I am not going to drone on and on… clearly I am in the minority and others found this and will find this beautiful and the way it was intended, unfortunately I did not. The best part of it was the absolutely gorgeous cover, well done on that.

And in November, Weirdpunk is accepting submissions for an upcoming anthology titled Stories of the Eye, edited by Sam Richard and Joanna Koch. They’re seeking horror stories “that explore the complex relationships between artists and models. Go beyond the male gaze. Show us the queer gaze, the disabled gaze, the un-colonialized gaze, the intergalactic gaze.” THE TREES GREW BECAUSE I BLED THERE explored death which seems to be a big theme in this collection. This was brutal and heart wrenching. But beyond that—and those are all things I can say about any of the authors I've worked with and titles I've published—I just think it hit that wind that every author and publisher hopes to hit.” Side note: This particular installment in the collection "shouldn't" have worked for me as it strongly involves my only trigger, but this story (and Eric's last novella, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke ) taught me that I've reached a point in my life where I am able to sometimes separate myself from a topic emotionally enough to enjoy the story without being triggered by the content, which is a lesson I was incredibly grateful to learn. This is a beautifully macabre tale about surviving your childhood and as an adult how those ties that bind are hard to break, but if you don’t sever those binds they’ll drag you down into the undertow of despair. There is a marvellous scene in this story involving some particular Golden Arches and a decision that is made, and I just love how LaRocca splices the mundane with the brutal and the innocuous - this scene is made even more horrific because of the simplicity it is written in and just LaRocca’s observations! Dark and brilliant.Where Flames Burned Emerald As Grass - A father and his teenage daughter are vacationing at a tropical jungle resort. His daughter has an accident and an elderly Frenchman comes to their aid. He has much more to offer than just his medical expertise if only the father had heeded his warning. Each thing we love takes a little piece of us whether we give it willingly or not. By the time we find the person we were meant to be with, we're a honeycombed shell of what we once were. Each person we love turns us into the strange thing we become." Please Leave Or I'm Going To Hurt You - Um. Hmm. Ahh. Huh. LaRocca has rendered me speechless. Let's just say this is a taboo love story and leave it at that. What is actually happening (although Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke cannot be labelled as “Torture Porn”) are new techniques in audience immersion. Constant franchises and ridiculous kill counts have cheapened a genre that relies on audience participation in a way that most other genres do not. LaRocca, through their construction of their novella, shows a deep insight into this ongoing debate and is instinctually correct to bring it into the written word. My Response to the Novella

This is a collection of short, dark fiction plumbing the depths of human emotions. The fascinating thing about LaRocca’s storytelling is his ability to draw on specificity. You won’t find a garden variety love story. Expect the unexpected but not just something unusual for the sake of being strange--expect the unexpected to probe, pierce, or puncture any barriers or protective layers in place. It’s startling to read characters behaving in some obscene way that feels relatable at the same time. This is the last Eric LaRocca book I will read - at least now. His writing style is just not for me. This book is the 5th one I've read him and I've only liked one so far. Eight stories of literary dark fiction from a master storyteller. Exploring the shadow side of love, these are tales of grief, obsession, control. Intricate examinations of trauma and tragedy in raw, poetic prose. In these narratives, a woman imagines horrific scenarios whilst caring for her infant niece; on-line posts chronicle a cancer diagnosis; a couple in the park with their small child encounter a stranger with horrific consequences; a toxic relationship reaches a terrifying resolution…TW: Animal deaths, animal murders, pregnancy issues, suicide, manipulation, relationship abuse, disturbing food scenes, toxic workplace, toxic family, bdsm, depression, divorce, loss of child, miscarriage, racism,

I just love how he played with my emotions with his writing style. He wrote about bad news like it's poetry from hell. Damn, he's good. How much of yourself do you give away when you find the one that makes you whole, how much do you surrender, how much do you bend and fall in line, how much heartache, despair, pain and suffering do we suffer to make another whole - how much do we love the ones that destroy us. This ones a hard hitting piece that breaks your heart whilst mashing your face into broken shards of glass… brutal and brilliant! Bodies Are For Burning - another story where someone has cancer. Author doesn't know what baby formula is because mentions her feeding the baby a jar of baby formula that's blended carrots. This story had no mystery in it. You know where it's going pretty much from the beginning. The ending remind me of the ending of Saint Maud. ⭐⭐ The ferryman and the steward arrive at the small cottage, Olive trailing close behind. They cover their mouths , coughing, the stench of gas greeting them as soon as they enter. “Gas. The stove,” the ferryman says. The steward dashes into the kitchen. He turns off the gas stovetop. Then, flings open a window. The three stories do complement each other in intriguing ways. As the afterward explains in, perhaps, unnecessary detail they’re all about the human need for connection, be in romantic, in faith and family, or just the overwhelming pressure to feel socially acceptable. While, in some cases, queerness does contribute to these characters’ sense of isolation there is something quite deeply horrifying—at least to me—to see that fundamental search for connection becoming increasingly twisted and detached from anything meaningful or real. The middle story has some explicitly supernatural elements, but in the first and last the awfulness is mostly kind of banal and human. And, because of that, incredibly effective. There’s a sort of flinching despair and incipient dread that wends its way through all three stories. Fun times. Good stuff.

This is a wonderful collection that looks at the various shades of the human condition, it is a collection that holds a mirror up to society, to those of us that feel unseen, or are too damaged to believe anyone can see us and our plight - it’s a collection of stories about connection and belonging, about love and destruction about all the many faceted things we humans do for love, life and survival - and in the end what we become. This is a nasty, kinky, strange, gruesome book, and I mean that in the best way possible. There is a horror book out there for everyone, and this one isn’t necessarily for the quiet horror crowd…although they should read it because it’s great. LaRocca wrote a unique book, and that’s rare. Between the format and the content, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a literary tapeworm that will dig into your brain and make you squirm for a while. There might even be times where you want things to be over, which is something that often happens to readers when reading Edward Lee or Ryan Harding novels, but once it’s over, you’ll find yourself wanting more, and that’s LaRocca’s greatest triumph. Grades: Comparing this story to the earlier ones is kind of somber. I can't say much without giving anything away, but it does put you in a difficult situation. 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. How the hell Eric LaRocca does this? Writing this twisted , gory and dark tales which gets weirder and weirder. And oh man!!! Does he have an unique and interesting style of titles!! Each title better than the other, so I'm confused which is my favourite so far.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a 2021 queer horror novella by Eric LaRocca. Originally published on its own, it was later reprinted with two additional stories as Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes.TW: cancer, death of parent, bullying, suicide, language, divorce, homophobia, gore, cheating, torture, incest, dementia And of course, I can’t move on to the next section without commenting on the cover! How eye catching is that?! The cover art is by Kim Jakobsson, cover design by Ira Rat. My Favorite Passages from Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.