Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

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Here's the hard truth: I have no idea,” he says. “Well, I have some idea, but the answer has less to do with anything I did.” In five unique and bizarre tales Katy Michelle Quinn ( Girl in the Walls), Charles Austin Muir ( Slippery When Metastasized), Jo Quenell ( The Mud Ballad), Brendan Vidito ( Nightmares in Ecstasy), and Sam Richard ( Sabbath of the Fox-Devils) each bring you their own disturbing vision of what lurks in the darkness of your local movie theater. LaRocca's point about queer representation is important for Richard and Weirdpunk, too: "Representation in horror—that's a whole big thing for me. I'm bi, Emma is trans, and though she's no longer a part of the press, the spirit has always been queer due to who she is." He adds that their novellas are mostly written by LGBTQ+ writers.

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. The story opens with a plea for its realism, classifying the story as ‘evidence’ to which we have been granted access: ‘… Because the litigation surrounding Zoe Cross’s case remains open at the time of this publication, certain elements of their communication have been redacted or censored at the behest of the Henley’s Edge Police Department’ (p.ii). The ‘redacted’ content acts as a negative space in the centre of the story; an insistence on journalistic integrity that undermines the assumed omnipotence of a fictional voice. Calling to mind the openings of H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, M. R. James’s ‘A Warning to the Curious’, or the always-unsettling ‘The following is edited from real footage…’ at the start of every found footage horror film, ‘Things Have Gotten Worse…’ is a love-letter to established horror forms from the very first word. If Things have Gotten Worse was too dark for you, You've Lost a Lot of Blood is a reasonable middle ground. Its dark but not disgusting, and much more psychological...with a hint of body horror. It doesn't inspire the same level of dread, rather, it focuses on mostly being very weird. The A plot structures itself like a dark academia (These Violent Delights) with the characters being a bit pretentious. The B plot gives off David Lynch vibes. They are pretty different, but work together to tell a complete story. I hated that it's made out the bdsm is just being selfish and personally pushing someone to do something they clearly don't want to do for the fun of it.

Success!

Foregone Conclusion: The author's notes at the beginning let the reader know that Agnes does not survive the events of the book. 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.” The final tale, You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over, is again a story of morals verus morality, and the societal pressure to be polite having consequences which are extremely far reaching, In the attempt to do the right thing, oftentimes, more damage can be wreaked and the cumulative nature of what happens after finding a fragment of bone in his garden, will haunt both him and the reader alike.

The author’s strong prose does an impressive job anchoring everything on solid ground even as the stories spiral into surrealist grotesquerie. LaRocca is a writer to watch.”– Publishers Weekly

De Schutter’s remarks follow Alston’s damning report into poverty in the UK, which he published after a two-week research visit in 2018. Alston, an internationally respected human rights lawyer, said “much of the glue that has held British society together since the second world war has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”. So why—and how—did this independently published epistolary novel gain so much recognition? Their next best-selling title has sold around 500 or 600 copies. It’s a question Weirdpunk gets from other indie writers and publishing houses all the time. And Richard… well, he doesn’t really know. Themes: Obsession, Sadomasochism, Excessive Emotional or Psychological Reliance on a Partner, Internet, Unsettling. Unusual. Ultimately satisfying. These are the words that come to mind when I think about this collection. 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: