The Deixis Press Occasionally - Issue #60
The Deixis Press Occasionally - Issue #60
Howdy, chapter chasers,
It’s a bit rich, isn’t it, calling this newsletter a “weekly”? Well, I’m not calling it that now, so none of us needs to worry anymore.
What on EARTH have you been doing? Over here we’ve been up to our necks in bookish business.
We had a brilliant launch for Chloe Turner’s Blue Hawk in her hometown, in the ancient1 market house at Minchinhampton. Chloe let me sleep in her house! And she didn’t even lock me in my room from the outside for her own protection.
We had another brilliant launch for William Parker’s The Last Doorbell in his actual home, with his extremely charming friends.
I’ve arranged YET ANOTHER brilliant launch for Richard Gadz’s THE EATER OF FLIES on Friday 4 October at Vout-O-Reenee’s. This will also be a second launch for Chloe and William! If you are signed up to my events mailing list, you will have received an invitation today. (If you are not and you want to be, just reply to this email and I’ll sort you out for this and future invitations.)
Each of these books has been getting fantastic reviews on Goodreads and Netgalley. I was particularly surprised and gratified by the attention Bill’s book got from being part of Pride Book Tours. I looked at the preorder numbers one day and they had me like:
I’ve, uh, tried to start doing some TikTok videos, because the Pride Book Tours thing mentioned above had a couple of BookTok folks involved, which I think helped raise Bill’s profile. You can follow me if you want; I enjoy using TikTok as a viewer, but I find videoing myself deeply cringey. Oh well, we find daily new ways to humiliate ourselves in the name of profit and progress.
I had a nice phone call from a woman at InPress; I don’t know if they’ve decided to take me on or not, but I do think it would be helpful to have a distributor and thereby become a little more legit.
I’ve been working with a social media person who is probably reading this wondering why I’m writing this instead of the things we agreed I’d talk about. The thing is, I didn’t write down what I was supposed to talk about, and now I’ve forgotten. But all of these things are good things to mention.
BUT SPEAKING OF GOOD THINGS! Next year I have two very exciting books coming out that I can now tell you about!
PARALLELS - James Kinsley
OH THAT’S RIGHT, fffffffformer presidents: Mister Kinsley is back! This was actually the first manuscript James showed me, some time ago, and while it was good then, we’ve worked on it together a bit and now it’s very, very good. What’s it about? I’ll use James’s own words:
Parallels is a psychological sci-fi thriller about two men experiencing debilitating blackouts and hallucinations of an alternative life - but is Jeff’s quiet, directionless life a product of the alien toxin that Jezz was exposed to on the battlefields of China, fending off an alien invasion alongside the combined forces of Earth? Or is that war, and Jezz himself, just something summoned up by Jeff’s psychosis as he stumbles in search of meaning? And who is the pale woman who appears to be at the heart of both their visions?
I’m so glad to be publishing this book; James is a fantastic author to work with, both personally and professionally (and, by the way, he is a finalist for the 2024 Page Turner Awards for Greyskin, alongside Marc Joan for The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man).2
THE GRIEVING EYE - Lena Atoug
Deixis Press has a new author! And her work is a slight departure from our usual fare because it is not fiction, it’s memoir. Now, The Last Doorbell is also memoir, but it’s more an autofictional memoir/novelized memoir.
THE GRIEVING EYE, though, is factual. But it’s also . . . poetic? I don’t know how to describe this book, really, which makes it the kind of book that is right up my alley. It’s a collection of 33 vignettes told from the perspective of Lena as a little girl and young woman, before, during, and after her time living as a refugee.
People, when I tell you this book made me cry every time I worked on it, and that it give me chills every time I read the last page, I’m speaking truth beyond truth. This book might well change your life.
Yours,
Angel
Is “ancient” the right word for something built in the 17th century? Some definitions imply that “ancient” things don’t exist anymore, but some just say they’re very old.
All that I have to figure out now is how to get Eels to approve James’s epigraph. It’s just a little lyric! If you know Eels, tell them please to reply to my multiple emails.