Gaslight Alley Press

Someone wind up the drummers please, they have little keys under their powdered wigs. Ah there! Thank you.

Hemhem, ladies and gentlemen of the Lyceum, after much deliberation and cogitation, speculation and confabulation… Get on with it? What do you mean “get on with it”?…  Anyway, after much thinking, I have reached a decision regarding the problem that has been consuming so much of our attention lately. That’s right, I sat there for hours in my study… Hey! Who whistled? Humph. Anyway, I give  to you:

Gaslight Alley Press!

Thank you, thank you!

I would like to thank the Lyceum for the brain space, my mother for giving birth to me, God, for inventing cogs and most particularly, I would like to thank the person who suggested the name that… Oh… The Servautrons are passing the champagne already? Harumph, yes, you go on and entertain yourselves. I guess you’ll just have to find out from the pages of Gaslight Alley Press’ first book then.

Are those cucumber sandwiches?

Okay, so I’ve stopped taking submissions, sorry! That said, I have over 100 really good entries. Some of them quirky, some of them poetic, all of them made of shiny, brassy awesome.

Thanks to all the participants! You’ve been great!
I’ve reduced the numbers to 20 or so I especially like and will continue to ponder, deliberate and brood. I think I should have a winner by the end of the week. Stay tuned!

A better website will be in the works soon after when I have a name to go with it. And then…I will start accepting submissions. This is very exciting!

Hello again everyone,

I have to say the contest is going much better than I expected. We’re nearly at 100 entries!  We’re at 93 to be precise. And that’s unique entries too. The (very few) times there were repeats, I only counted the first person to suggest it. I’m thrilled. Of course, this means I have 93 entries of pure awesome to chose from. Mr. Bingley, the office’s gentleman-cat, and I will no doubt disagree over which ones we like best (he is, for example, trying to eat my left hand at this very moment).

Because of the number of quality entries, I have decided to close the contest on the 1st of February. I will announce the winner shortly after (as soon as I’ve made up my mind).

And then, I’ll start working on a great website, because blogography is ill-suited to my purposes.

Hello and welcome to the temporary home for what will be my Steampunk and Retro-futurism publishing house.

My name is Chantal Perez and I am the owner of this as yet unnamed company. I am a young publisher with a passion for good SFF and Steampunk.

A good while ago, I thought I would like to run my own publishing house, one where I could publish those works I thought were well written, challenging, original and that many commercial publishers wouldn’t touch because they were too risky an investment. I am not in this to make millions, I’m in this for the love of the art and as my background is in literature AND publishing, I think I have all the tools to make this, if not a commercial success, an artistic one. I think I can help bring the world some darned good fiction in genres that have not been published as much as they deserve. It is a risk, but one I’m willing to run.

This company would be dedicated to publishing Steampunk and other Punk genres related to it, from the softest core to the hardest, for any age. I am looking for very well-written, original writing that challenges and innovates and pushes the boundaries of the genre. I’m looking for authors who aim for the highest common denominator. I’m not limiting myself to simply fiction either. Steampunk is very much a maker’s movement. I want to see novels and short stories but I also want to see art, essays, patterns for anything from a knitted jumper with a cog design to a functional time machine (well, one can hope).

And because I believe in this so much, everything will be made available for free online though Creative Commons licensing as well as printed novels and anthologies available for purchase. There will be a lot more information over the coming months as I work to set everything up and start accepting manuscripts (this is a real publishing house, not a vanity publisher, only selected ms. will be published and all will go through the editorial process).

However, to kick start the year, the company need a NAME as the name I had chosen has been taken by another publisher! Most discomfiting!

So I wondered, where can I find someone really creative with a talent for making up words? Well, where else but with the very people who make Steampunk! So… a CONTEST! The first of many I hope 😉

How it goes:

1. If you participate, you’re agreeing to give up any claim or right to it and cannot claim any sort of compensation from our using it beyond the contest prize if we end up choosing it (more details below).

2. The name cannot be already in use by another publisher, regardless of genre or country where they are based and cannot have been used in the past by any such company.

3. Entries have to be emailed to PressnameContest (at) googlemail (dot) com

4. If the winning entry happened to be suggested by several people, the winner is the person who submitted it first.

5. You can send as many entries as you want.

6. THE PRIZE: The person who submitted the winning entry gets a printed copy of the first novel published by us and will be thanked by name in its pages (unless the winner requests not to).

Simple enough isn’t it? The contest will run until I select a name (with no obligation for me to select it from the entries, I need a good name after all and if I think of one on my own, that’s what I’ll go with, sorry, you can use a contest to name your baby but would you name it “Moneyniggins” if that was the best suggestion you got out of it?)