From Eric LaRocca comes At Dark, I Become Loathsome, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful, intense tale of death, trauma, and love.
In This Spotlight On At Dark, I Become Loathsome
About At Dark, I Become Loathsome
“If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.”
A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same—and worse—in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him—it’s for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.
Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx—a potential candidate for Ashley’s next ritual—who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.
Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find new life.
Praise for At Dark, I Become Loathsome
“Imagine when literature had the power to be profane. Imagine reading Naked Lunch when it was first unleashed. Imagine no further. Eric LaRocca is this century’s William S. Burroughs. He is a Rimbaud abomination. His writing is akin to every Season in Hell. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a literary ritual, an unholy evocation of those unsparing authors who martyred themselves in the name of transgressive literature. To read this book is to partake in the agony and ecstasy of our poetic saints … and to burn right alongside them at the stake.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters
“At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a genuinely disturbing matryoshka doll of a novel that honors the tie-binding grief and our darkest impulses. This is LaRocca’s best book yet.”—Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of Horror Movie
“At Dark, I Become Loathsome continues to prove that LaRocca is a master navigator of the beautiful and the grotesque, plumbing the darkest, maddest depths of the human heart and retrieving from within all the grief and all the guilt the heart can hold. If there is a greatest strength here—in a book full of them—it is that LaRocca writes with an unswerving attention to the empathy of his characters, caring about them, even when they are, as the title suggests, loathsome.”—Chuck Wendig, author of The Book of Accidents and Black River Orchard
“Brutal, breathtaking, and beautifully written, At Dark, I Become Loathsome is Eric LaRocca at his best. It broke my heart and put it back together again, leaving jagged little scars. LaRocca is a master at peeling back the layers and showing us true darkness and depravity, the loathsome monster hiding inside us all. I applaud him for his bravery, and you, dear reader, for yours.”—Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People and My Darling Girl
“When people think of transgressive literature, they all too often think of it as an assault on the reader: external, aggressive, alienating. What makes LaRocca’s work so effective is not only how transgressive it is but how humane it is. These are not transgressions you can stand outside of. Instead, because of his skill reeling us into close proximity with the characters, the transgressions feel intimate, almost as if we were in the process of committing them ourselves. Which makes them all the more relatable, and all the more alarming.”—Brian Evenson, author of Last Days and Song for the Unraveling of the World
“With scalpel-sharp prose and an imagination bleak as a starless night sky, Eric LaRocca is the reigning king of uncompromising, decadent horror.”—Tim Waggoner, author of Lord of the Feast
“LaRocca’s most unsparing book yet. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a rich mosaic of alienation and loss that’s as tender as it is compelling and ultimately appalling. Eric LaRocca is just so very seductive when it comes to digging graves we’ll eagerly throw ourselves into.”—Nat Cassidy, author of Nestlings and Mary: An Awakening of Terror
“Terror, humor, humanity, lust, loss: at dark, everything, everything comes out. And Eric LaRocca is afraid of nothing.”—Kathe Koja, author of The Cipher and Skin
“Only Eric LaRocca can dig you a warm grave, luring you into its layered depths with a symphony of self-loathing, and make you never want to crawl out of the dark.”—Brian McAuley, author of Curse of the Reaper and Candy Cain Kills
“A visceral, unflinching, and yet startlingly humane plunge into desire, depravity, and the essential loneliness of existence—this is a book that you won’t, and indeed, can’t soon forget.”—Kay Chronister, author of Desert Creatures and The Bog Wife
“Where some might be too afraid to peer into the brutality of their characters, the wreckage of their psychological wounds, Eric LaRocca is fearless and masterfully mines the darkest recesses of the human soul in search of empathy. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a story about loneliness and belonging, ritual and friendship that proves to be LaRocca’s most personal and intimate story yet.”—Michael J. Seidlinger, author of Anybody Home? and The Body Harvest
“With At Dark, I Become Loathsome, Eric LaRocca fully takes his place in the hallowed halls alongside predecessors like Clive Barker and David J. Schow. An utterly relentless, terrifying, and masterful work by one of the genre’s best new authors.”—Brian Keene, author of The Rising
“Some novels give you nightmares, while others give you scars. With At Dark, I Become Loathsome, LaRocca delivers both without mercy. Full of human darkness, screaming with broken humanity … you may not be ready for this book. But it’s waiting for you. Nobody gets under my skin like Eric LaRocca. At Dark, I Become Loathsome is a book you cannot unread.”—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The House of Last Resort and Road of Bones
About Eric LaRocca, Author of At Dark, I Become Loathsome
Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a two-time Bram Stoker Award finalist and Splatterpunk Award winner. Named by Esquire as one of the “Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age” and praised by Locus as “one of strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction,” LaRocca’s notable works include Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Everything the Darkness Eats, The Trees Grew Because I Bled There: Collected Stories, and You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood. His upcoming novel, At Dark, I Become Loathsome, will be published in January 2025. The book has already been optioned for film by The Walking Dead star Norman Reedus. He currently resides in Boston with his partner.
You can connect with Eric LaRocca on their website.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Pub Date: Jan 28, 2025
ISBN: 9798212179027
Titles by Eric LaRocca
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