Podcast interview with Claude Lalumière

Episode 120 of The SF Signal sits down with ChiZine's own Claude Lalumière, author of Objects of Worship and The Door to Lost Pages.


Listen to it here!

Learn more about Claude's books here and here!

Mosaic - The Claude Lalumière Interview

Popular opinion says you can’t make money out of writing short fiction yet your entire output seems to revolve around this form. Why? And do you intend to move into novels at a later stage?

Hoping to make meaningful money from writing fiction is like hoping to win the lottery. It might happen, but don’t count on it. Mostly, I want this to be fun. I want to explore where my imagination takes me. And I can’t predict where that will be. I very much like the idea of “mosaics” — books composed of linked stories to form a larger story. It’s an underexplored form, mostly because it lacks an officially recognized name. But there are great books written that way that would not have been better served as novels or if their stories had simply been included in catch-all collection. Think of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES or CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN or THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION or ORSINIAN TALES or THE WORLD INSIDE…

Read this and more insights from Claude Lalumière. 

Learn more about Claude's books, Objects of Worship and The Door to Lost Pages. 

Locus interviews Claude Lalumière

Claude Lalumière, author of Objects of Worship and The Door to Lost Pages, gives his insights to Locus:
‘‘As a writer, I’m always interested in things I don’t understand. One of the worst pieces of advice ever given to writers is, ‘Write what you know.’ That’s terrible, awful! It’s very important for me to feel that I’m writing about something other. If I already understand things, why would I want to write about them? I try to write about characters who are very different from me – teenage girls, gay married men, forgotten Jews. And I just try to get into the mindset of somebody other than me. That’s where it becomes fiction, where it becomes something that is beyond self-expression, which I sneer at. Fiction is an attempt at communing with the world, trying to bridge some gap.”

Read the excerpt. The full interview can be found in the January 2012 issue of Locus.

Learn more about Objects of Worship or The Door to Lost Pages.

Great review of The Door to Lost Pages

"The stories in The Door To Lost Pages have all been exquisitely crafted by Lalumière and readers cannot help but be drawn in to the worlds and lives he shows us. The stories are by turns funny, sad, bittersweet, and joyful. ...Anyone who enjoys at least slightly dark fantasy should enjoy The Door To Lost Pages." - Cathy Green, SF Revu

Read the review here.

Buy The Door to Lost Pages here.

Door to Lost Pages makes Cate Gardner's top ten

Author Cate Gardner gave a quick shout out to Claude Lalumière's The Door to Lost Pages, naming it as one of her top ten novels for 2011.

See the post here.

Buy Lost Pages here.

Shouts out to In the Mean Time and Objects of Worship

Spec-fic blog Bibliophile Stalker mentioned two ChiZine books in a recent post recommending short story collections. In the Mean Time and Objects of Worship are among the works suggested for people who want to get into writing short fiction.

"There's always room for subtlety and elegance, even in genres like horror, and Paul Tremblay understands this. What makes his fiction remarkable is that it creeps up on you, instead of being transparent and overt. "

"Claude Lalumière has the ability to combine two (or more) unrelated genres and craft this potent story that's greater than the sum of its parts. "

See the mention. (scroll down)

Find out more about Objects of Worship.

Or about In the Mean Time.

Door to Lost Pages "weird and wonderful"

"Readers looking for something weird and wonderful may find it in this sequence of linked stories. ...While the narration swings from whimsical and hopeful to violent and despairing, the sense of wonder remains throughout." - Victoria Truslow for NJ.com

Read the review. (third on the page)

Check out The Door to Lost Pages.

10 Questions with Claude Lalumière

Writing about Writing sat down with Claude Lalumière, author of The Door to Lost Pages and Objects of Worship. He offers a fascinating insight into his writing style, his position on sexuality in fiction, and his Lost Myths project.

Check out the interview here!

Buy Lost Pages or Objects of Worship!

Great review of Lost Pages

"LOST PAGES gets progressively better and better, with no drag or drop. ...I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in mosaic novels done right, or weird tales about bookstores, books, and monsters." - Carrie Cuinn, Writing about Writing

Read the review.

Order The Door to Lost Pages.

Rover review of Lost Pages

"The creation of imagined worlds requires one key attribute: the kind of imagination that works sideways and most definitely outside the realist-naturalist box. The Door to Lost Pages re-inforces what was already very evident in Objects of Worship: Claude Lalumière has this attribute in spades." - Michael Mirolla, Rover

Read the review.

You can open the Door to Lost Pages here.

Door review on The SF Site

"As a first novel, it will reward any reader willing to explore unconventional structure and experimental technique, and it definitely bodes well for future efforts by this author." - Richard A. Lupoff, The SF Site

Read the full review.

Enter Lost Pages here.

ChiZine Roundup at Pulp 300!

Pulp 300 has done a set of four reviews in a row for ChiZine books, all of them highly favourable and earning three "guns" out of three.

On The Door to Lost Pages: " We dig these surreal interlinked stories and will certainly put Lalumiere’s first collection, Objects of Worship, on our TBR pile."

On Sarah Court: " Dear gussie, Davidson can write a good sentence. ...this is our favorite read of the year so far."

On Every Shallow Cut: "He’s on our esteemed 'Put Whatever Tripe You’re Reading Immediately Down and Pick This Up' list. ...Piccirilli is cooler than a New Guinea penis sheath."

And on The Thief of Broken Toys: "...the novella is the ideal literary length. Maybe we’ll wax eloquently at a future date as to why. For now let us simply bask in the glow of Lebbon’s latest."

You can see all of the reviews here.

Door review at Backlisted

"The takeaway from the mythology these loosely connected tales provide is that salvation will not come with ease. It must be fought for, and an understanding between one’s desired self and a past or present more closely tethered to reality must be earned through confrontation."
—Andrew Wilmot, Backlisted

Read the review!
Order a copy of The Door to Lost Pages here!

A great review of Door to Lost Pages!

K. W. Ramsey at The Left Hand of Dorkness heaps the praise onto Claude Lalumière's THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES.
"This is the kind of book you read when you want something different, something that will challenge your mind... It's what genre fiction can be when it takes itself seriously and doesn't hold to the idea that just because it's genre that it is somehow lesser than 'literature'."

Read the review here.
Buy Lost Pages here.

And another Lost Pages review!

Or rather, two. Jonathan McCalmont has written two separate reviews for Claude Lalumière's latest. On Ruthless Culture, he writes a capsule review that sums up Door to Lost Pages as "All in all, an excellent little book." While on Strange Horizons, he gets much more in-depth, writing that "the book defies not only easy categorization but also any sort of top-down attempt at interpretation."

The capsule review can be found here.
The in-depth review is here.
And our page on Lost Pages is here.

New Door to Lost Pages review

This review comes to us from the blog In One Eye, Out the Other. Susan Tunis writes: "...if I can’t ever find the door to Lost Pages myself, at the very least I hope to find more of these stories."

Click to read the whole review.
Click here to order a copy of THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES.

Just three days left in our Kobo Books offer!

April 21st will be the last day of our ChiZine's partnership promotion with e-book seller Kobo Books. Right now, you can get $2 off any of the ChiZine catalogue when you buy at Kobo Books and use the promo code "chizine". Now is the perfect time to pick up our newest titles, EUTOPIA by David Nickle and THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES by Claude Lalumière. Don't miss the savings!

Click here to buy Eutopia!

Click here to buy Door to Lost Pages!

Lost Pages on Winnipeg Review

"What are the best stories but gateways to a writer’s dreams and nightmares? Pick up this book and open your own door to Lost Pages—you might find something inside that you didn’t know existed." - Chadwick Ginther, The Winnipeg Review

Read the full review!

Buy The Door to Lost Pages here!

Objects of Worship "absolutely enthralling"

"Every world is fully realized; they're rich and vibrant and disturbing all at the same time--real worlds full of impossible things. ...I found it absolutely enthralling, and it's rare anymore that I find something I put firmly into the 'couldn't put it down' category. I highly recommend this book; it's a truly imaginative and unique collection."

Read the review here!

Buy Objects of Worship here!

Another Door to Lost Pages Review!

Publisher's Weekly calls Claude Lalumière's The Door to Lost Pages a "cerebral, erotic, and hypnotically compelling tale of bibliophilic wonder."

Read the review!

Click here to buy a copy!