LaRocca’s past writing?

I came across Eric LaRocca like most at a bookstore, intrigued by the title of his book You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood. Their prose is very flowery in that book, vague and lyrical, leaving much to the imagination of the reader. It was almost nostalgic, and I couldn’t place why for a while. 

I read two more of his books. Puzzling over why they seemed like an old friend until I went back into my Google drive to clean it out and came across fanfiction I had archived there. 

There once was a ThunderCats horror fanfic author by the pseudonym of “R.D. Rivero” on Angelfire and FFN, he went by another name on AO3. His material was similar to LaRocca’s current: dark, borderline erotic with queer themes. Rivero was active from around 1999-2012, stating that he was leaving fanfiction to start working on original writing. 

LaRocca’s first acknowledgment on a written piece of media was in 2016 in an anthology called Rejected for Content 4: Highway to Hell. Then in 2021 with their psychological horror novel Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. 

The only thing connecting the two authors is the prose and content and possible timeline connection. LaRocca is private about their origins, and joined Twitter/X in 2011 but no tweets remain from that time. LaRocca is not on any other sites This will probably remain a mystery unless I ask them or if there are any more posts from R.D.

If anyone else if familiar with Rivero’s work and has read Eric LaRocca’s stuff please tell me if y’all were struck with a similar feeling.