Notice concerning Amazon EU

This is a notice to address the concerns of some readers who have written to us about the long estimated delivery times for new releases on Amazon UK – the same problem, in fact, affects Amazon EU across the board. We have been looking into this matter. It seems we are not the only publisher affected in this way. From what we can gather, Amazon EU is, for reasons unknown, ordering all Chômu Press titles from the US rather than the UK printers, and this is causing delays. It seems that all titles are eventually delivered, however. Also, in all cases that have been reported to us, the actual delivery is much quicker than estimated, being completed within two weeks. Nonetheless, we are taking this seriously and looking into the problem. Anyone who has had to wait for longer than two weeks, or who has had related problems, should write to us at info at chomupress dot com.

Please also remember that there are a number of other online retail outlets that stock Chômu books, for those who would prefer not to use Amazon, including but not limited to The Book Depository (which also offers free delivery worldwide), Barnes and Noble, and WHSmith.

Reminder – last day of the Great Lover prize draw

This is just to remind people that today is the last day on which they can enter the prize draw for the inscribed copy of The Great Lover. Details of the prize draw may be found here. Please remember that you must be on our mailing list in order to enter.

Dying to Read – Feltham, here we come!

And now for something completely different! In keeping with the Chômu mission to bring you works that are of the highest quality and (maybe not just) a little unusual, we are very pleased to present a murder mystery that is also something of a literary conundrum. Dying to Read, by John Elliott, is a crime thriller as comic as it is gritty. Its evocation of its chosen milieu (“Heathrow perimeterville”) is masterly, the dialogue and characters are up-to-the-minute, and the text delights in the small, real and very odd details of so-called ordinary life. But beneath the surface it takes as much from the European tradition of existentialism as the Wodehouse and Ealing Studios tradition of British comedy. Get on the case, by ordering a copy here.

To quote the ever quotable Rhy Hughes:

It’s always a particular pleasure to chance upon a cunning, erudite, stylish, inventive, unique but relatively obscure writer who, perhaps because of dissatisfaction with their own obscurity, makes a sudden wild attempt to break into the limelight, to write something more commercial, but who actually fails to ’sell out’ because they simply have too much integrity and talent. The result is often a curious hybrid between the popular and the avant garde, the low and the highbrow, with each component doing its best to sabotage its opposite. John Elliott’s brilliant novel falls squarely into this category, but the self-sabotage becomes symbiosis. Dying to Read is a marvellous slide along the high tension wires of a vast imagination with nothing but a frayed belt to keep you above the intertextual chasm.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Dying to Read

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of Dying to Read. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Dying to Read’ 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 ‘Dying to Read’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 12th of May.

Revenants and Polycrates – prize draw winners

The prize draw copy of Revenants, by Daniel Mills, has now been sent to the winner of the draw, Todd Treichel, who reports that he is thrilled with his luck, and very happy with the book. He has also kindly offered a message to readers of the website, that, “Chomu needs to be explored by anyone looking for creative, satisfying and highly crafted fiction.” Thank you, Todd, and we shall do our best to keep up the standard.

The prize copy is signed and inscribed, and comes with six photographs of the American Northeast, where the novel is set, as well as unpublished poems and lyrics from the author.

Additionally, we can now announce the winner of the Polycrates prize draw as Claus Laufenburg, who will soon be receiving the inscribed and exotically modified copy of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children, by Brendan Connell.

Discover the subterranean frontier of The Great Lover

Today we are proud to announce the release of a book that we know has been much anticipated – the sixth novel from International Horror Guild Award winner Michael Cisco, The Great Lover. A many-spired citadel of a novel, The Great Lover has its foundations in an underground of untamed vision, but its architecture is that of poetic rigour. This is a work to make the divisions between genre and literary fiction seem what they are—the preoccupations of a previous century. Discover this new frontier of fiction, for yourself, here.

In his Foreword to the novel, Rhys Hughes poses the question, what can you say about a perfect work of art? Let us quote what some have said about it below:

The latest phantasmagorical offering from Cisco (The Narrator) is a fusion of dark fantasy, literary fiction, and existential horror that revolves around the eponymous character of the sewerman, an undead tramp in search of capital-L Love who can enter into women’s dreams. As he pines for a blind woman named Vera, he also helps a disgraced academic turned prophet to establish a “ptochocratic” cult that wants to create its own reality underground and battle a soul-sucking plague of white noise. The surreal narrative is something like a 400-page T.S. Eliot poem: otherworldly, lyrical, deeply philosophical, and supersaturated with extraordinary imagery and ideas (like the Prosthetic Libido, a golem-like device constructed to house a scientist’s unwanted desire). Fans of stylish and thematically sophisticated weird fiction should seek out this mad testament to Cisco’s visionary genius.

- Publishers Weekly

It seemed as if The Tyrant was the biggest monster Cisco could make, but The Great Lover is now his new masterpiece. Brilliant, light-years beyond … still marauding. He should receive plaudits for conceiving the Prosthetic Libido alone. Cisco has an identity as much as any writer I’ve read

- Thomas Ligotti

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of The Great Lover

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of The Great Lover. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Great Lover’ 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 ‘Great Lover’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 28th of April.

Reminder – last day of the Polycrates prize draw

This is just to remind people that today is the last day on which they can enter the prize draw for the special copy of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children. Details of the prize draw may be found here. Please remember that you must be on our mailing list in order to enter.

Subscribers to our mailing list can also look forward to a short, exclusive interview with the book’s author, Brendan Connell, soon.

In related news, the deadline for the competition for a signed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales has now passed, but so far no one has cracked the code on the book’s front cover, so we have decided to extend the deadline until the 13th of April. Even if no one manages to crack the code, we will ask the author to judge which entry is most interesting and appropriate, so please feel free to have a guess.

The Dadaoism anthology – deadline passed and selection begins

The end of March has come and with it the deadline has passed for the Dadaoism anthology, and we will no longer be receiving submissions for it. We start now on the next stage on the anthologising process – sifting through and selecting the submitted material.

We have had quite an overwhelming response so far, with most of the submissions coming in this last month before the deadline. From the variety and volume of the material we have received, we hope we can choose the right pieces to make a truly outstanding anthology. Thank you to everyone who has submitted, and thank you also for your patience in waiting to hear back from us. If you have submitted, we will try to get back to you with the verdict on your piece or pieces as soon as possible. Please bear in mind, though, that we have a lot of material to sift through.

We will be posting more news about the anthology here on the website, too. Announcing names of those included and giving further details. Please check the website for new posts and pages, or sign up to our mailing list for updates and exclusive material.

The Polycrates history tour starts here

From the author of Metrophilias and Unpleasant Tales, Brendan Connell, comes another consignment of finely-tuned unpredictability. We are most pleased to announce the official release of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children. Metrophilias took us to 36 cities across the world in a psychogeographical examination of sexual mania. The Life of Polycrates offers us another grand tour, this time through the living ruins of human history, and the guiding passions in the lives of exceptional people, both famous and obscure. These eleven tales form a collection of irrepressible depravity worth celebrating in song. To get yourself a ticket for the maniacal history tour, pick up a copy of the book here.

Here is what others have to say of the work of Brendan Connell:

With the yellow flag of Neo-Decadence lofted high, Connell exhumes the corpse of Mother Image and heaves it rank and rotting onto the tidy flowerbed of realist fiction.

- Justin Isis

Every generation throws up a few genuine Masters of the Weird. There simply is no hyperbole in the statement that Brendan Connell is a member of this elite group right now, perhaps the most accomplished of them all.

- Rhys Hughes

Prize Draw for unique commemorative copy of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed commemorative copy of The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Polycrates’ 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 ‘Polycrates’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 6th of April.

The Return of the Man Who Collected Machen

If the world has defied recent predictions by not ending today, we can immediately add to the good news by saying that this date also marks the official release for The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by the acclaimed master of modern weird fiction, Mark Samuels.

Previously published as a limited edition, with a slightly different selection of texts, by Ex Occidente Press, this collection, the fourth from Samuels, is now available in paperback for the first time, and may be purchased here.

Here is what people have to say of the collection so far:

It’s hard to review such a fine collection without choking on hyperbole but Mark Samuels has, within 178 pages, created a masterpiece to stand alongside the likes of Ligotti, Machen, Poe and Lovecraft.

- The Black Abyss

Connoisseurs of weird horror are fortunate to live in a time when skilled wordsmiths are so plentiful. However, seers of the truly black, dreadful, and bizarre, remain as rare as they come. Mark Samuels is one name that stands out among the priestly class in supernatural literature.

- Grim Reviews

Competition for unique signed and inscribed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales

Look closely at the writing uncoiling from the workings of the typewriter on the cover of this book and you will see that it is not in the Roman alphabet. If you have an interest in cracking codes, or a knack for guessing or deduction, perhaps you can work out what is written in this strange script. Find the correct answers and you can win a special signed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales. All correct answers will be entered into a draw in two weeks time. To be enter the competition, please sign up to our mailing list and send your answers to info at chomupress dot com with the subject heading of ‘Machen Competition’. The deadline for this competition is the 30th of March.

Reminder – last day of Revenants prize draw

Just a reminder – today is the last day to enter the prize draw for a unqiuely signed copy of Daniel Mills’ Revenants. Simply sign up for the mailing list (if you are not already signed up), and send us an e-mail headed ‘Revenants’. Details here.

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