Things that could have been used to unsettle the reader (how does a teenager crucify themselves, alone? what's up with how they're about to run out of food almost immediately and yet somehow keep having access to food?) seem most of all like plot holes. Perhaps it was intentional but the skill is just not there to make it WORK. The surrealism/spooky elements are not given enough attention to not look like accidents/plot holes. The Repress of Sam Richard’s 2019 Wonderland Award-winning collection, To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows is finally here. Our final release of 2021 and a book that went promptly out of print following its Wonderland win, To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows is an urgent animal cry from the depths of grief and loss. With most of the stories written in the weeks and months following the sudden death of his wife, Sam Richard strips bare the uncomfortable truths of despair and longing for someone ripped from this world far too soon. In the spirit of Kathe Koja, JG Ballard, and Georges Bataille, these stories are painfully personal and deeply unsettling, but also all to familiar for those who’ve experienced intimate loss. At one point the main characters were having a discussion about how in horror movies the things you can't see, that are left unexplained, only for you to imagine, are far more scary than any monster ever could be. The awfulness of said relationship is juvenile and edgelordy in nature and it goes from 0 to 100 way too fast.

This was just fine. Again, it had an interesting concept but the execution left something to be desired. Once again, the characters were bland and unbelievable and the story simultaneously felt drawn out and underdeveloped. The first plot point was way too predictable and also logistically impossible, how does someone crucify themselves? I also found the story, though having quite a good atmosphere and being potentially interesting, didn’t really make sense. I guess this was due to them being dead all along but even that wasn’t made clear at the end and the reason for everything that happened wasn’t either. I found it forgettable and undeveloped.This is one of those epistolary pieces that is anything but interested in being epistolary and is just BURSTING at the seems to be regular prose. Set it free, lord, please set it free from these confines that also contribute to the awful pacing.

It honestly was the most exciting thing about this book, but then he explains it super fast (not to mention that the reason behind it was boring as hell) and immediately killed the tiny bit of suspense he actually managed to create. First of all, i thought the concept of the police report/true crime setting was nice but there was literally no point to it. It was merely mentioned in the (fake) author's introduction, only to be able to tell the story in an epilostary fashion i guess (which added nothing in the end). There are moments of this brilliance in the other two stories, but Things Have Gotten Worse… doesn’t again reach the consistent quality of its titular tale. Queer misery porn with nothing particularly important or momentous to say. Reads very fast and was kind of entertaining. Also, this is pretty much a blatant rip-off of The Sluts by Dennis Cooper.

Squarely in both the crime and body horror traditions, Mutant Circuit reads like Elmore Leonard and David Cronenberg meeting at 3 AM in a run-down strip mall parking lot, and Mark Jaskowski is the conspirator who brought them there.

Part Dennis Cooper’s’The Sluts’,part David Cronenberg’s’The Brood’… Eric LaRocca’s’ Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke‘is a masterpiece of epistolary body horror.”– Max Booth III author of We Need to Do Something Some horror walks you down a dark corridor, where there’s whispers and laughter, sobs and screams. Other horror starts down at the end of that corridor, where there’s a door that opens on to you don’t know what. Read this, and then decide where Eric LaRocca has left you. Not that it matters. There’s no way out.”– Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians and My Heart is a Chainsaw

Read More:

This story was interesting. I wouldn't say this story had a twist. As she's slowly slipping into madness and desperation from missing her son Olive thinks the man that shows up is an angel here to save them. I didn't understand then how she ended up pregnant because I'm assuming that James couldn't get her pregnant. So the angel got her pregnant? But then when she crossed him by changing his room he made her lose the baby or were these things really miracles? It doesn't make sense then for the angel to take them. Were they going to die from a gas leak and that was when he was going to take them? I left with too many questions. Themes: Obsession, Sadomasochism, Excessive Emotional or Psychological Reliance on a Partner, Internet, One things for certain, I will be keeping my eye on Eric Larocca but whether it be out of fear or admiration we'll never know. 😉 4 stars! Disturbing, hair raising, chill inducing, stomach churning. The correspondence between Agnes and Zoe are not for the faint of heart, weak stomached, or delicate constitutions. Who knew that a story about selling a vintage apple peeler would manifest into such madness? *Shivers*