An Imaginary Menagerie

We come to the thirteenth and final Chômu release of 2011, The Secret Life of the Panda, by Nick Jackson, a collection of exquisitely realised short stories that forms a fitting(ly unusual) cap to an exciting and rewarding year. So, what can you expect to find between the mysterious covers of this volume, with its beautiful and evocative artwork from Suzanne Norris? Many things as rare as the titular panda: a perfect mastery of the short fiction form that is both unmistakably contemporary and authentically beautiful, a fusion of realism and dream-like fantasy that is seamless, an ability to summon potent emotions with small details and show the internal through the external, and the spreading of a large imaginative canvas on which the characters remain vivid. A disappearing world of strange and private visions is here for you to discover.

Here are rumours of the secret life that have already reached us:

“With exquisite delicacy and a keen eye for the bizarre, Jackson (Visits to the Flea Circus) creates a series of moody vignettes taking readers from religious strife in 16th-century [Germany] to a jungle camp of [Cuban] guerrillas and the mundane hallways of a contemporary British school. … The spectacular “Boys’ Games” intertwines the confused cruelties of children in the schoolyard and men at war. And the otherworldly dedication involved in studying or recreating nature comes to life in “The City in Flames” and “Shell Fire,” respectively.”

- Publishers Weekly

“In romanticizing the uncanny, the fantastic and the horrific, Nick Jackson’s fiction emulates that of the great 19th century writers of suspense, Poe, Wilde and Shelley. With his unique marriage of subtlety and decadence Jackson is able to minimise the carnal horror whilst preserving the spine-tingling fear. Whether unleashing his ghosts or exorcising his demons, Jackson’s is an almost ethereal voice in a literary world of bloody over-abundance.”

- Rachel Kendall

“Nick Jackson’s fertile imagination is matched by his skill with the English language: writing about both mundane matter as well as fantasies made real seems so natural to him that the reader is left wondering why this shamanistic mind has not bloomed around the world – so many stories are here that suggest that his fount of inspiration is bottomless. He has perfected the art of short story writing (no mean feat): he makes us long for a novella or novel that would allow us to explore his talent even further.”

- Grady Harp

On Monday the 19th of December, there will also be a book launch for The Secret Life of the Panda at Olives in Norwich (40 Elm Hill, Norwich, Norfolk, NR3 1HG). The event will take place between 7.30 and 9.00pm. Nick Jackson will be reading extracts from the collection, and from 8.30 there will be a musical set from singer-songwriter Kimberley Moore. If you’re anywhere near Norwich, or if you’re a travelling kind of person, please do drop in.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of The Secret Life of the Panda

The winner of last month’s prize draw for an inscribed copy of Here Comes the Nice is Thomas Strømsholt, who will be receiving his prize in the post soon.

We are presenting another prize draw this month, this time, of course, for a uniquely inscribed copy of The Secret Life of the Panda. The same rules apply as before: To be entered for this draw, please sign up here to our mailing list (or using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Secret Life’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘Secret Life’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 30th of December.

Here Comes the Nice Prize Draw and Book Launch reminders

This is just a quick notice to remind Chômu subscribers and visitors to our site of two things:

That today is the last day for entering the prize draw for an inscribed copy of Here Comes the Nice, by Jeremy Reed.

And that tomorrow, December the 1st, is the day of the book launch, for Here Comes the Nice. Doors open at 8pm and admission is £5, but this is refunded with a signed copy of the book which costs £10 (IE, you’ll save five quid on the usual price of the book). Copies of the book will be limited, of course, so this offer is first come first served, or, as they say ’subject to availability’.

The venue is Jamboree, 566 Cable Street, Limehouse, London. Jeremy Reed will be performing with The Ginger Light:

The support act is confirmed as Lord Magpie and the Prince of Cats:

The Young Mod’s Forgotten Story

November is here. There must be something in the air. On the 14th of this month (two days ago), The Who’s Quadrophenia: The Director’s Cut was released, a re-issue of the 1973 ‘mod opera’ and the tale of a young Mod called Jimmy. Today we look into the future and go also a little further into the past, with the literary fireworks of Jeremy Reed’s Here Comes the Nice, the tale of the Face, the proto-Mod who came out of nowhere with a quantum leap of style, and who may have leapt the bounds of time itself. Get the low-down on the High Numbers by picking up a copy here.

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly have this to say of the novel:

Pop culture revivals and obsessive style nostalgia are extrapolated to an almost frightening degree in this speed-rush of music, drugs, and time-travel mysticism. Paul is a journalist in a dystopian, gray, near-future London. As he works on a biography of 1960s fashion designer John Stephen, Paul begins running into a mod archetype called the Face, still young, riding his decked-out Vespa among the armored limousines and roving “hoodie gangs.” Is the Face a time traveler, a meth addict obsessed with the last generation’s fashions, or, like the aging bands and politicians, trying desperately to freeze time? Reed’s portrayal of the 1960s—the clothes, the language, the sex, and the music—is surreal and perfect. He doesn’t shy from the queer side of mod culture and accurately portrays the legendary young bands as kids, both amateurish and brilliant. Either a critique of retro chic or its most extreme expression, this page-turner is a volume knob-turner as well.

The legendary Jeremy Reed, with Here Comes the Nice, shows us the brilliant supernova of his creativity is still expanding. In a work that takes the reader back to the raw early gigs of The Small Faces, The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things and The Who, and forward to the collapsing brink of the near-future, the time-travelling Mod has never been more NOW.

To add to the excitement, there is also the Here Comes the Nice book launch at Jamboree, 566 Cable Street, Limehouse, London, featuring Jeremy Reed performing with The Ginger Light.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Here Comes the Nice

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of Here Comes the Nice. You may know the drill by now, but here it is again: To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list (using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘The Nice’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘The Nice’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 30th of November.

Prize Draw Winners and Chômu News

First of all, we would like to announce that we have a winner for the Orphan Palace prize draw, and that winner is Dave Brzeski, who will soon be receiving in the post a customised copy of Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.’s The Orphan Palace with free bookmark and CDs with selected tracks from the novel’s ’soundtrack’. Bad luck to those who entered this time but did not win. Remember to be eligible for future prize draws, please sign up to our mailing list using the free update widget next to our Twitter feed on the home page.

In further news, and on the subject of The Orphan Palace, we are very pleased to announce that Issue #117 of Rue Morgue magazine contains as spotlight feature on Chômu Press, which includes a look at The Orphan Palace and an interview with Quentin S. Crisp. It also has a very fetching image of Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera on the cover.

Coinciding, by chance or fate, with the Quadrophenia Director’s Cut box set next week, we have the release of Jeremy Reed’s brilliant Here Comes the Nice, more details of which will follow on the 16th of this month. For those living in London, or able to travel, don’t forget that there will be a book launch at Jamboree on Cable Street, featuring Jeremy Reed performing with The Ginger Light.

John Elliott Interview by chomuradioarchive

Last and not least, something calling itself the ‘Chomu Radio Archive’ (thanks to Joe Campbell) has uploaded a long, in-depth, audio interview with Chômu writer John Elliott. John Elliott talks to Quentin S. Crisp about Philip K. Dick, Lovecraft, Oulipo, John Calder, Queneau, Georges Perec, and many other things.

The Orphan Palace: A Road Trip to Madness

Three months have passed since our last release, Jeanette, but there are three more books to come from Chômu in 2011, and today the first of them, The Orphan Palace, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., (also featuring fabulous cover art from Peter Diamond) is finally released. Hitch a ride to madness by picking up a copy here.

Already we detect a stir of anticipation and excitement surrounding this title, as evidenced in quotes from Matt Cardin, Simon Strantzas and others:

“Joe Pulver is like the answer to some arcane riddle: What do you get when you cross one of Plato’s Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic, and then give their offspring to be raised by Raymond Chandler and a band of Beats? His work caters to a literary hunger you didn’t even know you had, and does it darkly and deliciously.”

- Matt Cardin

“The Orphan Palace kicks you in the face and doesn’t stop. Pulver’s prose sees the world through a cracked lense of 60’s hedonism and 70’s grit, with a side order of unshakable terror. A serial killer novel that explores the dark side of America via Kerouac in a shell of cosmic horror. What he does is electrifying. I’ve never seen anything like it. My hair is still standing on end.”

- Simon Strantzas

In honour of the road trip nature of the novel, here is a ‘Route 66′ synopsis in exactly 66 words:

“Cardigan heads east through the night-bleak cities of America. His destination? Zimms County Home for Orphaned Children, the palace of dementia where Dr. Archer, ‘Lord of Chaos’, evilly presides – a trap baited with memories. Fires blaze in the rear-view mirror. On the roadside, ghosts, bounty hunters, mermen, Ghoul Hotels. Will D’if, the talking rat, help Cardigan escape this maze, or do all roads lead to madness?”

In The Orphan Palace, Chômu Press are proud to present another prime slice of majestic literary dementia, and another change of literary gear. Watch the book trailer here, and pick up a copy of the book here.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of The Orphan Palace

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of The Orphan Palace, with a customised bookmark. You may know the drill by now, but here it is again: To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list (using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘The Animal’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘The Animal’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 2nd of November.

Joe Pulver’s message to prize draw entrants:

The CP “contest ed” will contain –
postcard(s) [with a note] from Carcosa East
signed & dated
an unpublished poem/tExt;;;; or 2 . . .
a “few” special annotationS sprinkled here & there . . .
a drawing of a rat [this is good for a laugh
as P’ull-yverre can’t draw! !!]
an illo of a bEastie [see above]
a TOP bookmark [one of only 25 made]
a selections from the TOP SOUNDTRACK CD
[& maybe some stickers/rubber stampings/
. . . .and only CTHULHU knows what the hell else? ??]

Good luck!

Everyone on the mailing list will also soon receive an exclusive mini-interview with the author.

Prize Draw Winners and General Update

Time has passed and there have been a number of Prize Draw winners since the results of the Man Who Collected Machen competition were announced. The most recent of these eminent winners is Eddie Jones of Wisconsin, who will soon be receiving a specially inscribed copy of Jeanette, by Joe Simpson Walker, with a custom-made bookmark, one side of which is pictured here:

Other winners, previously unannounced are Steve Duffy and Marc Lyth (sometimes known as Weber). The former won not only an inscribed copy of Nemonymous Night, but the entire ten-volume set of the acclaimed Nemonymous journal, pictured here:

The latter won a copy of Link Arms with Toads! personalised with a poem about himself by the author, Rhys Hughes:

Also included with the prize were a copy of the anthology Cthulhu Unbound and other goodies detailed on Rhys Hughes’ blog.

Here is the poem:

Caught in a weber spun by himself
Marc waits patiently for the secret
spider of his mind to come
and suck out his juice
with all the stealth of an eight-legged elf.

“Fangs for that!” he’ll say. “Most kind of
you, dear spider. Have a nice day!”
or words to that effect.

He lives alone with his books and his cat
and a balding head
which he has never yet read
because he prefers hair-raising tales.
He dismantled radiators in his youth
and we find that’s proof (if any were needed)
that he deserves to be eaten
by the secret spider of his mind.

The cat’s name is Balrog:
that’s another reason.

A jujitsu black belt, Marc should be able
to handle himself in any situation
but the secret spider of his mind is an expert too
and knows all his moves.
Before closing its jaws on his quivering flesh
it will dance for him
an eightfold Can Can,
the sort of thing we can all do without.
But that’s Lyth, I guess.

As mentioned in a previous update, Jérôme-Luc Paulin and Steve Poupard won inscribed copies of Dying to Read and The Great Lover, respectively.

Our next book to be released will be The Orphan Palace, by Jospeh S. Pulver, Sr., of whom Matt Cardin speaks thus: “Joe Pulver is like the answer to some arcane riddle: What do you get when you cross one of Plato’s Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic, and then give their offspring to be raised by Raymond Chandler and a band of Beats? His work caters to a literary hunger you didn’t even know you had, and does it darkly and deliciously.”

We hope you will enjoy what remains of the summer until that release, and use your time wisely in catching up with the Chômu catalogue. Please also look forward to our November and December releases, Here Comes the Nice, from the legendary Jeremy Reed and The Secret Life of the Panda, a wonderful collection from Nick Jackson.

Finally, the exclusive Brendan Connell interview was sent out to all our subscribers (check your spam if you missed it); remember to subscribe to our e-list for future interviews (John Elliott and Joe Simpson Walker coming soon), to receive updates and to be eligible for future prize draws and competitions.

Introducing Jeanette

July is here. Could this be the feel-good hit of the summer? Jeanette, by Joe Simpson Walker, is officially released today.

Here is the soundbite:

“Joe Simpson Walker is to kinky boots what William S. Burroughs was to junk.”

We feel confident in saying that you have not read anything like Jeanette before. It is a transgressive novel set in the early sixties, “a time when fetishism, bondage, masochism, transvestism and homosexuality are still condemned as perversions.” Transgressive fiction encompasses works such as Justine, Venus in Furs, The Story of O, Lolita, The Naked Lunch, Last Exit to Brooklyn, the theatre of Joe Orton, and the pseudonymous or uncredited writings of the erotic underground. Jeanette adds something entirely new to this lineage. The longest novel that Chômu has so far published, it nonetheless rattles by at a fair lick. Like a motorbike rider roaring past and snatching the handbag of your preconceptions, Jeanette is a novel that comes out of nowhere and means to cause trouble. Take a ride on the wild side by grabbing your copy here.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Jeanette

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of Jeanette, with a customised bookmark. You may know the drill by now, but here it is again: To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘kinky boots’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘kinky boots’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 3rd of August.

Everyone on the mailing list will also soon receive exclusive mini-interviews with our authors, including Brendan Connell, John Elliott and Joe Simpson Walker.

Are you nemonymous?

We’ve said this before, but… And now for something completely different! The tenth publication from Chômu press, Nemonymous Night (released today!), by legendary Weirdmonger D.F. Lewis, is the kind of work for which Chômu exists: insanely challenging, too serious for your average dinner table conversation, but too much fun for your average publisher. It’s the kind of work you’d like to put in the water supply of a major city, just to see what would happen. It was always going to be difficult actually to describe Nemonymous Night, and the best solution, of course, is to find out for yourself, by picking up a copy here.

However, for those in need of further description, here is some from an early review, at The Stars at Noonday:

I keep circling round the question of how to capture the peculiar appeal of Nemonymous Night. I think readers will understand that a bizarre, associative novel of the weird whose plot wanders and recirculates like Moses in the desert can nonetheless be rendered fascinating, but I don’t think that general understanding does justice to this particular instance. Part of it, perhaps, is that the recurring images are somehow resonant: angevin harvesting is utter nonsense, but something about it strikes a chord (or maybe a cord) deep within the brain. And then, underneath the strangeness there is the eternal frailty and fragility of human identity.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Nemonymous Night

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of Nemonymous Night. You may know the drill by now, but here it is again: To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘I am nemonymous’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘I am nemonymous’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 29th of June.

Update near the eve of the tenth Chômu release

This month, Chômu Press will release our tenth publication, Nemonymous Night, by D.F. Lewis (reviewed here), so we thought it was an appropriate time for a general update and some future forecasts.

We are proud of each of our releases and are gratified to know that our titles are now enlivening bookshelves and enriching readers’ lives around the world. Therefore, first of all, please allow us to introduce a small selection of links here relating to those titles and/or their authors:

Reggie Oliver was featured in Suvudu’s Take Five series, telling us five fascinating things about The Dracula Papers. Signed copies of The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar’s Tale are available from the Aldeburgh Bookshop.

Chômu authors Michael Cisco and Brendan Connell were interviewed together by Jeff VanderMeer for the Amazon blog Omnivoracious.

Gestalt Mash features a characteristically lively interview with Justin Isis, author of I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like, and the review blog of stalwart Theaker’s Quarterly features a review of Revenants by Daniel Mills.

Musings on the cover of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales, by Mark Samuels, are to be found at Grim Reviews, and Quentin S. Crisp talks about “Remember You’re a One-Ball!” and other things, at Matt Cardin’s Teeming Brain.

In other news, we now have winners for the Dying to Read and The Great Lover prize draws, and can announce that inscribed copies of the books will be sent to Jérôme-Luc Paulin and Steve Poupard respectively. The winner of the prize draw for Link Arms with Toads! by Rhys Hughes will be announced soon. Please look out for prize draws with our future releases.

Speaking of which, those following developments on the site will have noticed that after Nemonymous Night, we have also scheduled releases for two very different (to each other and to just about anything else we’ve encountered) novels, Jeanette, by Joe Simpson Walker (July release), and The Orphan Palace, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (October release). The former is in the transgressive tradition of Pauline Réage, with a gritty British sixties setting. This will also be the longest work we have so far published. The latter comes from one of the rising stars of the weird, for whom, we believe, the stars are now right; a novel of madness, written in poetry, or perhaps a novel of poetry, written in madness.

Those awaiting news of the Dadaoism anthology should also rest assured that gears are invisibly turning, and we are working hard on making this something special. However, it should be noted that, due to the high number of submissions, it is taking us some time to sift out the very best. We are excited, however, to have already found a considerable quantity of gold in our prospecting. We will release more information on the contents, scheduling and so on for the anthology when it is available. At present, we are still carefully sifting.

Other things to look forward to include mini-interviews with our authors. Interviews with Brendan Connell and John Elliott have already been conducted, and will be sent out in the near future to everyone on our e-mail list. Please note, you must subscribe in order to receive the interviews and other planned exclusive content. Please also subscribe or keep watching this site for news on further releases and developments.

Thank you.

Introducing the romanti-cynical world of Rhys Hughes

“Because I have experimented with so many different genres, styles and moods, not one of my individual books to date really provides a full overview of what I actually do. Link Arms With Toads! is different because it’s a fully representative sampler of my entire body of work and has been designed as a showcase of the new genre I recklessly tried to invent when I was younger. This book is certainly the best entry point to my body of fiction and if you don’t like Toads! you can be confident you won’t like my other books, so it’s also the financially wisest choice for any new reader.”

So says Rhys Hughes, the author of the collection in question, Link Arms with Toads!, which we gleefully release to the world today, a showcase of the genre that Hughes is calling ‘romanti-cynical’. In this collection you will find elements, indeed, of ghost story, gothic tale, science fiction, and much more, but all of these elements combined and transformed into a protean world of philosophical polymorphous perversity. Evolving through the exponential mutations of paradox, the ‘romanti-cynicism’ of Rhys Hughes swells the biodiversity of literature’s multiverse with innumerable species of medicinal eccentricity.

Some people have already obtained copies, and reviews of the books may be read here, here, and possibly elsewhere. We hope the reader will take this chance to make an acquantaince with the work of Rhys Hughes, by ordering a copy here. We hope also there will be many more chances for reacquaintance in the future. May we suggest further samplers such as Mink Farm Explodes, or perhaps, Pink Karmic Woad?

From the reviews:

…Hughes is the perfect chronicler of … absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange.

- The Stars at Noonday

Reading Rhys Hughes is a leisurely process: one feel’s that reading with too much speed the goodies may slip away unnoticed. He challenges our wit, our ability to imagine, our intellect and our table of entertainment. He is a complete pleasure.

- Grady Harp

Prize Draw for unique commemorative copy of Link Arms with Toads!

Regular visitors to the website will by now be familiar with the pattern of the prize draws, but please allow us to repeat it here. We would like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed commemorative copy of Link Arms with Toads!. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Toads!’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, naturally there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘Toads!’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 1st of June.

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