10p030: You mean there's a SECOND half to this year?!

Valves plugs pump to erase Rictus from my face Lapse of time Synchro freeze Loop rewind Forward speed Will to walk Crossed out feet Fingers tall Far from reach

Hey Ho Tenebrous Culto,

As you can surmise from the title of this here missive, we’re in a bit of a stock-taking mood as June approaches; vaguely surprised and certainly amused that nothing has actively killed us yet in the first half of 2023 (I know, there’s still a month to go; nothing like tempting fate!)

There have been hiccups and speedbumps; some self-imposed, but most out of our control. We’re in the midst of a period where corporate bookstore chains are shutting out indie publishers; predatory financial policies are being enacted by the major distributors that restrict the profits of anyone who isn’t in Big Publishing™; and a small but willful group of monsters have decided that allowing machine learning to steal from creators is A-OK.

And we’re still here. As are a ton of other kickass indie publishers. Because we’re all too stupid awesome to stop.

We started this year with ambitious plans—eight releases in twelve months. We’ll be sticking the landing on #4 on that list in a couple weeks, when Danger Slater’s horrifying, hilarious & heartbreaking HOUSE OF ROT oozes into existence; and oh yeah, as is our nature, we Alex lost her shit called an audible and decided to shoehorn in a ninth project, which we first mentioned last week and will remind you of below.

We flew to AuthorCon in March; Ghoulish Book Fest in April; crafted a new Award criteria out of thin air which didn’t get us pilloried; had some laughs, shed some tears, picked some fights, opened for pitch submissions 24/7, grew our Discord community to nearly 500 strong, launched an impromptu magazine…and it’s still May?!

My point being: it’s been a busy, tumultuous first half of 2023. And it’s not quite over yet, because in just over two weeks Alex will be making her first trip to America, leaving her mystickal otherworldly realm of “Romania” and joining me at StokerCon.

I’ve never been to the Stokers. Honestly, the pomp and the fanfare and the legacy of it aren’t really my thing. But I’m jazzed to finally spend some face time with the person who co-built this ridiculous jalopy with me; as well as meeting numerous members of the Tenebrous Cult in person, and sharing some news on the SECOND HALF OF TENEBROUS 2023.

Some of that news I can share with you here, yeah? Cool? Let’s get to it.

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DEHISCENT cover art reveal + preorders begin at Stoker

Ashley Deng’s DEHISCENT is like nothing that we’ve published so far; and it shows. Take your first gander at the amazing cover art by Ivy Teas:

Ivy will also be providing interior illustrations for this Weird Eco-Horror novella, out August 1st. You’ll be able to preorder it at the Tenebrous table at StokerCon, and everywhere else as soon as I get home and catch my breath.

About DEHISCENT:

In a climate-collapsed near-future China, the dregs of civilization huddle in small communities to scrape together what they can to survive…except for the Zhu family.

Daughter Yi has lived a sheltered life in her ancestral home and has wanted for nothing. But she’s about to learn the terrible secret of just how the Zhu house provides.

"Deng tackles the complexities of genre-mixing with enviable proficiency. Told through a quiet, literary lens, Dehiscent is an unflinching, one-step-into-the-future look at the climate crisis mashed up with a fresh and delicious take on the haunted house, steeped in the eerie atmosphere and creeping dread of the gothic. A breathtaking mosaic of powerful themes, Deng’s astonishing debut is a modern classic in the making."

• Kelsea Yu, author of Bound Feet

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HOUSE (PARTY) OF ROT

Before DEHISCENT arrives; before StokerCon kicks off; we’ve got one seriously gnarly book to set loose in all its fetid glory. And we’ll be doing it in style, with a release party for Danger Slater’s HOUSE OF ROT:

HOUSE OF ROT comes out June 14th, and is available to preorder now, in print or eBook, direct from us or from your preferred bookseller.

Preorder HOUSE OF ROT.

About HOUSE OF ROT:

The pink mold growing on the walls isn’t the worst thing about Elenya and Myles’ brand new fixer upper.

There’s also the inexplicable footsteps in the night; the sealed-over windows and doors; the neighbor that hears their screams but can’t be bothered to help.

Soon, there’s no leaving at all. No hope of cleaning. And that encroaching mold? It’s practically become a second skin.

Welcome to the House of Rot. You’re never getting out.

"Beautifully deranged, brilliantly revolting and bleak. Slater's impressive what-the-fuckery makes for a hell of an experience. It's a recognition that feels like rebellion, and I loved it."

• Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and Below

Preorder HOUSE OF ROT.

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BURN YOUR COMPUTERS (I mean, not the one you’re reading this on, that’d be silly; but maybe the other one?)

promotional art by Samir Sirk

It took less than three days to reach our creator funding goals for THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM, which we outlined last time. TYFJTA is our response to the rising threat of AI/machine learning; and in particular, its encroachment on creators’ rights. All proceeds will go to organizations working to defend writers and artists from having their work co-opted into this destructive Machine.

We’re still accepting monetary contributions right here; in the meantime, submissions for TYFJTA—our first foray into the magazine format—are open until June 20th!

Go here to learn more about THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM; to contribute to the creator fund, and of course, to submit.

This project has already seen some pretty significant attention, and Alex is wrangling a supporting cast of all-stars to make sure it runs smoothly on our end. And speaking of our fearless Editor-in-Chief…

HERE’S ALEX WITH THE WEATHER

I’ve just got a couple of thoughts for you right now, and I promise they’re all encouraging.

A lot of people are wondering what the future holds. Big sweeping changes are happening across all realms of business, and publishing isn’t the mightiest oak among them. We’re wondering, with all the advances in artificial generative technologies, is it even worth being an artist anymore? With all the saturation in publishing, is it even worth trying to break in now? How will we ever compete? Is it worth investing money in small creative businesses? How will we survive? Is disappearing to a remote island beach to start your own society maybe a better long-term plan?

panics

Yeah, those questions absolutely suck. And as someone who integrates moments of doubt into her healthy and balanced diet, I’m here to remind you that you don’t actually need to have definitive answers to all of these (or any of these!) questions in order to know what you’re doing is worth it.

You only need one person to agree with you.

We often think The Mighty Past was different; in Ye Olden Times art was meaningful and legacies were forged and people were being groundbreaking on the daily and nothing threatened their craft, and that’s all changed now. Hindsight is magical like that, it compresses all the effort and doubt and sweat and failure into a barely noticeable point of data while allowing the end result to fill up the entire rearview mirror.

But reality is both simpler and more beautiful: every single one of those legacies began when one person made one other person believe in their dream. One book turned the head of one agent, one fanfic writer got their first reader to become a loyal lifetime follower, one painter moved one buyer, one editor said to another editor, “hey, you know what we should do?”

We get really bogged down in how we’re going to fix everything, and the truth is, we can’t. Going after fixing everything is like trying to become a master blacksmith overnight. We all want to forge those sweet, sweet swords, but what we really need to do is spend a dozen years making nails first.

Now, I definitely can’t fix machine-generation pollution for you—believe me, if I could, it’d be gone—just like I can’t fix the lack of access into publishing, how underpaid artists are, nepotism, or a billion other things. All I can do is what I’m trying to do: convince one person that it’s really really important to care about these things. And once I do that, convince one more.

I know that if I keep doing this, one of two things will happen: I’ll either not make much of a difference, but spend a life full of the joy of doing what I believe in. Or, I’ll end up looking like a massive success in someone’s rear-view mirror, and that person will have no real recollection of everything this generation went through in their fight for the right to art-y.

So, your task, should you choose to accept it: go out and convince one person, today. Convince them that your story is hilarious, or that they should care about the WGA strike, or that it’s better when we have more representation in books, or that humans have intrinsic value that’s not machine-reproducible. Anything, really. Convince one person of something worthwhile. Convince another. Start an army.

And once it’s all done, may your failures be specks and your life and career be a magnificent blinding light in the rear-view mirror of everyone who comes after you.

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…BUT WE LOVE TO WATCH YOU LEAVE

So sometime next week, you’ll start to see the first few tidbits of what we’ve got in store for you in 2024.

BUT WAIT. What about that whole back-half-of-'23 I’ve been bitching about?!

Let’s refresh and recap:

DEHISCENT by Ashley Deng, as mentioned above, arrives August 1st, to kick us into summer.

Colin Hinckley’s THE BLACK LORD, a contemporary Cosmic Folk Horror novella, will follow September 12th, and we’ll be teasing some cover art for this slice o’ family trauma in the coming weeks.

POSTHASTE MANOR will sum up the Tenebrous Halloween season perfectly, but for now we’re enjoying keeping its mysteries to ourselves. I can tell you this much: it’s a composite novel co-written by Jolie Toomajan and Carson Winter; it’s formally experimental; it’s creepy and kinky and sexy and mind-bending and terrifying; it features cover art by Trevor Henderson and interior art by [redacted]; and it’s out October 17th.

And we’ll be closing out the year in truly grim spirits with Anthony Engebretson’s LUMBERJACK, a grimly comic, thoroughly bloody Weird Historical Eco-Noir (that’s a thing, right? it is now; out December 5th) featuring cover art and interior illustrations by Jonathan LaMantia.

Sometime in there—likely in the next couple months, our first charity magazine endeavor, THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM, will be released. And we just confirmed that the incredible Becca Snow will be providing cover art for it!

Alright, we’re gonna try to sneak one more newsletter in before StokerCon; hopefully I can wrangle Danger in to talk a little bit about HOUSE OF ROT (which, again, you can preorder here).

In the meantime: do The Good Work. Fight the Machine on any level you can; sometimes simply telling it NO is enough.

You’re enough.

Hail Indie Horror.

Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

Alex & Matt