The Best New Weird Fiction you'll find: THE SKULL & LAUREL issue 003 is out today
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
It’s release day, but there’s no rest for the Weird! Editor-in-Chief Alex Woodroe and magazine editor Cameron Howard have already set their sights on issue 004 of THE SKULL & LAUREL, leaving it to me to tell you that the latest issue our New Weird Fiction magazine is OUT NOW!
We knew going in that we were looking for a couple eco-horror-centric stories for this issue; what we didn’t know was that y’all were thinking the same thing. The submissions pile was really hive-minding this time around! Something in the memetic waters, I guess; maybe we’re all feeling a tad unsettled in our environments? Huh, can’t imagine why.
However you slice it, the Table of Contents this time around leans heavily into some of the Weirdest tales of climate uncertainty and straight-up horrific environmental terror you’ll ever lay eyes on.
Table of Contents:
This Flesh’ll Run Free - Jes Malitoris
Auntie Linda’s Farm - Chris Kuriata
Dose of Dread: From the Furrows - Aggie Novak
Mandrake Experiment - Toshiya Kamei
Foxtails - EC Dorgan
An Inordinate Amount of Interest - Ayida Shonibar
Water Bodies - Jangar Tokpa
The Flesh-Eating Gulls of Hanover Park - Mia Xuan
Witches in Cold Mountain Halls - Josh Pearce
Cover art by Mx Morgan G Robles.
Helluva lineup, as always.
In other news: we just passed 125 subscribers for the 2025 Tenebrous Book Club. That blows my mind; it’s more than double our subscriber total from last year (I’m just happy we’re heading in the right direction!)
Lemme tell ya: we know painfully well that everything costs more now. Shipping and printing costs continue to skyrocket. Yeah, all our books that are sold in the U.S. are printed in the U.S.; but those materials, the paper pulp and inks and equipment, come from all over the world. Bookstores are being understandably cautious, ordering fewer copies of everything, doing everything they can just to weather the storm. Book-lovers are forced to be more selective with their reading. We get it; we’re book-lovers too (no, really!)
And we’re not fooling ourselves: it’s not likely that this is gonna course-correct any time soon. When’s the last time you remember anything suddenly costing less? We’re determined to hold the line on our prices for as long as reasonably possible, but we’re also not in the habit of costing ourselves right out of business.
Alex and I built this beast ourselves, from the ground up. And perhaps a bit sadistically, we like doing it ourselves! Our outlook and methodology are also why we’re pretty well suited to to weather a storm: we simply can’t afford to put the press in a position where it would fail. We don’t have the disposable income to make stupid decisions.
Now, don’t misread me for a second: we are eternally grateful and fawn over the indie bookstores and libraries that carry Tenebrous, and we’re ambitious: we have our long-term sights trained on a better, bigger distribution deal. We work to make ourselves inevitable. But for the time being, this is the day-to-day reality of The Tenebrous Outpost:
Folding boxes, stuffing envelopes, printing bonus materials ourselves. And honestly, I f&%king love it so much I wanna write a double-concept album about it (nothin’ but four chords, the truth, and tons of theremin) but we’re currently operating at that threshold where it’s just barely manageable with our staff of none. It’s full time hours, minus the full time pay.
The best way that you can invest in Tenebrous' long term health, & lock in a flat rate on shipping prices, cover prices, and get some exclusive bonus features to boot, is to subscribe to the Book Club (there are print+eBook and eBook-only options; a lot of the bonus material comes with the eBook tier too!)
But hey: say you’re not interested in subscribing to the entire 2025 year? That’s totally cool too!
Whenever you order directly from us—whether it’s a big stack of books or just a single one—you’re supporting indie publishing. Higher royalty cuts to the authors, less overhead for us, stickers and pins and swag for you, win/win/win.
We ain’t goin’ anywhere—we’ve got committed publishing plans signed for at least the next five years already, and we’re constantly (read: daily) dreaming up what’s next—but we’re deeply grateful for everything you, the Loyal Cult, do to make Tenebrous stronger. This is us, this is ours, and it’s forever, but it’s nothing without your support and your belief in us.
Hail you.
Hail THE SKULL & LAUREL.
Hail indie publishing. Goddamn, I cannot properly express how much I love it. It feels like cracking the code to the universe, when you finally find your people and your home-
…wait, I got a song for this. Key of A, 4/4 drum beat, fire up the theremin Alex let’s gooooooooo-
Matt + Alex