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.

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.

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.