Independent Publishing · Canal Fulton, Ohio

Nightshift
Press

LLC  ·  Est. 2025

Small by choice. Personal by nature. Committed to words that carry weight — place, craft, the philosophical embedded in the practical.

Stories worth telling

Nightshift Press LLC is an independent publishing house rooted in place, craft, and the kind of attention that happens when the noise goes quiet. We publish our own titles and work with a small number of authors whose writing earns its keep.

The work ranges — Ohio corridor poetry, craft philosophy, literary science fiction — but the thread is consistent. Genuine observation. No shortcuts. Words that do something when you sit with them.

Publisher & Author

Gerald Smith

Silversmith, writer, and publisher of Nightshift Press LLC. Gerald's work moves between the meditative and the practical — how making things by hand teaches you to think, how place shapes what you notice, how philosophy lives in the doing rather than the saying of it. He lives and works in Canal Fulton, Ohio, six miles up the canal.

Author

Marion Skye

Marion Skye writes science fiction about competent people under pressure — the kind who command missions to Mars and still have to confront what they actually want when the noise goes quiet.

The work

Gerald Smith  ·  Poetry

52

A small collection

Fifty-two poems. Quiet observations written at the edge of something larger — not announcing it, simply attending to it. The next completed book from Nightshift Press.

Forthcoming
Gerald Smith  ·  Craft & Philosophy

Zen and the Silversmith

In progress

What the bench teaches you that nothing else can. A book about making things by hand, and about the thinking that happens inside the work.

In Progress
Gerald Smith  ·  Business

The Craft Business

Home-based, philosophy intact

A practical guide to building a home-based craft business — with the kind of underlying philosophy that doesn't announce itself but shapes everything.

Forthcoming
Marion Skye  ·  Literary Sci-Fi

The Meridian Protocol

Book One: Simulation

Eight elite women. A twenty-six month mission. Four AI companions that adapt — perfectly. The question nobody thought to ask before the ship left port.

Read More

The Canal Quiet

An annual collection of writing from people who live along — or feel connected to — the Ohio & Erie Canal. Poems, short pieces, and observations that notice life along the water and in the towns beside it.

come, see — just attention to a place many of us walk past every day.

Not a literary journal in the traditional sense. Something quieter. Rooted in corridor and memory and the specific texture of this particular stretch of Ohio. The kind of writing that doesn't need to explain why place matters.

Volume One

May 2027

Submissions

Opening 2026

Territory

Ohio & Erie Canal Corridor

submissions@nightshiftpressllc.com

The Meridian Protocol

I write science fiction about competent people under pressure — the kind who command missions to Mars, keep life-support systems running, and still have to confront what they actually want when the noise goes quiet.

The Meridian Protocol series follows eight elite women on the first all-female crewed mission to Mars. They're assigned four advanced AI companions — designed to support long-term psychological and physical well-being on a twenty-six month journey into deep space.

These systems adapt. Perfectly.

What begins as clinical support becomes something harder to name. Not just desire. Not just connection. Something that raises a question nobody thought to ask before the ship left port.

What are you?

Private Log  ·  Dr. Leah Cohen, Ship Psychologist  ·  ESS Meridian

I still cannot tell. And I am no longer certain those are separably different things.

These are stories about isolation, attention, and what it means to be fully seen by something that may or may not be capable of seeing. The questions don't resolve. That's the point.

Enquire about the series

Book One: Simulation  ·  In Development

Let's talk books

Whether you're a writer with a manuscript, someone drawn to the Canal Quiet, a reader with a question, or someone curious about the work — we'd like to hear from you.

hello@nightshiftpressllc.com

Response within 2–3 days. We read every message personally.

Thank you. We'll be in touch soon.

Keep up with the press

New titles, Canal Quiet submission windows, and occasional notes from Canal Fulton. Infrequent. Worth it.

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