This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances

by Eric LaRocca

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

If you don't already love Eric LaRocca in the horror space, then prepare to fall in love. Following up on the remarkable novella Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, this queer body horror collection is everything it needs to be and more. It's terrifying, disturbing and claustrophobic, all while woven tightly into important themes and meaningful takeaways.

A brand-new collection of four intense, claustrophobic and terrifying horror tales from the Bram Stoker Award®-nominated and Splatterpunk Award-winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke.

THIS SKIN WAS ONCE MINE
When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known about her father.

SEEDLING
A young man’s father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother’s body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist. Then he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction.

ALL THE PARTS OF YOU THAT WON’T EASILY BURN
Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction...

PRICKLE
Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781803366647
Publisher:	Titan
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	19,227
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Eric LaRocca (he/they) is a 2x 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, MA with his partner. For more information, please visit ericlarocca.com.

Editorial Reviews

02/05/2024

These four dreamy and gut-churning stories from LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) offer glimpses of the horrors people visit upon those they love. In the title story, a woman returns home following the death of her beloved father to take care of her estranged mother—and she discovers something terrifying in the attic that’s spent years waiting to make itself known. “Seedling,” a meditation on grief, follows two men in mourning who both sprout little black voids all over their bodies. In “All the Parts of You That Won’t Easily Burn,” a man searching for the perfect knife to give his husband strikes a deal with an unorthodox shop owner: rather than pay for the knife, the man must endure a small cut—with bizarre and horrific outcomes. “Prickle” features two old friends who meet at the park to play the eponymous game, which centers around an escalating series of shocking offenses to strangers and culminates in a truly unforgivable act. Though these stories sometimes struggle to pay off on their harrowing buildups, LaRocca’s refusal to go for the expected resolution lends the collection a wonderful feeling of unpredictability. Readers searching for visceral horrors need look no further. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/01/2024

LaRocca's latest collection of stories comes with a warning to readers to check with themselves before, during, and after reading. Rightfully so, as intimate relationships, and the pain, trauma, and violence that often come with them, feature prominently in this volume. Readers will encounter self-harm, child abuse, and shocking scenes of brutality, as claustrophobic settings reveal horrific secrets, weird wounds, macabre obsessions, and a cruel game. On the other hand, readers will also be mesmerized by these stories and their engaging narration, experiencing the full gamut of emotions, from disgust to wonder, held rapt as the illicit lure of the shadowy side of humanity is tantalizingly revealed. Both characters and readers will be pushed to what may appear to be their limit, but in reality, it is only the beginning, the place where the most universal of truths, often obscured by the mundanity of life, can best be observed. VERDICT LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) is a viral sensation for all the right reasons, showcasing why extreme horror is so resonant, thought-provoking, and necessary. Suggest to fans of Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and We Are Here To Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe.

Library Journal

Praise for This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances:

"Dreamy and gut-churning...Readers searching for visceral horrors need look no further." -Publishers Weekly

"LaRocca (Everything the Darkness Eats) is a viral sensation for all the right reasons, showcasing why extreme horror is so resonant, thought-provoking, and necessary. Suggest to fans of Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica and We Are Here To Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe."
-Library Journal (starred review)

“Readers will be mesmerized by these stories and their engaging narration, experiencing the full gamut of emotions, from disgust to wonder, held rapt as the illicit lure of the shadowy side of humanity is tantalizingly revealed.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

"Listeners seeking classically told horror with the bite of visceral splatterpunk need look no further. A mesmerizing and unputdownable collection that shocks, provokes, and appalls." - Library Journal starred review (Audio Edition)

“Eric LaRocca’s distinctive literary voice is a welcome addition to queer horror. I look forward to seeing his legacy grow.”
Poppy Z. Brite, author of Exquisite Corpse


“Eric LaRocca keeps getting better. Grotesque, heartbreaking, and deeply unsettling, this is the kind of transgressive horror that exposes the vulnerable human heart, that reminds us of our shared pain. Just the byline on his work—‘by Eric LaRocca’—should be considered a trigger warning. You know going in that it’s going to hurt. Caveat lector.”
Christopher Golden, author of The House of Last Resort and Road of Bones


“Eric LaRocca distorts spaces, both internal and external, creating new cavities within our bodies, fresh chasms in our minds, and flooding them with nothing but absolute terror. This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances makes for exquisite suffering and confirms LaRocca’s mantle as the heir apparent to Clive Barker and Poppy Z. Brite. Glory be to the new king of Horror.”
Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters


“Eric LaRocca is a singular talent, who writes ruthlessly, beautifully, bravely about brutality, who challenges readers to find their humanity, and ultimately hope, in the face of such horrors.”
Rachel Harrison, author of Black Sheep


“A twisty, intricate gathering of bleak fates. Beneath the skin of delicate prose lies indelicate menace. Eric LaRocca has penned a book that’s obsessively captivating, 
wherein even hope hurts like a shard of glass.”
Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth


“An intense collection that stalks its way around the kinship between pleasure and pain. LaRocca’s tremendous empathy allows him to look unblinkingly at the dark corners that others turn away from, in a way that makes his horror not only devastating but heartbreaking.”
Brian Evenson, author of The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell


“These raw and brilliant stories lure you in and then slice you to the core. Their terrors and scars will persist. Cutting, insightful horror from a new master.”
Tim Lebbon, author of The Silence and Among the Living

From the Publisher