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.

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.

Other winners, previously unannounced are Steve Duffy and Marc Lyth (sometimes known as Weber). The former won not only an inscribed copy of Nemonymous Night, but the entire ten-volume set of the acclaimed Nemonymous journal, pictured here:

The latter won a copy of Link Arms with Toads! personalised with a poem about himself by the author, Rhys Hughes:

Also included with the prize were a copy of the anthology Cthulhu Unbound and other goodies detailed on Rhys Hughes’ blog.

Here is the poem:

Caught in a weber spun by himself
Marc waits patiently for the secret
spider of his mind to come
and suck out his juice
with all the stealth of an eight-legged elf.

“Fangs for that!” he’ll say. “Most kind of
you, dear spider. Have a nice day!”
or words to that effect.

He lives alone with his books and his cat
and a balding head
which he has never yet read
because he prefers hair-raising tales.
He dismantled radiators in his youth
and we find that’s proof (if any were needed)
that he deserves to be eaten
by the secret spider of his mind.

The cat’s name is Balrog:
that’s another reason.

A jujitsu black belt, Marc should be able
to handle himself in any situation
but the secret spider of his mind is an expert too
and knows all his moves.
Before closing its jaws on his quivering flesh
it will dance for him
an eightfold Can Can,
the sort of thing we can all do without.
But that’s Lyth, I guess.

As mentioned in a previous update, Jérôme-Luc Paulin and Steve Poupard won inscribed copies of Dying to Read and The Great Lover, respectively.

Our next book to be released will be The Orphan Palace, by Jospeh S. Pulver, Sr., of whom Matt Cardin speaks thus: “Joe Pulver is like the answer to some arcane riddle: What do you get when you cross one of Plato’s Muse-maddened poets with a Lovecraftian lunatic, and then give their offspring to be raised by Raymond Chandler and a band of Beats? His work caters to a literary hunger you didn’t even know you had, and does it darkly and deliciously.”

We hope you will enjoy what remains of the summer until that release, and use your time wisely in catching up with the Chômu catalogue. Please also look forward to our November and December releases, Here Comes the Nice, from the legendary Jeremy Reed and The Secret Life of the Panda, a wonderful collection from Nick Jackson.

Finally, the exclusive Brendan Connell interview was sent out to all our subscribers (check your spam if you missed it); remember to subscribe to our e-list for future interviews (John Elliott and Joe Simpson Walker coming soon), to receive updates and to be eligible for future prize draws and competitions.

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.

“Because I have experimented with so many different genres, styles and moods, not one of my individual books to date really provides a full overview of what I actually do. Link Arms With Toads! is different because it’s a fully representative sampler of my entire body of work and has been designed as a showcase of the new genre I recklessly tried to invent when I was younger. This book is certainly the best entry point to my body of fiction and if you don’t like Toads! you can be confident you won’t like my other books, so it’s also the financially wisest choice for any new reader.”

So says Rhys Hughes, the author of the collection in question, Link Arms with Toads!, which we gleefully release to the world today, a showcase of the genre that Hughes is calling ‘romanti-cynical’. In this collection you will find elements, indeed, of ghost story, gothic tale, science fiction, and much more, but all of these elements combined and transformed into a protean world of philosophical polymorphous perversity. Evolving through the exponential mutations of paradox, the ‘romanti-cynicism’ of Rhys Hughes swells the biodiversity of literature’s multiverse with innumerable species of medicinal eccentricity.

Some people have already obtained copies, and reviews of the books may be read here, here, and possibly elsewhere. We hope the reader will take this chance to make an acquantaince with the work of Rhys Hughes, by ordering a copy here. We hope also there will be many more chances for reacquaintance in the future. May we suggest further samplers such as Mink Farm Explodes, or perhaps, Pink Karmic Woad?

From the reviews:

…Hughes is the perfect chronicler of … absurdity, not simply because of his gift for whimsy, but because that gift is accompanied by a feeling for the symbolic value of the strange.

- The Stars at Noonday

Reading Rhys Hughes is a leisurely process: one feel’s that reading with too much speed the goodies may slip away unnoticed. He challenges our wit, our ability to imagine, our intellect and our table of entertainment. He is a complete pleasure.

- Grady Harp

Prize Draw for unique commemorative copy of Link Arms with Toads!

Regular visitors to the website will by now be familiar with the pattern of the prize draws, but please allow us to repeat it here. We would like to announce a prize draw for a signed and uniquely inscribed commemorative copy of Link Arms with Toads!. To be entered for this draw, please sign up to our mailing list and send an e-mail with the subject heading ‘Toads!’ 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 ‘Toads!’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 1st of June.

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.