Devoured by dreams 

On Friday, October 9, author Patrick Montanaro and artist Justyn Iannucci will release the collaborative book "Dreams We Can't Come Back From" with an intimate reading at Dichotomy Rochester (14 Franklin Street). This collection of Montanaro's short horror and poetry with illustrations by Iannucci is the perfect usher for this, the spookiest of seasons.

Montanaro's sensitive scrawlings are the voice of an unwillingly wasted generation, trudging headlong through entropy into mad oblivion. These tales of numinous realities and dark verses read like incantations, raising the twin shades of wonder and horror.

Within one story, the reader will helplessly witness a dark covenant and unearthly bargain unfold. In another, a world-weary student seeks silence and solitude to study in the tower of the school library and trips out of this realm, exposing the beastly bare bones of the universe. Through his writing, Montanaro brings to life the songs of reverie, myth, and unsettling observation as they clash in meter and verse. With skillful suspense that plays on our most primal of fears, subtle terrors build into feverish nightmares, and haunted characters become more frightening than the most loathsome of monsters.

Iannucci's dark doodles and ominous illustrations combine nostalgic imagery with lushly dark markings to perfectly punctuate each bit of story. They claw at your subconscious and weave wormholes into the flesh of the page.

The book's Rochester-based contributors met in fourth grade, sharing a love of Egyptian culture and Pokémon. Montanaro wrote and developed the 2014 feature-length movie 'The Dead Deads"; won the RIT 2014-15 Fiction Award for his horror short, "10,000 Pixies"; and will be featured in the January edition of the Genesee Reading Series at Writers & Books. Iannucci has created illustrations for Playboy Magazine, Fast Company, Complex Magazine, She Shreds, Cure Bar, and City Newspaper.

The reading and reception is free and open to the public. For more information, call 732-5110, or check out facebook.com/dichotomyrochester.