2015 is drawing to a close. It’s been a while since our last release, Brendan Connell’s The Galaxy Club, and even longer since 2011’s debut from Justin Isis, I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like. But now we are ready to present the follow-up collection from Justin Isis, Welcome to the Arms Race, officially released on the 16th of December, and we believe the wait has been more than worth it.

Where I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like gave us an off-kilter, twenty-first century update of decadence set in Japan, Welcome to the Arms Race ranges across the globe and through time, taking readings for a map of human and post-human destiny with before-and-after snapshots at whose centre is the singularity. It’s science fiction, Jim, but not as we know it. Take your position at the starting line by picking up a copy here.

(Those of you who are interested in buying books as Christmas gifts, please see details below.)

Kristine Ong Muslim describes the new release as follows:

In Welcome to the Arms Race, Justin Isis, as usual, dazzles with his rendition of shattered reality where deeply damaged characters kick up their heels as they revel in their self-inflicted agonies. There’s just no letting up—from depravity involving a squid to the relentless mirroring of our deep-seated anxieties in ‘The Heart of a Man,’ from cosmic horror in ‘The Willow’ to the tortuous psychedelia in ‘M-FUNK VS THA FUTUREGIONS OF INVERSE FUNKATIVITY.’ Another terrific collection of stories from Chômu Press.

There is a brief, recent interview with Justin Isis, talking about his new collection, at the Compulsive Reader website, here. Justin Isis will also be the interviewee for our next Chômu Press e-mail interview, so, if you are not already signed up, please do subscribe in order to receive updates and exclusive interviews.

Welcome to the Arms Race is already in stock at Amazon U.S., but for those in the U.K. who wish to be more certain of receiving a copy in time for Christmas, Chômu Press will, for a very limited period, be taking orders directly. Simply make a payment for £15 (per copy) for U.K. orders by clicking the following link. (Sadly, we are unable to make this offer outside of the U.K., but if you do live in other countries and would like to enquire about special delivery options, please write to info at chomupress dot com with the subject heading “Christmas Arms Race” and we will do what we can to meet your needs.) This offer is open until 1.00 p.m (GMT) Tuesday the 15th. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee that the books will arrive before Christmas, but they will be sent by ‘rush’ service with no charge for postage. Otherwise, for readers in the U.K., please remember that The Book Depository, who stock Chômu books here, advise that Tuesday the 15th is the last day to make orders for Christmas delivery. (The Book Depository also offers free worldwide delivery, but cannot guarantee that orders will now arrive in time for Christmas.) Welcome to the Arms Race is also stocked by Jeff’n'Joys, Cold Tonnage, Blackwell’s and other retailers to be announced.

For e-book readers, Chômu are making the following seasonal offer: The e-book of Revenants by Daniel Mills will be available free through Kindle for the whole of the 21st of December, 2015. Of Revenants, Daniel Mills’s debut novel, Booklist’s Joanne Wilkinson wrote:

Readers [of Revenants] are swept into the towering forests of colonial New England right along with the settlers as Mills calls up both the majesty of stately oaks and chestnuts and mist-laden scenes of terrified Native American women and children who were slaughtered where they stood. Otherworldly fiction from a promising new talent.

Please remember also to sign up to our e-mail list for Chômu news and exclusive author interviews delivered directly to your inbox.

Chômu Press are very gratified to report the existence of an independently founded ‘Friends of Chômu Press’ group at Goodreads. The message boards include those dedicated to discussion of individual Chômu authors, to the discussion of quarterly group-reads, and so on, all hosted by the friendly but enigmatic batrachian known only as ‘Axolotl’. We urge you to pay a visit to the group’s home page, explore, and, if you feel inclined, to join.

There have also been a number of reviews of books from Chômu authors recently, mainly for works from other publishers. Mark Samuels’s latest collection, Written in Darkness, published by Egaeus Press, has been reviewed by Timothy Jarvis at Weird Fiction Review. Defeated Dogs, written by Quentin S. Crisp and published by Eibonvale Press, has been reviewed by The British Fantasy Society, and by Darkling Tales. And finally, Brendan Connell has had two different books reviewed: The Galaxy Club (Chômu Press), reviewed at The British Fantasy Society, and The Metanatural Adventures of Dr. Black (PS Publishing) reviewed at I Just Read About That…

Our final item on this brief bulletin: Jottings from a Far-Away Place and Blue on Blue, previously unpublished works by Chômu authors Brendan Connell and Quentin S. Crisp respectively, are expected from Snuggly Books, the release date to be confirmed.

Please look out for our next guest essay, from Brendan Connell, coming soon.

Crandolin, by Anna Tambour, shortlisted for the 2013 World Fantasy Award in the novel category, has been described by Paul Di Filippo thus:

Tambour deftly deploys a variety of tones and strategies in this book, which she manages to unite gracefully into an organic wholeness and distinctive voice. We have bits of erudite lost history, in the manner of Umberto Eco. We have surreal and absurdist moments such as we might find in the work of Stepan Chapman or Rhys Hughes. Haruki Murakami’s melancholy aloneness and perverseness of existence figure into Tambour’s style, as does Rikki Ducornet’s jeweled oneiric prose. Of course there’s a heavy dose of the Arabian Nights in the tale. And when the Muse and the Omniscient assume human form and interact with the Russians, I was reminded of nothing so much as Thorne Smith’s The Night Life of the Gods.

The hardback edition might take a couple of weeks (from the time of writing this) to arrive at Amazon at a reasonable price, but is already available at The Book Depository, with free delivery worldwide. Please also look out for new fiction from Anna Tambour at Tor.com this month. [Note: The story, 'The Walking-Stick Forest', is, in fact, to appear at Tor.com on the 4th of June.]

Chris Conn Askew's marvellous cover for Crandolin, by Anna Tambour.

Yesterday saw the end of the month-long collaboration between Chômu and Schlock Magazine, featuring not only an interview with Chômu, but reviews of the debut collections of Justin Isis and Luke Geddes in the Pop Culture Destruction section, and new fiction from both the above-named authors in the April Issue, which also includes fiction from T.R. Healy, Elsa Fiott and Ken Liu.

Finally, we are beginning to see reviews of our February release, The Galaxy Club, by Brendan Connell, appearing here and there online.

Justin Isis and levitationalist celebrate the coming of spring

In further news, we are very pleased to announce the imminent release of Chômu’s first hardback, the World Fantasy Award finalist Crandolin, by Anna Tambour. This hardback edition is due for publication on the 1st of May.

Finally, the winner of February’s prize draw, for a personalised copy of The Galaxy Club, is Martin Hayes, of County Wicklow, Ireland. The customised copy of The Galaxy Club is now winging its way across the Atlantic.

Please watch this space (and/or sign up here to our mailing list) for further Chômu updates.

2014 has begun, and after the come-down and hangover of the New Year, a tonic is necessary to fortify us for the year ahead – maybe even hair of the cynosure. And so we continue the astronomical theme with which we brought 2013 to a close, and start 2014 with the release of The Galaxy Club, by Brendan Connell. Set in seventies New Mexico, this is a booze-soaked stranger-comes-to-town tale with the cosmic picaresque vision of Wu Cheng’en and the grit of Jim Thompson. Buried treasure, dragons, and naturally plenty of car chases, are leavened with beat poetry and hard-boiled in a bed of noir, to bring the reading world the Great New Mexican Novel it never knew it was waiting for. Join the club by picking up a copy here.

Details of the prize draw may be found at the bottom of the announcement. Readers in London, please also remember that Jeremy Reed, author of Chômu books, Nothing But a Star and Here Comes the Nice, will be performing live with The Ginger Light at The National Portrait Gallery in two days time (on Valentine’s Day) at 18.30, admission free.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of The Galaxy Club

The results of the Nothing But a Star prize draw are as follows: ADW, of Lancashire, England, is the winner of a specially inscribed copy of Jeremy Reed’s Nothing But a Star, which should be on its way to him soon.

For this month’s prize draw, we are offering a specially inscribed copy of Brendan Connell’s The Galaxy Club. For all those unfamiliar with them, here are the rules: 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 ‘We are stardust’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘We are stardust’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 28th of February, 2014.

Please remember also to sign up to our e-mail list for Chômu news and exclusive author interviews delivered directly to your inbox.

The year 2013 draws moodily and mistily to its close, but if there is one bright spot in the nighted firmament, it is the advent of our 25th book. That’s right, with Nothing But a Star, by Jeremy Reed (cover photo by Gregory Hesse-Wagner), we have reached the quarter century in the number of volumes we have published. Jeremy Reed’s stellar novel, Here Comes the Nice, received a starred review at Publishers Weekly when we released it in November 2011. This time we are releasing an eclectic collection of his poetry, essays, lyrics and more besides. We may be shivering at the foggy fag-end of the year and of civilisation, but let us warm our hearts by the starlight of poetry.

Glamorous, autumnal, visionary, distilling the future from the present moment, glittering with pop spontaneity and smooth with velvet melancholy, capturing the dread and tingle of the moods of London, and spinning out from the light-polluted urban night across the universe, Nothing But a Star is the perfect book to bring a decadent, empurpled twinkle to the long, cold nights of December. Part intimate scrapbook, part jeweller’s tray, Nothing But a Star contains, as well as poetry, an essay on the suicides of Hart Crane and Harry Crosby, a playscript for a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray set in the 21st century, a pop libretto written for Marc Almond and based on J-K Huysmans’ À rebours, and other specimens of dopamine in literary form. Catch a falling star by picking up a copy here. There now follows the testimony of other stargazers:

Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man who fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautréamont and de Sade, and powered by the most exotic fuels the imagination has ever devised.

- J.G. Ballard

The most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.

- Björk

The man is light worlds apart from his contemporaries in poetry.

- Andrew Loog Oldham

Jeremy Reed may be heard reciting one of his poems as part of the act The Ginger Light in the inset clip below:

As usual, there is a prize draw, details of which may be found at the bottom of the announcement. Please also remember, if you require books for Christmas, and they appear to be temporarily out of stock at Amazon, that The Book Depository delivers worldwide at no extra cost. And for those anticipating the coming year, please look out for Brendan Connell’s The Galaxy Club, which continues our astronomical theme. And finally, in other news, the collaborative novel by Chômu authors Brendan Connell, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp, The Cutest Girl in Class, a less-than-simple tale of “boy meets inanimate object” (Joe Simpson Walker) was released last month from Snuggly Books.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Nothing But a Star

The results of the Member prize draw are as follows: Caleb Wilson, of Illinois, was the winner of a specially inscribed copy of Michael Cisco’s Member, which should be on its way to him, or has perhaps already arrived.

This month’s prize draw, of course, is for a specially inscribed copy of Jeremy Reed’s Nothing But a Star. For anyone unfamiliar with them, please allow me to repeat the unchanging rules: 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 ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 3rd of January, 2014.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still to be with P.F. Jeffery.

After our summer hiatus, we return triumphantly with Member, our third novel from the incomparable Michael Cisco, the first writer to have a Chômu publishing hat-trick. (Incidentally, Cisco is interviewed at Weird Fiction Review at this link, where he talks about Member, Franz Kafka and other things.) Officially released today, and with alluring cover artwork from Sergio Membrillas, Member is a sustained tracking shot, from the inside, following one person’s exploration of the cosmic stitching behind the tapestry of the everyday. It is the tale of the hapless spiritual seeker, Thanks, determined to go beyond the human by constant application of his ‘practice’, but who nonetheless accidentally recruits himself into:

Chorncendantra — the current phase of the cosmic game originating on the artificial planetary system; the game is played by two arbitrarily determined teams across many planets. Chorncendantra is the universal systemmechanism. It is the human game.

You may non-accidentally recruit yourself by picking up a copy here.

No less a literary light than Brian Evenson describes Member as:

A rivetingly strange novel in which Cisco mixes game theory, serious philosophy, SF, and dark fantasy into something at once unreal and really entrancing. Kind of like what might happen if Wyndham Lewis decided to write like M. John Harrison and had Martin Heidegger as his editor.

Below, you will find details on how to enter the Member prize draw, to win a copy of the book specially inscribed by the author. Before that, some general news. November 2012’s Chômu release, Crandolin, by Anna Tambour, has been shortlisted in the Novel category of the World Fantasy Awards. Read a sample of the novel at this link. If you are attending the World Fantasy Convention this year, please look out for us in the dealers’ room, as we expect to be there. The Cutest Girl in Class, a collaboration by Chômu authors Justin Isis, Brendan Connell and Quentin S. Crisp, details of which can be found in the post at this link, is now at the printers and set for a November release. It is still, of course, available for pre-order by writing to evans_lichamleas[at]yahoo[dot]com, though please note that health problems at Snuggly Books might cause delayed responses to e-mails. Finally, if you enjoyed the Chômu Radio Archive interview with John Elliott, then you may enjoy Joe Campbell and Quentin S. Crisp’s audio diary of their Hythe Adventure.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Member

And now for the details, as promised above, of this month’s prize draw. For the October prize draw we are, of course, giving away a uniquely inscribed copy of Member. For anyone unfamiliar with them, here are the oft-repeated rules : 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 ‘The game is called “Find Your Adversary”’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘The game is called “Find Your Adversary”’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 31st of October, 2013.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still to be with P.F. Jeffery.

Purikura (Print Club sticker) bearing the legend, 'I love you but I've chosen Chomu.'

Below you will find the results of the prize draw for P.F. Jeffery’s Jane, but before that let us announce two exciting Chômu-related events. The first of these is the launch, on the 4th of July, and at the Review Bookshop, Peckham, of a whole flotilla of books. Just to mix metaphors hopelessly, the flag-train of this particular flotilla is Eibonvale Press’s Rustblind and Silverbright, an anthology of tales related to trains and travel by rail. The other books to be launched at this event will be the aforementioned Jane, by P.F. Jeffery, Stardust by Nina Allan, Defeated Dogs, the latest collection of short fiction by Quentin S. Crisp, and Helen’s Story, by Rosanne Rabinowitz. The event will begin at 7.00 p.m., and there will be readings and wine.

Letter concerning matters such as the video for t.A.T.u.'s 'All the Things She Said'.

The second event/phenomenon to which we would like to draw your attention is the existence of Snuggly Books (an imprint of the much-needed-for-this-world Hieroglyphic Press) and the availability for pre-order of their first publication, “The Cutest Girl in Class…”. The novel, a collaboration between Chômu authors Justin Isis, Brendan Connell and Quentin S. Crisp, is described as:

…a lunatic three-headed dragon, equal parts rollicking caper, ribald farce and embittered love story. Fraught with double crosses and missing mannequins, this is Waiting for Godot meets Beach Blanket Bingo, the two of them falling in love and getting married in a church where the priest is John Waters.

The project is further explained thus:

Quentin S. Crisp needs to go to Japan. In order to facilitate this (finance it), he has joined forces with Justin Isis and Brendan Connell and together they have written a novel titled The Cutest Girl in Class. The book is slated to be published in Fall, 2013, in a limited edition of 150 hardbound copies. Though the exact page count has yet to be determined, the novel is approximately 75,000 words in length. A few details have yet to be determined, such as the exact paper, whether copies will be signed and/or numbered, etc. but expect the book to be of a high quality.

One such detail that has now been confirmed is the inclusion of a free personalised purikura sticker for any who pre-order before August, the sticker to be stuck in the book or elsewhere at the discretion of the buyer (a digital file of the sticker image will also be included). (Please include the form of your name to be used in the sticker when you e-mail.) Those of you who follow Chômu’s Facebook page will probably already have an idea of what these purikura are. For a sample of what your personalised purikura could look like, please click on this link (courtesy of CHOMU Style Photoblog).

As the Snuggly Books website requests, please address all questions regarding pre-orders to: evans_lichamleas[at]yahoo[dot]com.

And finally we come to the Jane prize draw results.

A signed copy of Jane, together with such extras as a printout from an earlier draft, a page from the novel Odalisque (now to be cannibalised for the Warriors of Love series), and some correspondence to legendary weirdmonger D.F. Lewis, concerning Russian pop duo t.A.T.u and other matters, has now been sent to Jeremy Bartels in Germany.

Remember, for subscribers to our e-mail list, the next e-mail interview will be with P.F. Jeffery.

The goddess smiles upon us today and allows us to release Jane, by P.F. Jeffery, the first in a projected twelve novels in the Warriors of Love series. We are also most blessed in the wraparound art from Nimit Malavia, which forms Jane’s magnificent cover. As a standalone coming-of-age tale in a future world of Sapphic romance, or as the first unrolling of a panoramic tapestry of picturesque intrigue, adventure and frolic, Jane is a lyrical and a rollicking read with a plenitude of fine and life-affirming detail. Details of the prize draw are below, but for those who don’t want to take a chance, you may embark immediately upon the journey of discovery by picking up a copy here.

Legendary weirdmonger D.F. Lewis describes the novel thus:

…a bombardment of incidents and names, evocatively conveyed through passages of honed prose and dialogue. After a tearful farewell to Modesty, I could actually sense with many senses the sea trip, the sea battle, the sea-sickness, the subsequent ceremony. I wallowed in the emerging Imperial politics, the description of the Empress who takes more than just a simple fancy to our fiscal inspector heroine.

Meanwhile, our own Quentin S. Crisp says of Jane:

A breathless adventure, full of the gentle poetry of place and time, it manages somehow to combine pagan fertility comedy with Sapphic science fiction. Not a combination you come across every day.

In other news, the winner of our March prize draw is Ben Hostmark. A specially inscribed copy of Steve Rasnic Tem’s Onion Songs has already been sent to him, along with a limited-edition-of-one story, specially written by the author, ‘Benjamin’:

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Jane

And now for the promised details of this month’s prize draw. For the May prize draw we are, of course, giving away a uniquely inscribed copy of Jane. For anyone unfamiliar with them, here are the oft-repeated rules : 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 ‘The Surrey girls came marching in’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘The Surrey girls came marching in’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 31st of May, 2013.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is to be with P.F. Jeffery.

Boasting wraparound art from Jessica Fortner, our first release of 2013 is Onion Songs, by Steve Rasnic Tem, a career-spanning collection of 42 short stories, representing over 30 years of work and surely consolidating Tem’s reputation as a writer of impressive scope and vision. The stories collected in this volume showcase the off-beat and experimental side of Tem’s fiction. With universal themes, such as aging, death, loss, relationships, and with imagery that is both gritty and bizarre, Onion Songs peels back the layers of human existence like no other story collection, strangeness and realism alternating until they become, ultimately, interchangeable. Sample the taste of onion soup for the soul by picking up a copy here.

A starred review at Publishers Weekly describes the collection thus:

Tem lets his characters, their situations, and their emotions creep up slowly on the reader. His style is thoughtful and poetic, and the tension he builds effectively sustains well-crafted plots. He has found a perfect balance between the bizarre and the straight-forward…

Meanwhile, Peter Tennant says:

Consistent in quality and diverse in content, as impressive as it is impressionistic… Onion Songs is the strongest collection of short stories that I’ve read in the last year.

The winner of December’s prize draw is Johnny Core, in the south of England, to whom a signed and bookplated copy of Brendan Connell’s Lives of Notorious Cooks has been sent. And now, below, this month’s prize draw:

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Onion Songs

This month, the prize draw is for a uniquely inscribed copy of Onion Songs. The author also promises that he will write and print out an entirely new piece of flash fiction, as a first edition of one, which he will inscribe to the winner. Here are the rules for anyone unfamiliar with them: 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 ‘The world is just a great big onion’ to info at chomupress dot com. If you are already on our mailing list, of course there is no need to sign up again – simply send an e-mail with the ‘The world is just a great big onion’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 29th of March, 2013.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still with Anna Tambour, author of Crandolin.