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.

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.

On July 3, 2008, one month before killing himself, Thomas M. Disch wrote a poem in which he referenced 19th century French author Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly. Disch introduces him as “the Walter Scott of Normandy” and mentions how “in his old age, he drew about him in his poor Paris lodgings the best of the young generation which has since made his fame secure.” Disch’s mention is intended as ironic; Barbey d’Aurevilly is all but unknown in the Anglosphere today.

Who was Barbey d’Aurevilly? Geoffrey Wall’s introduction to the Penguin edition of Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale states:

“Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, the mischievous high-Catholic dandy, declared that the whole thing was disagreeably ‘dry’ and overdone. Flaubert, so he argued, ‘stays on the surface, knows no feeling, no passion, no enthusiasm, no ideal, no insight, no reflections, no depth.’ Maliciously perceptive, Barbey d’Aurevilly mocked Flaubert’s cult of perfectionism, inviting his readers to imagine a crowd that ‘goes down on its knees – like the three kings at the crib of the Infant Jesus – before the box that contains Flaubert’s manuscript.’”

Wikipedia:

“Beloved of fin-de-siècle decadents, Barbey d’Aurevilly is a classic example of what lengths the Romantics were capable of; his writings make it plain why the genre fell into discredit among later Victorians. He held extreme Catholic views, yet wrote on the most risqué subjects (a contradiction the English apparently found more disturbing than the French; Voltairianism would have been something else); he gave himself aristocratic airs and hinted at a mysterious past, though his parentage was entirely respectable and his youth humdrum and innocent.”

Barbey d’Aurevilly also reviewed À rebours, “the breviary of the decadence,” upon its release. J.-K. Huysmans states that “in the midst of all this hurly-burly, a single writer alone saw clear, Barbey d’Aurevilly, who, be it said, had no personal acquaintance with me.” Huysmans is referring to the ultimatum Barbey d’Aurevilly offered him in the review: “After such a book, it only remains for the author to choose between the muzzle of a pistol and the foot of the cross.” Huysmans, like Barbey d’Aurevilly, would eventually choose the latter.

At present, few books seem available in English. One is a manual on Dandyism with a preface by Quentin Crisp (not [Chomu co-founder] Quentin S. Crisp); another is Les Diaboliques, a collection of stories dealing with the common theme of murderesses, which is available for free, online, in French. I used online translation for the preface, and from it the following phrases were generated:

“Real stories of this civilized time and if divine that, when one warns to write them, it seems that it is the Devil which dictated… The Devil is like God. Manicheism which is the stock of all the great heresies of The Middle Ages, the Manicheism is not so stupid! Malebranche said that God recognized himself with the use OF the MEANS MORE. Devil too.”

“One wanted to make a small Museum of these Ladies, while waiting for the Museum, even smaller is made, ladies which make them during and contrasts in the company, because all things are double. Art has two lobes, like the brain. Nature resembles these women who have a blue eye and an eye black.”

My own interest in Barbey d’Aurevilly stems from his embodying two seemingly contradictory ideas: religious conservatism and avant-garde fashion. This tendency, symptomatic of a certain stratum of 19th century French literature, can be seen also in Huysmans’s movement from Naturalism to religious themes. This combination is difficult to imagine in English literature; although a kind of spirituality exists in the work of Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, it remains at the level of a vague ideal. Few Victorian writers seem capable of summoning the satanic ecstasies of Huysmans’s La-Bas; even Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray comes off as derivative when held up to the standard of À rebours.

Where does this tendency come from? It might help to examine the seminal works of Flaubert, a writer typically credited with creating the modern form of literary Realism. As of 2008, Flaubert’s style in Madame Bovary and L’Éducation sentimentale is still used as a primer for Realist techniques – see critic James Wood’s recent How Fiction Works for an excellent analysis. But a closer inspection reveals that Flaubert, who claimed to detest Realism, more often wrote in a fantastic mode. His earliest work, La Tentation de Saint Antoine, is a near-Surrealist drama. His shorter works collected in Trois Contes have the atmosphere of fairy tales and medieval legends, and their concomitant violence – consider the flatly mystical ending of “Saint Julien l’hospitalier,” in which a horribly rotting leper is transfigured into Christ, or the grotesque death of John the Baptist in “Herodias,” a story which evokes its Oriental setting with all the vividness of a Gustave Moreau painting. Then there’s the historical novel Salammbô, with its flesh-eating idol, Moloch. And this dialogue from the early story “The Dance of Death,” which seems to prefigure H.P. Lovecraft rather than Henry James:

“When God’s work of creation has ceased; when the heavens have disappeared and the stars are quenched; when spirits rise from their retreats and wander in the depths with sighs and groans; then, what unpicturable delight for thee! Then shalt thou sit on the eternal thrones of heaven and of hell–shalt overthrow the planets, stars, and worlds–shalt loose thy steed in fields of emeralds and diamonds–shalt make his litter of the wings torn from the angels,–shalt cover him with the robe of righteousness! Thy saddle shall be broidered with the stars of the empyrean,–and then thou wilt destroy it! After thou hast annihilated everything, –when naught remains but empty space,–thy coffin shattered and thine arrows broken, then make thyself a crown of stone from heaven’s highest mount, and cast thyself into the abyss of oblivion. Thy fall may last a million aeons, but thou shalt die at last. Because the world must end; all, all must die,–except Satan! Immortal more than God! I live to bring chaos into other worlds!”

Examined in this light, Flaubert’s Realist works can be seen as exceptions rather than the rule, and so it seems strange that he’s still known primarily to English readers for a novel of provincial adultery. But the fact that the casual reader is familiar only with Madame Bovary is perhaps not surprising, given the Anglosphere’s Realist bias (to be fair, the other side of the coin is the long tradition of the English ghost story). And if most of Flaubert’s work goes unread, what hope does Barbey d’Aurevilly have? Disch’s poem and its mention of his “secure fame” seem painful to me. Oscar Wilde’s attempt to import Symbolist decadence into English had some influence on Modernism, but for the most part has had little mainstream effect: in the Anglosphere, at least, the fantastic/mystical tradition seems not just dead but forgotten. Instead we’re flooded with, on the one hand, tedious “magic realism” and empty formalism, and on the other, derivative “Realism” of the kind Flaubert would have disdained – Flaubert, who famously chose the theme of Madame Bovary not because of any especial interest, but because it was deliberately banal.

Why doesn’t the English-speaking world get the joke?

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.

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.

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.

Deeper inside the customised book, a tantalising glimpse of the continuing bricolage.

Below are the full cover and a detail from the prize draw Dadaoism anthology, the cover being decorated with stickers that feature – rather dizzyingly – the photographs of the decorated cover. Madness! The interior is yet to be enhanced:

The world-within-world magick sticker enhancement of the Dadaoism cover.

A close up of one of the stickers. Either that, or something the nature of which we don't understand.

And here is a glimpse of Michael Cisco’s signature:

Michael Cisco's anagrammatic signature.

Our next Chômu release is Quentin S. Crisp’s All God’s Angels, Beware!, due out very soon. For all those of you who will be in the UK this September, do remember that Chômu Press have a table in the dealers’ room at FantasyCon 2012, and that Quentin S. Crisp and Reggie Oliver will be signing copies of All God’s Angels, Beware! and The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar’s Tale respectively late on the morning of the Saturday of that weekend.

Finally, the cover of John Elliott’s masterpiece, Human Pages, has been uploaded to the Chômu website here. Cover art for Anna Tambour’s Crandolin and Brendan Connell’s Lives of Notorious Cooks will be unveiled soon.

Never been a beauty queen. But she was a magical teenage princess. Chômu’s seventeenth publication – officially released today – appropriately enough, is I Am a Magical Teenage Princess by Luke Geddes. We have been fortunate enough to work on this occasion with design megastar Rian Hughes, who has blessed us with a remarkably winsome-yet-wicked cover. Reviews are already beginning to appear on the internet, at Publishers Weekly and The British Fantasy Society. You don’t have to be a beauty queen or seventeen to enjoy I Am a Magical Teenage Princess. This is a book for the magical teenage princess in all of us. Pick up a copy here and find out for yourself. Or read this blurb explaining the book’s appeal first, and then pick up a copy:

It’s easy to sneer at ‘pop-culture detritus,’ but let’s face it—no matter how timeless and profound and unique we imagine our selves to be, we have no choice but to make them from the trash on hand. This is especially true of the teen bricoleur, that poor soul who has to cobble herself together from available materials: Scooby-Doo, drive-ins, soap operas in space, Wonder Woman, the Archies. The wonderfully playful and witty stories in Luke Geddes’ I Am a Magical Teenage Princess show just how resourcefully and delightfully that work can be done. You say whimsy and depth are incompatible? Nonsense. This is deep whimsy, is a book that employs rollicking sharp humor to explore the sad, solitary adolescent in all of us. Luke Geddes is a big talent, and this is a marvelous debut.

- Michael Griffith, author of Spikes

See below for details of the Magical Princess prize draw, or, if you can’t wait that long, buy yourself a copy here.

Other news

Just uploaded to HTML Giant is an article by Julie Sokolow on Chômu’s Dadaoism anthology and the psychedelic experience. A page has recently been added to the Chômu website for our December release, Brendan Connell’s loftily demented Lives of Notorious Cooks. With that and our November release – Anna Tambour’s Crandolin, of which David Kowalski has written, “It’s like it was written by a demented chef” – it seems we can expect a great deal of gastronomic irreality from Chômu’s year end. Finally, in our mini round-up of news, don’t miss the interview with Chômu writer Justin Isis at Inter Nova. The interview was originally posted last year in German, but has now been translated into English.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of I Am a Magical Teenage Princess

The prize draw last month was won by Gabriel Brum, of Brazil, to whom a specially inscribed copy of Michael Cisco’s Celebrant has now been sent.

The prize this month is for a uniquely inscribed copy of I Am a Magical Teenage Princess. We will repeat 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 am, personally, a magical teenage princess’ 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 am, personally, a magical teenage princess’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 1st of August.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview will be with Luke Geddes, author of I Am a Magical Teenage Princess – coming to the in-boxes of our subscribers soon.