#deathsgardenrevisited

[morbidloren]

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…

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An interview with the incomparable @marybatfraught, by @morbidloren of DEATH'S GARDEN REVISTED

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Death's Garden Revisited is available for preorder

Death's Garden Revisited is available for preorder

Last September, Death’s Garden Revisited came out from Blurb.com in a glorious hardcover edition that I am really proud of. The cemetery photos are huge and lovely. The colors are exquisite. The edition was everything I’d dreamed of. The book Death’s Garden Revisited collects 40 powerful personal essays — accompanied by full-color photographs — to illustrate why people visit cemeteries. Spanning…

[morbidloren]

Never Enough 2022

Every December I recap the writing triumphs and disappointments of the previous twelve months. Practically every year I feel like I haven’t done enough. This year I didn’t manage to finish and publish three books, but I did spend the better part of the last two months in Michigan, taking care of my folks, so three books was pretty ambitious. In the end, just as with the last two years, I feel…

[morbidloren]

How to update a book when your father is dying

In August 2022, my father fell in a gas station parking lot in Michigan. It wasn’t uncommon for him to fall, but he was too proud to use a cane. This time, it took three men to help him up and get him into my mom’s Equinox. She drove him to the Emergency Room in Flint. Turns out that he had fractured his pelvis. My dad had his first catastrophic heart attack in 1992. Thirty years of heart disease…

[morbidloren]

Cemetery book clubs

I love that there are so many book clubs reading cemetery books these days! This week, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the Tombs & Tomes Book Club, hosted by the Congressional Cemetery. They’d read Peter Ross’s Tomb with a View, a book I really enjoyed. They liked it less than I do, but their comments were really fascinating. They gave me lots of food for thought. I look forward to…

[morbidloren]

Never Enough 2023, part 2

This is the second half of this year’s year-end wrap-up. Short Nonfiction: 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.…

[morbidloren]

Death's Garden contributor: Robert Holt

I “met” horror author Robert Holt through my blog at CemeteryTravel.com when he submitted a sweet, funny, romantic essay about his first date — that happened to take place in a cemetery. I’m excited to reprint the story in Death’s Garden Revisited. Robert Holt lives in St. Louis with his wife and daughter. He writes horror novels and stories. Follow him on Twitter at @HoltHorror. What’s your…

[morbidloren]

Death's Garden contributor: Christine Sutton

Death's Garden contributor: Christine Sutton

Christine Sutton is one of the remarkable women I’ve met through the Ladies of Horror group on Facebook. For Death’s Garden Revisited, she wrote a wonderful essay about her visit to the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery in New Orleans — and her interaction there with someone who might not have been of this world. Officially, Christine Sutton is the author of multiple novellas and short stories ranging…

[morbidloren]

Never Enough 2022, part 2

Never Enough 2022, part 2

This is the second half of last year’s year-end wrap-up. It’s taken me more than a week to pull together all the links to stuff I did last year, not because there was so much but because my dad fell in September and broke his pelvis. He was too fragile for surgery, so they kept him in the hospital for two months so he could heal and get physical therapy. That was the easy part. Things have been…

[morbidloren]

My last cemetery event of the season will be Sunday night, October 27, at San Francisco's lovely, historic columbarium. Joining me will be Emerian Rich and Francesca Maria, to read from Death's Garden Revisited and discuss cemeteries, ghosts, family, and memory. Hope you can join us in this beautiful place.

Details: http://www.sfinsf.org/?p=2849 @emerianrich @writerofweird @sfinsf #cemeteries #sanfrancisco #halloween #ghoststory #cemeterybook #columbarium #sanfranciscocolumbarium #deathsgardenrevisited

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Death's Garden contributor Mary Rajotte

Interview with Death's Garden contributor Mary Rajotte

Although we’ve never met in person, I was introduced to Mary Rajotte through the Horror Writers Association several years ago. I really love her ability to spin a story. When I asked her to contribute an essay to Death’s Garden Revisited, I wasn’t sure what I would get. “Ebb and Flow: Finding My Way Back to Family,” the essay Mary sent, is a touching meditation on the way that cemeteries can…

[morbidloren]

Death's Garden contributor: Rain Graves

Death’s Garden contributor: Rain Graves

I met Rain Graves x-many years ago through the World Horror Conventions. She told stories at several of the Morbid Curiosity open mics and had an essay in Morbid Curiosity magazine, too. In 2010, Rain invited me to the first Haunted Mansion Writers Retreat, which literally changed my life. I edited The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two, thanks to her. Rain’s essay in Death’s Garden Revisited is…

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Death's Garden contributor: Brian Thomas

Death’s Garden contributor: Brian Thomas

Brian and I have known each other since high school. We wrote Star Wars fanfic together. We wrote Lost Angels and Angelus Rose — the novels about Lorelei and Azaziel — together. I’ve had the pleasure of publishing Brian’s essays in the original volume of Death’s Garden and in most issues of Morbid Curiosity magazine. Despite what he says about himself below, he’s a born raconteur. His essay in…

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Death's Garden Revisited is on sale now!

Death’s Garden Revisited is on sale now!

I’m so excited to announce that my next cemetery book is available now. Death’s Garden Revisited collects 40 powerful personal essays — accompanied by 80 full-color photographs — to illustrate why 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…

[morbidloren]

The Kickstarter counts down!

The Kickstarter counts down!

As of 9AM Pacific tomorrow (Saturday) morning, the Kickstarter for the cemetery book I’m editing will be over. This has been an enormous learning experience. I felt pretty confident going into the project that I could edit an amazing book. Death’s Garden Revisited will be the sixth book I’ve edited — and I’ve worked with presses from Scribner to Damnation to Tomes & Coffee, so I knew it was going…