Showing posts with label Pachanana Moharana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pachanana Moharana. Show all posts

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Tamil Pulp Update, Alien Landings Press, Etc.

We haven't updated the blog in a long while. Our latest releases Stupid Guy Goes to India and The Obliterary Journal have been in stores in India for a couple of months now. We hope you'll pick them up and that you'll enjoy them as much as these reviewers. (They're not available outside the country yet, but they will be soon.)

Even more exciting, Pachanana Moharana's illustrations from The Obliterary Journal have been sparking long-overdue speculation on the 1947 Odisha alien robot landing in mainstream publications like The Hindu and Zee News and Deccan Herald, which of course has us just tickled.

Meanwhile -- We often get calls from journalists asking about the popular fiction market in India. A lot of these journalists seem to take it for granted that the regional language pulp fiction industries are dead or moribund, and that all new exciting work is happening in English only.  However, while readership may be down from the 1990s peak, in Tamil at least, the scene is alive and thriving--as proved by a recent visit to the Besant Nagar newsstand outside Words & Worth.



Rajesh Kumar, the most prolific writer in the world, is still hard at work as ever -- these three novels all came out this month. The back covers are good too:




"Mythological crime thriller" author Indra Soundar Rajan is still publishing short novels, and longer works in installments:


And, perhaps most exciting, we saw a bunch of unfamiliar names: Akhil Kumar, "Crime King" Thennilavan, and Maheshwaran...


That's nine novels for Rs. 135, kids. Hard to beat. Of course, if you only read English, you'll have to spend the big bucks on one of our translated anthologies. (Available soon as eBooks! Watch this space.)


Thursday, February 9, 2012

Sneak Preview: The Coming Obliteration

Here's a sneak preview of "Memories of the Nayagarh Incident", one of our favourite sections of The Obliterary Journal, a collection of comics, street art, and illustration from Blaft Publications in association with Tranquebar Press -- two traditional yantra-purusha tala pattachitra, or "machine-man palm-leaf engravings", by award-winning artist Sri Pachanana Moharana from Puri. The pieces are inspired by the nearly-forgotten 1947 UFO landing and close encounter in Nayagarh, Orissa -- just weeks before the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico.




The Obliterary Journal, which also includes work by Malavika.PC, Zen Marie, Subrata Gangopadhyay, Aarti Sunder, Amruta Patil, Orijit Sen, Bharath Murthy, and many others (see the full table of contents here) launches at 3:30 pm on Friday, Feb. 17th at Comic Con India, Dilli Haat, New Delhi. We're also having a release party at Yodakin Bookstore on Monday, Feb 20th. Please come if you're in Delhi!

Available for pre-order soon!