Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!

The Cards are Dealt

The first time we met author/producer/lecturer Mo Moshaty was at a convention; within minutes we had begun laying out the cards for a years-long working relationship between her and Tenebrous.

Mo is a force of nature; her bio is a novelette in itself. She's incorporated her extensive Horror background—as well as her career as a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist—into lectures with Prairie View A&M in Texas as a keynote speaker for Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium; Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies on From Inside the House: Dissecting Women’s Trauma in Horror, and The Whole Damn Swarm: 30 Years of Candyman with University of Sheffield; Fear2000 for The Horror Evolution Will Be Colorized; and more.

She's a core member and producer with Nyx Horror Collective, whose 13 Minutes of Horror Film Festival originally screened on Shudder; of Stowe Story Labs, a collective focused on supporting woman-identifying creatives over 40 working in the Horror genre.

Mo is the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and is a featured creator in the resource 160 Black Women in Horror. Her novella, Love the Sinner, was released through Brigids Gate. And oh yeah: we're releasing five volumes of her non-fiction exploration of Horror across time and culture, ANNEX OF THE OBSCURE, beginning next year.

Those first seeds of our Weird pact with Mo reach fruition today, with the release of her phenomenal Occult Horror collection, CLAIRVIOLENCE: TALES OF TAROT AND TAROT!

Get CLAIRVIOLENCE

About CLAIRVIOLENCE:

The Tarot holds mystery, prediction, and unsettling omens for those who practice, divine, or are sensitive to it. 

A turn of the cards weaves CLAIRVIOLENCE through space and time to delve into the stories of those shaken by life-shattering choices that threaten to tear their souls apart:

A warring couple is forced to reconcile during the end of the world.

A young man is drawn into the surreal prison-scape of an elderly woman.

A dead woman’s curse travels miles and decades to bring her killer to justice.

CLAIRVIOLENCE unearths one novelette and ten short stories—each one exclusive to this volume—beneath the exterior of an otherwise charmed and quiet existence.

“The Horror take on Tarot I didn’t know I needed.”

• Melody Cooper, OMNI, African Ghost Short Stories

"Unsettling and thought-provoking. Moshaty's characters rise from the page." 

• Tim McGregor, Lure and Eynhallow

Of course, Mo knows better than anyone the long road this book has taken to get where it is today, so without further ado, let's hear from the woman herself:

For over thirty years, I've read Tarot for myself and others, watching the cards open doors to possibility, warnings, and transformation. Each reading can be looked at like a map. Showing paths we could take, the variables that can shift our course, and the choices that alter outcomes. In horror, as in Tarot, the revelation is rarely comfortable. It's a mirror that reflects both our potential and our ruin. We are the architects of our own worlds, the hands that build and the hands that break. I wanted CLAIRVIOLENCE to live in that tension, that dread, that confusion, and that despair, where fate and free will collide...hard.

CLAIRVIOLENCE: TALES OF TAROT AND TORMENT is available now, wherever indie books are sold. Or better yet, direct from us:

Get CLAIRVIOLENCE

Cover Art Reveal: OLYOKE by Vincent Endwell

We've been massive fans of Jenna Cha since we first encountered her stunning cosmic horror artwork in the BLACK STARS ABOVE comics series; and her current Weird trip through American alt-history in THE SICKNESS (both series are co-written/created by Lonnie Nadler) is even better.

Jenna knowing who Tenebrous is was strange enough; that we have not one, but two covers coming from her next year makes me wonder how we got so lucky. But I sure ain't complaining!

Check out this absolute fever dream of a wraparound cover for Vincent Endwell's mosaic novel, Apocalypse DollywoodOLYOKE:

Just about the most beautiful usage of jaundiced yellow and puke green I've ever seen.

About OLYOKE:

Olyoke, Tennessee is home to a Dollywood-like theme park, generations of troubled families, and the warnings of a dead architect turned conscripted prophet, who writes of a coming cataclysm.

As the fire nears, DARCY, a Dolly Parton impersonator, finds strange worms in the swamp and feeds them to her dog, who then speaks with the voice of her dead mother. Recently divorced LYLE KNOX is called through its dreams by a strange house, and through its investigation, discovers that Lyle Knox itself is not a person, but a structure. MAGGIE WARNER organizes a theater production to stave off her gnawing misery and becomes convinced that only the people she sees in her dreams are real. Moreover, THE WHISTLER—the man Maggie becomes when she sleeps—welcomes the town’s impending Judgment with open arms.

All destinies converge in Olyoke.

None will escape unchanged.

OLYOKE arrives in March of next year, and the fires are coming with it. Much more info on this one in the coming weeks.

10 Days Left to Submit to BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror (+ More) Volume Four

The window closes on Halloween to get your short fiction—or any independently/self-published stories you've read and want to nominate—from the past year into consideration for next year's anthology!

Here's the full details. Now get crackin!

Friends With Benefits

There's a really cool collection floating through the ether right now. Best of all, Tenebrous Cult, it's from a grip of cool friends of ours; and bestest(-est?) of all, it's free!

WE WILL SPEAK AGAIN OF THE RED TOWER is a collection of stories inspired by Thomas Ligotti's "The Red Tower", brought to you by Joelle Killian, Jack Klausner, Joe Koch, Rhiannon Rasmussen, C.J. Subko, TJ Price, RSL, and Tenebrous mainstay Carson Winter; Rhiannon handled the lovely cover artwork.

You can download the eBook for free over at Book Funnel right now; and yes, it's free, but we do encourage you to support the individual artists involved if you're able. Carson has helpfully provided a list where you can do that.

Additionally, Rhiannon—themself a close Tenebrous Cultist and YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY co-conspirator—brought our attention to a free online zine that sounds right up our alley: Billions vs. Billionaires, "a blaze of fiction and games from Bitter Karella, M. K. Anderson, Rick Claypool, Elly Bangs, Cyan Katz, and more!" Download it free here.

VoidCon: Proof of Survival

We're each back in our respective time zones—after some travel snafus set Alex back an additional day in Chicago—exhausted but happy, social batteries topped off, grateful to see old friends, make new ones, and dig ourselves further into a corner of the indie publishing scene that cares not a whim for trends, clout-chasing or star-f&%king.

We're both of us crap at taking photos—or even appearing in them! We're like ninja that way—but here're a few moments we've got to offer:

Hail Indie Publishing.

Hail New Weird Horror (+ More!)

Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

Hail CLAIRVIOLENCE.

Matt + Alex + Mo