The Tumulus
Very pleased to announce a new story entitled “The Tumulus” is out today in the 11th edition of Chthonic Matter Quarterly. I share the table of contents with many great authors, including Samuel M. Moss, who curates the experimental horror site ergot. He’s just released his first novel, The Veldt Institute. Having been tantalized by excerpts, I’ll be reading Moss’s The Veldt Institute as soon as I can get my hands on it.
Chthonic Matter will also be publishing a reprint of my beloved weird story “By The Witchroot, By The Dawn” in Harvest the Night: An Anthology of Folk Horror this October, and wow, is that next month? Time never stops its trickery, does it? If you subscribe to Chthonic Matter Quarterly, you’ll get this volume of folk horror for free along with the full year of the quarterly. Harvest the Night includes contributions from many excellent purveyors of the short story, including Abigail Kemske, who may be new to you. I’m especially looking forward to reading her story.
“The Tumulus” in Chthonic Matter Quarterly is one of those stories that took the long way on its journey to get published. I stood by it for several years as it languished and endured mistreatment. Originally it was solicited by a project that dragged on endlessly and never materialized; then accepted by a now defunct publisher who strung along many of us who know better but were momentarily fooled by their shenanigans; and then solicited again by a well-known press I considered extremely prestigious but who sentenced it to unpublished purgatory as they broke their contractual obligations to all of the authors involved in the project.
So, what all of this means is that the story has been accepted no less than four times-yes, four! Yet before now it has never seen print. I’m grateful for it to find such a good home with Chthonic Matter after its tortured journey.
Speaking of torture, you can still get a copy of the 11 x 17 poster or broadside with my micro “Death, With Sequelae” and art by Silver. It’s the story of a woman who can’t stop dying horrible deaths, and who haunts me to this day. Every word of it is true.
Last, a reminder that I’ll be at Gettysburg College for Voidcon 2025 October 9-11 with books and hopefully a few copies of “Death, With Sequelae” as well. Voidcon is the closest thing to a weird horror convention you’ll find, so come by for some existentialist kicks and peer into the VOID. All kidding aside, I’ve found I love meeting people who know me through my writing, and who appreciate what I do. Your interest and kindness makes it worth all the hard work.
As always, thanks for reading! More to come soon as a flood of new work appears while Autumn deepens into darkness and the veil thins.
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