Launching Angela

So the 16th October was the actress Angela Lansbury's 88th birthday, and the day we launched Chrissy Williams' and Howard Hardiman's Angela into the world. The party was at Drink, Shop & Do near King's Cross. There was cake, games, much donning of Angela masks, and your correspondent sampled a Smouldering Cherry cocktail in celebration of the book's debt to Twin Peaks. 

If you weren't there and you haven't picked up a copy yet, Angela is in part a poetic and visual tribute to Lansbury, in particular her role as Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote, but also a Lynchean descent into the otherworldly realm between our world and the world of detective fiction. It's very dark and very funny, and lovingly illustrated in the starkest of colours. It also might freak you the hell out, so we'd recommend reading in daylight, among friends.

Chrissy Williams has also just been shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award for her previous pamphlet, Flying Into the Bear, and she has several typically unique poems in our just-around-the-corner mega-anthology Coin Opera 2: Fulminare's Revenge. In fact, since we finished putting that book together, the various contributors can't seem to stop winning prizes and getting put onto shortlists. That's a good sign, eh?

And yes, that is a madeira cake above with a knife stuck into it, bleeding copious amounts of jam. That's the kind of party we throw.