ memorably said ‘Get busy living or get busy dying’. To be interested in death is generally described as being ‘morbid’ but this is what fascinates writer, blogger and taphophile, Loren Rhoads. She enthusiastically embraces it as the Doyenne of the Dark Side. I think the need to know what happens next is hard wired in some of us as it happened to me after my father died. So, I understood the author’s desire to visit a cremation company and a school of Mortuary Science. When viewing bodies for dissection, the author comments that she felt that she was ‘looking into a holy place that few people see.’
In this book of 48 short essays she gives us snapshots of her life both past and present. And with titles such as ‘Of course, I live in a haunted house’ and ‘I’m Gonna Go Eat Bugs’ how could you resist?
In the introduction, ‘Welcome to My Morbid Life’ she discusses the 90’s ‘zine scene. I remember it well even though I was in the UK. There was such energy at the time and so many ‘zines – I wonder what would be ‘zine creators do now? She also describes founding her own publishing company and creating the legendary Morbid Curiosity magazine. A real shame that it’s not still around.
The essays cover a really wide range of subjects from being out with friends on Prom Night and quite literally being stuck in a local cemetery at night. Not a good time for one of them to observe ‘Doesn’t this seem like the time when zombies should come out of the grave?’
Also being locked in a walk-in closet by your new room mate at sleepaway camp is not the best way to discover that you’re claustrophobic. But the author uses this experience as inspiration for some of her strongest characters.
Loren explores her family background as she was desperate to leave the farming community in which she grew up but returns to look after her father after he has a heart attack. Never close, she finds a way to make her peace with him.
AIDs isn’t such a big, scary word as it used to be now that it can be treated. But during the ‘80’s and ‘90’s it was more or less a death sentence. A generation of people wiped out and as Loren says ‘AIDS is a vampire.’ Blair and Jeff were husband and wife until Blair died from the disease. However, he was still around….
There is also tenderness and poignancy in the description of the workmanship of an anatomical model of a pregnant woman at an exhibition in San Francisco knowing that it was modelled on a real woman and child that had died. She saw it again in Italy next to another model of a pregnant woman, this time, with twins. She also discusses her own pregnancy and the premature birth of her daughter, Sorrell.
But above all, there is humour, especially when the author dresses up as a man to go to a party and struggles to reposition ‘my new lower appendage.’ It makes you wonder how men manage this themselves.
I almost wished that I was sitting in a coffee shop with the author and she was telling me these anecdotes, experiences and vignettes herself over a flat white. This is such a great book to dip into like a huge box of chocolates and it brought back memories of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s especially the ‘Modern Primitives’ book which gets a namecheck. I can’t recommend ‘This Morbid Life.’ Enough as I enjoyed it so much. And another killer cover by Lynne Hansen.

[Jennifer Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this as a Goodreads Giveaway via Amazon Kindle. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I had no idea what type of book it was when I started. Once I went back and read the foreword, it was clear it was a collection of essays/stories from the author’s experiences and how they influenced her to write. I guess I also have a fascination with death as I really didn’t think it was “morbid”. But I guess being very excited and intrigues about touring a cremation site isn’t the norm. The essays range from heartfelt and sentimental to hilarious and lighthearted to ghostly and creepily cool. I enjoyed some more than others. I’ll have to check out some of the authors other books now.

[Greg Weirauch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly what we would expect from the editor of Morbid Curiosity. Excellent! Thank you Loren

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tales of the morbid, yes, but also the alternative and also the purely dark.

I loved the parts the had to do with mortuary science and cadavers!

[Rae Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a digital copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway. (Thank you, Ms. Rhoads!)

This is my first introduction to Loren Rhoads’ work. The essays are funny, touching, poignant and fascinating. Like her, Halloween makes me feel alive. Unlike her, I’m too squeamish to check out Body Worlds. From mouse heads to pregnancy, and from ghosts to wildfires, she writes with both honesty and humor. I enjoyed this book, and am happy to have it on my digital shelf.

[LB · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I want to thank Loren for allowing me to read a digital copy of her book!
This was a really interesting read - I love reading about people with vastly different experiences than me, and this falls in that category. I really enjoyed her writing style and her way of going to darker places and topics many others do not, doing so in a way that a more vanilla human such as myself doesn’t feel unable to understand, if that makes sense. I like your brain, Loren! Thanks again for this copy of your book, and I’ll look for more from you!

[Erin Al-Mehairi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a few of these essays a week or every few weeks for months. That’s the rate I could handle them, as to me, they are so heavy and thought-provoking. Brilliant though, Loren is, with an amazing inquisitive heart and mind. I was sad for the collection to be complete. I could keep reading Loren’s essays forever. She views life (and death) differently than most and I’m forever changed. Definitely a highlight read of 2021 for me - a stand out. Highly recommended.

[Francesca Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this raw, intimate look into a fellow morbid soul. This deeply personal take on the dark things that fascinate us, was enriched by Rhoads' personal experiences, anecdotes and journey of the self.

[Melissa T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book on Goodreads first reads, thank you!

An interesting read. Still processing these essays.