DEAR STUPID COVER ART REVEAL
...Publisher's clarification: there is nothing stupid about this cover art
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
We took a stab at getting perma-cancelled by the ska-core allegiant last week—there are dozens of them! Dozens!—but you need more than a four-piece horn section and a porkpie hat to take us out. If you come for Tenebrous, you best not drop the ball; in fact, you really gotta pickituppickituppickitup-
-Wait, nope, ignore that, we’re not going down that road again. There is a refreshing lack of ska-related content today, both for and against.
But we do have plenty of cool shit to talk about. Such as…
…DEAR STUPID PENPAL’s gorgeous cover art!
Check out this beauty:
We haven’t shared a ton of info about our final title of the year, November’s DEAR STUPID PENPAL by Rascal Hartley. Well, let’s pull back the curtain a bit:
About DEAR STUPID PENPAL:
Atticus “Finch” Davani does not want to be an astronaut. He hates space, he hates the ship, and he strongly dislikes his fellow crew members. He makes that painfully clear in his letters to Aku, his corporate-assigned penpal back on Earth.
Soon, Aku becomes much more than a penpal. But when the crew engage hyperdrive, Aku’s punctual letters start coming at random intervals, and Finch and his shipmates realize that time, for them, is moving all wrong.
As everyone else’s penpals rapidly die of old age, Finch turns, heartbroken, to Aku; who, more than a century later, is still there.
DEAR STUPID PENPAL is an entirely epistolary exploration of cosmic dread, the passing of time, and the lifelines we cling to against the vast endlessness of space.
…PENPAL fits a lot of where’s and when’s into its page length, from the Earth of today to unknown corners of the universe, billions of light years away; and the breadth of emotions on display are similarly wide-spanning. Rascal is pretty new to the scene, but you’d never know it; this is some of the crispest, most confident prose I’ve ever read. The terror is existential and chilling; the humor is boisterous; the tears are well-earned (I have been driven to actual physical tears by only a handful of books in my life; DEAR STUPID PENPAL accounts for two of those occasions).
That gorgeous cover comes courtesy of Carly A-F; and I handled interior art chores myself this time around.
DEAR STUPID PENPAL, a Weird sci-fi tale of cosmic horror and love, is scheduled for November 11th. Preorder info coming soon.
THE SKULL & LAUREL issue 004 is out now!
Subscriptions have begun shipping out for our fourth issue! I’m just waiting on the next batch to arrive from Ingram this week and I’ll get the rest shipped as well (between this and the BRAVE NEW WEIRD shipping debacle I’ve been having a fair share of disgruntlement this summer with our “distributor”, but the good news is our next two books are already printed or being printed as we speak!).
Full Table of Contents info is here. We’re currently determining what shape the future of THE SKULL & LAUREL will be, but picking up this or any back issues sure wouldn’t hurt!
The Most Anticipated Horror Books of Summer 2025…
…include WE LIKE IT CHERRY, according to Paste Magazine.
Reviews matter to us, positive or negative, and whether or not they end up ringing true to the readers, who will certainly have their own relationship with the book. If people are engaging with the material we publish, period, then we’re doing our job.
All that said: WE LIKE IT CHERRY is resonating pretty incredibly with critics, as well as our web of advance readers. Booklist gave it a starred review. Readers who didn’t already know that Jacy has published well over a dozen books are pledging their allegiance to his blend of unfussy Pulp devotion, cracking dialogue and propulsive plotting.
He’s also just a great, amiable dude to shoot the breeze with for a couple hours. Jacy, Danger Slater and I spent a recent evening at Pinky’s in North Portland, getting a big stack of WE LIKE IT CHERRY copies signed and being endlessly entertained by lead bartender Jerrod and owner Celeste.
(Pinky’s is rad, by the way, especially if you’re a whiskey drinker…which none of us were, but they didn’t hold it against us. Check it out if you’re in the neighborhood.)
If you haven’t preordered WE LIKE IT CHERRY yet, we still have a handful of signed copies. We’ll be shipping those first come first serve (Book Club subscribers already have one reserved!) until we run out, so be sure and preorder now!
About WE LIKE IT CHERRY:
Documentarist Ezra Montbanc thinks he's hit the jackpot when he receives an invitation to document the rites of a mysterious, hitherto unknown tribe: the Winoquin, who reside in the harrowing, inhospitable Arctic. It’s a shot at the prestigious journalism career he's long envisioned, and a path out from the borderline-exploitative series detailing the celebrations of Indigenous tribes he’s been mired in with his life and filmmaking partner, Stu.
Buzzing with possibility, Ezra and his crew depart for the home of the Winoquin, only to find themselves in a frozen and bloody battle for survival atop an inaccessible glacier ritual site, where men and mythical horrors hunger for sacrifice.
We Like It Cherry is a story about identity and the quest for success, splashed with supernatural slasher vibes and the nailbiting relentlessness of survival horror.
"Harrowing and wicked!"
Tim McGregor, author, Lure, Eynhallow
“Darkly atmospheric. Bloody, frozen and full of heart.”
Laurel Hightower, author, Below, Crossroads, The Day of the Door
“Thought-provoking and bone-chilling.”
Brian Bowyer, Splatterpunk Award-nominated, Godless Award-winning author, Roads to Ruin and Old Too Soon
“Blood-soaked and brutal.”
Carlos E. Rivera, author, White Harbor trilogy
“Not for the faint of heart. Morris’ narrative does not pull punches…Highly recommended for fans of Stephen Graham Jones.”
Booklist, starred review
Coming in 2026: MIDWESTERN CHROME by Michael Bettendorf
TRVE CVLT hit harder than we anticipated; in hindsight we shouldn’t have been surprised—and often there’s just no telling which books will speak the loudest—but what could have been a very niche book only for black metal fans with a CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE curiosity ended up punching above its weight class. That’s what great writing and vision will get ya.
MIDWESTERN CHROME is quite the u-turn from TRVE CVLT…except for the “great writing” part. It mixes the scuzzy sordid low-lit noir of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler with a near-future cyberpunk polymer composed of neon and—yes—chrome, and injects them into a setting where we don’t often see these sorts of stories play out: the plains and small towns of the American Heartland.
Personally speaking, I’m positively rabid at the chance to comp one of our titles to one of my own Mt. Rushmore writers, Philip Dick. Now, PKD (very rightly) has earned his crown as one of the finest, most influential sci-fi writers ever; but in my estimation, he is just as much a devotee of the Weird. And that distinction has often been overlooked. We are hereby claiming Philip K. Dick as a Flagbearer of the Weird Emiritus, and MIDWESTERN CHROME is the perfect contemporary book to pick up what DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? threw down.
MIDWESTERN CHROME is out in summer 2026. More to come.
WEIRD ENDLESS SUMMER VACATION slithers along
Heyyyyy, we got New Weird books and magazines of every stripe: preorders, recent releases, and back catalogue alike!
There are no expiration dates; books never have shelf lives, it’s a beautiful thing.
We’ve got one more 2026 announcement for you next week—maybe one-and-a-half. I’m sure we’ll have more to chat about, too.
The people in charge aren’t looking out for you right now, so it falls to each of us to pick up those who are struggling around us. Be good to each other, y’all. You are loved.
Hail indie publishing.
Hail New Weird Horror (+ more!)
Matt + Alex