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.

The year 2013 draws moodily and mistily to its close, but if there is one bright spot in the nighted firmament, it is the advent of our 25th book. That’s right, with Nothing But a Star, by Jeremy Reed (cover photo by Gregory Hesse-Wagner), we have reached the quarter century in the number of volumes we have published. Jeremy Reed’s stellar novel, Here Comes the Nice, received a starred review at Publishers Weekly when we released it in November 2011. This time we are releasing an eclectic collection of his poetry, essays, lyrics and more besides. We may be shivering at the foggy fag-end of the year and of civilisation, but let us warm our hearts by the starlight of poetry.

Glamorous, autumnal, visionary, distilling the future from the present moment, glittering with pop spontaneity and smooth with velvet melancholy, capturing the dread and tingle of the moods of London, and spinning out from the light-polluted urban night across the universe, Nothing But a Star is the perfect book to bring a decadent, empurpled twinkle to the long, cold nights of December. Part intimate scrapbook, part jeweller’s tray, Nothing But a Star contains, as well as poetry, an essay on the suicides of Hart Crane and Harry Crosby, a playscript for a version of The Picture of Dorian Gray set in the 21st century, a pop libretto written for Marc Almond and based on J-K Huysmans’ À rebours, and other specimens of dopamine in literary form. Catch a falling star by picking up a copy here. There now follows the testimony of other stargazers:

Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man who fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautréamont and de Sade, and powered by the most exotic fuels the imagination has ever devised.

- J.G. Ballard

The most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.

- Björk

The man is light worlds apart from his contemporaries in poetry.

- Andrew Loog Oldham

Jeremy Reed may be heard reciting one of his poems as part of the act The Ginger Light in the inset clip below:

As usual, there is a prize draw, details of which may be found at the bottom of the announcement. Please also remember, if you require books for Christmas, and they appear to be temporarily out of stock at Amazon, that The Book Depository delivers worldwide at no extra cost. And for those anticipating the coming year, please look out for Brendan Connell’s The Galaxy Club, which continues our astronomical theme. And finally, in other news, the collaborative novel by Chômu authors Brendan Connell, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp, The Cutest Girl in Class, a less-than-simple tale of “boy meets inanimate object” (Joe Simpson Walker) was released last month from Snuggly Books.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Nothing But a Star

The results of the Member prize draw are as follows: Caleb Wilson, of Illinois, was the winner of a specially inscribed copy of Michael Cisco’s Member, which should be on its way to him, or has perhaps already arrived.

This month’s prize draw, of course, is for a specially inscribed copy of Jeremy Reed’s Nothing But a Star. For anyone unfamiliar with them, please allow me to repeat the unchanging 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 ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ 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 ‘But some of us are looking at the stars’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 3rd of January, 2014.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still to be with P.F. Jeffery.