ONESHI PRESS - WILL BOLDLY GO WHERE NO INDIE PUBLISHER HAS GONE BEFORE

Do you like watching porn, or would you say that you're the sort of person who gets immersed, engrossed, and stimulated by an alternative form of media which doesn't conform to society's subjugated standards? If so, can you please explain to me what I just said because I haven't got a clue! Better yet, why don't you check out the following interview I did with Lynsey G, who once worked in porn and now works in comics. No. Not in the way you might think. Wink-Wink!


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1) What are your own origins, Lynsey?   I’m basically a country girl who moved to the big city, only to work for a publisher and become a journalist for the porn industry. I also wrote a book about my experiences and then started my own independent publishing company. So yeah, that's me to a tea! I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, and I’ve had journalism, essays, creative nonfiction, short stories, poetry, and one memoir published. Now it’s time for me to stretch my wings and start publishing graphic novels and comics, too! So what better way to do that than with my own publishing company, where I can also publish the work of other writers?

2) What inspired you to form, ‘Oneshi Press’?   Recently I published a book about my work as a journalist covering the adult entertainment industry, and that work inspired me so much, I then wrote a graphic novel about a feminist, self-made, independent porn performer who makes a cyborg-clone army with her best friend: A talking raccoon (naturally). Early in the writing process I met Jayel Draco, an accomplished illustrator, and we hit it off immediately, and soon were working on Tracy Queen together.

We approached at least two dozen publishers with a sample of our project, and we got some great feedback from them. But, the story was too sexy for mainstream publishers, and not sexy enough for erotic publishers, even though many of them loved it. So it’s a challenging sell, to say the least.

Roughly around the same time we were also working on a few other projects together, like PACK, a comic about 6 stray dogs and one stray man who put crime under the fang on the streets of corrupt Brooklyn; and Children of Gaia, a vast fantasy universe that Jayel had been developing for decades already with his co-creator, Chris Covelli. 

Soon enough we realized that between the two of us we had years of experience in writing, editing, publishing, illustration, and web design -- basically all the things you need to publish your very own books! So we formed Oneshi as a way to get our projects out into the world, and it’s growing into an indie publishing company that’s also publishing creator-owned comics by other independent creators. It’s been amazing!

3) Can you give us a brief run down on some of your titles?   So far we’ve published one art book: Children of Gaia: The Great Nations of Rendaraia, which was written and illustrated by Jayel Draco. It’s a sort of metatextual, prequel of a fantasy art novel set in the vast universe of Children of Gaia, narrated and drawn by a character in the larger story. The book itself actually appears in the larger story, and it’s absolutely gorgeous, immersive, intricate, and diverse.

We’ve also begun releasing Tracy Queen and PACK in eight-page installments in our quarterly comics anthologies. Once we have enough pages published we will release the first volumes of each project as soon as we can (Hopefully we will have one issue of each out in 2018.)

We’ve been able to publish three anthologies as well, and we’ll continue putting them out every three months for as long as possible! We’re so freaking thrilled to be working with other comic-creators like Miguel Colón, Tom Swift Bird, Brendan Rowe, and Creees Hyunsung Lee, to name but a few, and I'm sure we will be working with many others in the up and coming months! As a matter of principle we’re investing in paying creators fairly on a royalties model, letting them keep the rights to their work, and providing a platform for stories from less-often-explored perspectives. We love progressive stories, diverse casts, immersive worlds, and general weirdness. 

4) What song would you say best represents your firm and why?   That’s an excellent question which is really hard to answer! Maybe the theme song from Star Trek: The Next Generation! Both Jayel and I are huge Star Trek fans, not just because we love sci-fi, but also because the ideals that Starfleet stands for are very much in line with our own. We believe in dignity for all sentient beings, in the pursuit of knowledge over conquest, and in peaceful exploration. We might not do it so much in space as in the sphere of human understanding, but we like to think that Oneshi Press will boldly go where no indie publisher has gone before -- and honestly, the TNG theme song is just better than the other ones!

5) If you could get a celebrity – either living or dead – to promote your wares, who would you choose, and why would you want to choose this particular person?   It would have to be Jim Henson, no doubt about it, because if we’d gotten his attention and he liked what we were doing, we’d know we were on the right path. He is our ultimate hero, and one of the things that brought us both together as life and business partners was our shared belief that he was the most influential man of the 20th century.

6) What have you learnt about yourself through this endeavour?   I’ve learned that there are only 24 hours in a day, but somehow I can usually squeeze in about 28! Ha! In all seriousness though, I work as a freelance journalist and an editor, while Jayel works as a freelance illustrator, a web designer, and a VFX technician. Collectively we’re both working really hard to make Oneshi Press our bread and butter, but until that happens, we’ve been putting in a lot of really long days!

7) If ‘OP’ had a motto, what would it be?   Our tagline, which is sort of also our motto, is: “We build worlds...You’re invited.” We believe that stories are best told when their worlds are richly imagined and lavishly illustrated, so we spend a lot of time on world-building before we release anything. Also, what’s the point of making a gigantic, beautiful universe, unless you invite others along for the adventure?

And on that note, I would like to thank Lynsey for telling us about ‘Oneshi Press’, before directing you towards their official website, facebook, and twitter pages. You also might like to know that they are always accepting submissions for their quarterly anthology titles, and that you are more than welcome to contact them for further information.