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.

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.

We are proud of each of our releases and are gratified to know that our titles are now enlivening bookshelves and enriching readers’ lives around the world. Therefore, first of all, please allow us to introduce a small selection of links here relating to those titles and/or their authors:

Reggie Oliver was featured in Suvudu’s Take Five series, telling us five fascinating things about The Dracula Papers. Signed copies of The Dracula Papers, Book I: The Scholar’s Tale are available from the Aldeburgh Bookshop.

Chômu authors Michael Cisco and Brendan Connell were interviewed together by Jeff VanderMeer for the Amazon blog Omnivoracious.

Gestalt Mash features a characteristically lively interview with Justin Isis, author of I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like, and the review blog of stalwart Theaker’s Quarterly features a review of Revenants by Daniel Mills.

Musings on the cover of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales, by Mark Samuels, are to be found at Grim Reviews, and Quentin S. Crisp talks about “Remember You’re a One-Ball!” and other things, at Matt Cardin’s Teeming Brain.

In other news, we now have winners for the Dying to Read and The Great Lover prize draws, and can announce that inscribed copies of the books will be sent to Jérôme-Luc Paulin and Steve Poupard respectively. The winner of the prize draw for Link Arms with Toads! by Rhys Hughes will be announced soon. Please look out for prize draws with our future releases.

Speaking of which, those following developments on the site will have noticed that after Nemonymous Night, we have also scheduled releases for two very different (to each other and to just about anything else we’ve encountered) novels, Jeanette, by Joe Simpson Walker (July release), and The Orphan Palace, by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (October release). The former is in the transgressive tradition of Pauline Réage, with a gritty British sixties setting. This will also be the longest work we have so far published. The latter comes from one of the rising stars of the weird, for whom, we believe, the stars are now right; a novel of madness, written in poetry, or perhaps a novel of poetry, written in madness.

Those awaiting news of the Dadaoism anthology should also rest assured that gears are invisibly turning, and we are working hard on making this something special. However, it should be noted that, due to the high number of submissions, it is taking us some time to sift out the very best. We are excited, however, to have already found a considerable quantity of gold in our prospecting. We will release more information on the contents, scheduling and so on for the anthology when it is available. At present, we are still carefully sifting.

Other things to look forward to include mini-interviews with our authors. Interviews with Brendan Connell and John Elliott have already been conducted, and will be sent out in the near future to everyone on our e-mail list. Please note, you must subscribe in order to receive the interviews and other planned exclusive content. Please also subscribe or keep watching this site for news on further releases and developments.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the language has proved to be too strange and alien to yield up its secrets in the form of a literal translation of what it says. We shall, then, save that mystery for another day. However, there is a winner to the competition – the one who came nearest in spirit the secret hidden in the alien writing. The winner is Brendan Moody. The specially signed copy of the book will be winging its way to him soon. In the meantime, with Brendan’s kind permission, we reproduce his winning entry in full below:

What It Means

I had intended to enter the competition in a timely manner, but a recent personal tragedy, so mundane that beneath equally mundane grief lay a certain resentment that my life should take such a prosaic path, had necessitated a delay. The deadline was drawing near as I sat at my newly-cluttered kitchen table with a pad of notepaper, a pencil, and my well-read but immaculate copy of the red book. The light from the breast-shaped fixture overhead seemed dimmer than usual, and when I looked up I could see that one of the two bulbs within had burnt out at some time in the past week. The sickly yellow glow was, however, strong enough to work by, and I was too exhausted to clatter through cabinets looking for a replacement.

I wasn’t expecting the code-breaking to require much time. It looked likely to be a simple substitution cipher, akin to the cryptograms that fill the pages of mass-market puzzle magazines, and I was reasonably adept at such things. Identifying and extrapolating from the simple logic that guided them had always been a source of deep satisfaction for me. (My wife had often jokingly linked this hobby to my work as an accountant, suggesting that my life was defined by numbers, their order and lack of ambiguity. I had always resented this joke, but had never told her so, and now that resentment was a source of festering, pedestrian guilt.)

But when I took my first close look at the symbols on the cover of the red book, I realized that this puzzle would be more difficult than I had realized. The problem was that the symbols of this new alphabet were so small and so similar, and the gaps between them so minute, that it was difficult to tell where one ended and the next began. Did the message begin with two words of three letters, or one word of six? Were those two symbols identical, or was one at a slightly skewed angle, and therefore unique? I tried copying them onto my notepad in larger print, but halfway through the first line I tossed my pencil down in despair. Suddenly my failure to crack the code became symbolic of other, more serious recent failures, and there seemed no alternative but to slink out to the couch, where I had been sleeping for the past week, and hope that this time I would be able to rest through the night.

It was not to be. I woke in the early morning, with an aching head and a mouth full of saliva. I stumbled to my feet, rubbing brittle sleep-dust from my eyes, and headed for the kitchen, to take a plastic water bottle out of the refrigerator and chug from it until I felt my stomach expanding. But on the way there I happened to glance at the kitchen table, and in the faint light coming through the window from a flickering streetlight outside, I recognized my copy of the red book.

Suddenly, more than water, or sleep, or any other nepenthe, I wanted to know what message lay beneath that bright cover, which seemed almost to mock me, to be laughing at my matted hair, my dirt-encrusted black suit, the crumbs caught in my beard and mustache. I snapped on the kitchen light — even its half-illumination was an assault on my tired eyes — and sat down once more. At first I was as unable to make headway as I had been before, and my frustration grew, reaching its usual peak in a strange sensation, almost like physical arousal, that pierced my genitals, pleasant and yet at the same time unbearable. Just as I thought I would have to retreat for the second time, I blinked, and when my eyes opened again I could see everything.

It was small wonder that my earlier attempt had failed, for what was revealed to me was nothing that could ever be communicated through the incremental, rational processes of frequency analysis and persistent guesswork. This message was of another order altogether, brought to me in what were clearly words of a sort, yet which defied translation into English, or any other human tongue. It was beautiful, promising discovery and clarity, and yet there was something faintly mechanical about it; I felt, without knowing precisely why, that it was appropriate that the cover of the red book should show this message emerging from an old-fashioned typewriter: grace and industry combined. The symbolism was so perfect that I laughed aloud. Perhaps that laughter that prevented me from hearing approaching footsteps. But I think not.

When the door that led from the kitchen to the front porch swung open, I was leaning forward, about to reread the message, if “reread” is an appropriate term for the return to something so fundamental, so circular, that once discovered it is inescapable. I was too excited by my discovery to feel any surprise as I looked over at the shadowy doorway. Even when I recognized the figure emerging from it, I felt only that this, too, must be contained within the message on the cover of the red book. If I looked down at it, all would surely be explained. But I found myself unable to turn away from the creature that had been my wife.

All the signs of the petty tragedy that had destroyed her were gone, and at first she seemed rather ordinary. It was only when she opened her mouth and began to speak that I saw the change, how the hinge of her jaw had been ingeniously altered so that it opened wide, like the mouth of a dummy or puppet. A terrifying thing, I suppose, in the abstract, yet the words she spoke distracted me from any fear. It was a language of buzzes and clicks, like the sound of ancient machinery, and somehow I knew that it was the oral equivalent of the spindly symbols on the cover of the red book.

I could hardly tell where one word ended and the next began, but I knew what she was telling me, this thing that might be wife or might only have borrowed her form. With each buzz, each click, each step toward me across the grey tiles of the floor, she drove further home the message that I had, by some quirk of mind and hour, opened a door that few would ever perceive. There would be no turning back; “turning back” was not a concept that had any meaning on the other side of the threshold across which she was about to lead me. Her wide, wide mouth would cover mine, to make the necessary adjustments, and that would be that. As I prepared myself for what I knew would be a cold, sharp, tantalizing kiss, I managed to turn my head and take one last look in the direction of the red book. I was not at all surprised to find that, its purpose fulfilled, it had disappeared.

Brendan Moody (who couldn’t translate the code and decided to find another way to amuse himself).

Glimpse of the strange vistas inside the 'Special Commemorative Edition' of Polycrates.

Subscribers to our mailing list can also look forward to a short, exclusive interview with the book’s author, Brendan Connell, soon.

In related news, the deadline for the competition for a signed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales has now passed, but so far no one has cracked the code on the book’s front cover, so we have decided to extend the deadline until the 13th of April. Even if no one manages to crack the code, we will ask the author to judge which entry is most interesting and appropriate, so please feel free to have a guess.

If the world has defied recent predictions by not ending today, we can immediately add to the good news by saying that this date also marks the official release for The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by the acclaimed master of modern weird fiction, Mark Samuels.

Previously published as a limited edition, with a slightly different selection of texts, by Ex Occidente Press, this collection, the fourth from Samuels, is now available in paperback for the first time, and may be purchased here.

Here is what people have to say of the collection so far:

It’s hard to review such a fine collection without choking on hyperbole but Mark Samuels has, within 178 pages, created a masterpiece to stand alongside the likes of Ligotti, Machen, Poe and Lovecraft.

- The Black Abyss

Connoisseurs of weird horror are fortunate to live in a time when skilled wordsmiths are so plentiful. However, seers of the truly black, dreadful, and bizarre, remain as rare as they come. Mark Samuels is one name that stands out among the priestly class in supernatural literature.

- Grim Reviews

Competition for unique signed and inscribed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales

Look closely at the writing uncoiling from the workings of the typewriter on the cover of this book and you will see that it is not in the Roman alphabet. If you have an interest in cracking codes, or a knack for guessing or deduction, perhaps you can work out what is written in this strange script. Find the correct answers and you can win a special signed copy of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales. All correct answers will be entered into a draw in two weeks time. To be enter the competition, please sign up to our mailing list and send your answers to info at chomupress dot com with the subject heading of ‘Machen Competition’. The deadline for this competition is the 30th of March.

The Man Who Collected Machen by Mark Samuels

A veritable Rosetta stone for scholars of wonder and terror.

The Great Lover by Michael Cisco

A visionary novel of eros and thanatos.

Dying to Read by John Elliott

A post-Ealing comedy murder mystery.

Nemonymous Night by D.F. Lewis

A spiralling towards the event horizon of weirdness.

Link Arms with Toads! by Rhys Hughes

The perfect introduction to the work of this speculative whimsicalist.

We have also announced the deadline for submissions to the Dadaoism anthology – the end of March.

2011 will be the year in which the Chômu vision for the world begins to come clear, but even this will only be the prelude. Soon our newsletter will be operational. Please subscribe to our mailing list for behind the scenes insights, news and exclusive rarities.

Whatever you are expecting from Chômu, be prepared for some surprises; Chômu Press is not a comfort zone.