After our summer hiatus, we return triumphantly with Member, our third novel from the incomparable Michael Cisco, the first writer to have a Chômu publishing hat-trick. (Incidentally, Cisco is interviewed at Weird Fiction Review at this link, where he talks about Member, Franz Kafka and other things.) Officially released today, and with alluring cover artwork from Sergio Membrillas, Member is a sustained tracking shot, from the inside, following one person’s exploration of the cosmic stitching behind the tapestry of the everyday. It is the tale of the hapless spiritual seeker, Thanks, determined to go beyond the human by constant application of his ‘practice’, but who nonetheless accidentally recruits himself into:

Chorncendantra — the current phase of the cosmic game originating on the artificial planetary system; the game is played by two arbitrarily determined teams across many planets. Chorncendantra is the universal systemmechanism. It is the human game.

You may non-accidentally recruit yourself by picking up a copy here.

No less a literary light than Brian Evenson describes Member as:

A rivetingly strange novel in which Cisco mixes game theory, serious philosophy, SF, and dark fantasy into something at once unreal and really entrancing. Kind of like what might happen if Wyndham Lewis decided to write like M. John Harrison and had Martin Heidegger as his editor.

Below, you will find details on how to enter the Member prize draw, to win a copy of the book specially inscribed by the author. Before that, some general news. November 2012’s Chômu release, Crandolin, by Anna Tambour, has been shortlisted in the Novel category of the World Fantasy Awards. Read a sample of the novel at this link. If you are attending the World Fantasy Convention this year, please look out for us in the dealers’ room, as we expect to be there. The Cutest Girl in Class, a collaboration by Chômu authors Justin Isis, Brendan Connell and Quentin S. Crisp, details of which can be found in the post at this link, is now at the printers and set for a November release. It is still, of course, available for pre-order by writing to evans_lichamleas[at]yahoo[dot]com, though please note that health problems at Snuggly Books might cause delayed responses to e-mails. Finally, if you enjoyed the Chômu Radio Archive interview with John Elliott, then you may enjoy Joe Campbell and Quentin S. Crisp’s audio diary of their Hythe Adventure.

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Member

And now for the details, as promised above, of this month’s prize draw. For the October prize draw we are, of course, giving away a uniquely inscribed copy of Member. For anyone unfamiliar with them, here are the oft-repeated 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 ‘The game is called “Find Your Adversary”’ 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 ‘The game is called “Find Your Adversary”’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 31st of October, 2013.

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

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.

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.

Copies of Celebrant, by Michael Cisco, have already leaked out and found their way into the hands of the keen-eyed and well-informed, but today is the official release date. With lush wraparound art from Christopher Conn Askew, Celebrant is Chômu’s sixteenth release. As Publishers Weekly summarises, the novel is set in the possibly mythical city of Votu, “a fantastical realm where time runs backward, the inhabitants worship five ‘natural’ robots that formed spontaneously, and gangs of theriomorphic waifs (rabbit girls and pigeon girls) struggle to survive as urban scavengers.” Reporting intrepidly from Votu, China Miéville informs us, “With Michael Cisco doing things like this, sometimes it feels like the rest of literature might as well get up and head home.” What should you expect in Votu? Pick up your ticket to the frontiers of reality here. And before you leave, a brief excerpt from the travel guide:

In Votu, time is commonly supposed to run backward. It is insisted, however vaguely, that, everywhere else, what exists is understood to protrude from the past into the present. In Votu, what exists is understood to protrude from the future into the present. Time pours out in a stream whose current goes toward the past, although their preferred metaphor for this is a burning incense stick: the past is ashes, still retaining the shape of the stick for a time, then dispersing to dust, while the future is unground leaves, and the present is the ring of fire.

See below for details of the Celebrant prize draw, or, to find or lose yourself straight away in Votu, buy yourself a copy here.

Other news

Because of the large number of submissions already received, regretfully, Chômu is temporarily closed for submissions. The good news is that, among those submissions read so far, there is already more great material than we can hope to schedule – good news for us and our readers, of course. Sadly, there will be many submissions that we cannot take on. Many thanks to all those who have submitted, on whom we rely, for your patience and understanding.

Our schedule for 2012 is now full and looks like this:

May – Dadaoism (An Anthology) (already released)
June – Celebrant, by Michael Cisco (released today)
July – I Am a Magical Teenage Princess, by Luke Geddes
August – summer break and a chance for you to catch up with the Chômu back catalogue
September – All God’s Angels, Beware!, by Quentin S. Crisp
October – Human Pages, by John Elliott
November – Crandolin, by Anna Tambour (page recently uploaded on site)
December – (title to be announced), by Brendan Connell

There is also a new name at the bottom of the ‘Our Books’ page.

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Celebrant

As usual, we are presenting another prize draw this month. Before we do so, however, we would like to announce the winner of last month’s prize draw, for a uniquely inscribed copy of Dadaoism (An Anthology). And the winner is… Brian Warfield of Philadelphia. The editors of the anthology will be personalising a copy to send his way soon.

The prize this month, of course, is a uniquely inscribed copy of Celebrant. 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 ‘Celebrate – for all you’ve changed me’ (remember the important apostrophe) 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 ‘Celebrate – for all you’ve changed me’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 29th of June.

The first Chômu release of 2012, Dadaoism (An Anthology), is something of a lepidopterous monster (perhaps not unlike Mothra). It has taken many times more person-hours than our single-author volumes to produce, featuring 26 pieces of writing (short stories, flash fiction, novellas and poems, as well as work slightly harder to categorise) from 25 authors, a killer cover design from Anil Nataly of Bigeyebrow, and what we believe to be stylish mayhem and mystery throughout. As well as authors previously published under the Chômu banner, such as Reggie Oliver, Michael Cisco, Nick Jackson, Jeremy Reed and Brendan Connell, we are also very pleased to present a plethora of authors new to us, and perhaps to the reader: Katherine Khorey, Jesse Kennedy, Megan Lee Beals, John Cairns, Kristine Ong Muslim, Peter Gilbert, and more. The full table of contents is viewable here, from where you may also pick up a copy for yourself.

Quoting the introduction from co-editor Justin Isis, the first online review of the anthology concludes thus:

“Feel free to eat this book, tear out any pages which displease you, add corrections and emendations. Feel free, as always, to write lies in the Book of Life.” A truer characterization of unbridled rebel spirit and richly attitudinal contents under pressure could not be made.

- Gordon Hauptfleisch, Blogcritics

This is the first of a projected seven books for 2012. (Although we are publishing fewer books this year than last, with the help of this anthology, we are publishing more authors.) Please watch this site for details of future titles and general news, or sign up here to our mailing list. (Speaking of general news, and for those who missed it, ‘An Interview with Quentin S. Crisp’, a short film by R.B. Russell, in which mention is made, amongst other things, of Chômu, is viewable on YouTube, at this link.)

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of Dadaoism (An Anthology)

We are presenting another prize draw this month, this time, of course, for a uniquely inscribed copy of Dadaoism (An Anthology). The prize copy will be inscribed and otherwise creatively defaced by the editors, Justin Isis and Quentin S. Crisp. The same rules apply as in previous prize draws: 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, it’s not weird fiction’ (remember the important apostrophe) 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, it’s not weird fiction’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 31st of May.

Next week, we release Dadaoism (An Anthology), a book that has been absorbing a great deal of our energy for some time. A review of the anthology has already gone online here. Gordon Hauptfleisch describes the book as:

…an often challenging but ultimately rewarding collection of angst, anxiety, and alienation as conveyed in whimsy, wit, and wordplay.

In June and July, we return to single-author volumes, with the novel Celebrant, by Michael Cisco (a work of which China Miéville, has said, “With Michael Cisco doing things like this, sometimes it feels like the rest of literature might as well get up and head home”), and a debut collection of short fiction – I Am a Magical Teenage Princess – by the inestimable Luke Geddes. This latter features a cover design from special guest designer, Rian Hughes. Both books have been reviewed favourably by Publishers Weekly. And here are the links of the Publishers Weekly reviews for Celebrant and I Am a Magical Teenage Princess.

Christopher Conn Askew, who produced beautiful wraparound cover art for Celebrant, will also be producing another lush wraparound cover for the September paperback reprint of Quentin S. Crisp’s collection All God’s Angels, Beware! (previously an Ex Occidente limited edition). October, November and December willl bring work from John Elliott, Anna Tambour and Brendan Connell. Please watch this site or subscribe to our mailing list at this link (or using the ‘Free updates’ widget on our home page) for further details.

For a more in-depth view of what is happening at Chômu, and greater detail on some of the books mentioned here, as well as some of those not mentioned here, please read Jason Rolfe’s interview with Quentin S. Crisp at Bibliomancy.

Finally, Chômu would like to congratulate Reggie Oliver and Michael Cisco for their nominations in the novel category for the 2011 Shirley Jackson Awards (thank you for entrusting your novels to us), and to thank whomever nominated Chômu Press to the shortlist for the PS Publishing Independent Press Award. Thank you, and get suavée!

First, for those who missed them last year, a selection of Chômu-related links. Chômu was named best UK small press, and I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like, by Justin Isis, joint best collection with Ralph Robert Moore’s I Smell Blood, in Peter Tennant’s pick of 2011, over at the Black Static website. Also at Black Static, an in-depth interview with Quentin S. Crisp about Chômu Press. Chômu was also named best small press of 2011 at Johnny Mains’ Occasionally Horrific. And Weird Fiction Review, naming Michael Cisco’s The Great Lover as the “weird book of the year”, had the following to say in their 2011 round-up:

As for who is taking the most chances, that’s also clear: Chômu Press.

2012 promises a more relaxed schedule than 2011, but with the help of the Dadaoism anthology, we will still be publishing more writers this year than last. And on that subject, we can now reveal the table of contents, as follows:

1 ‘Portrait of a Chair’, by Reggie Oliver
2 ‘Autumn Jewel’, by Katherine Khorey
3 ‘Visiting Maze’, by Michael Cisco
4 ‘The Houses Among the Trees’, by Colin Insole
5 ‘Affection 45′, by Brendan Connell
6 ‘M-Funk Vs. Tha Futuregions of Inverse Funkativity’, by Justin Isis
7 ‘Spirit and Corpus‘, by Yarrow Paisley
8 ‘Timelines’, by Nina Allan
9 ‘Jimmy Breaks up with His Imaginary Girlfriend’, by Jimmy Grist
10 ‘Body Poem’, by Peter Gilbert
11 ‘Testing Spark’, by Daniel Mills
12 ‘Noises’, by Joe Simpson Walker
13 ‘Romance, with Mice’, by Sonia Orin Lyris
14 ‘Grief (The Autobiography of a Tarantula)’, by Jesse Kennedy
15 ‘Orange Cuts’, by Paul Jessup
16 ‘Instance’, by John Cairns
17 ‘Kago Ai’, by Ralph Doege
18 ‘Fighting Back’, by Rhys Hughes
19 ‘Nowhere Room’, by Kristine Ong Muslim
20 ‘Koda Kumi’, a Justin Isis re-mix of ‘Italiannetto’ by Quentin S. Crisp
21 ‘The Lobster Kaleidoscope’, by Julie Sokolow
22 ‘The Eaten Boy’, by Nick Jackson
23 ‘Poppies’, by Megan Lee Beals
24 ‘Abra Raven’, by D.F. Lewis
25 ‘Pissing in Barbican Lake’, by Jeremy Reed
26 ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicides’, by Jeremy Reed

Beyond the Dadaoism horizon, please keep a look out for announcements regarding exciting new work from Michael Cisco, and the sparkling debut collection from Luke Geddes.

While we are here we would also like to announce the winner of the prize draw for a specially inscribed copy of Nick Jackson’s The Secret Life of the Panda. The winner is Caroline Callaghan, of West Yorkshire, who will be receiving a copy of the collection shortly, with an inscription and some illustrations added by hand.

The next exclusive interview to be sent out to our e-mail subscribers will be with author Rhys Hughes. If you have not already signed up to our mailing list, and would like to receive interviews and updates, please sign up here.

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.

Today we are proud to announce the release of a book that we know has been much anticipated – the sixth novel from International Horror Guild Award winner Michael Cisco, The Great Lover. A many-spired citadel of a novel, The Great Lover has its foundations in an underground of untamed vision, but its architecture is that of poetic rigour. This is a work to make the divisions between genre and literary fiction seem what they are—the preoccupations of a previous century. Discover this new frontier of fiction, for yourself, here.

In his Foreword to the novel, Rhys Hughes poses the question, what can you say about a perfect work of art? Let us quote what some have said about it below:

The latest phantasmagorical offering from Cisco (The Narrator) is a fusion of dark fantasy, literary fiction, and existential horror that revolves around the eponymous character of the sewerman, an undead tramp in search of capital-L Love who can enter into women’s dreams. As he pines for a blind woman named Vera, he also helps a disgraced academic turned prophet to establish a “ptochocratic” cult that wants to create its own reality underground and battle a soul-sucking plague of white noise. The surreal narrative is something like a 400-page T.S. Eliot poem: otherworldly, lyrical, deeply philosophical, and supersaturated with extraordinary imagery and ideas (like the Prosthetic Libido, a golem-like device constructed to house a scientist’s unwanted desire). Fans of stylish and thematically sophisticated weird fiction should seek out this mad testament to Cisco’s visionary genius.

- Publishers Weekly

It seemed as if The Tyrant was the biggest monster Cisco could make, but The Great Lover is now his new masterpiece. Brilliant, light-years beyond … still marauding. He should receive plaudits for conceiving the Prosthetic Libido alone. Cisco has an identity as much as any writer I’ve read

- Thomas Ligotti

Prize Draw for uniquely inscribed copy of The Great Lover

We would also like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed copy of The Great Lover. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Great Lover’ 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 ‘Great Lover’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 28th of April.