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 to be beautifully designed. The trick was going to be raising the money so I could make the full-color hardcover that I envisioned.
And backers made that happen on the very first day.
Since then, backers have preordered enough books that I can add additional photos to the book, commission a couple of essays, and host a reading on Zoom that will include the international contributors.
The final goal ahead of us is a book release party in a cemetery in the Bay Area. I’m hoping that will happen before the campaign ends.
This week I announced the book’s Table of Contents on Kickstarter. Here it is:
Cemetery Strawberries – Chris LaMay-West
A Tale of 25,000 Tales – M. Parfitt
Guess How Many People are Buried in Bonaventure Cemetery? – Barbara Baird
Brown Bodies and Burials – Saraliza Anzaldúa
Toasting a Ghost in Northern Ireland – Anne Born
La Recoleta – Rain Graves
How the Forgotten Angels Saved My Life – Emerian Rich
Not a Tourist Attraction – Priscilla Bettis
Sacred Heart – Robert Holt
Family Time – A.M. Muffaz
History Lives Like Ghosts – Trilby Plants
In the Shadow of Eldfell – Greg Roensch
The Silence of Block 14 – Frances Lu-Pai Ippolito
Paris’s Secret Cemetery – Erika Mailman
Katie Likes Flowers – Joanne M. Austin
Marking Fred Gwynne’s Unmarked Grave with Flowers – Sharon Pajka
Wedding Vailes – Angela Yuriko Smith
Crossed Fingers – Jo Nell Huff
New Orleans Blues – Christine Sutton
Communing with the Dead – George Neville-Neil
Death and Spinsterhood: It’s Personal – Rachelle Meilleur
The Swirl of Silence – Denise N. Tapscott
The Day it Snowed in Prague – E.M. Markoff
I Found Love on Find-A-Grave – J’aime Rubio
MS. Inspired by a Graveyard – Trish Wilson
Never Let Your Feet Get Cold – Carrie Sessarego
The Treasure Hunter – Stephen Mark Rainey
Lenin’s Mausoleum – Melodie Bolt
When a Cemetery Speaks – R. L. Merrill
The Hill Church Cemetery of Sighișoara, Romania: An Unforgettable Experience – Rena Mason
A Girl, Her Dad, and a Cemetery – Francesca Maria
Ghost in the Graveyard – Benjamin Scuglia
The Cemetery that Changed My Life – Carole Tyrrell
Exhuming Corpses for Fun and Profit – Paul Stansfield
Ebb and Flow: Finding My Way Back to Family – Mary Rajotte
If you’d like to pick up a copy of the book for yourself, here’s the link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lorenrhoads/deaths-garden-revisited-relationships-with-cemeteries
Don’t snooze! The clock is ticking.
