You're receiving this because you are signed up for Advance Review Copies from Tenebrous Press. If you'd prefer to stop receiving, please unsubscribe below.

Happy Halloween, Tenebrous Cult! As the creepy season sweeps over us, we want to tell you about our final release of 2025, coming November 11th: the genre-bustingly brilliant DEAR STUPID PENPAL, an entirely epistolary mixture of Heart, Humor and Cosmic Horror from newcomer Rascal Hartley.

Read DEAR STUPID PENPAL in its entirety here

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.

Cover art by Carly A-F. Interior illustrations by Matt Blairstone.

"A joyously weird tale of unexpected genre mashups, overwhelming odds, quotable lines, and queer romance that even the most jaded cynic can't help but get swept up in."

•  Íde Hennessey, "Sequoia Point", Split Scream: Off the Map

“Veers from funny to dread-inducing and back again…sits alongside This Is How You Lose the Time War as a blueprint for compelling, propulsive, epistolary [fiction].”

• Emma Cole, Love Never Dies, editor at Harlequin Books

Read DEAR STUPID PENPAL in its entirety here

DEAR STUPID PENPAL is out November 11th, 2025. Please share your reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, your own personal blogs, websites and social media, and anywhere else you review books at! 

And feel free to tag us @TenebrousPress, or by responding to this email; whether good, bad or in between, we'd love for you to share your thoughts with fellow readers.

Thank you for supporting Tenebrous Press!

--

Alex Woodroe, Editor-in-Chief, She/Her

Matt Blairstone, Publisher, He/Him