Contact Information:
Email Address: morbid@charnel.com
Books By Loren Rhoads
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: There’s something magical about that sense of terror that grips you in the middle of sleep, when your heart pounds, you can’t catch your breath, and you know the monster is seconds away from grabbing you. While this anthology occasionally records the odd hallucination or vision from beyond, you’ll find no dream sequences here. These nine stories are designed to induce nightmares. Table of Contents: In “La Japonesa” by Lisa Morton, a college professor chasing tenure comes face to face with something with sharp claws and even sharper teeth. Weston Ochse cuts deep in “Glue and the Art of Supermodel Maintenance.” Officer Warren Hastings can’t escape the crime he didn’t prevent in Yvonne Navarro’s “Recall.” In Jennifer Brozek’s “Twenty Questions,” Sara discovers some games must be played until the end. E.S. Magill reminds us that every civilization has its myths of supernatural protectors of the natural world. During a hiking expedition, Harris Kimball encounters the spectral guardians of California’s Santa Lucia Mountains, whose mission is to stop the greatest threat to nature: humans. In Angel Leigh McCoy’s “The Haunting of Mrs. Poole,” Amelia seems to have it all: wealthy husband, devoted sister, perfect daughter…and a gothic mansion on the shore of the James River where nothing is what it seems. The line between reality and delirium blurs for an exhausted new mother in Alison J. McKenzie’s “Into the Quiet.” In Bill Bodden’s “The House on River Road,” Ed and Jerry discover some urban legends are more than legendary…and some abandoned houses are better left alone. Finally, Loren Rhoads grew up in a small town. She remembers how they can be in “Elle a Vu un Loup.”
Word Count: 55000
Summary: In Unsafe Words, 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. Featuring an introduction by Lisa Morton and cover art by Lynne Hansen, these never-before-collected stories come from the magazines Cemetery Dance, Space & Time, City Slab, and Instant City, the Wily Writers podcast, and from the books Sins of the Sirens, Demon Lovers, The Haunted Mansion Project: Year Two, Tales for the Camp Fire, and more. One story, “With You By My Side It Should Be Fine,” is original to the collection.
Word Count: Information not available
Summary: In November 2018, fire broke out on Camp Creek Road and raced through Butte County, California. By the time the fire was extinguished, the town of Paradise had been scoured from the map. Nearly 100 people died. Damage ran to an estimated $16 billion. The disaster was named the Camp Fire, in memory of its place of origin. Horror writers of Northern California rallied to raise money for the survivors. Tales from the Camp Fire ranges from fairy tale to science fiction, from psychological terror to magical realism, from splatterpunk to black humor, all rounded out by a messed-up post-apocalyptic cookbook. Through these pages roam werewolves, serial killers, a handful of ghosts, plenty of zombies, Cthulhu cultists, mad scientists, and a pair of conjoined twins. All profits from the sale of this anthology are being donated to Camp Fire relief and recovery efforts.
