New Publishers

Of the various inspirations behind the launching of The Flâneur, the mighty work of Maurice Gerodias of Olympia Press in Paris is, as we explain on our Salutations page, perhaps the greatest. Bold publisher of many of the underground greats of the 1950s - Henry Miller, Beckett, 'Pauline Reage', Jean Genet, Nabokov - Olympia Press remains a beacon to us all.

However, though The Flâneur will never be a publisher of books itself (we retain our distance from the market place, and intend to remain a non-commercial concern, the better to ensure we are never under pressure to toe the line of any outside agency, be it ideological, business, governmental or anything else) we are happy to throw our languid weight behind some new publishers whose works have caught our eye.

Firstly, Democritus, publisher of the splendidly strange novel by Democritus Minimus Natu, The Antonym of Melancholy. Volume 2, The Fertile Crescent, is to follow later in 2007.

Secondly, L'OYS Press, publisher of Darvell St-Irvyne's brilliant new play about the Shelleys and Byron, Fire of Heaven, Fire of Hell.

In addition, although we do not publish actual books, we can put new works up on our site (which is I suppose a kind of publishing). New works appearing here for the first time includes Quincey Riddle's extraordinary The Great Dessert Raid 1882 (by kind permission of L'OYS Press who intend to release the novel in book form shortly).

If you are an independent publisher or writer with new material - prose, poetry, plays, recipes, spells, whatever - that you would like us to look at with a view to publicising and promoting, contact us at the.flaneur@XXXyahoo.co.uk (omitting the XXX) with 'New writing' as subject.

Although The Flâneur has a certain flavour to it, we do not intend to impose a 'house-style' on the writing we support. Everything will be considered on its merits, but we can probably make a couple of predictions: writing that conveys an urge for something else, be that surreal, mystical, radical, weird or downright bizarre will be warmly welcomed; scripts for soaps, or anything trumpeting its 'gritty reality' will probably end up in the bin.

The top and bottom is that if you are the sort of person who frequents our site, you probably have the kind of mind that will produce work that will interest us.

Needless to say, this is all entirely on a non-commercial basis. All we ask is you don't send us anything to which you do not have a right.