This will be, in all probability, the last post on the Chômu website until 2013. If you’ve enjoyed our releases in 2012, please do continue to support us. Next year will see us release books by Steve Rasnic Tem, P.F. Jeffery and others yet to be revealed. We hope that your holidays are sufficiently irreal and suffused with yuugen. And now, let us leave you with overdue pictures of some of this year’s prize draw books:

Artist Ben Baldwin won all this Joseph S. Pulver loot simply by entering the Chômu prize draw at FantasyCon 2012 (computer not included, probably).

A very elegant package put together by Anna Tambour for the winner of the Crandolin prize draw.

May you never lack yuugen, in the year ahead, or for the rest of your lives.

The PS Publishing Independent Press Award sits next to Adam Nevill's August Derleth Award for best horror novel.

We would like to thank, therefore, whoever nominated us, the special jury who finally selected us for the award, and everyone with enough curiosity, taste, etc., to have discovered Chômu books for themselves. We very much hope, with all your continued support, to go on producing quality books that are exciting, surprising, and by turns (or at the same time) difficult and accessible… and both of those things in a good way.

All God’s Angels, Beware! prize draw results

Finally, we would like to announce the winner of the All God’s Angels, Beware! prize draw. And the winner is… Dan L. from Canada. Mr. L will be receiving a specially inscribed copy of All God’s Angels, Beware! plus some Kodagain CDs. Photos may be featured in a later update.

If you signed up to our mailing list at FantasyCon, you may have won our FantasyCon prize draw, so please keep an eye on your e-mail in-box, and watch this space.

The summer of 2012 draws towards its melancholy end. Bathed in the red and gold rays of its dying sun is our September release, All God’s Angels, Beware!, by Quentin S. Crisp, originally a limited edition hardback (Ex Occidente, 2009), now released as a paperback for the first time. This re-release, revised and with lush wraparound cover art from Christopher Conn Askew, is Crisp’s fourth, and according to Ziesings Books, a “much anticipated” collection of shorter fiction. If this is all the recommendation you need, then please proceed to obtain a copy here. Be aware, however, that, as well as the title itself, this book appears to come with warnings attached:

Quentin S. Crisp is one of those writers whose voice is so strong that the essential features of his fiction remain constant whether the trappings are science fiction, horror, fantasy, or contemporary minimalist fiction. It’s not something that all readers will be able to bear. His characters’ awkwardness, suffering, self-pity will turn off those for whom such modes of existence are impossible to understand. But for those who are epicures of the upsetting, the degraded, and the unexpectedly numinous, he is (superlative alert) among the finest of contemporary writers.

- Brendan Moody, The Stars at Noonday

Crisp (Shrike) stakes his claim to the territory of existential dread with this … edition of a short fiction collection first published in 2009. The stories are largely told in the first person, touching on themes of Japanese culture, the pointlessness of everyday life, and the terrors of intimacy. Moments of unexpected tenderness leaven the relentless gloom: “Italiannetto” is a genuinely sweet reminiscence of love and inspiration, made all the more powerful by the surrounding unsettling tales of sexual dysfunction like “The Fox Wedding” and “Asking for It.” The narrator of “A Cup of Tea” may be painfully incapable of surviving in the workaday world, but is still very capable of affection even in the midst of despair. The book’s saving grace is that ability to mitigate the worst of the overwrought self-indulgence of the neurasthenic narrators with flashes of emotion, making it simultaneously deeper and more accessible than its many characters might have wished.

- Publishers Weekly

If you are one of those who will be in attendance at this month’s FantasyCon, in Brighton, please also remember that, as well as Chômu Press having a table in the dealers’ room, Quentin S. Crisp will be signing copies of All God’s Angels, Beware! and Reggie Oliver of The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar’s Tale, late on the morning of the Saturday of that weekend. Details of this month’s prize draw are to follow:

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of All God’s Angels, Beware!

The prize this month is, of course, for a uniquely inscribed copy of All God’s Angels, Beware!. Here are the rules here 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 ‘I’m not afraid anymore’ 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 ‘I’m not afraid anymore’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 1st of October.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview will be with D.F. Lewis, author of Nemonymous Night.

Next week, we release Dadaoism (An Anthology), a book that has been absorbing a great deal of our energy for some time. A review of the anthology has already gone online here. Gordon Hauptfleisch describes the book as:

…an often challenging but ultimately rewarding collection of angst, anxiety, and alienation as conveyed in whimsy, wit, and wordplay.

In June and July, we return to single-author volumes, with the novel Celebrant, by Michael Cisco (a work of which China Miéville, has said, “With Michael Cisco doing things like this, sometimes it feels like the rest of literature might as well get up and head home”), and a debut collection of short fiction – I Am a Magical Teenage Princess – by the inestimable Luke Geddes. This latter features a cover design from special guest designer, Rian Hughes. Both books have been reviewed favourably by Publishers Weekly. And here are the links of the Publishers Weekly reviews for Celebrant and I Am a Magical Teenage Princess.

Christopher Conn Askew, who produced beautiful wraparound cover art for Celebrant, will also be producing another lush wraparound cover for the September paperback reprint of Quentin S. Crisp’s collection All God’s Angels, Beware! (previously an Ex Occidente limited edition). October, November and December willl bring work from John Elliott, Anna Tambour and Brendan Connell. Please watch this site or subscribe to our mailing list at this link (or using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) for further details.

For a more in-depth view of what is happening at Chômu, and greater detail on some of the books mentioned here, as well as some of those not mentioned here, please read Jason Rolfe’s interview with Quentin S. Crisp at Bibliomancy.

Finally, Chômu would like to congratulate Reggie Oliver and Michael Cisco for their nominations in the novel category for the 2011 Shirley Jackson Awards (thank you for entrusting your novels to us), and to thank whomever nominated Chômu Press to the shortlist for the PS Publishing Independent Press Award. Thank you, and get suavée!