Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!

Our final title of this Weird Endless Summer Vacation is out next Tuesday, when Hazel Zorn’s debut novella REEF MIND splashes to shore and delivers oceanic justice and horrors to landlubbers everywhere.

Hazel will join us next week to talk a bit about REEF MIND; in the meantime, preorders are shipping out as they come in, so hit the Tenebrous webstore to get your copy of this Eco-Body-Horror-Pocalypse, or any of our other Weird summer titles you may have missed!

Shop the Tenebrous Webstore!

Get all three BRAVE NEW WEIRD eBooks for just $9.99

While you’re there, you can also grab the BRAVE NEW WEIRD bundle for less than ten bucks. That’s 70+ stories from the past three years, providing a comprehensive look at just how incredible and healthy the world of Weird independent Fiction is.

We maintain the best work is being produced outside of the mainstream (hardly a hot take, and hardly a new idea, but still: we maintain it, dammit)

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror (+ More) is proof of this. Hail Indie publishing, always and forever.

Get the BRAVE NEW WEIRD e-bundle!

The H.P. LOVECRAFT FILM FESTIVAL returns to Portland in less than three weeks

…and we’ll be lurking and slinging Tenebrous wares in one of our favorite spots in all the world: the Hollywood Theatre here in Portland.

The fest met some logistical challenges this year, with last minute date changes scuttling organizers Gwen and Brian Callahan’s original plans (and also, unfortunately, scuttling our ability to bring Alex over for the fest this year). But nevertheless, the HPLFF lives on for its thirtieth year, this September 19-21. It has confidently outgrown the constraints of its namesake, and it remains a truly unique, celebratory destination film fest if you’re seeking Weird Cosmic Horror off the beaten path.

They’re pre-selling ticket packages here, and info on the films and guests of honor are slowly rolling out on their website.

What I’ve been reading

A big challenge of being hip deep in indie publishing full-time is that huge spans of time pass where I don’t read…really, much of anything, if it’s not in our submissions queue or on our publishing calendar. I trade in books, I worship them, they’re my life; but sometimes, I don’t read them. Weird, I know.

Well, various circumstances led to a glut of pleasure reading these past couple weeks. For the first time in a long time I ripped through not one, not two, but three books, and I’m halfway through a fourth.

VENGEANCE IS MINE was my first Spillane. I could read a pile of these, quite frankly. I go through phases where all I wanna do is burn through half a dozen ratty old Pulp paperbacks of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler; add Mickey Spillane to the list. They’re tough and macho and dated, but the prose absolutely scorches the paper. Not a single word is wasted; this is true economy of action.

I grabbed THIS ROTTEN WORLD from Jacy last week when we were tabling at the Drive In of the Dead (a great event marred slightly by 104-degree weather, but even that hellishness didn’t keep the Horror faithful away). I’m biased, of course, so if you’re only gonna read one of Jacy’s novels, for me it’s WE LIKE IT CHERRY all the way (on sale now!) But THIS ROTTEN WORLD is where he began developing his chops, and he’s got a whole cult of readers who impatiently await each next volume in this ongoing series. Having read it, I can see why: there’s a Japanese punk band battling zombies mid-gig 30 pages into this one, for starters, and that’s only one of a dozen connecting plotlines in this sprawling zombie apocalypse. You can and should get Jacy’s books here.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR was a re-read; it’s been on my mind since we purchased Santiago Eximeno’s ALICIA IS IN THE BASEMENT for release in 2026. There’s a hard-to-pinpoint similarity between Ketchum and Santiago’s book. I cannot stop turning the pages of either of them, for one thing, no matter how awful the things happening on the page. And if you know THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, then you know the things on the page are about as bad as things get. But there’s both a harrowing, cold electricity to the prose (and to Santiago’s upcoming book, goddamn I cannot wait for y’all to read that one!), and a warmth, a humanity; these books feel literally alive. I’m rarely energized by modern “extreme” horror books; not because they offend me, but because too many of them rely on gimmicky shock and nothing further. There’s nothing gimmicky about Jack Ketchum; he’s one of the best authors to ever do it. He left us too soon.

We love Val. We published CROM CRUACH and PUPPET’S BANQUET, two of the Weirdest books in our catalogue. DECREPIT RITUAL is a Val book that those jerks at Ghoulish were lucky enough to get. So far I love it too, because of course I do. It’s Val doing thrash metal and found footage videotape horror. How could I not? You should get a copy of it from them.

If I manage to keep the reading hot streak going, next on my list are FEEDING THE WHEEL by Michael Boulerice (Dead Sky Publishing), RED OF TOOTH AND CLAW by Sam Richard and Matthew Mitchell (WeirdPunk), and UNCERTAIN SONS by Thomas Ha (Undertow).

Then again, I may not read another book that we didn’t publish until 2027. That’s equally possible.

I’m sure there are more things I’m forgetting that I was supposed to tell you. I’ll get to those next week, when REEF MIND comes out. Possibly. Or maybe I’m just gonna read more books.

Hail books! You should go get some more, they’re great, you can read ‘em and everything, apparently.

Hail the Tenebrous Cult.

That’s you.

Matt + Alex

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