10p059: In 2025, Tenebrous keeps it CASUAL
I was born in a time machine, Broken down at some gruesome scene, Sometimes it works in reverse, And so I relive what hurts
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
How about a signing announcement to kick things off?
Koji contributed the crackling leadoff story “Filtered” to our anti-AI magazine, THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM, and when this novel dropped into our submissions queue we were all kinds of intrigued by its premise
And needless to say, we’re all in. CASUAL is our first slated title for 2025, and it’s a highly personal affair for Koji, loaded with emotion, sci-fi dystopia, heart and horrors of a kind we’ve not explored at Tenebrous before.
We’ll have much more to say about this haunting novel as the year progresses; and we should have a couple more announcements for 2025 coming soon!
THE SKULL & LAUREL will be a Real-For-Real New Weird Thing
Did you hear?
Yeah, that kinda caught us off guard a little bit, too. I mean, we knew that y’all dig us, but we didn’t expect quite that level of rabid anticipation. Made for quite the come-down hangover the next day, lemme tell you. A good problem to have.
But all it means is, now the real work can begin. A new home for New Weird Fiction of every stripe. New voices—lots of ‘em!—sharing their Weirdest, Darkest tales.
A lot of you have asked what we have planned for stretch goals, since this campaign funded so damn quick. Our answer might not be glamorous, but it’s the wisest thing we can think of:
We plan to ensure THE SKULL & LAUREL sticks around for a long time to come.
Alex summed up our thoughts on the matter after we hit our subscription/funding goal:
Ever since we started planning this project, our goal has been sustainability. We strongly believe that the community needs long-term, stable places where they can be published, read the latest, meet new writers and artists, and trust that everyone will still be around in a year.
We estimated our costs carefully but kept them low, and that means fancy stretch goals that increase yearly cost (more words, more cents per word, more anything) would make the second year harder to fund.I want the magazine to turn profit and then grow those metrics slowly.
The long-term goal will be to raise the pay rates for everyone, add custom art, add comics, and all sorts of wonderful things only after we're sure the demand can sustain the cost.So what are the goals for now? What do the extra pledges accomplish?
An enormous amount, actually.The more we overfund through pledges right now, the more we can set what's left aside (after fulfilment, shipping, surprises, etc.) for Year Two and relieve pressure from this first year.
Which means we'll be able to offer up free ad slots to causes we care about, send out more free sample and review copies to spread the word, take more time to build a subscriber base. Maybe even sneak in some more of the Good Work you've seen us do in the past with THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM and YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY.Certainly be a lot more experimental in content.
It isn't sexy and clickbait-y and grabby; there's no star power and no gimmick to get you to commit.It's just us promising we can do better with your help. Plus, you get goodies like gorgeous print magazines, a first peek at our first audiobook, and your custom horrorscope.
The past year of magazine and publisher closures have taught me that the future is unpredictable; but if anything is in my control, then at least this will be done right, with safety, the future, and you in mind.
There’s still over two weeks to get in on THE SKULL & LAUREL. You can sign up for a single issue, or a full-year subscription, in print magazine or eBook, whatever you prefer. You can add on eBooks of everything we ever release, forever; or our first ever audiobook (for THE BLACK LORD); or your own custom horrorscope.
Help give New Weird Fiction a forever home. Support THE SKULL & LAUREL.
In two months, FROM THE BELLY emerges from the deeps
Heeeey, we got our first Publishers Weekly writeup. As a result, all of us on this end are busy clearing out all our old crap and replacing it with new crap that is made of solid gold; but while we’re doing that, you should get busy preordering FROM THE BELLY.
‘Cuz this book is gonna seriously slap:
The whaling vessel Merciful has just made its strangest catch yet: a massive whale containing a still-living man secreted within its stomach lining. Sailor Isaiah Chase is tasked with keeping the enigmatic man alive.
As their relationship grows, a series of accidents, injuries and deaths quickly befall the ship and its crew. Isaiah is plagued by strangely prophetic dreams, even as the crew continues their endless quest for whale oil under the command of an increasingly unhinged captain.
As events spiral further out of control, the mysterious man confesses what Isaiah has begun to suspect: the crew of The Merciful has fallen into a cycle of punishment for their greed and destruction. Isaiah must confront the sea's vengeance made flesh, and choose between this new, strange love and the fate of the ship itself.
Cover art by Chris Shehan.
Interior illustrations by Megan Llewellyn.
“Seeps into your skin, reaching as deep as the bone, [and] harbours a sense of dread that never dissipates.”
Clay McLeod Chapman, What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters
“Blends the vast, incomprehensible danger of the ocean with the queasy intimacy of body horror to create an atmosphere that feels both timeless and new. Wild, ominous, and darkly romantic."
Lindsay King-Miller, author of The Z Word
“A darkly sensuous dive…beautifully empathetic and character driven. I loved this book from start to finish.”
Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and Below
FROM THE BELLY is out May 30th.
After a couple soul-fulfilling journeys to Ghoulish Bookfest and Scarelastic Book Fair back-to-back, it’s good to be home to recuperate for a minute.
We’re two months out from StokerCon, where my co-conspirator Alex will join me stateside to reign Tenebrous chaos down upon everything we see…actually that sounds exhausting. More accurately, we’ll be slinging books, slapping Temporary Tenebrous Tattoos™ on anyone who wants one, and finding somewhere after hours to throw darts. We’re not much for the awards ceremony side of things, but if you wanna hang out, we should be easy to find, and we’re barely rabid.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go see Alkaline Trio tonight.
Hail the Heart & Skull (& Laurel).
Hail Indie Horror.
Hail the Tenebrous Cult.
Matt & Alex