10p052: Brilliant starless skies
See, the preacher, he encourages your capacity for illusion, and he tells you it′s a f**king virtue. Surely, this is all for me? Me, me, me, me, I, I, I'm so f**king important. Right?
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
Looking out my window right now, I’d never know that everything was covered in an inch-thick sheet of ice ten days ago, and that much of the city was in the midst of a freezing, days-long blackout (I was lucky and never lost power; HOUSE OF ROT author Danger Slater, not so much). Since then we’ve settled into standard Oregon winter, i.e. pissing rain twenty hours a day. Now that’s the flavor of seasonal depression I can get behind!
On the one hand, it’s the perfect weather in which to stay buried inside, brooding Indie Horror thoughts. On the other…I’m feeling pretty antsy and ready to see y’all up close and in person.
And wouldn’t you know it: we’re less than a month out from our first event of the year: Scarelastic Book Fair in McCordsville Indiana, hosted by the horror fans-slash-brewmasters at Scarlet Lane Brewing on Saturday, March 2nd! And just a couple weeks after that we’ll be in San Antonio for Ghoulish Book Fest (more on that soon).
While our first book of 2024, MOUTH, doesn’t technically go on sale until March 15th, we’ve been busting our humps to get a small print run ready for Scarelastic; which seems appropriate, since Scarelastic’s official/unofficial host, Joshua Hull, wrote it.
Alex “Notorious EIC” Woodroe and Josh finished editing a couple weeks ago, and I got a chance to put my final proofread on it. I love this stage of the process; it’s interesting to see how a book holds up to my memories from when we first picked it up.
There are exceptions, but for the most part, every book we release is only signed off on by both Alex and myself after a full read. Oftentimes, that’s my only read until after it’s been edited. Occasionally I’ll get a chance to go back again pre-edit and offer my two cents before Alex and the author carve it up. But due to time constraints; Alex’s and my evolving intuitiveness; and the fact that she really doesn’t need my help in extracting the best book possible from the initial manuscript—this happens less and less.
My point is, last week was only my second time diving into MOUTH, and it brought a wave of big feelings crashing over me. See, Joshua hails from Indiana—also the story’s setting—just a couple hours’ drive from my hometown in Illinois, and MOUTH pulses with a lived-in Midwestern vibe. It’s also a passionate love letter to the Sci-Fi/Horror movies of the 60s, 70s and 80s that shaped us; no surprise there, considering Joshua’s day job.
MOUTH invokes character-driven creature features like Jaws and Tremors, run through with both absurd comedic moments and pitch black twists and turns. More than any book we’ve released so far, it takes me back to my earliest Monster Kid memories, growing up in the Midwest, tuning into Son of Svengoolie’s B-movie matinees and wearing out my Universal Monster toys.
Needless to say, MOUTH has sunk its teeth in both me and Alex. We hope it does the same to you. It’s out March 15th and up for preorder now!
About MOUTH:
Screenwriter Joshua Hull (Glorious) makes his longform prose debut!
After a stranger leaves him a secluded property, drifter Rusty finds himself the caretaker of a massive, tooth-filled mouth in the ground…and it’s hungry.
His situation is complicated by Abigail, a wannabe filmmaker who stumbles on the secret. Together, the odd pair set out to discover the origins of Mouth and the hidden history of its former owner, setting in motion an outlandish scheme that could endanger them all.
Cover art by Halil Karasu.
Interior illustrations by Kristofor Harris.
"Joshua Hull is the poet laureate of orifices. What began with Glorious continues with MOUTH, the definitive modern day grotto grotesquerie, mincing both Herschell Gordon Lewis with Hunter S. Thompson into an amuse-bouche of a novella. You'll eat this up."
Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters
ONE MORE BOOK TO ANNOUNCE FOR 2024
So hey guess what:
Wonderland Award Winner M.Shaw (Best Novel of 2022, ONE HAND TO HOLD, ONE HAND TO CARVE) returns to Tenebrous for a second go-around with this collection of-
…
…y’know, I have a hard time trying to sum up the vibes of ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE.
Is it Horror? Absolutely.
At times.
It’s certainly horrifying. I read some of these stories with my hand literally covering my mouth in astonishment.
It’s also occasionally hilarious; often heartbreaking; often both at the same time. It’s lyrical and maddening and bold and uncomfortable and singular (seriously, if you’ve read ONE HAND TO HOLD…, then you already know not to expect anything conventional.)
Above all, whoa daddy, it is Weird in the very best sense. In the Tenebrous sense. We have held off, quite intentionally, on single-author collections up until now. Not for lack of submissions—from names you know and from names you likely don’t—because the right one for us just hadn’t come along. To be honest, Alex and I were never sure if we’d be interested in a single-author short story collection.
We are now.
ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE is currently slated for the end of 2024, and trust us, we’ll be talking a lot more about it as the year moves along.
LAST CHANCE TO SUBSCRIBE TO ALL OF 2024’s TITLES
M.Shaw’s collection caps what is shaping up to be a threshold-pushing year for Alex and myself (not to mention Alex Ebenstein, curator and editor of the SPLIT SCREAM titles!) We continue to refine and redefine what NEW WEIRD HORROR means to us, and the vessels by which we aim to deliver it:
Two Novellas, a Novel, a Gamebook, a Collection, two Double Novelettes, and an Anthology of the Best New Weird Horror of the Year.
And if you wanna get your greasy little mitts on all of it, save some money, and (with the print subscription) get an exclusive shirt, then subscribe now:
No shirt with the eBook subscription, but you’ll still save money and get all eight books:
LIGHT ‘EM UP: HERE’S ALEX WITH THE WEATHER
Stars aren’t real.
No, I’m not becoming a conspiracy theorist, hear me out: stars as a concept are not actually real in any sense outside our decision to invent them, invent stories for them, give meaning to them. Us; it all comes from us. “Stars” is a name we gave to things we couldn’t understand, but now we can. What’s real is suns and clumps of dust and planets and celestial bodies diverse and chaotic and unpredictable and uncaring of our opinion of them. How fitting, then, that we used the word “star” for another concept that held us in rapture for far too long, but is starting to do so no longer: those people who look oh-so-impressive from a distance, but who don’t acknowledge that we’re all exactly the same celestial bodies. That we are, over here, the same dust as they are over there. That there’s no magical separation, except for the one we afforded them.
And I’m just about ready for a morning filled with 400 billion suns.
If I sound pissed, it’s because I am. This month in the arts has been brutal, and we’ve been told from multiple sides that if we’re not stars, we don’t matter. If we’re not bringing money to the game, we can’t play. Put up or shut up! If you want an opinion, pay for the right! It’s your fiduciary duty to play the part, kiss my ass, spend spend spend. I tell you, this month has been absolutely brutal because it has felt like listening to caricatures of writers and publishers that would be edited out as too ham-fisted-evil in any manuscript.
And it feels like shutting up means the assholes win, but I know that’s not true. At least, I’m trying to teach myself to focus on pushing only where there’s hope of progress, and that sure as shit isn’t ever going to be some deep-pocket dudebro with a messiah complex. We spend a lot of time pushing against our own immovable walls. That's part of our job on this planet, insofar as we have one: to see all there is to see, inside and out. But sometimes we keep pushing long after we know there's nothing down that path for us.
Of course, it makes you want to scream yourself hoarse if you really think about it. Scream that when we make something good for the tired and the weary, they swoop in and take it for themselves. When we create places for everyone who isn't them, they're drawn to those places. They come in with the “I I I” because it’s all they know how to say: I’m so fucking important, I make a difference, I change things, I’m a one-man revolution. Right? Right?
They’re not, but we let them keep asking.
Because the problem is, there's no world in which you can't have them. Whatever version of a perfect future without power-grabby abusers we envision becomes horror very quickly. Because in this perfect future, what do you do when someone desires to consume everything for themselves? When someone desires to create the illusion of power? What do you do to them? Who gets to decide who those people are? Where are the lines? How do we stop those deciders from abusing their power?
No, in any real imagination of our current capacities as humans, we need to accept and embrace that this is the best of what we can be, as a collective. We can be bright and forward-facing and question everything including ourselves, and also leave room for spaces that brightness doesn’t reach. Room to be free from the endless unpaid labor of deciding where to draw lines, labor that nobody will ever thank you for, labor that takes momentum away from your journey.
Room to refocus. To ask, what was the point of going around being angry at everybody and everything if the only thing it ever accomplished was having people be angry back? It’s time to let go. Not of the anger, no; the anger is great fuel for your work and your art. It’s time to let go of the hope that we can change people. They’re responsible for their own change, just like you are for yours.
The powerful and the wealthy may close the doors to you, but they're not real. They operate in a different world because we gave them that power, raised them in that belief. Some of them are so used to their fame/captivity, they’re no longer fit to be released back into the wild. And they’re only as powerful in your wild world as you let them be. You’d have to invite them in, and invite them in again and again and again with your clicks and likes and money and time and praise and love. That's what they live off, and if you don't give them your threshold, they're just shadows screaming out in the street, screaming for attention that’s not guaranteed tomorrow, even if it’s there today.
Because if we’re not so fucking important, neither are they. That’s the beauty. It may sometimes feel like the rules are different for them and us, but those are only man-made rules, and man-made rules aren’t the only set out there.
There are some things that none of us can escape. The fact that nothing ever stays the same is one of them. What we can control is whether we’re adapting, or even leading, that change—or kicking and screaming about the power we lost and the respect we believe we deserve.
All the climbing and the vanity and the constant looking up, It’ll get tiring someday, and the people locked into that captivity will eventually have to stop and wonder why it left them with nothing. Look down to your hands, make something strange that nobody else could be making. You'll never tire of that. It'll never tire of you.
And for the love of the universe, stop giving your love away to self-important bodies of hot gas and space rubble unless you’re ready to give that much to every single one of them.
Including you.
FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS: Third Estate Books
Speaking of bright and forward-thinking: our good bud Aquino Loayza recently launched a new, bold initiative with Third Estate Books.
Third Estate aims to split the difference between independent publishing and resource collective, which…well, I’ll let Aquino explain it directly:
Third Estate wants to reimagine what an Indie Press looks like. Instead of being a for-profit entity where I build an empire of comfortability upon the backs of safe and secure voices, I want to take risks. I want to spotlight the voices I wish I heard growing up. I want to give the victims of systemic abuse the tools to fight back with their minds and show the world we can and will persevere despite the horrors inflicted on us. We will do so through community building, being a vanguard for our most vulnerable populations, and ensuring proper resources for creatives to properly facilitate their artistic visions and accrue informational resources for Trans, Queer, POC, Disabled, ND, and Homeless or At-risk populations in our community to access on a local level where possible.
And by being filthy degenerates whose depravity can only be outdone by the words we commit to the page.
You can learn more from Aquino and Third Estate’s vision statement right here; it’s well worth the read. And Third Estate’s first anthology is on its way April 2nd; Spectrum: An Autistic Horror Anthology features typically bold wraparound cover art by Tenebrous favorite Jonathan LaMantia, and is up for preorder now!
We’ve thrown all our dynamite for the time being; let’s sit back and see what blows up, and we’ll see you in a couple weeks with one…more…big…announcement for 2024. A real big one, that we’re gonna need y’all’s help with. But it’s fun; that much I guarantee.
We’ll see you soon. Take care of yourselves.
Your filthy degenerates in Indie Horror,
Matt & Alex
New M.Shaw! \o/