At least, that’s what Rhodes says she hoped she published the magazine “Morbid Curiosity” in San Francisco, from May 1997 to 2006.
That’s what she hopes audiences will find in “Pique Your Morbid Curiosity,” scheduled Saturday at Ink Spell Books, when she will read selected stories from her book “Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues” (Scribner, 320 pages paperback, $14.99) from 2 to 4 p.m. Oct. 24 at Ink Spell Books in Half Moon Bay.
 Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues |
She said that at first, the stories tended to be travel writing, “in a strange place, and a weird thing happened to me.” In time, she said, they evolved into a medical arena, still in the format of an unusual thing happening to an everyday person. One particularly popular essay, she said, involved a writer waking up on the operating table.
“They run the gamut of mundane things,” Rhodes said.
She said that, surprisingly, many of the stories in her magazine reflected humor. And that, she said, is a human survival technique.
“They start from dark places but so many are told with humor. And to survive, you have to see the brighter side,” Rhodes said. “Everyone that endured (something like that) had to tell the story about it, We tell stories about our lives as a way to understand them.”
Other pieces in the magazine involved ghost stories, UFO abduction or out-of-the-mainstream jobs. Most shared a common, morbid undertone.
“They were things you might not think were morbid but turned out to be,” she said.
But oddly, “They started from dark places but so many are told with humor. A lot of the pieces wee quite funny.”
There is a reason, she said. “At lot of times and situations, you have to laugh, to survive.”
The essays, touching on the funny bone, the guilty pleasure of morbid curiosity or the simply absurd, are by a few a handful of regular contributors to her magazine, who will be at Ink Spell on Saturday.
Writers and essays include Katrina James and a piece about hunting real vampires, Allegra Lundyworf and a piece about lighting a bonfire to dispel ghosts, Dorian Katz and surviving a street attack, Trilby Plants and hugging a ghost and Mary Ann Stein and her job in a Halloween store. Rhodes will emcee the day.
Rhodes’ book developed after the magazine ended when Tower Records, the chain music store which had been Rhodes’ chief distribution outlet, closed. Juggling work and motherhood to a 6-year-old daughter, Rhodes edited her book.
She said she hopes the offbeat pieces have something positive for readers.
These days, she said, “I think that there’s a lot of wallowing, meanness and grimness, and I don’t hold with that. I think there is darkness and lightness in the world and that they complement each other.”
Darker aspects can teach readers something, she said.
“I don’t understand meanness,” she declared. “We’re all in this together. If I can learn from something someone else went through, it’s good for both author and readers, to learn from mistakes.”
Besides, she added, reading about dark issues “is cathartic. I think it’s a lot of, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ It makes what you’re going through, not seem so bad in comparison.”
Ink Spell is located at 500 Purisima St. in Half Moon Bay, and can be reached at 726-6571.
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