Michael David Wilson 0:28
Welcome to This Is Horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson, and every episode, alongside my co host, Bob Pastorella, we chat with the world's best writers about writing, life lessons, creativity and much more. Today, we are talking to Eric la rocker for part two of our conversation about his wonderful novel at dark I become loathsome now, Eric, as of the past week is now a free time Bram Stoker Award finalist. So breaking news, different bio, as opposed to the last episode, is also a splatter punk award winner, was named by Esquire as one of the writers shaping horror's next golden age, and was praised by locus as one of the strongest and most unique voices in contemporary horror fiction. His 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 in his latest novel, this is the reason that we got together for this two parter. Is that dark, I become loathsome, and it was published by Blackstone publishing last month, and it has already been option for film but a walking dead star, Norman Reedus, so time for a quick advert break, and then we'll get Eric on the podcast.

Bob Pastorella 2:16
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Andrew Love 2:48
In 1867 the young Samantha gray marries the infamous Captain Jakes, unleashing a series of brutal horrors in this epic splatter Western from Death's Head press mayhem Sam by J, D grays is a rip roaring tall tale of revenge. Drags a coffin full of gold across the hellscape of reconstruction Texas and explodes at the top of a mountain. You better read this one with lights on. So

Michael David Wilson 3:18
with that said, Here it is. It is Eric la rocker on This Is Horror. So I want to get into some of these specifics pertaining to at dark, I become loathsome. And I mean, in many ways, this is both a story of grief and a love story, and I mean both elements are so effective and feel so deeply personal. Now I know that we've previously spoken about your relationships and love before, but perhaps something we haven't spoken a lot about are your own experiences with grief. So I wondered if we could start there. Yeah,

Eric LaRocca 4:15
absolutely. I mean, that's a that's a heavy place to start, but let's start there. We're starting at the deep end. Let's start with grief. Let's start with death. Let's just start there. Yeah, no, I my experience with grief. I lost someone very, very close to me at a very young age, someone who was a mentor to me, a really good friend, and she passed away from breast cancer, and it was a very traumatic experience for me. At a young age, I was like maybe 13 or 14, when that, when that happened, and I remember how much that experience kind of shaped me, and how much it gave it obviously like the sorrow that came with it, but also the anger and the anguish and the discomfort of losing someone so that I felt like so connected to, so attached to, it really was like a defining moment for me, and in A lot of ways, I think that this person's passing really influenced a lot of my writing, especially a lot of my work, because it a lot of my work revolves around like cancer and how, like, there's this kind of like cancer that's eating away at the world In general, in what I'm writing, but also like the literal cancer of this disease inside a person. And I feel, I feel like that experience at such a young age, I feel like it really fucked with me quite a bit, and made me acknowledge things about the world that like were uncomfortable truths and really made me feel, really made me question, like my own mortality, cancer, for me is, is very, very frightening, and Something I think about probably more than I should, and it figures pretty heavily in my work. You know, I don't know if we want to go into like spoiler territory with with this discussion. I don't know if that's, is that okay?

Michael David Wilson 6:54
I think as long as we put a warning. So I guess we are now warning people that you know a spoiler is about to occur and to find out when it ends as we are not Nostradamus, you will have to check the show notes to see whether you need to fast forward five or 10 minutes or however long. Yeah,

Eric LaRocca 7:20
thank you. You know, I don't want to spoil too much for this book, and maybe we should just keep it, you know, non spoilery. But just in general, you know, there is a section of text in this book where we go there, there are two stories kind of nested, two tangents nested within this book, and one of them deals a lot with cancer, and more specifically, and more grotesquely, like the fetishization of cancer and terminal illness as like a kind of kink. You know that being said, it it seemed like something, it just seemed like something very, very grotesque, something that would kind of rot away at this person, Ashley, this protagonist, like he is so infatuated with the story about decay and death, it just, it seemed like the the perfect kind of building for him as a character, that being said, like just my fascination with with decay and and an entropy, I feel like it really was influenced from a very early age, from Losing that, that friend I had to something so so malignant and something so awful. You know, I look back and I remember kind of watching that person waste away and just kind of become something else, and it was one of the most like horrifying things I've ever seen in my life. And that, to me, is like the real horror of like humanity and what it what it means to be alive, that, you know, like we're all subject to entropy and decay eventually, and we have no say over it. And you know, not to get too gloomy, but like it's coming for us no matter what. And that that, to me, is like, really, really frightening, and that that upsets me. And I always think like when I'm writing, I want to write from the wellspring of what makes me uncomfortable. I always want to write from what disturbs me, what actually affects me, and what changes me when I interact with it, and to me this particular tangent that I'm talking about in this in the novel, with regard to like Victor and Tandy, their story. Story. It definitely made me very, very uncomfortable. And it seemed like the perfect sort of tangent to go on in this book. And it was always aligned specifically with this story in general. It wasn't just like, inserted in here. It was always like, thoughtfully put in this narrative, you know, we had to, like skirt, like, you know, change a few things around to make it more sound and more structurally coherent. But that tangent was always a part of this book, and was always something I really wanted to to explore. So, yeah, just, you know, to answer your question, the grief figures heavily in this story, because it's one of my formative memories. And you know, I definitely am someone who imagines what it's going to be like when I lose other loved ones like my partner or my parents, you know, the people that I really, really care about and really adore. It's something that I ruminate on probably more than I should, because it really disturbs me and frightens me. And I think that's really what writers, especially horror writers, I feel like we should write from that kind of that genes, that source of discomfort, of what really affects us and makes us sort of squirm and makes us uncomfortable.

Michael David Wilson 11:34
So once again, there's so many topics that we could jump into, and I mean two things I definitely want to explore as stories within the story, and then perhaps now forbidden kings and forbidden fetishes. And that is something that I think permeates all of your work. I mean in the previous collection the tailor immediately springs to mind is the one in which there's a gentleman who's inserting bits of glass inside himself. And, I mean, here you've taken cancer, which I think for many people, is the scariest thing, because, you know, it creeps up on you, you can, you can have it, and you're not even aware of it. And if you don't find out about it fast enough, it's over, it can't be treated. And so to then take that and to turn that into a kink. I mean, it it's such an Eric La Rocca thing. It's like, right? How can we just take this to its ultimate form of forbidden fetish? And there it is. And goodness, there's something so troubling in reading that section, but also so alluring in times, in terms of the psychology and what is going on. And of course, any king, any fetish, the nature is that we we can't really control that. We can't decide what does or doesn't turn us on. If we could, it would make life and relationships a lot more simpler. But, yeah, I mean, when did you know that you were going to go there? Because that that might be one of the most disturbing and shocking parts of the entire book. I mean, it's difficult to pick what's the most shocking part of a book that contains many shocking parts, but it has to be a contender.

Eric LaRocca 13:49
Thank you. Yeah. I always knew that I wanted this book to be really dark, very twisted, very transgressive, very confrontational and in your face. So to me, it felt very organic. And I was so worried about that particular section of text, because it's quite a considerable amount of pages in the book. It's quite a tangent. And when I submitted the manuscript to Blackstone, I pretty much thought like I was, I was preparing for them to come back and be like, we have to cut this. And it's interesting because they, they actually did cut a few things from the book that were a little too graphic toward the end of the story. And we did end up trimming some of that. And if that'll tell you anything, if you've read the book, you'll wonder, what the hell could he have cut? That would be more graphic that when, than what was in the book.

Michael David Wilson 14:53
Can we jump into that right now? Yeah, yeah. What did they catch?

Eric LaRocca 14:58
They cut? Cut a few scenes toward the end that more described the assault with, can we go into spoiler territory or Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 15:12
yeah. So another note, spoilers are about to happen.

Eric LaRocca 15:17
Yeah, they we cut a lot of texts that had to do with the assault with Jinx and Ashley's son. There were a lot of like, very visceral physical descriptions of what he did to Bailey that we just had to cut because there comes a point if a character does something, they are irredeemable in a reader's eye. And Jinx probably is already a bit irredeemable to many readers, but it's a line that is very difficult to come back from if you cross it and Blackstone told me unequivocally that they wanted to send this book out as far and as wide as possible, and because of that, they wanted it to be a little bit more digestible, I guess is what you could say a little bit less, not because it is a transgressive book, but they didn't want it to be like too much, and it's a fine line, like it's a very fine line between what is tasteful and then what is considered obscene or indecent. So there was a whole section of Bailey's assault that was described that we that we cut. And then there was actually another story toward the end of the of the novel that Jinx tells Ashley that involves the I'm just going to say it. It involves the mutilation of child's genitals, and it's, it was incredibly graphic, very, very visceral. And my editor and the publicist at Blackstone was like, we can't have this in the book. We just can't have it in the book. And I get that. I totally understand. I mean, there are certain things that you just you have to work on with a publisher when they when they approach you to collaborate on something like it's no longer if you're self publishing, you can do whatever you want, but when you're working with a press, and it's a team effort, not that self publishing isn't a team effort, Because self publishing, you have, like, your interior designer, you have your cover artist, you have all the people that blurb the book. But like, when you have the company behind you, like the like a machine, like Blackstone, you really have to take into consideration what they say and what they think is going to fly and what's not going to fly. And there, there were just those scenes toward the end of the book that were just way too much and to just cross too many lines. And it made me it definitely depressed me to cut that material, because I thought it spoke to the depravity of Ashley. It spoke to the violence of Jinx, how enamored he is with violence, how much he kind of romanticizes brutality and fetish is that I thought it corresponded a lot with, like, the kink of terminal illness. I thought, I thought it worked, and it did probably work, but the publisher just wanted to cut that material. So I understand. But I mean, maybe there will come a time when we publish the unedited version, like, you know, 2025, years from now, when it's in, like a new printing or whatever. But for now, I'm I am actually very happy that we decided to go the way we went with with this book, because I feel like if we had included some of that material, I feel like we would have lost more readers with what we presented in in those sections, if you know what I mean, like I, I feel like people who were on the fence about the book and giving it like maybe, oh, I'll give it a three or a 3.5 star rating, they would have given it like a two or a one, you know, so I and we wouldn't have been able to send it as wide as possible. Like Blackstone has really great relationships with a lot of indie bookstores and a lot of like Barnes and Noble stores, so we wanted to to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. And because of that, you have to make certain sacrifices, which I totally understand. I mean, it is, it's part of the business, but it's definitely like a process of of kill. Your Darlings, which is never, is never fun. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 20:03
I always think, as you've alluded to, that just because we cut something from one edition, it doesn't mean, you know, it's cut from all editions. There may come a time where those scenes in a subsequent version of the book. And I'm sure if Lars von Trier somehow made it into a film, he'd be like, no, no, give me the genital mutilation scene. That's what I want. That's what I want to include. And goodness from from what Chuck has said previously. I'm sure if we if Chuck Chuck Palahniuk, I should say, seeing has also famous Chuck Wendig, Chuck Palahniuk would probably be like, Okay, well, I'll cut that, but there's a danger that what I replace it with, you're gonna wish that I was keeping that one, yeah, and I mean, that kind of brings us quite nicely. You spoke about Pauline being an influence, and someone who you're a great fan of in general. And to take it back to nested stories, I mean, in a way, at least in terms of the format, there was a bit of ant, dark I've become loathsome, that reminded me of haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Because you've got this main story following Ashley, and then later involving James, but you're telling us so many short stories within it. I mean, there's a story with Mr. Cavalier, which is great, because there are so many twists to that. And there's a very short piece, but very effective, involving a granddaughter who temporarily dies and goes to heaven and goodness. When, when I was reading that that that was the chuck Paula Nick story right there, particularly the way that it ends, it just reminded me of so many of the things that we've seen him do before. And so really, you've almost found this key to where you're able to write short stories and write a novel or novella. I'm not sure which this is. It's very much on the cusp

Eric LaRocca 22:32
calling it a novel for purposes. Yeah. How many words is it? Almost 50,000

Michael David Wilson 22:41
it's a novel. Yeah, okay, yeah, but you've managed to kind of write a novel and short stories simultaneously. Was that something you always intended to do? And of these short stories nested within, did you write them more specifically for this book? Or had you had some of these previously, or you'd had these ideas and you don't write this? This is going in this one?

Eric LaRocca 23:13
Yeah, no. I mean, I think you're absolutely right, like, I've kind of developed this style now of being able to write short stories within the larger narratives of what I'm writing, because I I love a short story. I love short fiction in general, like it just really excites me. It's where I started writing fiction. I just love short formats of telling stories. It's, it seems like a true test of a of an author's ability to be able to tell something coherently and concisely in a short amount of words, tell something that's compelling and exciting and like you know, surprising, all of those things. It's really, really wonderful to be able to see that, to experience it. So the stories, the tangents that I go on in this book, felt really organic to me when I was crafting them, because they were obviously crafted specifically for this book. I had had the concept of terminal illness as a kink for, like, quite some time, but to me, it didn't seem like something I would be able to write, like an entire book about, and when I was piecing together the narrative structure of what I wanted, a dark I become loathsome to be I thought, you know, the one thing that Ashley is obsessed with is this blog. And I thought this is like the perfect sort of Portal, the entry point for this other. Idea that I've been kind of like brewing for a little while, and it just seemed like a really perfect place to kind of insert that and write, write that tangent in this narrative. And then, of course, there's the tangent with that Jinx, the story that Jinx tells Ashley in the chat room. That kind of causes Ashley to become really enamored and interested in Jinx in general. The story with mace Cavalier, yeah, and that was written specifically for this piece. But I think those those little tangents that I go on, first of all, I love when characters tell stories to other characters in a larger narrative. I think that's really just clever, and I'm a sucker for that, but it kind of feeds my addiction of the shorter format and almost treating something like like a very small section of a larger body of work. It's almost like more easy to digest than looking at an entire novel. I kind of, I kind of like to look at novels like little short stories. Each chapter, each chapter I go through, is like a little short story, and that makes it doable for me, because if I look at the entire big picture, it's just like, so overwhelming. So that being said, I kind of view each chapter has, like, a little short story, a little short tangent that I go on. And these stories in particular, I'm really, really proud of them. I think that they're really excellent tangents that the characters either obsess over or are told. And I think, you know, they work thematically with the with the ideas and concepts that I'm trying to play with here, about like our obsession with death, Ashley's obsession with death more specifically the grief that he is suffering from, but maybe even like the love that he feels for his his late wife, and the hope of being reunited With with his young son who disappeared, so that being said, you know, those those pieces, those tangents in the in the story, I feel like they do serve a larger purpose, and they were definitely influenced by Chuck Palahniuk, haunted like that's one of my favorite books of all time. So I definitely look to that book for a lot of inspiration, and a lot, like, even my burnt Sparrow trilogy that's coming out in September this year, like it incorporates other little tangents in the larger narrative. And that's a much longer book, like, that's almost that book is almost 80,000 words, so it's definitely, like, the longest thing I've written so far and characters tell one another stories. And you know, we get the story through like diary entries and newspaper articles. So I love playing with like formats. I love playing with like different sort of formats to tell a story, and I've always loved doing that. Like, especially in things have gotten worse since we last spoke, and you've lost a lot of blood. Like, I've always really liked manipulating formats and treating things as if they were like primary sources for something that actually happened. I think that's really disturbing and unsettling to kind of and it's very voyeuristic in a lot of ways, like it makes you feel like you're reading something that's forbidden, that like you shouldn't be reading, but you can't stop yourself from reading. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 28:53
I think the entire book has a kind of forbidden literature, forbidden peace about it. And I mean, even early on, I felt like you are kind of breaking the fourth wall, because you say, if you're reading this, you've likely thought that the world will be a better place without you right now, given the amount the the type of people, I suppose, that are attracted to dark fiction, and how kind of thoughtful we can be about our place within the world and in human humanity, that's got to apply to probably 90% plus of your readers. I would say so. I

Eric LaRocca 29:42
would say so. I mean, like this book is very much like a love letter to the outcasts, like the freaks, the people who feel like the way I felt growing up in a small, isolated little town in northwest corner of Connecticut, like very rural Connect. Kit. I felt. I felt like a freak. I felt like everybody, you know, as a queer kid with with like kind of overly feminine characteristics, like people knew about me before I even, like, set my name to them. You know, people knew about they they thought they knew me before they even met me. And it's it's difficult to operate like that and be a child in a in kind of a hostile environment like that. And this book really speaks to those outcasts, those people who feel different and feel like people are judging them constantly, and feel like they're, they're disenfranchised and completely disillusioned with with the world. And, you know, I think I maybe do break the fourth wall a little bit with this, with this book, and I'm, I'm directly addressing a lot of the people, a lot of the the outcasts that I feel like would benefit from reading something like this. I I always say that I love I want to write the books that I wish I could have read like at a younger age. And this feels to me like a book I would have loved to read, you know, at like, 16 or 17, it would have been really powerful to me.

Bob Pastorella 31:25
It captures a lot of the early splatter punk, because, especially because of you, if you look at the actual what that word means, it's more of the punk, the the outcast, the misfit, the the fringes of society, yeah, and so in it's incredibly transgressive. And I think it's, it's, it's, it's shifted to to a more modern sensibility. Because I think some of the early spider punks, they had like a clear, defined, what you would call someone as a protagonist. But now we have some a character who is, you know, who could be a protagonist. He could be an antagonist. It's morally gray, and so it's splatter punk with modern sensibilities. Kind of lean into a little bit more noorish type thing, but it's definitely in that vein, and I like that. I want to, I want to see more of it.

Eric LaRocca 32:24
I know I feel the same way. I grew up reading a lot of the splatter punks. Like, like I mentioned, like Clive Barker and poppy Z bright Kathe. Koja is another one that I look to a lot for inspiration. Yeah, I think splatter punk is definitely an appropriate descriptor for this book, but it definitely has those modern sensibilities too, and it has like, kind of like a NEO Gothic almost feel to it, with like the like the way in which it's kind of like a purging of all your emotions while you're reading it, which is what gothic fiction, I feel like does so expertly.

Michael David Wilson 33:06
No, definitely. It's interesting that you brought up splatter punk, because while I was reading it, and one of the reasons that I would say this is a genre redefining book, much like incidents around the house. I know there's something splatter punk about it, but it's not quite splatter punk. So I feel you've almost created a new genre. And I'm I'm having difficulty articulating what that is, exactly, because to call it transgressive splatter Punk would then be enormously disparaging to every single splatter punk book that has come before it. But there's, there's just something a little bit different. It is like, this is a new genre now, I don't know what to call it, and it's brilliant, and I love it, and I want more.

Eric LaRocca 34:02
Thank you so much. I mean, I, I feel like my my work, is following this kind of vein of like splatter punk, um, with stories following kind of miscreants on the fringes of society, like even my burnt Sparrow trilogy follows a one character in particular who feels very much like on the outside of polite society. And I feel, yeah, I think I've read so much slaughter punk, but I'm really interested in, I'm interested in bringing new flavor to it and bringing like a new definition, new new kind of enhancements to it. It's all it's kind of like when you play jazz music, like I listen to someone talk about about playing like the old jazz standard. Words. And they said, you know, when you play jazz, you want to honor the people who played before you, and like brought this into the culture and and made it what it is now. But in doing that, you also want to bring new flavor to it, and bring like, something that is uniquely you to the conversation as well. And I feel like, I hope, at least I hope this book kind of does that with splatter Punk in that it honors the writers, the amazing artists who came before, but it also brings this new sort of edge to it that maybe wasn't in the original movement, and is kind of redefining what it what it could be and what splatter punk could be in the future. I don't know. I'm interested to see where it falls with with people, but a lot of people have already from what I've seen in, like some early reviews, a lot of people have referred to it as flatter punk. So I'm interested to see how people continue to react to it and and where it continues to fall with with people, and how they how they perceive it.

Bob Pastorella 36:13
It's interesting that you brought up jazz because I was reading something about Miles Davis, who really didn't think of it. What he did is jazz. He thought of his as music, and probably leaned a little bit more to rock, or what we would call fusion. And it's like, it's, it's a good analogy for, like, what, what you're doing here with this book is, it's not, it's not spider punk, it's, it's, it's a story, but at the same time it is and it's, it's, it's like, it, it, it, it, the definition won't hold it's like, it's too it's too turbulent to hold the definition. Yeah, and that's, you know, would, I would go as far as saying it's, it's la rock, Ian, it's, it's a brand, you you have this flair, the style that we're gonna, you know, we have, you know, carpen, you know Lynch in, you know, I guess, I guess you'd say, you know loracian Or rocket esque. I don't know. I think loracian Sounds better Moroccan. I like that.

Michael David Wilson 37:32
Yeah, whatever we call it, we know that it is fiction that will make you feel something and will sometimes hurt you. Sometimes you're gonna like it, yeah,

Eric LaRocca 37:44
you're gonna be into it, yeah,

Michael David Wilson 37:48
it'll hurt you, but you'll enjoy it. Well, I mean, goodness, where to go from here? I mean the ritual itself, you said that it was inspired from something you read that happened in in a country in Asia. Yes, do you recall which country? I feel that like I've heard of this happening, and possibly in Thailand, but I'm not sure. I

Eric LaRocca 38:21
think it was. I think it could have been Thailand. I do remember it was an article. If I ever find the article again, I'll send it to you, Michael, it was, I believe, through vice or ID, and it was all about this, this organization that had developed by people who were trying to, kind of like what Ashley's motives were in this book, to kind of illustrate the the importance of life and how wonderful it is to be alive to people who wanted To have this sort of like transformative rebirth experience. And I thought it was fascinating. And I thought that's a really interesting entry point for for a character. I thought it would be a really interesting character study to kind of explore his motivations for why he does this, and then how his motivations change halfway through, how he is, his mental state sort of begins to decay because of his like break from reality, because he undergoes so much trauma in such a short period of time. And I'll tell you what, there's actually a an amazing film from Czechoslovakia from 1969 called the cremator. And it it was also a huge influence for me while writing this piece. It's all, it's all a, an. Technology for what happened in Germany in the 1940s with the Holocaust, and how people in Germany became so susceptible to people in power, and how they just sort of followed suit in order to satisfy, you know, just the status quo and the norm, and it's all about this, this cremator who decides he's going to purify the world by burning everyone alive. And it's about his plan to go about doing this. It's a brilliant, brilliant film, and was like very much an inspiration while I was, while I was writing this piece. And it's funny. A lot of the places that I look like IMDB for this, for this film, they label it as like a comedy, comedy slash drama slash horror. And it, it's, it's funny. You had said that this book at dark, I become loath some kind of denies categorization. And that film, too kind of denies categorization. It's very, very difficult to define what that movie is. And that's kind of the art that I love to encounter and to ingest like I love art that is very hard, difficult to categorize. I think it's really fun to kind of play around with that and and explore all the possibilities. You know, there's, there's so many films like that. There's also a really brilliant film. It wasn't so much an inspiration for this book. But I'm just going on a tangent now called taxidermy, which is a brilliant Hungarian film from 2006 that's about three generations of men from the same family. One of them is a like farmer slash, I think he's like a soldier at one point, and he's, like, very interested in, like, disturbing kinks. So I guess in some way it did influence this book with regard to, like, the kink aspect. And then the second person is this obese speed eater. And then the third character that we follow in taxidermy is an embalmer. So it's really fascinating, but it's also very hard to summarize and categorize that film. It's like part comedy, part surreal, part horror, just very transgressive. And I mean, you know, those are the films like The cremator and taxidermy, and like Antichrist by Lars von Trier. Those are the films that I look to a lot when I'm crafting what I want to create and like how I want the work to be perceived. I want it to be divisive. I want it to be polarizing. I don't want people to be able to categorize it too neatly,

Michael David Wilson 42:58
you know, yeah, and anti Christ by Lars von Trier. I may have mentioned this to you before, in fact, but it will always have a special place in my heart. And the first time that I saw it, it was at a cinema that was located in central Birmingham, so the second biggest city in the UK. I literally must have seen it at about midnight, and so after watching it, and it may have even just been me and my friend in cinema, and then when we came out, because it was like a Saturday night at about two or 3am you just had all these drunk people that had been clubbing, and it was just such a surreal combination of experiences. It's like I've just been affected by trauma and misery and this bleak but somehow beautifully done piece of art, and I'm now having to navigate my way through a street of almost zombies and stop anyone either being sick on me or trying to fight me. And it was a paradox, and really highlighted how surreal and bizarre life can be.

Eric LaRocca 44:19
Life can be pretty surreal and bizarre, yeah, and I feel like that's that's part of the crux of a dark I become loathsome. Is like life is traumatic and it's bizarre and difficult. It's difficult to categorize how we sometimes feel about life. But I think at the end of the book, I feel like there is, like, even though, well, I don't, I'm not gonna get into spoiler territory, I feel like there's some, there's like, a teeny bit of hope, even though, that, even though, like, a lot of horrible things happen, but like, there is some hopefulness. That Ashley will change and, you know, become a better person, hopefully not that he was a bad person to begin with. He just, you know, I don't like to assign like good and evil with with my characters to outright. You know, there

Michael David Wilson 45:19
is a glimmer of hope for a couple of reasons, neither of which I can state without completely spoiling but, but I definitely see what you mean, and I think both in terms of, let's say, the switch in Ashley, Ashley's thinking, and also the conclusion of the story, they are what we need for a good ending, a good twist, a good book. And that is, as Bob always says, They are logical, but they are unpredictable, and that is exactly what you have done here. And yeah, I can't wait to see how people react. And I know, I know that there will be a multitude of reactions. There are going to be people who get it, who love it, who say it is your best work yet. I believe Mr. Paul Tremblay said that. So shout out to Paul. And there will be others who who are probably angry about it, or they didn't quite get it, or maybe they did get it, and they're still angry about it. And this is, this is a good place to be for art. You want controversial art. You want art that affects people, and you sure as hell have got it.

Eric LaRocca 46:40
Thank you. I I mean, that's the motivation for me to sit down at the computer and and write and create. I don't think too much about my audience when I'm writing, because I want to write what's in my heart, and I want to write the books that I want to read and that I want to see in the world. But if I do think a little bit about audience and reaction, I think especially about how I want people to have, like a visceral reaction to the work. I want them to have some sort of reaction that causes them to to feel something. You know, the worst thing that you can do as an artist is release something and people are apathetic about it. They're like indifferent. But if you release something that is daring and provocative and brutal, which I hope this book is. I hope it's all those things you know, I feel like you'll create that divisive, really polarizing reaction. And that's what I love. Like I love the films that have those really polarizing reactions, like Antichrist is definitely one of them. There are people that absolutely despise that movie. There are people that, like adore it. I'm definitely in the camp of loving that film. It's one of my favorite films, or even a film like a Serbian film, or mother by Darren Aronofsky, you know, those are films that really test people's endurance. And, you know, challenge people challenge the viewer. There are books like that too. I mean, exquisite corpse by Poppy Z bright comes to mind. That is a brutal book, but also so poetically, beautifully written. But there are, there are people that absolutely despise that book, just as there are people that you know glorify it and love it. So when I create my art, I I really do want some reaction, like, good or bad, that's what really moves me as an artist.

Michael David Wilson 49:05
Yeah, there was something that I noticed that came up in a couple of reviews that I disagreed with. And obviously anyone's view is their interpretation, is their takeaway. So I just wanted to kind of talk about there were some people who said they felt that the it was a little bit against piercing culture and body modification and and, okay, if you took that away, then that's your interpretation. Completely. Wasn't my interpretation. And, you know, even though I don't have any visible piercings right now, like I used to have a lot of visible piercings, I still have a number of, I guess, not so visible piercings. And I don't like look certainly, Eric is the Hap. Artist. He is definitely not the enemy to alternative and piercing and body modification culture. You know, you stand up for the outcast, for the outside of the alt community, but even in terms of Ashley and in terms of the protagonist, like I didn't think he was ever saying, you know, piercings in and of themselves are ugly. I felt his act to pierce himself was was to almost a punishment and almost to try and reflect who he saw himself as. And I, I think, as well, there's so many reasons why people get piercings. I mean, a lot of the time it, it's to make yourself more beautiful. It's to compliment it. It's like an esthetic choice in that, you know you want to mirror who you are, but I don't know. I just didn't feel that you were being anti piercing. And this is coming out clumsily, but yeah, it felt like it's worthy of discussion totally.

Eric LaRocca 51:17
I I've seen a few of those reviews, and I was a little baffled by them. At first, I never saw Ashley as a member of the Body mod community. You know, a someone who goes willingly into that community of people and celebrates himself and the art of piercing himself and redefining his whole body through implants and piercings and surgical modifications, that's not him. He's not a mouthpiece for that community. It is very much like you said, like he is punishing himself in a lot of ways, he's coming to terms with his trauma. He's coming to terms with with all the pain and suffering that he's endured in such a short period of time. And I think the main, the main crux of the book, is just because we think we're monstrous doesn't mean we're actually vile and loathsome and and that's what Ashley needs to learn throughout the course of the narrative. But he's so filled with this self loathing, and this, this this hatred toward himself, that he feels the only way he can punish himself is through these piercings. And you know, he was once a painter, he was once an artist, and now he kind of views his body as his, his canvas, his way of expressing himself. He has no desire to to paint really or be creative again. So there's a sadness to his motivation for for the body modification that he goes through. But I never, I never once viewed it as like him, speaking on behalf of the entire body modification community and saying like, you know, piercings make you a bad person. Ashley, you know, I don't feel that way. I don't think Ashley feels that way as a character. Ashley just thinks he's a bad person in general, and the piercings are incidental. They're just a way of coping with what he's going through.

Bob Pastorella 53:37
Now, I felt like it was a form of scarification. I mean, he's doing, you know, resurrection rituals for transformation. He felt that this, this scarification, was using his body, destroying his body, as a canvas. You know, that's, that's the way I saw it. You know, there's with self blogging, there's a lot of, you know, pain. There's a lot of hurt. I mean, immediately, you know, I cut myself just to see if I would feel, you know, you know, hurt comes to mind. And so it's, it's, I thought it was a way of him doing it like a personal transformation. Yeah,

Eric LaRocca 54:25
absolutely, it is definitely a personal transformation for him, and it's not directed at an entire community. I and I'm I, I get very frustrated sometimes with with people that you know, read horror and think that because one character says or does something, it means that the author feels this way, or that even the character feels this way. And you know that the character is against x, y, z, um. Um, or, you know, even worse, the author is against or for whatever. It's not always that black and white. It's more complex than that. And sometimes it feels like people just kind of pick up sound bites and they think, Oh, this might get me clicks. This might get me more views, if I kind of glom on to this, you know, that being said, I think, I think, obviously everyone's entitled to their opinion, but it should be an informed opinion. I think, you know, really, we should think more critically about what we're reading and what we're digesting. And I think there's a there's a tendency to just read, read, read, review, review, review, review, and not really think too much about what we're putting into our bodies and what's coming back out. Um, but like I said, I don't view Ashley as like, a spokesperson for, like, the entire body mod community. But if that's the way people feel, that's the way they feel, I can't control it. I just I, I'm baffled when I, when I see that criticism, it doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 56:17
to me, I just felt there was almost a nod towards pin head and another kind of Barker connection there,

Eric LaRocca 56:25
too. Yeah, definitely Barker influence, for sure. And

Michael David Wilson 56:29
I mean, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask a couple of questions about burnt sparrows and about rich, although I hope that we will be able to chat with you, you know, when they come out, and really get into them, sure, but in terms of wretch So, as you said, up until this point, your titles are almost short stories within themselves, and this time you've gone for one word, yep. What inspired this? And was it your idea to go for a one word title, or did saga have some input?

Eric LaRocca 57:15
You know, to be truthful, it was a little bit more saga than it was my decision. I'm working with a brilliant editor at saga, Tim O'Connell, who is just a remarkable person, really amazing, kind hearted, wonderful editor. He really understands horror fiction, just speculative fiction in general. He's brilliant. That being said, he really wants to frame this novel that I have with saga as almost like a relaunch, or like a rebranding of my, my whole oeuvre, um, he wants it to be like, kind of almost like a clean slate, like a fresh start. And by doing that, he he thought that, like a one word, sort of like iconic word title, would be the best thing to kind of signify my transition from the wordy, sort of Baroque titles to this more like refined one word Title, you know, game that I'm going to be hopefully doing if I sign more books with saga, which I hope, I hope I do, because I love, I love saga, and I would really love to keep working with them. So it was really Tim's input for that, but obviously I decided what the title would be based on the book that I wrote, and rech, to me felt like just such an interesting word to play with, and to my knowledge, like I looked I don't think there's been a horror book, or there probably has been some book with with the title wretch, but I don't think there's been a speculative fiction book with the title, and it seems like such a an evocative image like it conjures immediately like someone, like miserable and like a like a waif that's kind of like been discharged and like blown out to see Almost it just it conjures that really dark, gloomy, unsettling image. And I'm excited. I think I obviously miss the more wordier, Baroque, poetic sounding titles, but I'm really interested to see how saga breaks me out in a big way with with rich when the time comes, do

Michael David Wilson 59:44
saga have worldwide English language rights? Because we've seen something interesting with you, and we've seen it with other people like Josh maleman, where they'll have one publisher for the American edition. And then. Another for the UK. And I think in both your cases, like the UK one has been tightened. So, yeah, I'm wondering what the deal with saga looks like.

Eric LaRocca 1:00:11
Yeah, for right now, they have worldwide rights. You know that being said, we are totally open to collaborating with, like, a UK publisher, and yeah, no, the way the deal kind of worked out with between my agent and saga, when they first approached me about commissioning a novel, Tim kind of made it specific, whereas, like, he was, like, we I need worldwide rights for this book. And I don't know if that's typical. This is my first, like, big four, Big Five publishing deal, so I'm not sure if it's typical for them to take worldwide rights. But that being said, you know, like I said, we're definitely open to collaborating with a UK publisher at some point,

Michael David Wilson 1:01:05
and then link to that. Burnt sparrows is a trilogy with Titan. So then the Titan have worldwide rights for that one. Or is that you? Okay? Yeah,

Eric LaRocca 1:01:18
they have worldwide rights to the burnt Sparrow trilogy, like all three books, and that the first book comes out in September of this year, 2025 and we actually just kind of finalized the cover art for it, and it is so brilliant. It is such a departure from all the covers I've done previously. I think it's really going to surprise a lot of people, and it really captures beautifully the essence of the book. So much of the book revolves around gun violence in the United States and like mass shootings. So the book speaks to that quite a bit. And the cover really exemplifies those themes. And what I'm trying to convey with with the story of this fictional small town in New Hampshire that is forever changed because of this horrific massacre that occurs on Christmas Day. So that being said, Yes, you know, Titan has the worldwide rights to it, and we're, we're really excited to put it out, and hopefully I'll be able to do like a tour for it, maybe even tour the UK, and it'll I think it's going to be brilliant. I'm just really looking forward to it.

Bob Pastorella 1:02:50
And considering the subject matter and how transgressive your writing is, that definitely leans into, like the latter works of JG Ballard, yeah, you know, and so, yeah, you my credit card is, is hot right now. It's ready to go. So I'm really interested in checking out this, this trilogy. I

Eric LaRocca 1:03:12
appreciate that I'm a huge JG Ballard fan. And actually, JG, Ballard was a huge influence for loathsome in the in the respect of the cancer as like a kink, terminal as a tank. You know, it felt like some with his crash, like it this, this book feels like my riff on crash, almost, you know, definitely,

Bob Pastorella 1:03:39
yeah, yeah. I can now that you say that you have solidified those, those inklings of my thoughts in my head, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just, I'm way behind on my on my Ballard, and so I've been trying to catch up and his his later books. Though, a lot of people say yeah, he rewrote the same book three times, but, you know, okay, fine, you know, if you but, you know, a lot of writers do that, yeah, yeah. I mean, I read cocaine nights last year, and that blew my mind. Yeah, just, and it's just, so, it's, there's really nothing to the story. It's just so it's so fucked up. It's just how characters, how people change. You know? It's just like, God damn, yeah, yeah,

Eric LaRocca 1:04:29
no, there's definitely Ballard influence in a dark I become loathsome and especially burnt Sparrow the whole trilogy. It's very much like this world spanning blight that kind of just covers the entire the whole atmosphere of the story. And, I mean, that's what Ballard did so magnificent Lee is just kind of discuss those things of of you know, the. The decay of society and the ways in which we brutalize and harm one another is definitely a huge influence for both of these books.

Michael David Wilson 1:05:13
Yeah, we spoke about before how it's difficult to classify your work in terms of a neat genre box, and it sounds like with the burnt sparrows trilogy. It might be just as hard. I mean, it sounds from what you've given us. It might be leaning a little bit away from horror and more a dark thriller with elements of crime and social commentary. Have you had any discussion with the team at Titan in terms of the marketing and where you're going to try and pitch it?

Eric LaRocca 1:05:48
A little bit? I actually had a meeting with them earlier today about burnt Sparrow, and we talked about the cover, we talked about where we're trying to target specific, like reviews and trade outlets, all of that really fun stuff. Um, you know, there's, there's definitely a horror element to it, but there's also just, like a dark literary fiction feel to it that is just, it is almost, in a way, like unclassifiable, like there are fantastical elements to it, but it's not fantasy. It's not really dark fantasy. There are horrific elements, but it's not like outright horror. It's, it's an amalgamation of all those things, because I'm a fan of all those things. So it's, it's really hard to categorize. I'm really, I'm very, very interested to see how other authors react to it. We're, you know, seeking blurbs for it right now. And Paul Tremblay wrote back with a really kind blurb, which was so we were so appreciative of that. But I'm just, I'm really interested to to know how this, this other book, burnt Sparrow, like I I'm just very curious to know how it lands with people.

Michael David Wilson 1:07:13
Well, we cannot wait to read it and to discuss it. So later this year, it's happening. I'm ready. Let's do it well. Thank you again for being so generous with your time and your knowledge. I want to know, do you have any final thoughts to leave our listeners and viewers with?

Eric LaRocca 1:07:39
Yes, obviously, I'm so grateful to everybody listening that picks up my books or doesn't pick up my books. No worries. I'm just really grateful I'm in this position to be able to create art and have conversations with with you. It's, it's just really, really special. And this book in particular, at dark I become loathsome. I really want it to be like an exorcism for people. I want it to be something that sets people free and that people can resonate with it and respond to it. And it be the book that really challenges them, really disturbs them and unsettles them, but also makes them feel like a little freer. So I hope this book speaks to you, and I'm just really excited to share it with everyone.

Michael David Wilson 1:08:34
All right, thank you again for joining us. Thank you so

Eric LaRocca 1:08:38
much for having me. You

Michael David Wilson 1:08:43
thank you for listening to This Is Horror Podcast. If you enjoy the show and want to support us, then please consider becoming a patron a patreon.com, forward slash, This Is Horror you'll get early bird access to each and every episode, and you can submit questions to the interviewee. You'll also automatically become a member of the This Is Horror discord, and every year there are bonus episodes for patrons only, such as story unboxed, the horror podcast on the craft of writing, in which Bob and I and sometimes a special guest will dissect a short story or film and let you know writing lessons and takeaways to improve your own writing. Another great way to support us is to leave us a review on the Apple podcast app or website. And if you want to watch the video version of the This Is Horror Podcast, join us on YouTube, youtube.com, forward slash at This Is Horror Podcast. You can subscribe there and get notified every time there is a new video. And however you support us, I thank you in advance. Okay, before I wrap up. A quick advert break

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Michael David Wilson 1:11:03
I go, I wanted to let you know that I am now available for freelance editing. I've had a bit of a setback recently because the company I work for lost the teaching contract for the city I work in. So as a consequence of this, I've really been looking at what it is I want to do with my life, what it is I want to do with my job, and so now I am jumping back into freelance editing in a big way. So if you want me to edit your book and take it to the next level, drop me a line. Email me. Michael, at this is horror.co.uk. Now there's more information on my website. Michael, David wilson.com, if you want to find out a little bit further, including my rates before emailing but I'm happy for you to just email me. Let me know what it is you want, and let's see if we are a good fit for one another. So that is Michael. At, this is horror.co.uk I should say too, if you want to advertise on the podcast, that is also the email to get in touch with me. At, well, okay, that is it for another episode of This Is Horror. I will see you next time for the conversation with Wesley suffered, but until then, take care of yourselves. Be good to one another. Read horror. Keep on writing and have a great, Great Day.