Announcing THE SKULL & LAUREL: A New Weird Fiction Magazine coming soon from Tenebrous Press!

"Pessimism means things are getting messy. Optimism means these are precisely the times when change is possible."

Hey Ho Tenebrous Cult!

We’ve been hinting at this one for a minute; there’s no time like the present to share the news:

Tenebrous is launching a quarterly magazine of New Weird Fiction, and we’re returning to Kickstarter for the first time in three years to ensure that we’re set up to succeed in the long term.

Let’s put a pin in that for a minute; I’ll circle back to what I mean by “succeed long term”.

First, let me tell you a little about THE SKULL & LAUREL.

(Actually, first, do us a favor: click this link and hit the Notify Me on Launch button. I ain’t gonna speculate on how many folks we can get to follow this campaign before it launches, but I’m betting we can get it into the hundreds.)

Cover to THE SKULL & LAUREL 001; art by WolfSkullJack

We’ve made our mark on short fiction with our anthologies: GREEN INFERNO, IN SOMNIO (both of which funded on KS, incidentally), and the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY.

And the anti-AI charity magazine we released late last year—THANK YOU FOR JOINING THE ALGORITHM—served the second purpose of being our trial balloon as we worked out the logistics.

We believe that the time is right for Tenebrous to establish a long-lasting home for our own unique brand of Weird-ish fiction in the short story arena.

We’re extremely proud of, and committed to, the notion of NEW WEIRD HORROR. And in our books, we will continue to explore new crannies and new definitions within the Horrific realms.

With THE SKULL & LAUREL, while we’re definitely sticking to the New Weird end of the Speculative Fiction realm, we’re eager to fling open the doors to Weird Sci-Fi, Weird Dark Fantasy, Weird…

…well, let’s get funded, and you can show us just how Weird you can be, yeah?

Here are some things I can tell you:

• THE SKULL & LAUREL will be edited and curated by Cameron “Warhead” Howard (previously of The Tentaculum), under the purview of Tenebrous EiC Alex Woodroe. Interior designer extraordinaire Braulio Tellez and interior furniture artist Samir Sirk Morató are back on board as well after making TYFJTA look as gorgeous as it does.

• There will be no special invites. No featured star writers. THE SKULL & LAUREL’s pages will be filled 100% by open submissions.

• All contributors will be paid.

• We will publish four issues a year, beginning with our Fall issue in October 2024.

Sample Interior Art by Samir Sirk Morato

Now let’s talk a bit about “succeeding long term”, and why we’re returning to Kickstarter for this project.

I worked my ass off to get the first proper Tenebrous book, GREEN INFERNO, funded via Kickstarter. I met Alex in the slush pile there and, well, shit kinda blew up:)

Alex and I worked our asses off to get the second Tenebrous book, IN SOMNIO, funded via Kickstarter. By this point, we both knew what the long term goal was, and started planning accordingly.

That was in 2021. By the end of 2024, we’ll have published nearly thirty books, each release seeding and financially enabling the future (and then some). Crowdfunding opened the first gate; from there, Alex and I have turned Tenebrous into a self-perpetuating publisher that always pays for itself and always stays in the black.

And always pays its creators.

Now, no one’s buying solid gold rocket-cars with what Tenebrous pays, don’t get me wrong; but we have paid out nearly $20,000 in royalties to our authors; and nearly $20,000 to charitable organizations (Trevor Project, Equality Texas, Sandy Hook Foundation, and we’ll be making contributions to anti-AI organizations EGAIR and Algorithmic Justice League this year). The only people not getting paid…are Alex and myself (for now. This ain’t a sob story; we have plans in the works to provide at least a little bit of financial relief to ourselves in the near future, because running 10p properly is pretty damn close to a full time job for both of us).

Getting into the magazine game is a tricky business for us. We don’t have the cushion to absorb a financial blow out of pocket if it doesn’t hit. But what we do have are good minds for this; we know what needs to happen to make it work. It’s what we’ve been doing for the last three years.

And we need your help to do it.

This campaign will be pretty straightforward; you’ll have the option to subscribe to a full year, or just buy a single issue. Print form or digital, whatever your preference. There are a couple fun add-ons, but for the most part this is being treated as a fairly priced, controlled subscription model. The goal, as always, is to not bankrupt Tenebrous in our slow-growth model toward eventual world domination.

Neither Alex nor I came to this dance with a trust fund, or with any kind of financial security, really. Not to begrudge those who do; it just wasn’t in the cards for us. We built Tenebrous thanks to supporters who believe in what we do, and we continue to reach new heights as that group grows and becomes ever more loyal to our mission of quality, diverse, ethical New Weird Horror.

We call ourselves the Tenebrous Cult, and there’s a whole lot of tongue in cheek there, but if you’ve spent any time in conversation with either of us, or in our Discord, then you know that the passion is legit, and it bleeds into everything we do. You’ve seen that what we represent is a constantly growing family for outsiders and misfits and individuals who legit do want to see Indie Publishing be f&%king better.

If you dig what Tenebrous has done so far; if you’d like to see that New Weird ethos applied to an ongoing Speculative Fiction magazine spotlighting the best up and coming voices from every dark corner of the globe…then we hope you’ll support THE SKULL & LAUREL.

The campaign begins Tuesday, March 12. Click here to receive a reminder.

Hail Indie Publishing.

Hail New Weird Horror.

Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

Hail THE SKULL & LAUREL.

Alex + Matt + Cameron