Free chocolate!

That's simultaneously a terrific offer and a call for the stuff to be liberated from its maker!

In other words, HappenStance Press are launching their new anthology, titled Blame Montezuma, in a cocoa-fuelled splurge that entails giving away chocolate fish with the first 25 orders to be received for the book via their website (see link here). You'll even be able to try the chocolate in situ if you manage to make it along to the launch at Free Verse 2014: The Poetry Book Fair in London (at the Conway Hall) on 6th September.

I very much recommend this second option, as there are also numerous other events going on as part of the fair, while the HappenStance slot will include an additional launch alongside the chocolate: D.A. Prince will be reading from Common Ground, her second full collection, which is packed with excellent poems that creep up and then never leave you.

As for Blame Montezuma itself, it's a lovely book, and not just in terms of the cover:

There's a wide variety of poetic takes on chocolate inside. I'm delighted to have a piece included among offerings from the likes of Hilary Menos, Alison Brackenbury, Stephen Payne, Clare Best, Roy Marshall, etc, etc.

I think a few Christmas-gift quandaries might just have been resolved...