Loren Rhoads

Latest News:
April 2008: The Morbid Curiosity back issue sale is going on now! Issues 3-10 are available in limited quantities for $4 each, U.S. postpaid. The Morbid Curiosity page is here.

March 27-31, 2008: I’ll be at the World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City, reading at the Persephone Writers Organization’s game show, reading SIRENS, doing my first-ever Mass Autograph Signing, and swanning around the Dark Arts Pajama Party.

February 23, 2008 at 3 p.m.: Maria Alexander and I will read from SINS OF THE SIRENS at Borderlands Books.

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

January 19, 2008 at 2 p.m.: My first-ever book-signing with Maria Alexander and Christa Faust -- to celebrate the publication of SINS OF THE SIRENS -- at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, California!

January 2008: SINS OF THE SIRENS, the book containing four of my stories, alongside work by Maria Alexander, Christa Faust, and Mehitobel Wilson come out from Dark Arts Books.

November 30, 2007: I finished Nanowrimo 2007, scraping together 50,000 words of an Alondra novel tentatively called "The Shadow of Death."

November 2007: "San Francisco: Crimes Seen," a nonfiction exploration of San Francisco criminal history, appears in Instant City #5. (www.instantcity.org)

October 31, 2007: I finished first draft of a science fiction Hong Kong-style action novel called The Dangerous Type. Revision is scheduled for January 2008.

October 2007: "The Paramental Appreciation Society," a chapbook containing stories by Loren Rhoads, Seth Lindberg, Claudius Reich, and Lilah Wild, is back in print! Order it from Borderlands Books. (www.borderlands-books.com)

October 2007: "The Fox and the Foreigner," an Alondra story set in Tokyo, appears in Not One Of Us #38. (www.not-one-of-us.com))

8/7/07: I signed the contract for Sins of the Sirens, available from Dark Arts Books in October 2007, with new and rare stories by Maria Alexander, Christa Faust, Mehitobel Wilson, and Loren Rhoads. My stories will include the first chapter of a succubus novel, the complete version of the story published by Cemetery Dance last year, an Alondra story set in New Orleans, and a brand-new story inspired by the museum at Griffith Observatory.

August 2007: I joined Facebook and Goodreads. Come be my friend!

7/12/07: "The Fox and the Foreigner" is accepted by John Benson for either the October issue of Not One of Us or a special project in January. This will be the third Alondra story to see print this year. It's one of my favorites.

6/4/07: "San Francisco: Crimes Seen," a tour of the scenic crime scenes of my hometown, is accepted for Instant City #5.

4/23/07: In celebration of today being International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, the story "The Acid That Dissolves Images" has been posted in PDF form on the Writing page. Download and enjoy!

2/23/07: "The Shattered Rose" is accepted for The Paramental Appreciation Society's chapbook to be published by Red Snake Books in March 2007. Loren will read an excerpt of the story at Borderlands Books on March 25 at 3:00pm.

2/2/07: "The Energizer Bunny Keeps Going and Going" published in Instant City #4.

9/28/06: "Still Life with Shattered Glass," the X-rated version, will appear in NOIROTICA 4, edited by Thomas S. Roche. It should be out by the end of the year.

11/20/06: "Affamé," a gay vampire story, is accepted for City Slab #10. (www.cityslab.com)

12/31/06: Loren will be the featured reader at the release party for Instant City #4 (www.instantcity.org). The event is scheduled for 2/2/07 at Adobe Books, 3166 16th Street (between Valencia and Guerrero) San Francisco, (415) 864-3936. More details posted as I receive them.

1/4/07: "Still Life with Shattered Glass," as published in Cemetery Dance #54, has been recommended for the Bram Stoker Award for short fiction.



Loren's writing ranges from dark urban fantasy, dystopian science fiction, and morbid erotica to worrisome personal essays and gleefully gloomy travel articles. Her short fiction has appeared in 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.

Magazines like Tail Spins, Unzipped, and Jane have featured her peculiar personal essays. Loren's travel stories darkened the pages of two Traveler's Tales books, the anthology Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person, and Instant City. Her explorations of graveyards manifested monthly for almost four years at Gothic.Net.

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 can be found here.

Loren is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the Persephone Writers Organization, 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.


Photograph by Tracy Ingle.

This website copyright © 2008 by Loren Rhoads. All rights reserved.