ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE...is here!
Plus a Tenebrous Anniversary short story from Danger Slater
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
This one is special.
That’s not at all to disparage any of our other books, or imply that any of them aren’t special. But as I’ve mentioned before, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE feels like closing the circle on a very specific journey we started with M.Shaw’s first release, ONE HAND TO HOLD, ONE HAND TO CARVE. Can’t imagine a more fitting book to close out this year with, honestly.
ONE HAND… went on to win the 2023 Wonderland Award, and it was some moderately prominent industry folks’ favorite book of the year. Will ALL YOUR FRIENDS… follow a similar trajectory? Don’t know and don’t care. We absolutely acknowledge the sales boost and attention that awards bring, but we’ve never once signed a book with commercial potential in mind and…no offense, M., but your Weird books in particular have never struck us as sacks of money waiting to happen:) Sometimes the stars just align, and sometimes the right things resonate.
This is not hyperbole: M.Shaw is a rare, peerless talent in this scene. A few folks with exceptional taste have seen that and shouted it out. I think, with this book, a few more will. I sure hope so, because we may not sign books for their commercial potential but we also wouldn’t say no to one of those sacks of money. We’ve got outlandish future plans to plan, after all.
Why M. chose then-quite-unproven us to take a chance on ONE HAND…, I’m still not totally sure, but we’re damn happy they did. I think we get M.Shaw as much as M. gets us, and that in itself is a pretty validating feeling. It’s served all parties well.
I asked M. to share their thoughts on the conception of ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE, or the stories behind the stories, or anything they felt like talking about, really, on their release day. M. replied, “My brain is a weird place these days, so feel free to edit or discard at your discretion,” but honestly, it’s their day, it’s their floor, I’m not 1/10th the editor that Alex is and she’s off the clock. So this is word for word what M.Shaw had to say:
Basically the story is that I watched my whole extended community shred itself within 48 hours after the 2016 election. That is, what was left of my extended community after we had already cut our lives into pieces over everything and nothing in the lead-up to said election. We were all very lonely and anxious and depressed, and most of us were in precarious economic situations, but at least we all knew we were the most right. It would have made sense to support each other through all this, except that now we all hated each other. I then wrote All Your Friends Are Here. I mean, not all at once. Actually, the stories in this collection are from between 2011 and 2023, but time is radial, not linear, so there.
Timefuckery aside, the experience of writing all of them holds in common my need to address the profound loneliness of modern life and the inherent terror of that loneliness. We think we’ve built such a society for ourselves, when all we’ve really done is replace people with products and services in these silly little enclosures we live in while we wait for it all to end. It’s a level of absurd that can only be communicated absurdly, and so I ended up with a bunch of stories about tree-fucking cultists and cursed iPhone games and erotic stinky car vampires and deadbeat dads who worship Elon Musk. Among other things. And despite the absurdity, it’s still horrible. We live in a world of vicious, horrible violence that is also very clownishly stupid. We don’t have real communities and most of us don’t even have real friendships but we do have same-day delivery and a truly ridiculous amount of cheese in a government bunker somewhere to assuage our isolation.
It’s the week of the book’s release and I’m staring at a text from a friend of mine that reads, I just don’t think I can keep doing the “let’s phone it in for capitalism as it finishes devouring itself” thing, in reference to the idea that we’re all expected to keep going to work despite, you know. This feels relevant. Another friend is reminding me that I used to refer to my writing as “millennial gothic,” which is a phrase I haven’t thought about for years, but that I have to grudgingly admit is still pretty apt. This also feels relevant. I am alone in my house smoking weed and crying about how much I love my cat, and in the past month I have introduced a total of nine people to the movie House (1977) via three different showings, and this, too, feels relevant. I’m aware that these paragraphs are largely incoherent, and it’s because I’m insane. Here’s some stories I wrote.
About ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE:
Your new favorite assortment of New Weird Lit stories about car-vampires; fascist deer; memory-devouring tree gods; and the torment matrix; from Wonderland Award-winning author M.Shaw (One Hand to Hold, One Hand to Carve).
At last we can confirm what you’ve always dreamed of: All your friends are here!
Why leave your apartment ever again? All your friends are here.
Why go to outer space? All your friends are here.
Why grow, or dream? Why take that vacation you’ve been saving up for? Why set yourself free?
All your friends are here.
Contains a novelette written especially for this collection, Ready Player (n+1).
Thank you for trusting us with all of your Weird babies, M.
Now it’s your turn, 10pCult, to welcome some new friends into your life. Be warned, they’re kinda messy and uncivil and maybe even occasionally dangerous, but I promise: their friendship is rewarding and eternal.
THE TENEBROUS ANNIVERSARY PARTY CONTINUES!
It’s true, today is for ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE, but you’re all…our friends…too? Or something? Yeah that works, f&%k it let’s roll. Anyway, friends, we’ve got more gifts to share from the Tenebrous Cult as we celebrate our thirdfourth anniversary!
Here’s a—story? Cautionary tale? Bit of advice?—honestly, I don’t know if you should take advice from someone named Danger—his real name by the way, I’ve seen his birth certificate—anyway, Danger Slater wrote this for us and for you, you lucky dogs, and I’ve done my best to make this sentence as convoluted as one of his; here goes!
YOU ARE THE HERO
Danger SlaterIf you ever find yourself waist-deep in the swamp water of a hostile jungle planet, don’t sweat it. These things happen. Just remember: you’re the hero of this interdimensional adventure tale. You’re the good guy here. You got nothing to worry about. I mean, just look at you! You’re tanner than cowhide, and you have bulging veiny muscles, and women all across the galaxy want to get to know you better *wink wink* if you know what I mean. You’re like Conan the Barbarian, except waaaaaay more business savvy. Conan was legendary when it came to wielding the broadsword, but at the end of the day he could barely balance a checkbook. You, on the other hand, run a moderately-successful LLC. That’s why you came to this shithole planet in the first place. This is an adventure, for sure, but it’s also (mostly) a business trip.
And you’re well aware that you could cut a swath of destruction across this godless land and the folks back home would barely blink an eye. Sure, there’d be the bleeding hearts who want to whine and moan and tell you that violence is never the answer, but violence certainly is the most EXCITING and INTERESTING option, and at the end of the day, it would make for the best story. You have your trusty blade at your side. It’s served you well over the years. Not every dimension is a neighborly one.
The last thing you should do is stop and wonder if your presence in this swamp is just another example of imperialism in action. Would slaughtering these monsters put you on the right side of history?
Something like an alarm bell rings - ding-ding-ding - and they come down from the trees all slick-skinned and frog-faced and probably about as ugly as you could imagine an alien being. All of a sudden, you’re surrounded. Play it cool, hero. Play it cool.
“I’ve come to negotiate,” you say.
A tall, green sonuvabitch approaches you. Must be the leader. Razor sharp teeth fill its mouth like the keys of a broken piano. You knew heading in you probably weren’t going to be greeted with open arms, but damn.
“Neg-o-tiate,” the creature echoes you, causing the rest of them to screech and croak and make all manner of hellacious noises. They’re laughing at you.
Behind you, on the wide fronds of some unknown vegetation, is a dried splatter of crusty old brain meat, lain out in a pattern so perfectly chaotic one could only describe it as ‘inspired.’ If you wanted, you could probably pluck that plant right at the root and sell it at auction. The arrangement of blood-speckled leaves, posted and framed like a fucking Monet. Rich folks love to festoon their mansions with this type of culturally-appropriated decor; Andromeda chic, they called it. Outsider art.
And they wouldn’t be wrong in that regard. This jungle planet is certainly in the backwater of the cosmic boondocks. Normally you’d avoid this place like the plague (which you probably caught from this froggy freakazoid anyway) but you are the hero. You gotta go where the adventure takes you. And right now, this particular adventure is at the behest of Viznik Pharmaceuticals, whom you are currently under contract with. You came here to harvest the sap from the sacred trugglewood tree, the center of this hideous race’s entire civilization. It’s got magical healing properties, they say, and the bigwigs at Viznik are willing to pay you a pretty penny to bring some back home.
So you offer to cut the denizens a deal. 50/50 split. Well…more like 60/40, but c’mon, you’re the one doing all the work. And all they got to do is say yes. They’d be fools not to take it. The tree might be sacred, but not nearly as sacred as money.
And while they consider your flimsy proposal, you discretely slip a Purple Mushroom cap under your tongue. Your head hums like it was a car engine and a light in the back of your eyes flickers on and then - POW! - in an instant you zip back and forth across The Rift a few dozen times over. Multiple futures unfurl like the twisted tracks of a rollercoaster, and there are so many versions of this story in which everything turns out okay for everyone involved. But goddamn, the drugs don’t last forever, do they? Sooner or later you have to land, and now here you are, cemented back into this inflexible and inhospitable reality. Ah well. Time to do what you do best, and slowly draw your sword from its sheath on your hip. Time to spill some blood.
But these frog-lookin’ motherfuckers aren’t messing around, and one of them pulls out a shotgun and points it directly at your head.
You think, Wait, how did these things even get guns? Did some other trader come through here and do the deal before you? Just a little trugglewood sap in exchange for these fancy human-made boomsticks. Pleasure doing business with ya. And off he went, towards fortune and glory.
The razor-tooth creature gives you a malevolent smile. The tide has turned. You’re so helpless right now that it’s almost poetic.
So you drop your sword and it goes plop into the viscous black swamp and you realize this is one of those situations where you should probably run. But you don’t. And it’s not because you’re feeling particularly heroic either. I mean, sure, you have the muscles and the tan skin and all that other Conan the Barbarian crap going on. But your boot…is stuck in the mud.
They’re surrounding you now. There’s nothing you can do. The barrel of the shotgun is placed against your head. But you’re not all that worried. Things’ll work out. When you’re the hero, they always do.
Danger Slater is the author of HOUSE OF ROT, in which a young newlywed couple move into their dream home—well, the only home they can afford, really—and immediately things go from bad to…just, so bad. The worst. Rotten bad.
They muse about commercials the Taco Bell Dog may or may not have actually made at one point, and things get pretty goddamn gross.
THE 2025 TENEBROUS BOOK CLUB IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Don’t run the risk of missing one of our titles next year (like we would let you, but whatever). Options are available for both Print+eBook and eBook-only.
There’re already too many damn words in this newsletter today so I’ll skip the hard sell; you can read more about it here.
We’ll see you next week with even more anniversary celebrations from Bitter Karella, Val Loughcrewe and more (we might have to go two more weeks at this point).
Hail the Tenebrous Cult.
Hail Indie Publishing.
Hail to All Your Friends.
Matt + Alex + M.Shaw