Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!

And Happy Halloween eve-eve, to those who celebrate (you're here reading this, so I'm guessing that's most of y'all).

Here in Oregon our traditional Halloween festivities come with a side of torrential downpour; let's just say I've become well-versed in the term "atmospheric river" in the twenty-plus years I've lived in Portland. Honestly, it's amazing that this city can burn clean to the ground, with as much rain as we've been getting! Nonetheless, we've rioted up a way, and this year we'll all be trick-or-treating through the smoldering (antif)ashes.

Meanwhile, in Transilvania, Alex will be celebrating Halloween in the traditional Romanian way: cursing everything in sight. Curses, un-curses; so many damn curses. Probably waving bundles of burning herbs at things, too.

I imagine those curses are gonna be flying my way any minute if I don't get to the good stuff soooooooo

...ONCE MORE INTO THE WEIRD WE GO!

Sink your teeth into the full cover art for Volume Four of BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror (+ More), our annual showcase of the finest Weird Fiction of the year; illustrated by yours truly, with substantial art direction notes from Alex ("make his arm a Death's Head moth"; "fewer static lines"; "please make it suck less"). Pretty sure she talked me out of adding even one more color to the palette, as well. This is a pretty different visual direction than previous volumes, but I love the opportunities these covers present to try out new things and break out of my artistic comfort zones.

The book isn't out until June 2026, but time is running out to get your submissions in! You have until Halloween to get your previously published Weird shorts to us; full submission details are here.

And just for the heck of it, print copies of last year's BRAVE NEW WEIRD Volume Three are 20% off, exclusively in our webstore! Most likely through the end of Halloween weekend, but if you're lucky my brain will glitch and I'll forget to deactivate the button until sometime next year.

20% off BRAVE NEW WEIRD Vol. 3

Tenebrous 2026 Book Club Subs Open on Black Friday

We nearly tripled the number of Book Club subscribers between 2024 and 2025; an astounding increase, quite frankly. We're humbled and beyond grateful for the amount of trust that y'all put in our curated yearly lineup. While we never expect to replicate those subscription numbers, let me just say that the 2026 Tenebrous release calendar is even more ambitious and incredible.

We've got nine titles coming at you next year, as opposed to eight the previous years** (see below for more details on that). Among those:

• The return of a couple Tenebrous favorites: HOUSE OF ROT's Danger Slater is back with his finest work to date (and I think I've read all of them at this point, so I'm not just blowing marketing smoke!) and TRVE CVLT author Michael Bettendorf goes full on cyberpunk-scuzz-noir;
• Our biggest book yet, in Kristal Stittle's epic alien invasion/creature feature novel, KAYAK;
• Our first translation, and our darkest title to date, and there's no close second place: Santiago Eximeno's profoundly wrenching ALICIA IS IN THE BASEMENT;
• Genre-mashing "are they novels? collections? both? yes both and they're f&*king WEIRD" from Allison Mick and Vincent Endwell;
• New volumes of SPLIT SCREAM, BRAVE NEW WEIRD, and the long-awaited companion volume to 2022's YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY (full title and cover art reveal coming soon! I know I know the suspense is killing us all!)

2026 Book Club subscriptions open Black Friday weekend (November 28th). As usual, there will be both print+eBook and eBook-only options, and each will feature subscriber-only bonus content. While subscriptions will remain open throughout the year—we never wanna penalize anyone who comes to the party late!—there will be some additional savings for anyone who subscribes opening weekend.

**We actually have ten books slated for release in 2026; we've held Mo Moshaty's ANNEX OF THE OBSCURE, VOLUME ONE: THE AFTERLIFE off the Book Club list for a couple reasons. 1.) we've never released a non-fiction, reference-heavy book before, and we don't know what the final formatting, page count, etc, is gonna cost; and 2.) while we think the ANNEX series is absolutely designed to appeal to our crowd, we know that some folks just aren't on board for a non-fiction title in the same way they would be for our other books, and we don't want to hard-sell anyone something they're not interested in. That being said, as soon as we have the details locked in for ANNEX OF THE OBSCURE, it will be offered to all interested Book Club subscribers at a discount.

But We Ain't Done With 2025 Yet. Not Even Close.

Mo Moshaty's Halloween-appropriate CLAIRVIOLENCE: TALES OF TAROT AND TORMENT, has been sinking its vengeful claws into readers for just over a week now. These ten short stories—and one harrowing, centerpiece novelette—weave their horrors throughout time and place—from the eve of Orson Welles' fateful War of the Worlds broadcast to a violent plague in the near future—and creatures that range from the monstrously cryptic to the monstrously human. CLAIRVIOLENCE is out now, and its ready to read your fate.

Get CLAIRVIOLENCE

And in just two weeks time, our final title of 2025 arrives!

Deep-space sci-fi, Cosmic Horror, Queer Romance and one snarky-ass co-narrator collide in the glorious, exhilarating DEAR STUPID PENPAL by Rascal Hartley:

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.

"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

Rascal's own trope board tells the story better than we can:

Anyone furrowing their brow at the words "Romance" or "Comedy" appearing in a Weird Horror book, may we lovingly point you at "grandma clutch her pearls"😀 Taco Bell, on the other hand...

Undoubtedly, DEAR STUPID PENPAL is a bit of a left turn for Tenebrous; all we can say is, "Read it for yourself", and we bet you'll see why it was an instantaneous YES YEP GOTTA HAVE IT from both Alex and myself.

Preorder DEAR STUPID PENPAL

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Rachael Herb-Neterer is the auteur behind the incredible-sounding—and looking! The graphic design on this package is phenomenal—book, LOST IN THE STATIC: The Untold Stories of Shot-On-Video Horror Directed by Women.

Seriously, check this out, the book is sized to an old VHS cassette and comes in an actual videotape clamshell:

There are only a few copies of the special edition preorder left; you can read more about the project and nab one of those copies here! (Don't sweat it if you miss out though, the standard edition will be going on sale soon as well).

Okay I think that's all we've got for you this week. Wishing you a safe, creepy, extra-Weird Halloween; we'll see you next week.

Hail Indie Publishing.

Hail New Weird Horror (+ More!)

Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

Hail Halloween!

Matt + Alex