Following on from the news of the Marked to Die anthology last year, we are very pleased to make another Mark Samuels-related announcement. Written in Darkness, the fifth collection of short fiction by Mark Samuels, and the twenty-eighth title from Chômu Press, is officially released today. Originally available as a limited edition hardback from Egaeus Press, it is now generally available as a Chômu paperback, with lush new cover artwork from Christopher Conn Askew and book design by David Rix.

Samuels’s fourth collection, The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales, released in paperback by Chômu in 2011, has proven exceptionally popular with our readers, and we are sure that the current collection will be enjoyed just as widely and deeply. With a further refinement of the author’s concise, elegant style and a broadening of his themes and subject matter, the nine apocalyptic tales included in Written in Darkness are testament to Samuels’s secure and growing place in the consciousness of the connoisseur as an authentic practitioner of weird fiction.

From the back cover: “Europe decays, but the Bloody Baron’s spirit will not rest. A lone yachtsman is becalmed at sea, and confronts madness, or something greater than madness. A condemned office building is besieged by the forces of transcendent decay. In the city of exiles, an unguessable secret awaits.” For all this and more, book your one-way ticket to the heart of the labyrinth here. Or, if you would first like a sample of the contents, you can listen to Quentin S. Crisp reading the final story, ‘In Eternity—Two Lines Intersect’, by arrangement with the author, at Soundcloud, here:

For further information, the author talks informally to Quentin S. Crisp about the collection, about weird fiction, psychogeography, Thomas Ligotti and many other things, in the following YouTube vlog interview:

Other stimulating news—of Chômu Press and miscellaneous matters

Although Chômu’s release schedule has slowed down recently, news abounds in relation to our authors and the surrounding small-press world. In January, for the first time, one of our titles was mentioned in the New York Times. In interview, Roxane Gay was asked, “What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of?”, and replied: “I Am a Magical Teenage Princess, by Luke Geddes.” Of course, our readers can claim to have been ahead of the pack here; we hope that many more will follow their excellent lead.

On BBC Radio 2, in February, talking to Jonathan Ross about his ‘hidden treasures’, Marc Almond recited a poem by the Chômu-published poet (beloved of Björk and J.G. Ballard), Jeremy Reed. Marc Almond, of course, collaborated with Jeremy Reed for his Against Nature project, putting the seminal decadent novel by J.-K. Huysmans to music; the lyrics for that project, written by Reed, are included in the fantastic miscellany, Nothing But a Star.

The first of a three-part interview, in which artist and musician Rachel Margetts talks to Chômu author Quentin S. Crisp about the relevance of the Dao De Jing to the 21st century, has recently been uploaded to YouTube. The interview was conducted by Skype, and the image and ambient background audio are provided by Rachel Margetts.

The Cutest Girl in Class, by Quentin S. Crisp, Justin Isis and Brendan Connell, now in paperback.

The (as the name suggests) friendly press, Snuggly Books, have been very busy of late. Last month, they released in paperback the three-author collaborative novel The Cutest Girl in Class, by Quentin S. Crisp, Justin Isis and Brendan Connell (reviewed by Publishers Weekly here). Other recent releases include An Ossuary of the North Lagoon, by Frederick Rolfe a.k.a. Baron Corvo, and a collection of seasonal tanka, October, by Quentin S. Crisp.

To keep up to date with all Chômu and related news, and if you are not already signed up, please do subscribe here to our e-mail list.

As the whistles and gunpowder smell of fireworks die away and we start to approach, with premature anticipation or dread, the festive season, and as the dark winter evenings that seem to call up atavistic memories of roaming wolf packs draw in, we break a long Chômu silence to bring you news of Mark Samuels, Snuggly Books and other matters.

First we present an interview with Chômu author Justin Isis, regarding the curious and remarkable Marked to Die, an anthology of fiction in tribute to the illustrious Mark Samuels, whose collection The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales we published in 2011. The anthology, edited by Justin Isis, was released earlier this year, from Snuggly Books, and is available from the publisher’s website and elsewhere.

Interview with Justin Isis Regarding the Mark Samuels Tribute Anthology

Chômu Press: What formed the initial impetus for the Marked to Die anthology?

Justin Isis: A vague desire to write Mark Samuels Real Person Fiction or fanfiction, resulting from a vague feeling that other people would eventually end up doing this, and I wanted to take the initiative and get there first. From there it was mostly a desire to rope other writers into this scheme and see what they’d come up with. The tribute anthology format is a pretty inherently boring and conservative one, from my perspective, and I wanted to see what interesting things I could do to somehow subvert or reinvent it while still fulfilling the basic obligation of honoring the subject material. Mark’s own writing is a model of stylistic focus and consistency, which made it weirdly ideal for this kind of thing—there were enough clear jumping-on points, and his own approach had been influential enough that I felt confident the writers I solicited would have a lot to work with. I think we succeeded in stretching the format pretty far at times through multiple layers of metafiction, random author insertions and the contributions of some writers who’d barely even read Mark’s work—balancing it all, of course, with stories from some of his oldest and closest friends who understand his style, influences and thematic concerns on a deep level.

Chômu Press: What would you say are the non-obvious aspects of that stylistic consistency that have ultimately fed into the anthology—the non-obvious jumping-on points, if you like?

Justin Isis: Mark’s writing is often compared to that of Thomas Ligotti, who’s an admitted influence, but when looked at closely, they don’t actually have that much in common—Ligotti’s stories are much more consistently unreal and vague about the details of place, for example, whereas Mark always seems to be coming to grips with London as it decays. The idea of some kind of psychogeography or deep engagement with setting (deep topography?) was one I hoped the contributors would seize on, and a fair number of them did: Thana Niveau’s ‘Language of the City,’ and David Rix’s monumental ‘Slag Glass Lachrimae,’ which is rooted firmly in the England of rising housing prices and persistent low-level despair. That kind of attention to setting gave the book a grounding it otherwise wouldn’t have had: even as it ranges pretty far over the globe with stories set in Russia, Japan, South America, etc., it still seems to keep one leg of the compass fixed in London. You could also pick up on the religious underpinnings of some of Mark’s stories, which of course have been the subject of some controversy. A few of the contributors chose to play them straight, while others engaged with them in fairly unexpected ways. There’s a pretty clear metaphysical thread running through the book.

Chômu Press: The anthology, of course, is called Marked to Die. Do you think there’s a morbid, or perhaps simply unhelpful prejudice, against living writers? This anthology is an attempt to celebrate a writer in his lifetime, but writers are often more celebrated in such a way (and in other ways) after their death; is this the inevitable result of the time investment necessary for reading books, so that it takes a while for the reading public to sift the good from the bad, or do you think it’s something else?

Justin Isis: Since the book has come out I’ve seen at least five or six comments along the lines of “Is Mark Samuels dead? No? Well, he probably should be if he has a tribute anthology.” There’s definitely a sense in which writers are only seen as real, as accepted, once they’re in the ground. But the intention of this book was never to be any kind of monument in the tombstone sense; neither do I think it comes close to capturing everything about Mark’s writing. I’m fully expecting him to keep changing and evolving, and if his recent work (such as the upcoming novel A Pilgrim Stranger) is anything to go by, the public impression of his writing might be completely different in another ten or twenty years. I mean, I did say that I expected there would be further tributes, further instances of him being used as a character, etc. Marked to Die gets things rolling, but it’s really just the beginning. More generally, I don’t think much time at all is needed to evaluate quality, it’s just that the cult of death is excessively prevalent. Look at how much revenue is being extracted from Kafka, Lovecraft and others who died poor and unknown. I’d rather focus on the living.

Further Intriguing News

The Samuels-related news does not end, however, with the release of the Marked to Die tribute anthology this year, or even with the enigmatic A Pilgrim Stranger mentioned in the interview above, for the next book to be released by Chômu Press will be the Mark Samuels collection Written in Darkness, previously released as a limited edition hardback by Egaeus Press. The author himself has become the latest of many to publish his works directly, and fans of Mark Samuels can now find his Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes back in print and available for purchase at Amazon, soon to be followed by his short novel, The Face of Twilight.

Before we go, we would like to urge all readers who have enjoyed Chômu Press publications to take a closer look at Snuggly Books, who are publishing some of the same authors as Chômu (see, for instance, the attractive reissue of Quentin S. Crisp’s long out-of-print collection, Rule Dementia!, or the forthcoming publication of Brendan Connell’s masterly fictional life of a Paraguayan actor and star of Cinecittà, Clark), and other interesting contemporary authors most deserving of the reader’s attention. For the adventurous connoisseur, Snuggly Books are also unearthing and disseminating (sometimes in new or first translation) notable works of Decadent, Symbolist, and otherwise curious or exotic literature, such as The Tarantulas’ Parlor and Other Unkind Tales, by Léon Bloy, and The Soul-Drinker and Other Decadent Fantasies, by Jean Lorrain.

How to Bake a Cockatrice, and Other Gastronomic Oddities

A Window on Renaissance Dining

Have you ever been struck with a sudden urge for a dish of quails farced with figs, or desired nothing so much as a plate of cockscombs on lettuce? Maybe not, but for a decadent of the Italian Renaissance, such dishes were the standard fare. In imitation of the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, who ate such extravagant things as peas with gold-pieces, lentils with onyx or beans with amber, the Renaissance nobles were true gourmands.

Classes, however, were drastically divided. While the rich were living in sumptuous conditions, unheard of today, the common people generally suffered a great deal. Throughout the whole of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries alone there was on average a famine in Europe every eight years.

The poorer people ate, for the most part, things such as corn mush, coarse bread, stock fish and salt pork. Those of a somewhat higher standing ate beef, white bread, wine, and cheese.

For the nobles and their circles, meal time was an altogether different matter.

The Italians led Europe in virtually all things; in the art of cooking no less than that of painting, dress and conversation. While England and France were still using their hands to eat with, the Italians had developed the novelty of the fork. The Englishman Thomas Coryate, upon visiting Italy at the turn of the fifteenth century, commented that he had never in all his travels seen such a wondrous way of eating, and forthwith brought the custom back to England for the enrichment of his own civilisation. Catherine Medici had brought forks with her to France nearly seventy years earlier, but their use apparently never caught on. It is interesting to note that she is also considered responsible for first bringing liqueurs to France, an invention which caught on very well.

In Italy, those of especially high rank were sure to have a nervous venom taster near at hand, nibbling at each dish and desperately hoping that he would not successfully swallow a poisoned one. Agate cups were used to drink from, because it was thought that poison would become non-toxic in such a vessel.

There were numerous myths concerning food: Salad was considered efficacious for whitening the skin, and meat for making the muscles flexible. To overcome the fear of water, you ate the partially digested small fish found in the belly of a larger. To have strong legs you ate mountain goat. A jelly of quinces prevented ‘vapours.’

A typical meal of a well-to-do Italian of the fifteenth century might have consisted of the following: A broth of beef and barley, roasted venison or pig, minced chicken livers in paste balls, batter-fried goose breasts, and leeks parboiled and fried in oil. For dessert there would be candied prickly pears and coriander seeds steeped in marjoram vinegar and crusted with sugar.

Dessert in general has always been something that the Italians excelled at. The secrets of sherbet had been handed down from the Emperor Nero, and greatly improved by the syrups brought to Venice by Arab traders. At a pageant, the nobility liked nothing so much as a hard candy called Manis Christi, or hand of Christ, which was made of sugar, rose water and gold leaf. The ingredients were mixed together and then cast in moulds, in the shapes of flowers, birds or little beasts, medallions or ornaments, producing a candy that looked much like valuable jewellery. Gold leaf was also used to decorate other desserts, such as cookies, lozenges and marzipan. It is interesting to note that gold and pearls were once thought of as a ‘restorative’ and not uncommonly added to food and drink.

The diametric opposite of the Italians, were the Germans. In the south their eating habits were considered coarse. Coarse or not, one thing is certain: their stomachs were imperturbable. Looking over what they ate, we can only come to the conclusion that they were veritable superheroes of digestion. They ate eagles, nightingales, swallows, herons, starlings, ptarmigans and woodpeckers. Horses were common fare, as were aurochs, bears, marmots, seals, beavers, porcupines, hedgehogs and virtually any other living thing that was remotely edible.

The forests of Europe were at one time extremely rich with wildlife. It is little wonder that they no longer are.

England, like Germany, has never been known as a land dedicated to culinary excellence. When reading over books of old English recipes, one is struck with a certain hesitancy. The very names of the dishes might very well send shivers through a person with weak digestion. Boiled cony with pudding in his belly, sparrows stew, liverings of a swine – These are not the foods most of us want to have sitting on our dinner table.

Yet, it must be said, that the English food of long ago was probably not half bad, especially for those who liked piquant cooking. They used, with a free hand, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, saffron and numerous other spices. Ale and wine were used in the kitchen constantly. Toasted or stale bread was used as a thickener.

English chefs were heavily influenced by the French, and for that reason we can today trace many of our words for food preparation back to that language. When reading a cookbook from the thirteenth of fourteenth century, we find it full of strange French corruptions. We read of King Henry IV eating ‘Braun fryez’ (fried pork) and ‘Egretez’ (egret).

Sometimes the language is so terse as to leave one scratching one’s head. As an example of how obscure some of the old recipes could be, we only need to look at the following for Lampreys in Bruet, which was written by one of King Richard II’s master chefs. The recipe is set forth in its entirety:

They schulle be schaldyd and ysode and brulyd upon a greder and grynd peper and safron and do ther’to and boyle it and do the Lamprey there’yn and serve yt forth.

Of course, it must be remembered that King Henry I died from eating ‘too plentifully of lampreys’, so the previous recipe, though undoubtedly tasty and surely adored by Richard, cannot in good conscience be recommended.

Some of what we come across in the cookbooks is quite ambiguous, such as the following recipe for ‘apples of love,’ a fruit which I have been unable to place:

Take away the pilling, then cut them in slices boyle them in water, and after frie them in the flower of meale and butter or oyle and then cast upon them pepper and salt: this kind of meat is good for such men as are inclined to dallie with common dames, and short heeld huswiues.

The chefs of old had a certain cool brevity to their methods. There was no preheating the oven to 350 degrees. No bothering with weights and measures. No pinches of this or teaspoons of that. Occasionally they might refer to an ‘ana’ or an ‘assay,’ an obscure measurement equal to 4 drams plus 24 grains (if you know what those are). Generally, however, it seems they measured their ingredients more by intuition than anything else.

Though they lacked our modern precision, there is no reason to think that they suffered thereby. Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for the 26th of January 1660, says his wife prepared a very fine dinner of “a dish of marrow bones, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, a dish of fowl, three pullets, two dozen larks all in a dish, a neat’s tongue, a dish of anchovies, a dish of prawns and cheese.” To drink, he mentions liking, amongst other things, “sack-posset, ” which consists of hot sweetened milk, spiced and then curdled with a strong Spanish wine.

Aside from imported wines, ale and mead were drunk in abundance, it even being the custom of the men to have a ‘morning draft’ before work. The ales were often seasoned with such things as marjoram, thyme, rosemary, mint, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Hippocras was another popular beverage and consisted of wine heavily dosed with sugar and spices. Caudell was wine mixed with eggs and, for children and teetotallers, there was furmenty, a drink which I believe is the ancestor of our present day eggnog. It was made by boiling together milk, sugar and eggs, and sometimes adding raisins or, for those in need of extra protein, venison.

When it came to feasting, no one could outdo the nobility, particularly for oddness and extravagance. Queen Elizabeth I dined almost always alone, and never on less than twenty-four dishes, though she would take but a taste from each. For the coronation of the Henry V’s wife Catherine, they ate porpoise and whale. It was a fish day. King Richard II, at the age of twelve, was entertained by the Bishop of Durham. He was served fourteen oxen lying in salt, two fresh oxen, six score sheep, twelve boars, fourteen calves, one hundred and forty pigs, three hundred marrowbones and six deer. For poultry, the good bishop did not stint. He produced fifty swans, two hundred and ten geese, fifty-eight dozen capons, sixty dozen hens. Additionally, there were four pheasants, five bitterns, two hundred conies, six kids, seventeen dozen pullets, one hundred dozen pigeons, twelve dozen partridges, eight dozen rabbits, ten dozen curlews, twelve dozen brewes, twelve cranes, six dozen gallons of milk, twelve gallons of crème, eleven gallons of curds, three bushels of apples and six thousand eggs.

The French were even more extravagant. At one royal banquet we read a menu more or less like the one mentioned above, with the addition of numerous varieties of fish and cheese and three thousand two hundred litres of wine. Kings and nobles drained their treasuries in feasting, spending millions and competing with each other in gluttony.

At the great banquets, there would be fountains spurting rose water and lawns adorned with rabbits, deer and birds all moulded from minced meat. Subtleties, or sculptures made of sugar, paste and sometimes jelly, were extremely popular and often reached epic proportions. There were hunting scenes, fully armed ships, and even grand castles. Extravagant recipes were imported from Italy to France, where the great lords would make wealthy any man with skill enough to properly prepare them.

The royal chefs were considered to be almost magicians, and would go to great lengths to impress their lords. Peacocks would be cautiously killed and stripped of their skins, then cooked and reclothed so that they would appear to be alive. Camphor soaked in aqua vita was then cast in their mouths and set alight, so the poor creatures breathed fire.

The alchemy of food preparation was taken incredibly seriously and extravagance was always applauded. A ‘rainbow of roast chickens’ was made by dying each one a different colour. For white, egg yolks and flour, for yellow, egg yolk and saffron, for green, parsley pressed through a cloth with egg. Cockatrice was made by cooking the front part of a capon and the back part of a small pig and sewing them together. A fish could be cooked three ways: The tail fried, the middle steamed, and the head roasted. Each part was then dressed with a different coloured sauce, in a manner similar to that of the chickens just mentioned.

The most awful recipe was certainly that enjoyed by the King of Arragon: A goose roasted alive and served not dead. I refrain from describing the recipe.

For the unwelcome guest, there was a recipe so that ‘flesh may look bloody and full of worms, and so be rejected.’ Rabbit’s blood was dried and cast on the meat, to make it look uncooked. Then ‘cut harp strings small, and strew them on the hot flesh, the heat will twist them, and they will move like worms.’

So, do you feel adventurous? Would you like to sink your teeth into a well garnished taste of the past? Well, for those spirited individuals who are handy in the kitchen, I have composed the following short and relatively simple Renaissance menu, along with recipes:

The First Course

Garbage

The Second Course

Whyte Mortrewys of Porke

The Third Course

Caboges

Dessert

Peris in Syrippe

Garbage

Ingredients:

chicken gizzards, livers etc. (heads and feet optional)
bread (dark bread is best, preferably toasted)
black pepper
cinnamon
cloves
mace,
fresh parsley
fresh sage
ginger
lemon juice
salt
saffron

Take faire garbage, chickens heads, feet, livers, gizzards and wash them clean. Caste them into a faire pot of fresh broth of beef. Add powder of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, mace, parsley and sage minced small. Then take bread, steep it in the same broth and then draw the broth through a strainer. Let this broth boil now. Cast therein powdered ginger, lemon juice, salt, and a little saffron, and serve it forth.

Whyte Mortrewys of Porke

Ingredients:

lean pork
almonds
rice flower
oil or lard
sugar
salt
ginger
almonds

Take lean pork and boil it. Remove it when done. Blanche almonds and grind them and mix them up with the broth of the pork and stir in flower of rice and let boil together. Grind the pork small now and mix in minced almonds fried in fresh grease. Then lay this up all flat in a dish. Throw thereto now sugar and salt. Pour on the dressing (the broth) and then strew thereon powdered ginger and almonds.

Caboges

Ingredients:

cabbage
broth
marrowbones
bread (toasted or dried)
saffron
salt

Take faire cabbages and cut them, and wash them clean. Parboil them in faire water, and then press them on a faire board. Chop them, and caste them in a faire pot with good fresh broth, and with marrowbones, and let it boil. Then grate faire bread and caste thereto, and caste thereto saffron and salt. And when thou servest it, knock the marrow out of the bones, and lay two or three gobbets of the marrow in each dish, as seemeth best, and serve it forth.

Peris in Syrippe

Ingredients:

pears
cinnamon
red wine
sugar
powdered ginger
saffron

Take pears and cast them in a faire pot of water. Boil them till they be tender and then take them up and pare them in two or in three. Then take powder of cinnamon, a good quantity, and cast it in good red wine, and cast sugar thereto, and put it in an earthen pot and let it boil. Then cast the pears thereto, and let them boil together awhile. Take powder of ginger, and a little saffron to colour it with.

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.

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.

Now we bring our 2012 schedule to a close with the compendious tour of culinary history and legend, Lives of Notorious Cooks, by Brendan Connell. In Metrophilias, published in 2010, Connell set about laying before the reader thirty-six tales of sexual obsession in thirty-six cities around the world. In Lives of Notorious Cooks he pulls off another such stupendous feat, this time with cuisine, presenting fifty-one fictional biographies of great and notorious cooks (some of them saints, some of them crooks) from pre-history to the last days of the First World War. Informative, sly, uproarious, Lives of Notorious Cooks is a peek behind the scenes of the kitchens of history and a claret call to season the day! Book a table at the banquet by picking up a book here.

Here are one or two comments already scribbled on the napkins of satisfied diners:

Avid foodies may exploit Connell’s fantasies as entertainment to regale fellow diners following an especially boozy repast.

- Mark Knoblauch, Booklist

Historical fantasy at its best.

- Risingshadow.net

A dessert to take to a party: loaded with chocolate edifices, secret-recipe kimchis, ortolans, the never before sighted ‘paradise in Illinois’ and a host of other surprises—this is the pièce de résistance of information and misinformation. To be scattered as clusterbonbons or consumed at your risk, in bed. Each story is packed with wit and a quite dangerous amount of erudition. I would be willing to eat a serve of Maincave’s ‘cosmic breasts’ (order by the pair) if Le Cubisme Culinaire isn’t cited authoritatively in some future tome.

- Anna Tambour

We are also pleased to announce, limited to one hundred copies, the availability of a signed edition (the standard edition but with one hundred signed and numbered bookplates). This signed edition is available from Ziesing Books, Cold Tonnage, Fantastic Literature, and Jeff ‘n’ Joys. Other outlets may be announced later. For further information, please enquire by e-mail at info at chomupress dot com.

The winner of last month’s prize draw is Jeff Matthews, of the Sunshine State, to whom a specially inscribed copy of Crandolin shall before long be making its trans-global way. In the meantime, this month’s prize draw:

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Lives of Notorious Cooks

The prize this month is a uniquely inscribed copy of Lives of Notorious Cooks. 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 ‘No.1 Thick Soup in the Universe’ 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 ‘No.1 Thick Soup in the Universe’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 4th of January, 2013.

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

October is upon us. It’s time to walk bleak city streets, with our coat collars turned up against the chill and gritty wind, to find the yellow-lit window of a barely inhabited cafe, somehow dazzling in the soft blue of the evening, to step inside, remove one’s gloves, order a coffee (or similar beverage) and lose oneself in an existential mystery novel exploring the labyrinth of human identity. Fortunately, Human Pages, by John Elliott, has just been released. The story weaves its web around and within Chance Company, a pre-internet Second Life, which gives its clients the opportunity to take a holiday in prefabricated identities. One such client, Agnes Darshel, makes use of her assumed identity in her search for an errant father. And as the tagline says, “What begins as a masquerade becomes Russian roulette. This may be a game of chance, but the dice, like the guns, are loaded, and someone is marked to lose.” Pick up a copy of Human Pages here, or read on for further information:

Human Pages is a matryoshka doll of a novel, where style and characters nest one inside the next inside the next, the latter being occasionally revived with brandy and the former at once displaying and twisting the traditions of such masterpieces as The Waves and The Saragossa Manuscript.

- Brendan Connell

For those of you who missed it the first time around, the following is an audio interview with John Elliott, in which he talks about Human Pages, about his second novel (Dying to Read, also published by Chômu Press), about Philip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, Georges Perec, and much more:

John Elliott Interview by chomuradioarchive

At this link you can also view a YouTube interview with Quentin S. Crisp in which he talks about (amongst other things) John Elliott’s work. Details of this month’s prize draw follow:

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Human Pages

The prize this month, naturally, is a uniquely inscribed copy of Human Pages. 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 ‘Why are there things in the world?’ (not forgetting the question mark) 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 ‘Why are there things in the world?’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 1st of November.

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.