Loren Rhoads

Latest News:
January 13, 2012: DEMON LOVERS comes out from Ravenous Romance, featuring my new Lorelei story “Never Bargained for You.”

November 1, 2011: My true ghost story "The Ghost of Friends" goes live on the Jennifer's Ghost podcast.

October 2011: Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma invites me to speak about traveling to cemeteries on April 15, 2012!

June 24, 2011: I’ve been invited to read at the Instant City event at this year’s Litcrawl. October 15 at 6 p.m. at Dalva, 3121 16th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District.

June 3, 2011: Instant City is going to publish "The Shattered Rose" in its genre issue.

September 18, 2010: “Valentine” goes live on Wily Writers. It’s the first podcast of one of my stories. I adore it! Click here.

Fall 2010: My cemetery essay “With Folded Wings,” about Valhalla Memorial Park, appears in the Association for Gravestone Studies’ AGS Quarterly newsletter.

August 2010: The first new cemetery essay, “Not Fade Away,” appears in Eleven Eleven magazine. It’s about visiting Jack London’s grave.

July 24, 2010: Not One of Us bought my short story “Catalyst,” about drinking absinthe in Prague. It should appear in the fall.

November 29, 2009: Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues is nominated for a Black Quill award at Dark Scribe magazine.

October 23, 2009: Loren was interviewed at Morbid Outlook. Read the interview here.

October 2009: Morbid Curiosity Cures The Blues was featured in a Rue Morgue story called "Chicken Soup For The Morbid Soul."

October 5, 2009: Loren's story "The Angel's Lair" from SINS OF THE SIRENS made Ellen Datlow's Honorable Mention list of the Year's Best Horror: view.

October 4, 2009: Loren's photo "The Bone Chalice" is chosen for the permanent collection of the Museum of Death. It will be displayed in the Museum's photography room.

September 3, 2009: I guest-blogged about Rabbi Loew’s tomb in Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery at the amazing Quigley’s Cabinet (Link). It’s my favorite blog.

August 23, 2009: Mason and I put together a trailer for Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, featuring music by his band Numinous Eye. Check it out at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2euCWtVxFA

April 15, 2009: “A Cemetery that Once Rivaled Niagara Falls,” about my visit to Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, appears on Morbid Outlook (http://www.morbidoutlook.com/art/articles/2009_04_greenwood.html). I sold the essay to City Slab last year as the first of my new cemetery columns. City Slab, R.I.P.

February 2009: Scribner accepted the manuscript for MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES: True Stories of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox and Unusual from the magazine "Morbid Curiosity." In addition to 40 essays, the book will include sidebars and illustrations from the magazine. It goes on sale September 29. (http://books.simonandschuster.com/9781439124666)

January 2009: “The Drowning City” was bought by Burning Effigy Press for their FRESH BLOOD, Vol. 2 chapbook, due in Spring 2010.

February 16, 2008: My first interview as an author, rather than purely as an editor, appeared at Macabre Ink.



For 10 years, Loren was editor of the cult nonfiction magazine Morbid Curiosity. She still believes curiosity is a radical, transformative trait. The contributors and contents of Morbid Curiosity magazine can be found here. A collection drawn from the magazine has been published by Scribner. Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues is available from your local bookstore or from Amazon.

Loren's writing ranges from dark urban fantasy, dystopian science fiction, and morbid erotica to worrisome personal essays and gleefully gloomy travel articles. These days she's blogging at CemeteryTravel.com — about cemeteries as travel destinations — and at RedRoom.com about living the writing life.

Loren's short fiction has appeared in Instant City, City Slab, Cemetery Dance, Not One of Us, the chapbooks Ashes & Rust and The Paramental Appreciation Society, and in the book Sins of the Sirens: Fourteen Tales of Dark Desire, alongside Maria Alexander, Christa Faust, and Mehitobel Wilson.

Loren's travel stories have darkened the pages of two Traveler's Tales books, the anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person, and Morbid Outlook. Her explorations of graveyards manifested monthly for almost four years at Gothic.Net. This year will see the publication of her cemetery travel essays called Wish You Were Here: Travel Adventures in Graveyards around the World.

Loren is a longtime member of the Horror Writers Association and the Association for Gravestone Studies.


"Loren Rhoads has a taste for the most breathtaking insights to be found in macabre topics. Her work is at once arresting, haunting, unsettling, and gorgeous." — Thomas Roche, editor of the Noirotica series.


Loren at exhibit of art from Morbid Curiosity
Art by Suzanne Dechnik. Photo by R. Samuel Klatchko

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