Richard Peabody, the owner of Paycock Press and editor of Gargoyle Magazine, answered our questions about what keeps the press around.

How did things start? What began as an umbrella for Gargoyle Magazine became a full-fledged press when we assembled an all-fiction issue and received a novella-length piece by Michael Brondoli. The Love Letter Hack became our first book. It was too good not to publish as a stand-alone.

How have things changed since? Indie mags frequently evolve into presses. I think it’s simply easier to deal with one or two writers a year over the 100+ we juggle for the magazine. And our focus may shift anyway because we can do 2-3 books for the same price it would cost to do one issue (in regard to the number of pages printed, not to mention the cost of mailing).

What keeps this press around? Our sloth-like desire to snort ink fumes from freshly printed pages? It’s an addiction really. I try to quit and then somebody sends me something that has to see life between covers. Shepherding somebody’s baby into life is extremely satisfying in terms of creating an object. Publisher as doula? Mayhaps.

What do you look for in a poem? Imagistic bursts, mind grenades, lines that pitch empathy and/or wit but with a universality that registers on my own personal Richter Scale, and ripples out into the universe from there. Harrison Fisher’s Blank Like Me riffs on horror movie titles and Bill Knott-like visions. George Myers Jr.’s prose poems are bite-sized languagey baklava.

How about prose? The three of us, the original founders, were all fiction writers first and foremost. I sort of fell into poetry via song lyrics. But my focus in terms of the press has always been fiction. We promote both realism and experimental writing.  What if Raymond Carver had written zombie novels?  What if Kathy Acker had written Revolutionary Road?  We have a broad palette. I like zings and zaps, characters I can relate to, or hate, or adore. Tom Carson’s Daisy Buchanan’s Daughter is a snarky reappraisal of the last American Century and a marvel of invention and wordplay. Jeff Richards’s Open Country: A Civil War Novel in Stories, cuts to the heart of the matter regarding families ripped apart by both sides of that disaster. David Nicholson’s Flying Home: Seven Stories of the Secret City is a homage to the real DC that instantly places him in a triumvirate with Edward P. Jones and George Pelecanos.

What does an acceptance mean? A happy dance! We’re a small indie and only publish 1-2 titles a year. We have to want to live with a book for the year-long editing, designing, desktopping, and proofing process.

And a rejection? Fiction collections that don’t work for us often yield a chapter or a story we can add into the mix of the magazine, or else in a lot of cases, into the series of anthologies of DC area women’s fiction we’ve been publishing since 2004. The seventh and final volume is due out at the end of 2015. Each of those volumes in the “Grace and Gravity” series has been a mix of name writers and newbies, featuring long stories alongside flash pieces, whacked out magical realism side-by-side with semi-autobiographical real life.

How’s the future looking? The price of printing and mailing goes up every day.  Seems inevitable to move the magazine to online only. Apart from my own writing, I do foresee the occasional book. And I’d like to keep a hand in as long as I find publishing projects that catch my fancy.

Website: http://www.gargoylemagazine.com/books/paycock/paycock.htm