NEW BOOKS!
RED FLAGS (2024)
Stories and Other Disturbances by CHARLENE ELSBY [HOV037]
Red Flags features eight new stories and three out-of-print chapbooks by the “scream queen of wild psycho-philosophical transgressive lit.”
“Most authors are content with writing stories; Charlene Elsby sets traps. Immaculately tuned to the mechanics of the human mind, her fiction maps our mental gymnastics as we justify our selfish acts, betray others and ourselves, and alternately experience and inflict violence. Always vicious, often terrifying, and frequently hilarious, Red Flags further proves Elsby to be one of the most exciting writers operating today.”—B.R. YEAGER, author of Negative Space
THE ERRORS TOUR (2025)
Collected Poems (2019-2024) by BRIAN ALAN ELLIS [HOV038]
PRE-ORDER a signed, limited-edition * copy of BRIAN ALAN ELLIS’s latest 180-page hardcover omnibus, The Errors Tour, containing collected and uncollected material (some NEW, some RARE, mostly OUT-OF-PRINT), as well as essays, reviews and interviews! Will ship by April 2025!
* THIS PARTICULAR HARDCOVER EDITION WILL ONLY BE AVAILABLE TO SHIP WITHIN THE UNITED STATES. HOWEVER, A LIMITED-TIME INTERNATIONAL SALE OF SIGNED HARDCOVERS WILL BE AVAILABLE EXCLUSIVELY THROUGH ASTERISMSBOOKS.COM IN THE NEAR FUTURE. FOLLOWING THESE TWO SALES: ONCE INVENTORY IS GONE, IT’S GONE FOR GOOD!
The shittier I felt, the more I’d tweet. I tweeted about my failure as a musician, my failure as a music critic, my failure as a restaurant line-cook, my failure in relationships, my failure in understanding life outside of random archaic pop-culture references, my failure as a poet etc. etc. I accumulated lots of these tweets. In search of greater validation while reeling from the small buzz my Sad Laughter book (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018) was building, I began turning these tweets into poems, under the delusion they’d maybe get published in literary journals, which they somehow did. Those accumulated tweets made from sad desperation and comical hopelessness were now, amazingly, published poems. A year later I collected them into two modestly successful volumes, Road Warrior Hawk (2019) and Bad Poet (2020), both included here, together with other poetic odds and ends, coupled with aggrandizing interviews and reviews about said poems, all of which, for better or worse, comprise The Errors Tour.
“You can read [Ellis] and conclude that maybe despair isn’t so bad.”—CHARLENE ELSBY, author of Red Flags
“[Ellis] is a true American artist. [This book] bears the laughter and burdens of reality… and glows with all the best of it.”—BRIAN ALLEN CARR, author of Bad Foundations
“The setlist consists of Ellis’s greatest hits: bombastic self-loathing, clever interludes about the inevitability of dying, and power ballads which pay tribute to dive-bar commiseration and WWF dreams deferred.”—JILLIAN LUFT, author of Scumbag Summer
Cover Design: TEX GRESHAM
SNUGGLE UP WITH BRIAN ALAN ELLIS AND CELEBRATE THE ERRORS TOUR IN STYLE WITH EXCLUSIVE GEAR—VARIOUS SIZES, COLORS, VIBES! SHIPS INTERNATIONALLY! ORDER NOW!
LEASING (2024)
A Novel by D.T. ROBBINS [HOV036]
David, like every other rock-bottom soul, runs out of options and ends up working at Victoria Lawn—the raunchiest, most dysfunctional apartment complex in the suburbs of Southern California. After finding the body of a deceased resident with a similar backstory, David is forced to navigate a revolving shit-world of death and sex and violence. Will he make it out alive or will property take him like it’s taken so many others? Leasing is the hilariously are-you-fucking-kidding-me? story of one man’s struggle to protect himself and the downtrodden characters he’s forced to co-exist with from being crushed by the corporate powers that be. Find out if David, or anyone else, can survive such complete and seemingly hopeless bullshit…
“Fast, fun, and fully grounded, Leasing is a no-nipples dive into a low-rent lifestyle. It sprints and crackles. Glistens and heaves. D.T. Robbins is a bold voice—an exhilarating raconteur.”—BRIAN ALLEN CARR, author of Bad Foundations
SCUMBAG SUMMER (2024)
A Novel by JILLIAN LUFT [HOV035]
It’s the summer of 2003 and an idealistic yet unambitious Florida college grad moves to Orlando—the most magical and maddening place on Earth. Determined to find transcendence in trash culture, she soon finds herself immersed in a torrid love affair with her married, opioid-addicted boss. From bowling alleys to barrooms, malls to matinees, through the dull refuse of suburbia with new and unforgettable meaning, this book is a love letter to a fleeting season of illicit love, rampant addiction, buried grief and inevitable heartbreak—a whiskey-soaked, deep-fried, classic rock-scored mega-chain ode to Florida, youth, and the swan song of the human heart.
“Can romance be fanned in TGI Fridays? Is bondage sex better with bungie cords, Percodan, and Hot Topic lingerie? In Scumbag Summer, Jillian Luft never flinches from the tawdry, and thus blurs the merely pathetic into sublime pathos.”—JACK SKELLEY, author of The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker
PEOPLE SCARE ME (2024)
Poems by CASH COMPSON [HOV034]
“People Scare Me is a snow globe at rest on a Taco Bell wrapper. But the snow is crushed Ambien, the trees are the woods you smoked pot in back home, and the figurines are all bruised with blue jeans, wearing tacky makeup. There’s no money here, but there’s love. Cash Compson’s collection will leave you gutted but hopeful—it will make you go outside.”—SHY WATSON, author of Horror Vacui
HOBBIES YOU ENJOY (2024)
A Novelty by BRIAN ALAN ELLIS [HOV033]
Serving as a somewhat companion piece to such literary classics as Letters to Wendy’s, Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts and one of those books of Chuck Norris facts, Hobbies You Enjoy is a heartbreaking yet comical character study highlighting a person’s yearlong emotional unraveling through the work they resent, the family trauma they endure, the substances they abuse, the loneliness they embrace, and of course, the HOBBIES THEY ENJOY.
“Ellis knows exactly the right number of words he needs to make you feel something you didn’t feel before you read them…”—CHARLENE ELSBY, author of Violent Faculties
SUICIDE: AN ANTHOLOGY (2023)
[HOV032]
On September 21, 2021, CORY BENNET and JON LINDSEY posted a request for writing by survivors of suicide. This 250-page paperback book, co-published by CASH FOR GOLD BOOKS and HOUSE OF VLAD PRESS, contains some of the many responses, including:
ALLIE ROWBOTTOM, B.R. YEAGER, BRAD PHILLIPS, CHARLENE ELSBY, CHRIS CLINEBELL, CORY BENNET, DAVID FISHKIND, DYLAN BOYER, EVAN CERNIGLIA, FELICIA URSO, GARTH MIRÓ, JOE HAWARD, JOHN TOTTENHAM, JON BERGER, JON LINDSEY, KARTER MYCROFT, LILY LADY, NICK FARRIELLA, PEPPY OOZE, SAM BERMAN, SARAH GERARD, STEVE ANWYLL, TJ, and TROY JAMES WEAVER
All proceeds from the sale of this book go to:
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, please call 988 in the U.S. or for international help visit www.stopsuicide.com
Cover design: Tex Gresham
Violent Candy (2023)
Stories by TEX GRESHAM [HOV031]
AN AMAZON #1 NEW RELEASE IN “ABSURDIST FICTION”!
NEWLY REMASTERED IN 4K! Experience these sixteen stories that explore the violence people do to themselves and others in their search for love and purpose. There’s a man whose only cure for self-hate is drinking weed killer, a woman who loses her daughter at Disneyland, an elderly man who falls in love with an ostrich, a frat boy looking to do a big bad thing, and many more. Take a bite and break your teeth on some VIOLENT CANDY.
“Incredibly fucked. I loved it.”—TROY JAMES WEAVER, author of Marigold
Cover design: Tex Gresham
FARSICKNESS (2023)
A Novel by JOSHUA MOHR [HOV030]
Hal, an Afghan war veteran, begins to hear a voice telling him to go “home”—to a castle, in Scotland. But Hal has never been to Scotland. So, whose voice is it? What does it want? And why is it calling Hal “home”? What follows is a surrealist road trip story, part Heart of Darkness and part bipolar Guardians of the Galaxy. In Farsickness, Joshua Mohr spins a picaresque, hallucinatory yarn like only he can, as Hal and the reader journey deep into the human soul.
“This book is like driving a Ferrari through a funhouse and then smashing through the windshield into another realm of existence. In other words, it’s what a book should be.”—BEN LOORY, author of Tales of Falling and Flying
Illustrated by Ava Mohr