DEAR STUPID PENPAL is out now!
Nov 11, 2025 2:31 pm
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
It's our final release of 2025: Rascal Hartley's extraordinary novel, DEAR STUPID PENPAL. Given that Earth's biggest scientific accomplishment this year is finally figuring out how to spontaneously combust, it seems like a good time—emotionally speaking—for Tenebrous to deliver something even more left-turn-y than our typical tradition of left turns:
A love story.
But before you let those three words skew your opinion of something you haven't yet read, let us assure you:
- There are monsters.
- There is cosmic horror.
- There is a fuckload of casual swearing.
- Shit gets real Weird. We promise.
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.
"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
There's a lot of complicated messy emotions—a whole lot of humanity—in these pages, and there's no one better to paint the picture than the author who crafted this incredible story.
The floor is yours, Rascal:
Dear stupid penpal,
This book has lived on the edges of my brain for years now. When I first wrote it, I'd never even attempted letters before. Random parts where the story suddenly turned into a play? Yes. Letters? No.
I don’t know why it's letters. I put my fingers to the keys and that's how their voices chose to escape me. I got to peek into their world through the pages of correspondence, and now, so do you.
It's a book about... being a person, maybe. The small moments that exist despite (because of?) a giant, endless, careless universe. Love in a million facets. Horror that eludes words. Memes that haven’t been uttered since 2012. More about my psyche than I care to admit.
I like to say I'd explode if I ever stopped writing, but the truth is, I've never stopped for long enough to find out. I wrote Aku and Finch first years ago, and it's been a pleasure to revisit them and their world with the wonderful people at Tenebrous. Thanks to them, Aku and Finch get to live in brains that aren’t my own.
It's kinda trippy.
All this to say: I hope you like them.
- Rascal ☆
DEAR STUPID PENPAL is available everywhere now. Due to our old friend SHIPPING COMPLICATIONS, we're still waiting on the rest of our stock to arrive (just a couple more days, according to my tracking numbers), but most preorders have been sent out.
If you haven't ordered a copy yet, how about we entice you with some completely context-free interior art, courtesy of yours truly?
Our next title doesn't release until February of 2026, but here's a quick refresher of everything that's come out in 2025, in case you missed anything:
Gyaddamn, that is one pretty pile of Weirdness. Our webstore never closes; it is always awake. It is always watching you.
And a reminder that subscriptions for our 2026 Book Club open in less than two weeks, on Black Friday. Here's what's on tap for next year:
We'll be here next week—or maybe the week after, we'll see where Alex and my exhaustion levels are at—with some revelations and information on just what those blurred-out words are...
Hail Indie Publishing.
Hail New Weird Horror (+ More!)
Hail the Tenebrous Cult.
Hail DEAR STUPID PENPAL.
Matt + Alex + Rascal
