078: Weird Weather
I stepped into an avalanche, It covered up my soul, When I am not this hunchback that you see, I sleep beneath the golden hill
Hey Ho Tenebrous Cult!
When last we spoke, I was bound for VoidCon.
Well, Hurricane Helene had other plans for me; those plans being, “Fly from Portland to Atlanta; connecting flight delay for several hours before being boarded with assurances that the pilot was ‘on his way’; sit on plane for 90 minutes before that flight is cancelled, ha ha that pilot was actually a phantom; get back off plane at 1:15am to queue in a maelstrom of chaos only to learn that all the other flights going in the direction I needed to go are also cancelled; climb back on a plane back to Portland and lick my wounds.”
All in all it was a surreal, dejected, sleep-deprived 36 hour span that felt like a week. But the Tenebrous Cult is strong; stronger even than I imagine sometimes! While I was getting tossed about by Atlanta transit security because the trail mix in my carry-on contained a kilo of cocaine automatic weapons absolutely nothing of note but f$%k it why not, Alex was working the phones with a quartet of our pals to secure at least some books for our paid-for table, as well as bodies to move them.
Extra special gratitude to four particular 10p Cultists who made the weekend a success on our behalf: TRVE CVLT’s Michael Bettendorf, David Corse (the upcoming horrible-parents volume of SPLIT SCREAM), Michael Boulerice (who’s appeared in THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM and is our tireless Swiss army knife behind the scenes) and Weird Fiction supremo Joe Koch, whose work has appeared in three Tenebrous titles, if memory serves:
Hail the Tenebrous Cult, indeed.
Betts had a great release week for TRVE CVLT, which ultimately made everyone’s travel shenanigans worthwhile. And if you haven’t checked out TRVE CVLT yet, let’s remedy that:
I hope VoidCon continues to envelop all in its wake in future years, because by all accounts it was a blast. I was happy to be there in spirit, at least.
This coming week has its own set of travel shenanigans, but I have faith they’ll go smoother. Tuesday I fetch Alex from the Vancouver BC airport due to some non-hurricane-related flight hinkiness (Hail Canada! For the hour or two that we’re there) and this weekend we’ll be tabling Tenebrous at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon.
Come hell or highwater, we’ll be there. Join us.
Submissions for BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Vol. 3, open October 1st!
This sorta snuck up on us this year, but the window to submit previously-published short stories for BRAVE NEW WEIRD Volume Three opens today!
Everything you need to know about submissions, eligibility and rules is here.
If anything is unclear, by all means hit us up on our Contact form (but again, keep in mind we’re in transit this week, so our response may be delayed.)
Wanna know what’s tickled our New Weird Horror fancy in previous years? You can pick up this year’s BRAVE NEW WEIRD Vol. 2 here (print copies) and here (eBook), and BRAVE NEW WEIRD Vol. One here (print copies) and here (digital).
A fun anecdote tying TRVE CVLT and BRAVE NEW WEIRD together: Betts’ BNW-nommed, Nicolas Cage-centric story, “As the Music Plays Groovy” (available in BRAVE NEW WEIRD Vol. 2) inspired such love in Horror writer Harrison Stypula that they tracked down the original publication from Ex-Parrot Press and hit up Betts at VoidCon to sign it:
I’m not sure how any of this ties into Betts juggling a pair of invisible cantaloupes, but we like fun stories.
THE SKULL & LAUREL Debuts This Month!
One positive that came from missing VoidCon? I got ahead on some shipping:
Issue 001 of THE SKULL & LAUREL, our quarterly New Weird Fiction magazine, will start shipping out this week, a little ahead of schedule!
Cameron, Alex and our phenomenal team of associate editors are deep in the muck, putting the finishing touches on issue 002, even as preliminary work begins on 003.
We’re excited to get this new enterprise out into the world, and we’ve got a lot of grand plans for THE SKULL & LAUREL in the future. But really, that’s all gonna depend on subscribers like you.
Some numbers: there are about 3,600 subscribers to this here newsletter. If we can get roughly six percent of you to commit on a yearly basis—about 200 folks, split between print and digital subscriptions—then that’s enough to keep the doors open and continue to provide an outlet for the unrecognized future voices of New Weird Fiction.
That seems like a possibility worth banking on.
Of course, all issues will be available to purchase without subscription too. You can order Issue 001 right now, or grab it direct from Alex and me at HPLFF this weekend!
As you can see above, most of those preorders have already begun to ship, but THE SKULL & LAUREL 001 technically comes out October 15th.
We’re probably gonna skip newsletters the next couple weeks. But we’ll be back soon to go full bore to the end of the year with the next volume of SPLIT SCREAM from David Corse and Ryan T. Jenkins:
And M.Shaw’s much-anticipated collection, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE:
Alright, y’all, we’ll see you at the movies.
Hail the Tenebrous Cult.
Hail Indie Publishing.
Matt + Alex
Enjoyed the pictures putting names to faces. I have it on good authority that it wasn’t cantaloupe Betts was thinking about