Maybe I should explain the title.  There are some memoirs I published in Morbid Curiosity magazine that I still feel really close to, stories that changed me as I read them, edited them, proofread them, and ushered them into print.  The Editor’s Children are my favorites.

I’m gonna skip ahead to Morbid Curiosity#9, since I still have copies of that one for sale.

#9 has one of my favorite covers.  It’s really, really black and shiny, with the perfect violet color in the name.  Hugues Leblanc’s lovely infrared photo of Marie Laveau’s tomb in New Orleans didn’t really have anything to do with the text inside — the cemetery Joe Donohoe explores is Lafayette, not St. Louis #1 — but the picture was too pretty to pass up.

The issue also has some of my favorite stories.  Opening the issue is T.M. Gray’s “Slippery Little Devil,” which is about waking up under anesthesia while her appendix is being removed.  It’s grueling to read.

Also in the issue is “This is a Very Old Scar,” which Dorian Katz wrote about recovering from having her face slashed at a bus stop in her neighborhood.  I didn’t know Dorian before the attack, but I was privileged to attend her scar’s 10th birthday party, where we played “Pin the Tail on the Scar.”  I love stories where people are able to reclaim what hurt them.

Another of my favorites in the issue is “Charley Don’t Surf” by Timothy Blasza.  In 2004, Tim ran through Category 4 Hurricane Charley, dodging grapefruit projectiles.  Luckily, he lived to tell the tale.

The most intense story in MC#9 is Jude Gibson’s “Grace in Gravity.”  She was called home to clean up the aftermath of her stepbrother’s shotgun suicide.  The story is harrowing, disgusting, and deeply humanizing.  I wanted to reprint the story in Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues, but I’d lost track of Jude.  The only place you can read it is Morbid Curiosity #9.