Tenebrous086: Cover Art Reveal, SPLIT SCREAM authors announced, much fun was had by all
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
So much to get to, and here in ‘Merica it’s a holiday weekend, to boot, so let’s dive right in, shall we?
First, a reminder:
ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE, out next week
Author M.Shaw will join us in the newsletter next week to share their thoughts about this collection of stories designed to pull your heart in any number of directions, most of them deeply uncomfortable and accompanied by embarrassing unintentional laugh-scream-cries. In the meantime, this is your last (probably) reminder to preorder it!
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).
Cover art & interior illustrations by Echo Echo.
"There is not a story in this collection that doesn’t hit like a heroic dose of acid straight to your cerebellum. Unhinged in the best possible way."
Danger Slater, Starlet and House of Rot
“Trippy and gross and sexy and disturbing and funny. No matter the bizarre places this book took me, I felt deeply for these humans whose struggles and desires, at their core, are universal.”
‘Pemi Aguda, Ghostroots
“A surreal reading experience, humorous and creepy in equal measure. An exciting new voice [that] delivers a fresh take on horror and will appeal to fans of T. Kingfisher, Grady Hendrix, and Jason Pargin.”
Booklist
On December 5th, ALL YOUR FRIENDS ARE HERE.
COVER ARTISTS & ILLUSTRATORS WANTED
We’re looking to expand our roster of artists! We take a lot of pride in the aesthetics and artistic decisions that go into a Tenebrous title—no, the cover art does not speak to the quality of a book, but it’s the first line of engagement for most readers.
If you’re an artist—or know some—who might be interested in working with us in the future, please tell us more here!
This should go without saying if you know anything about us, but if you utilize AI in your art process, please do not reach out.
Preorder THE SKULL & LAUREL Issue 002
Our second issue is (relatively) just around the corner! If reaction to Issue 001 is anything to go by, you wholeheartedly approve of our approach. Which is good, because we’re sticking to it: only the finest and Weirdest fiction from all corners of the globe. Story over star power.
Issue 002 features stories from Neal Auch, Ria Hill, Beau Farrow, Anne Liberton, Letícia Werner, Cedrick May, Jonathan Olfert, Atalanti Evripidou and Dmitri Akers; an incredible non-fiction piece on Mascot Horror (a term I’d never personally considered but now makes so much sense) by Xochilt Avila; horrorscopes, classified ads and more.
It’s also not too late to catch up! You can still get a subscription to our first year of THE SKULL & LAUREL (starting with Issue 001) right here.
Now we get to the heart of the matter:
The 2025 Tenebrous Book Club opens this Friday
So let’s talk 2025.
First, this week we announced the authors of SPLIT SCREAM’s seventh volume—subtitled Off the Map this time around:
Seventh?! Jeez, Ebs, that means that SPLIT SCREAM will have officially been in the Tenebrous family for over half its life. They grow up so Weird, don’t they.
And with that announcement, all our titles for 2025 are formally solidified.
Let’s recap, shall we?
CASUAL, a novel by Koji A. Dae
What is it? A lost Black Mirror episode, vibes-wise. A dystopian peek into a future that looks a lot like our present, dealing with bodily autonomy in a wildly divided world. Valya has successfully managed her anxiety and depression, thanks to the game-like app/cerebral implant Casual. Now pregnant, she will be forced to either disable Casual…or have it paired with her unborn baby in a medical trial with no precedent.
When? February 11th
SPLIT SCREAM: Off the Map, two novelettes by Idé Hennessey and John K. Peck & L. Mahler
What is it? Two New Weird Horror stories—the occultish Sci-Horror of Sequoia Point and the Eco-Horror of Evergreen—each dealing with the death of a family member in very different ways.
When? March 27th
PUPPET’S BANQUET, a novella by Valkyrie Loughcrewe
Hey, this seems like a great time to show you some reveal some cover art. Check out this ripping piece by Donna Anita Black:
What is it? Val wrote CROM CRUACH. If you’ve read that, then you know there’s little use trying to describe this, and you know you already want it anyway. Val refers to PUPPET’S BANQUET as a “diseased Gothic”; fair enough. We’ll be sharing more of the bonkers plot with you soon enough, but for now let’s call it “Silent Hill meets Cronenberg’s The Brood meets Scorcese’s Shutter Island.
"Surreal, horrific, smart—there’s a lot of meat in PUPPET’S BANQUET. Masterfully plays on the reader's expectations…a sumptuous feast of raw Weird.”
Eve Harms, author of Transmuted and Chasers
When? May 14th
BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Literature, Vol. 3
What? Can you believe they keep letting us get away with these?! We’re back for a third round to showcase the explosive creativity and boisterous health running rampant in the independently- and self-published New Weird scene. TOC will be announced sometime in February probably, if Alex and I haven’t gone insane from Weird overload by then. I’m handling wraparound cover art again myself for this one, with Alex as art director; she already made me ditch the “fruit bowl but instead of fruit it’s alien embryos” because it wasn’t Weird enough.
When? June 10th
WE LIKE IT CHERRY, a novel by Jacy Morris
What? Serious 80s grindhouse pulp vibes here, as a jaded travelogue host and his video crew make their way deep into the barren Arctic on the promise of revealing to the public a long-forgotten Indigenous tribe. They get the exclusive, alright; and pretty damn quickly they wish they hadn’t. Jacy’s a writing machine; his wildly popular This Rotten World series is only a drop in the bucket of his self-published work, and we are so stoked that he trusted us with this story that only he could tell. This sucker is intense.
When? July 31st
REEF MIND, a novella by Hazel Zorn
What? The coral reef becomes sentient and begins to spread rapidly, invading the land and mutating the human population. Christ; I mean, we may as well have commissioned this premise directly, right? This book just screams Tenebrous. But it’s easy to have a good premise without good execution. Hazel’s prose cuts deeply and without mercy, and it’s a little discomforting how effortlessly she slides us into the point of view of a race we can never truly know.
When? September 9th
CLAIRVIOLENCE: Tales of Tarot & Torment, a story collection by Mo Moshaty
What? Speaking of effortless: this collection shuffles through a host of eras, settings and colorful characters, and you’ll feel the depths of each twisted narrative knocking on your bones. Mo is masterful at immersing her audience up to their eyeballs in her horrific tales, in addition to being one of the most enthusiastic and tireless advocates for indie Horror I’ve ever met. This is the first step in a long partnership we’ve got planned together, and it’s a hell of a first step; pray she doesn’t read you your fortune.
When? October 23rd; the Halloween-y season, naturally. This one’s a perfect fit.
DEAR STUPID PENPAL, a novella by Rascal Hartley
Our year is capped with books that lean heavy into science fiction with a Weird twist, but …PENPAL is an entirely different beast than CASUAL. To tell you too much about this one will give away its central conceit, but it concerns astronauts on a mission a looooooong way away from Earth, away from our galaxy; the penpals they keep in touch with who help them remain anchored to humanity; and…say, have you noticed that time isn’t passing quite right? And who is answering these letters? And just what the hell is their mission, anyway?
When? November 12th
Admit it: that’s a pretty sexy-sounding New Weird year of books, isn’t it? You wanna read them all, don’t you? Or at least buy them a couple drinks and a fancy dinner?
Well, you can (read them, that is. If you wanna feed them dinner…look, that’s between you and the books). This Friday—the blackest of Fridays—2025 Book Club subscriptions goes on sale. There are both print+ebook and ebook-only options; and just like this year’s Book Club, the print option will contain an exclusive t-shirt that won’t be made available anywhere else, plus some cool bonus swag we’re gaming out right now.
Keep an eye out for a brief email reminder this Friday; it’ll be buried between a mountain of Black Friday ads from Amazon and Target and every other indie press who’s doing something cool but probably not as cool as we are and also probably Chili’s. We’ll put something like CRUSTING-OVER EYEBALL GOO: IT’S A TENEBROUS BLACK FRIDAY!!! in the header, just to stand out.
Okay it’s after 11:00 the night before I need to send this, and I didn’t even include any new pieces from the Tenebrous Anniversary celebration! No worries, we’ll just keep sharing those through the coming weeks for however long it takes us. We have original creations from Bitter Karella, D. Matthew Urban, Danger Slater, Val and more still to come.
Whatever you choose to do this weekend, I hope it involves delicious food. Personally I plan to watch a stack of Godzilla movies with the boy. You do you.
Hail Indie Publishing.
Hail the Tenebrous Cult.
Hail all of the kick-ass books we’re putting out in 2025.
Matt + Alex