Category Archives: Good cemetery news

News about graveyards coming back from the brink, new uses for graveyards, or features on the people who care for them.

Death’s Garden Revisited

Posted on September 13, 2022 | Leave a comment

I’ve just now finished the final proofing for my next book, Death’s Garden Revisited: Personal Relationships with Cemeteries. Today we’ll order a paperback proof to check the quality of the photos one last time, then I can order the books and start fulfilling the Kickstarter pledges. The book will be available to everyone else in October.

It’s such an exciting time. The genesis of this book began in 1994, when my friend Blair gave me a box of photos he’d taken in cemeteries. Automatism Press published the first book inspired by them in 1996 and ever since, I have wanted to do a sequel. This book exceeds all my expectations.

I cannot wait for everyone to see how beautiful this new book is. I knew the text was going to be powerful, emotionally affecting, and life-affirming, but Automatism Press had never done a full-color book before. The photos truly are all I had hoped.

If you are interested in preordering a copy, you can drop me a note via my bookshop and I will let you know when the books are available.

In the meantime, enjoy some of the photos from the book! My phone isn’t really doing them justice, but you can get the idea.

Old Stirling Cemetery, photographed by Ann Bollen.

Unnamed graveyard, photographed by Greg Roensch.

St. Stephen’s Cemetery, photographed by Emerian Rich.

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Cemetery Happy Hour!

Posted on April 14, 2022 | 1 comment

What is a Cemetery Happy Hour? Last summer when I attended the Association for Gravestone Studies conference online, Dr. Sharon Pajka hosted a virtual happy hour for attendees. She’d even created a PDF recipe book filled with tasty drinks like Preservation Punch, Decoration Day Daquiri, and Cemetery Cider. What a great souvenir!

When the contributors to Death’s Garden Revisited and I started talking about events we could hold to get the word out about the book, Sharon offered to host a Cemetery Happy Hour. We recorded it last weekend.

If you’re reading this on your phone, sometimes the video embedding doesn’t work. You can watch the video on youtube: https://youtu.be/H5BN8WWZq-c

Each of the contributors — Chris LaMay-West, Sharon Pajka, Denise N. Tapscott, and me — created a drink to celebrate the cemetery they wrote about in their essays. I wanted to include my recipe here.

The Ghost of Lone Mountain Cemetery

2 oz. St. George Vodka

1 oz. Creme de Mure

1 oz. Creme de Violette

A squeeze of lemon

Served in a martini glass and garnished with a skull ice cube.

Remember, if you’d like to preorder a copy of Death’s Garden Revisited, personal essays about the cemeteries we form relationships with, the Kickstarter ends on Saturday, April 16, at 9 AM Pacific. Here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries 

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Cemetery Podcasts

Posted on December 22, 2021 | 3 comments

I had the honor of being a guest on two really great podcasts this year.

In March, I chatted with Tui Snider on her Tombstone Tuesdays video podcast. We talked about Wish You Were Here and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, how I came to love cemeteries, and some of my favorite cemetery sculptures. It was really fun.

Here’s the link, in case the embed doesn’t come through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc8atGbwYis&t=2s

In November, I hung out with LaShell Scott for her Stones, Bones and Shadows podcast. We talked about our favorite cemeteries that we haven’t visited yet — Highgate for her, Savannah’s Bonaventure for me, and so much more.

Click to listen to it here or go directly to Spotify with this link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/00tHCvVT7dq8Rm8bFhvRI0?si=e0af30ed3d574505

I know it’s been a couple of years since I had a cemetery book published, but that hasn’t been for lack of trying on my part. Hopefully, something will work out for next year.

In the meantime, if you have a cemetery podcast, I’d love to chat with you. Hit me up through the Contact form above!

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Price Drop on the Cemetery Travels Notebook

Posted on June 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

I’ve dropped the price on the Cemetery Travels Notebook, so it’s more affordable. Check it out!

cemetery-travels-notebook-cover-1

The Cemetery Travels Notebook is a place to keep the field notes from your own cemetery adventures. It features 80 lined pages, interspersed with 20 lush full-page color photographs of cemeteries from Paris to Tokyo, with stops at Sleepy Hollow, San Francisco, and all points between, to inspire your wanderlust.

Photographer Loren Rhoads, author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel, blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com. She’s a long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies.

Ordering information:

The Cemetery Travel Notebook is available for $19.59 (softcover) or $23.39 (hardbound) from Blurb.com. See a preview at Blurb.

Autographed and inscribed copies can be ordered directly from Loren via the Cemetery Travel bookstore in the tab above. For details or to request inscriptions, leave a message through the Contact Me form.

Praise for the Cemetery Travels Notebook:

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is the perfect notebook for a taphophile. It’s a lined notebook for all your note-taking needs. It’s also filled with beautiful full-color photos of monuments from the US and beyond.”—Minda Powers-Douglas, The Cemetery Club

“Cemetery Travels Notebook is a great book for recording notes and thoughts while you explore cemeteries. It is also a unique gift idea for your taphophile friends.”—Andrea Carlin, Association for Gravestone Studies Quarterly

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is great! I love the photos and the amount of space for keeping notes and thoughts.”—Joy Neighbors, author of A Grave Interest

“The Cemetery Travels Notebook is really beautiful. It will be very useful.”—Jeane Trend-Hill, author of the Silent Cities series

“The photos in the Cemetery Travels Notebook are inspirational. I love the fact that there’s a lot of writing space for my thoughts.”—Leni Panopio, Cypress Lawn Memorial Park

“I love my Cemetery Travels Notebook. It has beautiful pictures and fits into a purse perfectly. What more could you want from a notebook?”—Martha Allard, author of Dust and Other Stories

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Cemetery Season begins now

Posted on September 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Cemetery season is starting early this year. I’ve already been on two podcasts to talk about graveyards and travel:

Something (Rather than Nothing) with Ken Volante: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4WyvBI3A5WgIqeJUSOejRN?si=V4CThu30QL2IESwbxeiAkg

Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3wAvGv98DvKVDDBURHEPGy?si=-iaUGgVyQq2IivHelzEr-g

Coming up next month will be the Books & Travel podcast with Joanna Penn. I’m not sure of the date yet, but here’s the homepage: https://www.booksandtravel.page/listen/

Things have been slow on the cemetery book front this year. While I’ve been waiting to sign another contract, I’ve gotten two fiction books out:

What if Romeo had wings and Juliet a barbed tail?

Angelus Rose is the second novel in the succubus/angel series I was writing with Brian Thomas. Of interest to cemetery folk is that the book visits three cemeteries in LA. It’s available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Indie Bound, and Smashwords.

Finally, my brand-new collection of short stories, Unsafe Words, came out on Sunday.

From the back cover:

In the first full-length collection of her edgy, award-winning short stories, Loren Rhoads punctures the boundaries between horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction in a maelstrom of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Ghosts, succubi, naiads, vampires, the Wild Hunt, and the worst predator in the woods stalk these pages, alongside human monsters who follow their cravings past sanity or sense.

Unsafe Words is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indie Bound. It should be up at Bookshop.org and Smashwords soon.

I hope to get back to work on the cemetery updates soon. In the meantime, tell me…have you had a cemetery adventure lately?

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