Chômu Press » Steve Rasnic Tem

The Surrey girls came marching in

Chomu Press Admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:32:18 +0000

The goddess smiles upon us today and allows us to release Jane, by P.F. Jeffery, the first in a projected twelve novels in the Warriors of Love series. We are also most blessed in the wraparound art from Nimit Malavia, which forms Jane’s magnificent cover. As a standalone coming-of-age tale in a future world of Sapphic romance, or as the first unrolling of a panoramic tapestry of picturesque intrigue, adventure and frolic, Jane is a lyrical and a rollicking read with a plenitude of fine and life-affirming detail. Details of the prize draw are below, but for those who don’t want to take a chance, you may embark immediately upon the journey of discovery by picking up a copy here.

Legendary weirdmonger D.F. Lewis describes the novel thus:

…a bombardment of incidents and names, evocatively conveyed through passages of honed prose and dialogue. After a tearful farewell to Modesty, I could actually sense with many senses the sea trip, the sea battle, the sea-sickness, the subsequent ceremony. I wallowed in the emerging Imperial politics, the description of the Empress who takes more than just a simple fancy to our fiscal inspector heroine.

Meanwhile, our own Quentin S. Crisp says of Jane:

A breathless adventure, full of the gentle poetry of place and time, it manages somehow to combine pagan fertility comedy with Sapphic science fiction. Not a combination you come across every day.

In other news, the winner of our March prize draw is Ben Hostmark. A specially inscribed copy of Steve Rasnic Tem’s Onion Songs has already been sent to him, along with a limited-edition-of-one story, specially written by the author, ‘Benjamin’:

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Jane

And now for the promised details of this month’s prize draw. For the May prize draw we are, of course, giving away a uniquely inscribed copy of Jane. 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 Surrey girls came marching in’ 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 Surrey girls came marching in’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 31st of May, 2013.

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

Pain and fear are the spices that make you cry

Chomu Press Admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:44:22 +0000

Boasting wraparound art from Jessica Fortner, our first release of 2013 is Onion Songs, by Steve Rasnic Tem, a career-spanning collection of 42 short stories, representing over 30 years of work and surely consolidating Tem’s reputation as a writer of impressive scope and vision. The stories collected in this volume showcase the off-beat and experimental side of Tem’s fiction. With universal themes, such as aging, death, loss, relationships, and with imagery that is both gritty and bizarre, Onion Songs peels back the layers of human existence like no other story collection, strangeness and realism alternating until they become, ultimately, interchangeable. Sample the taste of onion soup for the soul by picking up a copy here.

A starred review at Publishers Weekly describes the collection thus:

Tem lets his characters, their situations, and their emotions creep up slowly on the reader. His style is thoughtful and poetic, and the tension he builds effectively sustains well-crafted plots. He has found a perfect balance between the bizarre and the straight-forward…

Meanwhile, Peter Tennant says:

Consistent in quality and diverse in content, as impressive as it is impressionistic… Onion Songs is the strongest collection of short stories that I’ve read in the last year.

The winner of December’s prize draw is Johnny Core, in the south of England, to whom a signed and bookplated copy of Brendan Connell’s Lives of Notorious Cooks has been sent. And now, below, this month’s prize draw:

Prize Draw for an inscribed copy of Onion Songs

This month, the prize draw is for a uniquely inscribed copy of Onion Songs. The author also promises that he will write and print out an entirely new piece of flash fiction, as a first edition of one, which he will inscribe to the winner. Here are the rules 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 ‘The world is just a great big onion’ 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 world is just a great big onion’ subject heading to the address mentioned. Only one entry allowed per person. Deadline for draw, the 29th of March, 2013.

Those on our mailing list can also expect exclusive interviews from Chômu authors. The next interview is still with Anna Tambour, author of Crandolin.