Esoterranean Books is a small press run by Jean Dark, specialising in chapbooks of flash fiction and poetry. We currently have two titles Clutches of Love (2018) and The Short Answer (2017). Both chapbooks cost £5 each and are available from the Esoterranean Books Etsy store

Clutches of Love
A new solo chapbook from Bella Basura
With an introduction by Katya Lubarr
When I first heard the theme, and the phrase, ‘clutches of love’ I viscerally felt it as a proactive clutching; a glancing yet emphatic embrace of something pure and wonderful.  I imagined snatches of fulfilment amidst a frenzy of obligations, distractions and complications.  Moments of innocent authenticity in a world of alienation.  Nothing negative, only a reaching for and finding of this desirable experience known as love.  Then I read the book.

True to form, the ever unflinching Bella Basura leads us brazenly through the scorn and glory of some uncomfortable, yet sometimes all too familiar, relational milieus.  Putting paid to any dewy-eyed conceptions, her latest collection of flash fiction and poetry lays bare some of the rarely spoken pains and ecstasies of life, love, connection and loss.
Walk into worlds delivered with a rawness and immediacy that arouses a gut response.  Step into the clutches of Ms Basura and prepare to be enthralled, enchanted, and repulsed…

The Short Answer
an anthology of flash fiction by Bella Basura

Extract from the Introduction
“In the 1990s I spent a year grubbing around Holland and Spain on a DSS Enterprise Allowance Scheme as a self-employed author and poet. I spent the decade devouring magazines, journals and chapbooks by the small presses that were so active and plentiful back then. I particularly loved anything by Tom Vague, HeadPress,  HEAD magazine, Rapid Eye and Unlimited Dream Company. In those days there were bookshops too, Compendium in Camden and The Inner Bookshop in Oxford and London’s Atlantis. I even devoted a lot of time and energy to producing pamphlets of my own, which were an irregular source of beer money. I tried to persuade others to print my writings. Eventually I studied bookbinding to enable myself to print, bind and distribute my pamphlets and chapbooks…
And then everything went online…

So, now after a gap of almost ten years here is a new chapbook of my writings – this new pamphlet has come about as a result of performing my writing at spoken word events and I need some merchandise to flog to cover travelling expenses. All of the pieces in this collection are 100 word flash fictions – a genre I specialise in. So, I hope you will put your hands deep into your pockets and buy my new chapbook, and also come to see me perform.
You won’t regret it!”

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