Announcing the Shortlist for BRAVE NEW WEIRD Volume Three!

Hails, Tenebrous Cult!

It takes three to establish a pattern, and one of the patterns we’re establishing is this: the BRAVE NEW WEIRD calendar year is about thirteen-and-five-eighths months long, as opposed to the standard-issue twelve-month Gregorian calendar.

And why wouldn’t this be the case, when you think about it? Time is Weird™. Also, we don’t ever wanna cut corners or shirk in our duties of showing you the most accurate cross-section of Weird Fiction circa 2025; every story submitted deserves our full attention, regardless of timeline. This forthcoming volume is the culmination of an entire year’s worth of Weird, and boy howdy this year has been Weird. Have I said “Weird” enough this paragraph? I need an editor.

Weird Weird Weird.

(…also, this little ramble feels suspiciously similar to what I said last year around this time. I hate to burst your bubble, Cultists, but I think the forecast is nothing-but-Weird-years for the time being.)

Regardless: we’re gonna focus on the good kinda Weird. and to that end, it’s time to announce the…

BRAVE NEW WEIRD VOLUME THREE SHORTLIST!

As usual, it was agonizing just to narrow this list down to sixty worthy contenders from the nearly 1,000 submissions we worked through. And it’s gonna be agony to further sculpt a final Table of Contents from this list.

A couple points of note that Alex wanted me to stress:

  1. Additional categories like anthology, special issue, games, etc. are still going to receive awards, they're just not shortlisted and will go straight to the final round. Those announcements will be made soon-ish.

  2. We mean this very seriously: not being mentioned is not an indicator that your work isn't good enough. We understand that awards can feel exclusionary, but what we're doing here is only attempting to showcase a range of what was published over the past year that fits into our vision for our genre and voice. This is a selection of stories we chose to showcase; there are many amazing stories we couldn't, largely because of genre fit and space. Those stories are worthwhile too and we hope more and more spaces will choose to do showcases like this one (equitably, openly, and without using it as a platform to champion themselves and their own work, there's plenty of that already going around).

Okay, enough from both of us.

The BRAVE NEW WEIRD SHORTLIST:

Ainsley Hawthorn - Big Cats of Newfoundland

Aleksandra Ugelstad Elnæs - Spolia

Alex Fox - The City of Cities, Inverted; A Shadow Cast By Many Hands

Angela Liu - A Contract of Ink and Skin

Ann LeBlanc - Memories Held Against a Hungry Mouth

Avra Margariti - Unbirthday Means You Wish Yourself Unborn

Azure Arther - Reciprocity

Briar Ripley Page - Birth Of a Sucker

Calla Eris Orion - Kiss of a Toad

Casey Lawrence - Ten Things I Have Learned About Human Skin: A Presentation

[sarah] Cavar - Mad Studies

Dane Erbach - Something Else

David Corse - The Amassing Man

E.G. Condé - Sibilance

E.M. Linden - Mangrove Daughter

Elad Haber - End of Line

Elana Gomel - Mother Black Hole

Eleanna Castroianni - Zarghána

Emma Burnett - Plastic-eating fungus caused doomsday[2][3]

Emma E. Murray - An Angel of God

Emmett Nahil - Vining

Erik McHatton - The Man Who Collected Ligotti

F. J. Bergmann - The Museum of Etymology

Faith Allington - Teacakes for Foxes

Guan Un - Painted Surfaces

Hannah Greer - To Be Human

Ira Rat - Soft

Jack Klausner - Cardboard Faces

Jack Lennon - The Scottish Welfare Fund Application Form

James Cato - Wonders of a Plastic Ocean

Jes Malitoris - The House of Coiled Earth

Jess Elizabeth Reed - The Belly

K. A. Roy - Welcome to Rebirth Grove

K.A. Wiggins - The Tangle (Did Not Kill Kitsault)

Kay Vaindal - Pig House

Kelsea Yu - Creature

Lena Ng - The Halloween Horror Show

Leo Oliveira - They Remember Faces

Leslie What - Wayback

Lor Gislason - fumes

Lucas Yao-Bendimerad - So Dramatic

M. L. Krishnan - Measurements Expressed as Units of Separation

Madalena Daleziou - Hauntless House

Matthew Mitchell - Knight Rumors

Nayt Rundquist - Flashes of Neverwhen

O F Cieri - The Tragedy Brotherhood

Plangdi Neple - Not All Your Bones Are Yours

Raluca Balasa - Cogs in the (War) Machine

Ryan T. Jenkins - The Potato Problem

Samir Sirk Morató - EGREGORE

Shantell Powell - The Snow Hath No Queen

Sharang Biswas - Waiting for Jonah

SJ Townend- I HAVE SEEN SEVEN BAD THINGS

Sonya Vatomsky - The Yolo Wallpaper

Susan L. Lin - Gravitational Pull

Tehnuka - You Can Leave Your Helmet On

Tiffany Michelle Brown - Full Immersion

Tim Pratt - The Liminal Space Dating Agency

Timaeus Bloom - Memorabilia

Zoe Kaplan - Travelling Salesman

Congratulations to everyone on this list, and a heartfelt, exhausted thank you to everyone who submitted, on their own behalf, or on behalf of their peers.

We’ll announce the final Table of Contents shortly-ish; sometime before Release Day**, I can safely say, because we haven’t figured out how to manipulate time any further than that.

**currently scheduled for June 10th, though I’ve grown slightly smarter; enough to leave us a few weeks of flexibility around this particular book, because I know how much it kicks both my and Alex’s ass. In the most rewarding way.

Hail the Weird!

Read an exclusive excerpt from Valkyrie Loughcrewe's upcoming novella, PUPPET'S BANQUET

The Trans Rights Readathon is currently underway, counting down until the Trans Day of Visibility on March 31st!

To celebrate, we’re sharing the first “chapter” of Valkyrie Loughcrewe’s upcoming novella, PUPPET’S BANQUET, with our readers for free. It’s out May 14th and available to preorder now.

PUPPET’S BANQUET is a surrealist nightmare; a “diseased Gothic”; a hallucinatory treatise on medical abuse; the systemic disease of colonialism and patriarchy; and the limits of human perception. Equal parts Cronenberg’s The Brood, Scorcese’s Shutter Island, and Silent Hill.

Cover art by Donna A. Black.

Interior illustrations by Trevor Henderson.

About PUPPET’S BANQUET:

Married couple Celia and Martin are brutally attacked on their drive through the Irish countryside. The attack leaves Celia with a violent schism in her mind, seemingly existing in two places at once: one the “real” world, the other a howling maelstrom of abstract monstrosity. 

Of her husband, there is no trace…until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman.

And they are very pregnant.

***

Now, please enjoy the disturbing early events of PUPPET’S BANQUET:


“Sub-Ornament Creaking Carcasses

Stagger Blackest Harbours

Moored Frothing Profuse”

  • Portal, “Werships”




“I’m coming home, I’m home, I’m coming home”

  • Axis of Perdition, “Heaving Salvation in the Paradise of Rust”





  There we are, coming back into the flesh.

  Were you dreaming?

  Still a bit groggy. That’s ok.

  No, don’t try to speak, you might damage your tongue

  Against the wire gauze, in your numbed state.

  Follow the light. That’s it.

  That’s it.

  It is a very special thing to have you here

  for you to be part of this procedure.

  Unfortunately, however we—or you, rather, do not

  have a lot of time before you begin to…

  Well,

  Let's try and keep things pleasant for now.

  I see you’re shifting a little in your bonds,

  I do hope the restraints aren’t too tight.

  Toxic shock would really interfere with what we’ve come to do here today.

  I’m going to put something up on the screen now and I want you

  to focus, 

  focus on the image, and the sound of my voice.

  Some of it will be pre-recorded,

  the rest of it will be alive,

  in here with you.

  With us.

  And hopefully, once this ends,

  you and I will finally understand

  why all of this had to happen.




Slide 1:   Verminations in the carrion infinity



 Humans were meant to exist in living tribes,

 gathered around the fire, bustling nonstop

 from sunrise through sunset and beyond

 children were meant to sleep to the sound of 

 crackling fires, murmuring conversation

 the tapping of drums and the flutters of music

 memory is a network of nodes reaching out to 

 one another, connecting through story and song

 when humans are separated, sorted into right-angled

 living catacombs, a kind of decay that sets in

 a decay of meaning

 and memory

 can you imagine the kind of things that 

 certain people might

 get up to? 

 in their desperation

 in search of a signal through the noise?

  

   First, we must draw our attention back to a large, well-kept house nestled in the misty veils of the Irish countryside, as the last clink of cheap porcelain on a tray of expensive silver signalled the end of the evening.

   It was followed by an exaggeratedly satisfied sigh, and an equally exaggerated rubbing of hands. It was not taken as obnoxious or unnecessary by the guests. The party had started at twelve in the day and it was approaching eight in the evening. The drinkers were drunk, the drivers were tired, and the gossip had long run dry. 

   Celia and Martin needed no excuse to be the first to filter out, though they did wait for a couple of the older family members to make their way out across the misty gravel driveway to their cars before they followed suit. They didn’t want to be rude, and it wasn’t as if they didn’t get on with Martin’s family, or his Uncle Paudy, whose birthday they had been celebrating. 

  

  There was, however, a kind of underlying tension to any sort of family gathering, on either side. They were from wealthy stock, our husband and wife, families with ties to heavy industry, real estate, pharmaceuticals, agribusiness and communications, ties to the twin dominant political parties which had robbed the countries blind for decades.

  So where did the discomfort come from? Were dear Martin and delicate Celia, beneath it all, revolutionary socialists in the time-honored tradition of their ancestors, aghast at the rape of their beloved green isle? Of course not, the truth was far more banal—the pair had fallen on hard times, their mortgage getting out from under them. Their meagre jobs—Celia a schoolteacher, Martin a middle manager in a floundering infrastructure startup—were not quite cutting through the rolling waves of debt.

  Being good Irish Catholics the pair of them, naturally they refused any offers of nepotism, plenary or partial, and by the point of the evening of Paudy Fitzmaurice’s seventy sixth birthday, the family had accepted their honourable stubbornness. 

  For the most part.

 “Do you not think maybe you could take yer man a little more seriously?” Celia said, in a small voice as the car door shut behind her.

  “Who now?” Martin asked, checking the rear-view mirror of his SUV to make sure there were no children standing behind it for him to reverse over.

  For what it's worth, if there had been, he wouldn’t have seen them.

  “Sean’s brother—what was his name?”

  “Hannon. Bit of an odd name.” Martin sniffed.

  “It’s a good job he was offering. You’re well cut out for it.”

  “He’ll have me doing nothing. Same as me father, sitting at a desk doing piss all while I rake in cash, it’s no way to live. I’d turn into a fat-berg and then shrivel up.”

  Martin chuckled to himself as they pulled out of the driveway, heading down the country lane. The light was failing, the sunset lost to wispy layers of cloud, all stacked on top of each other, such as the otherwise gorgeous view from the Fitzmaurice house was lost to the darkening grey haze.

  “A fat-berg?” Celia asked, sounding perturbed.

  “Ah, you don’t want to know what that is, you’d be put off your dinner, sorry I said it.”

  Celia would be put off making Martin’s dinner, more like. Inside her pale and pretty head, Celia weighed if she should wade into the thorny issue of the futility of Martin’s employment. She knew that eventually when the pay dried up completely, he would move on to something better, but his stubbornness, his insistence that the firm was going to have some kind of breakthrough success that would wipe their slate of debt clean, was a menace. 

  Said debt was always ticking up, as far as Celia was concerned, Martin’s machismo was not only prolonging their suffering, but inflaming it. As far as Martin was concerned, the worse things seemed like they were about to get, the more satisfying it would be when the dam broke.

  It would be damn near orgasmic, a hand delivered climax to his righteous suffering, eased into being by way of his diligent practice of prayer and Sunday worship. His faith was unshakable, unlike his wife’s confidence in her own assertions.

  All this aside, to call their marriage unhappy would be disingenuous. Life can’t be measured in pennies and pounds, and the pair were known to make each other laugh on occasion. They still enjoyed the warmth of each other’s bodies as they drifted off to sleep at night, and their fruitless attempts at fertility were for the most part adequately pleasant experiences.

  They were used to the deep, rich vein of discomfort and anxiety in their relationship. Its amniotic fluid carried them, floating, together, from day to languid day. 

 It is what it is

 Driving through the countryside, from lane-vein to road-artery, 

 to town-organ, barely conscious of the routes 

 patterns traced like the fingers of God

 grooves in the vinyl

 wrinkles in the brain

 in waking sleep

 until some external stimulus comes along

 to

  There is a featureless field, along an uninteresting road, through an uninteresting stretch in the countryside. The odd ivy-choked tree, decaying fenceposts being pulled into the earth by relentless vegetations. Rusted barbwire and unreliable electric wire.

 

  And gates, almost always closed, aside from when the local farmer, all crotchety gait and gaunt, tanned-pink skin, herds his local cows from place to place; always signposted by bright orange traffic cones, flimsy rope barriers. Always in the daylight.

  That night, a gate was open along the road, one that Martin did not expect. Darkness had long since fallen as they passed it, not far from the home-stretch, a cosy evening ahead of them of microwave mini pizzas and a glass of wine before bed.

  In the split second before the car drifted by the open gate, the driver in his comfortable state of road hypnosis, a pale figure came flailing out of the blackness. 

Just a flash of white and the impression of a figure,

the brain having barely a split second to alert the body

fragmentary instant of sheer abject rejection 

and the first collision, barely a thump,

she went up and over, 

to the second collision

the one against the windshield

turning the clear vision of the road

into a scattered  scrunch of bloody material

tumble tumble across the roof

to the third collision

flesh on tarmac

skin shredded and bones mangled

a body he didn’t need

for what was to follow

  Their screams were the kind of hysterical shrieks of panic you never hear in movies, the kind of animal sound that can’t be faked. You probably would never hear such a sound in your life, unless you happen to be in the vicinity of a car accident, or disturb a dreamer in the midst of a nightmare.

  Martin opened his door first, as he found himself beginning to projectile vomit on the dashboard, and figured such emissions were better suited for the tarmac. It wasn’t a conscious choice, he was still in shock, but his manners were impeccable, it must be said.

  Celia, ever the dutiful wife, followed suit, hearing the click and the hydraulic swing of the door. 

She gasped in the night air, seeing only the very edges of the plant-life at the edge of the road, picked up by the very outer limits of the SUV’s headlights. Milky-pale, jagged leaves, the impression of a rotted fencepost, and off to the side, the yawning of the open gate.

  A cool breeze from the field, the distant braying of the animals.

  While Martin knelt in his own vomit on the tarmac, besmirching his Sunday best, Celia walked as if in a dream toward the figure that lay broken behind the car, bathed in the red of the brake-lights.

  She was smiling, the body. A small pale dark-haired woman, facing Celia, almost a mirror of herself—in fact, for a moment, Celia did feel as if she was looking in a broken mirror, one arm bent backwards across a naked torso, legs positioned demurely, as if the body was just relaxing there. Most of the mortified flesh was hidden out of sight, but in the red light the body’s smile looked a little too wide, and it was true, the cheeks had been torn ragged.

  And the eyes were staring, glistening in the red light.

  “Oh God, Oh GOD” Martin howled.

  Celia turned and saw the passenger door of the car shut closed. She screamed, and Martin turned as well, ostensibly to look at her, but in the process he caught a glimpse of the man reaching across to him from the passenger’s seat. A haggard mask bedevilled by age and overgrown white hair, a shock on top of the head and growing from the lower half of the face.

  A baby’s glee in the expression, the body naked and pockmarked. All Celia saw was a pair of muscled arms reach out and pull her husband, struggling, into the car.

  

  Now, watch for this 

  because something fascinating occurs here inside Celia’s mind.

  the situation unfolding splits, duplicates, 

  mitosis of the consciousness

  It’s nothing like a split-image effect in a film, not as if the observer within her

  is sitting in a darkened, smoke-filled theatre watching a pair of screens

  each showing a slightly different cut of the same film 

  no, she is experiencing both simultaneously

  and fully

  In one life she screams as the SUV rocks

  Martin’s screams becoming strangled. 

  

in another, she screams for a different reason.

over the barbed wire, through the bushes,

from the gate, from the swung open doors

of the vehicle, come pale figures

like the one her husband struck

indistinctly formed, perfectly illuminated 

by no light, flailing toward her

as in the other life, she calls out for 

Martin one final, pathetic time,

hears the sound of the gear shift,

and the SUV reverses toward her at speed.



  A single neural impulse fired—shared across the vast gulf between those twin experiences, those parallel lives—to turn, and to run. Both instances were too slow, far too slow, as Celia turned in a blur, in slow motion, the red light of the SUV creeping up on her, the horde of flailing, drowning-victim screams just a breath away.

  The body stared up with the sightless eyes, smiling, as from the darkness above her another vision emerged, into the red light, a skinny body hanging from a bloated head, ballooning beyond the limits of her vision, pore-pocked with glistening black eyes, pulling the night around it like a cloak.

   and the fourth collision


***

Preorder PUPPET’S BANQUET here.

THE SKULL & LAUREL open for Short Story Submissions **BIPOC WRITERS ONLY, PLEASE**

We are looking to accept at least one extra Weird Folk Horror short story from a BIPOC writer.

SUBMISSIONS WINDOW: 11th of March to 1st of April

This submissions period is for Issue 004 of THE SKULL & LAUREL.

The theme connections can be vague, but submitting to this category counts as disclosure that the author fits the demographic for this specific entry.

Genres and forms: Weird Folk Horror/Folk SF/Folk Fantasy, broad interpretation, all kinds of folklore and lore welcome.

Word count: 100 to 4999 words

Payment: 3c/word (USD) originals; $25 (USD) reprints

Reprints: Yes (Please limit this to reprints that haven’t been originally published in the past 12 months!

Simultaneous Submissions: Yes, please

Multiple submissions: Please submit no more than one original story and one reprint at a time (one of each is fine).

Translations: Translations are welcome as long as the story has not yet been published in English.

Target Age Group: Mature audiences

AI Disclaimer: Machine/AI-generated content is explicitly forbidden. Authors and artists should anticipate contracts declaring that no part of their submission was machine/AI-generated. Those who submit machine/AI-generated content will be permanently blacklisted from Tenebrous Press.

Rights: World English first rights in print, electronic, and ebook, including a six-month exclusivity period. For reprints, World English reprint in print, electronic, and ebook, no exclusivity. All copyright belongs to the author. Estimated response time so far has been under three months for most passes, over that for shortlist. It’ll depend largely on volume of submissions, and it will be the best it can possibly be.

Please remember we love simsubs and will cheer you on if you need to withdraw for any reason. Withdraw your story by dropping an email to tenebrouspress.mag@gmail.com including the author name and story title as submitted.

Format: Any standard manuscript text format will suffice so long as your submission is readable. No preferences on things like font etc. For weird formatting or submissions that contain images such as comics or mixed media, please create a shareable PDF in a medium-to-low quality. Home address and legal name are not necessary and we’d prefer not to receive them. If you make mistakes with the form, have typos, misread instructions, or submit the wrong thing, it is not a big deal. Let us know if you need us to do anything about it, otherwise rest assured that we understand the level of stress, overwork, and exhaustion that comes with being a writer.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY HERE.

If you cannot access these forms for any reason, feel free to email us a submission at tenebrouspress.mag@gmail.com! Please try to include your byline, bio, title, word count, and for reprints, original publication venue. Make the subject line “SUBMISSION - TITLE”. However, if you can use the form, we’d be grateful. We understand and agree that this isn’t ideal but don’t have any plausible alternatives yet (see Q 1). However, we are constantly searching for other options.

Subscribe to the 2025 Tenebrous Book Club!

Wanna get all eight of our scheduled titles without even thinking about it, along with some fun bonus add-ons?

Let us answer for you: our upcoming lineup is friggin’ stacked, so yes, yes you do.

The 2025 Tenebrous Book Club is available in either Print+eBook or eBook-only options; Get all eight books plus:

  • A T-shirt or tank, your choice, that won't be made available anywhere else (available with print subscriptions only)

  • Exclusive add-ons and swag that won't be available anywhere else (comes with both sub plans)

  • All shipping costs included

PLEASE NOTE: Print books will ship on a QUARTERLY basis, two books at a time. Expect shipments in March, June, September and November. Ebooks will ship upon release date (or often earlier to subscribers).

SUBSCRIBE TO THE 2025 TENEBROUS BOOK CLUB.

***

OUR 2025 Lineup:

1. CASUAL - a novel by Koji A. Dae (February)

cover art by Cristina Bencina; interior art by Helen Whistberry

ONE OF LITHUB’S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2025!

Valya’s neural implant is amazing.

Casual has managed her depression and anxiety, stabilized her mood, and helped her get pregnant, but new laws forbid her from using the device when she's sole caregiver for her infant, so Valya needs to detox before giving birth. The full-blown panic attacks have her considering a controversial clinical trial that would place a tandem implant in her unborn baby and allow Valya to keep hers active. Her only options are to attempt solo parenting without Casual, or install a minimally tested device in her vulnerable child. 

CASUAL is a stark and cutting glance at a near future that looks uncannily like our present, exploring themes of bodily autonomy and the struggle for mental health in a world increasingly divided.

2. SPLIT SCREAM: Off the Map - two novelettes:

Sequoia Point by Íde Hennessy

Evergreen by John K. Peck & L. Mahler (March)

cover art by Evangeline Gallagher & Alex Ebenstein; interior art by Echo Echo

Two tales of nightmares on secluded streets, exploring grief and eco-horror in lonely locales.

In Sequoia Point, a grieving widow relocates to the Lost Coast region of California to rebuild her life, only to be swallowed up by a world of eccentrics, conspiracies, talismans, and strange doppelgangers.

In Evergreen, a woman returns to her family home to find a carnivorous tree growing within it, which feeds off of the emotions of her childhood memories and devours anything she commands it to.

3. PUPPET'S BANQUET - a novella by Valkyrie Loughcrewe (May)

cover art by Donna A. Black; interior illustrations by Trevor Henderson

Married couple Celia and Martin are brutally attacked on their drive through the Irish countryside. The attack leaves Celia with a violent schism in her mind, seemingly existing in two places at once: one the “real” world, the other a howling maelstrom of abstract monstrosity. 

Of her husband, there is no trace…until weeks later, when Martin is discovered in a hospital for rare and abnormal diseases, his body spliced together with that of an unknown woman.

And they are very pregnant.

Fans of Silent Hill, The Brood, Hellraiser, and Shutter Island will eat this up.

4. BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Literature, Volume Three (June)

cover art by Matt Blairstone

The Best New Weird Literature published in 2024 in the realms of indie and self-publishing! Final Table of Contents will be announced in the first quarter of ‘25, we’re currently reading through hundreds of submissions. As in previous years, this will be a celebration of the myriad strange roads that Weird fiction can and should take, from voices (perhaps) familiar and (definitely) new, and fitting proof that New Weird Lit is healthy and vibrant.

5. WE LIKE IT CHERRY - a novel by Jacy Morris (July)

Cover design by Alex Woodroe; interior illustrations by Blacky Shepherd

Ezra Montbanc is burned out. The reality series he hosts—immersing himself into the cultures and celebrations of Indigenous tribes—borders on pure exploitation and has been relegated to tax write-off status by the network; this was not the prestigious journalism career he had long envisioned.

Everything changes when Ezra receives an invitation to document the rites of a mysterious, hitherto unknown tribe: the Winoquin, who reside in the harrowing, inhospitable Arctic. Ezra and his crew depart immediately for the home of the Winoquin, only to find themselves in a bloody battle for survival against a mythical horror with a serious grudge against modern man.

WE LIKE IT CHERRY is a story about identity and the quest for success, splashed with supernatural slasher vibes and the nailbiting relentlessness of survival horror.

6. REEF MIND - a novella by Hazel Zorn (September)

cover art by Becca Snow; interior art by Echo Echo

The coral reef rose from the seas, spreading across the land with incredible speed. A rapidly evolving invasive species.

It transformed the landscape. Mutated every living creature of the surface world.

We never suspected it had a plan.

Beneath the grisly body horror lurks a parable about delusion and how our self-images of nobility and heroism shatter in the wake of disaster.

7. CLAIRVIOLENCE: Tales of Tarot and Torment - a collection by Mo Moshaty (October)

(cover art by Bri Crozier; interior art by Mo Moshaty)

The Tarot holds mystery, prediction, and unsettling omens to those who practice, divine, or are keen to it. Each card in the Major Arcana holds a position in our lives, the many facets and personas we use to make it through this world.

Sometimes these personas can break us. They can plunge us into despair, fear, terror.

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 very souls apart:

A warring couple is forced to reconcile during what they believe is 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 the hellish tales that lie beneath the exterior of an otherwise charmed and quiet existence.

8. DEAR STUPID PENPAL - a novella by Rascal Hartley (November)

(cover art by Carly A-F; interior art TBA)

An entirely epistolary Cosmic Sci-Horror novel in which Aku, an astronaut who absolutely hates space, his ship, and his crewmates, finds that as time unravels in hyperdrive, everyone else’s penpals back on earth have died off while his beloved closest friend, inexplicably, remains

***

Subscribe to the 2025 tenebrous book club here.