Alice Magazine covers art, style, culture, music and more with main issues now arriving quarterly including features on our favourite emerging artists. We run daily updates and news pieces too – please check our submissions guide for details.

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Interview With The Editor – feel free to post this interview on your own site if you are looking for free content but it must be complete and include a link back to us!

Who are you and your part to play in Alice Magazine // Alice Media // Alice Boutique?

My name is Heather-Jane Steeley (Kathleen Opium and Chloe Dolores)- I am a writer and part-time designer /musician. I currently run Alice Media, Alice Magazine and Alice Boutique from my home in Newcastle, UK. It’s a one man band and I only have the hours between 9am and 3pm each weekday to work so it can take some weight to get things finished on time! Alice Media is a collective name for my design services and publishing services – I publish Alice Magazine to combine my passions of writing and design. It was always meant to be an online only blog zine until I received many requests for a print version. The free digital version was bourne from that. I think that Alice Magazine contributes positively to the promotion of independant businesses, many run by other women, whilst providing me with a source of income. Alice Boutique is our virtual store in Second Life. We sell many items, clothing and accessories of appeal to Alice Magazine readers and are bringing out our own range of clothing – attractively priced too!

Tell us the history behind the project.

I was struggling to get work after six years as a full-time mum. Despite having an MA and having worked most of my adult life it was time to catch up with myself and say “well, your ultimate goal is to be self-employed anyway so why not now?”. I had written for many publications having been involved in music journalism since the age of thirteen. I had a vast knowledge of the internet because my last post was working for an online art company. Plus I was always the kind of kid who would spend every sunshine hour outside building pretend homesteads, creating my own worlds and each rainy one inside either reading, writing or programming the spectrum. I was brought up in a very rural english community. Small and sheltered. I have carried my love of solitude ever since and find working alone the greatest joy. However I discovered that I am actually quite a social animal if I get my recommended daily dose of loneliness so I also wanted to create a little community around the readership of Alice Magazine.

Current plans and long – term goals.

To continue the re-structure of quarterly Alice editions. It was becoming highly time consuming to make a full edition every month – marketing, maintence, life…everything else was getting left behind so with the idea to bring out 4 bigger editions every year rather than 12 smaller ones we should hopefully be able to move forward with the magazine. Distribution also needs to be addressed, so many people have been searching in WHSmith for it! I also wish to improve the Alice Boutique because it’s fun first and foremost and also very social. I get quite a few nights in by myself at this point in my life so it’s really good to be able to pop into a virtual world and say hi to friends I have made there. It’s much more interactive than say Facebook – I know of people who can spend entire evenings on Facebook. For me the site is a dull looking place filled with the text of others. Much of that text is pretty badly spelt and a lot of it just crude. It has it’s place but I prefer something more colourful and something that goes just that little bit further into creating a reality, another world. My writing is also heading that way – I want to introduce a new section called “Curiouser & Curiouser” which will feature some articles I am writing on reality and metaphysics. I am no scientist and certainly no mathematician but I am really intrigued by the concepts of parallel universes and the way the universe we appear to be in works. And time-travel.

Who and what are your biggest influences and inspirations?

Over the past two years I have been intrigued by the Steampunk and neo-victorian movement. It’s got all the traditionalism of Victorian re-enactment but with a warped reality style – when I discovered it I thought “yes, we’re getting closer”. There are a lot of things that I don’t relate to in this world. I am a very outdoors person. The beach and the mountains are my two favourite places and although I currently live in the city there is the biggest park ever just next to my house which inspires me on the school run everyday. It was designed by Lord Armstrong who was a Victorian inventor (lived at Cragside…look it up via The National Trust), who passed it onto the city. He is an icon. And then there are the writers who have had such an impact over the years such as Sylvia Plath and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Richard Brautigan, Bukowski, Angela Carter…I can’t name all my favourite authors I would crumple under the weight of the list. But my literature love developed into a musical passion in my early teens. I learnt the guitar and wrote a few songs with friends. Possibly not brilliant ones. I was struck by the work of Kim and Kelley Deal from The Breeders and Tanya Donelly, Kristin Hersh. Women in music at the time who were all struggling with the female musician thing. And how to play it. How to work your feminine side and masculine side all at once and which one do you gravitate towards the most? I mean, I had all of those dilemmas too. I get struck by the people who do crazy and extroadinary things for the time and place they live or lived in such as Amelia Earhart and fantastic thinkers and scientists. Anyone who works mainly alone on radical projects. I was talking with someone about six months ago about how he still felt peer pressure despite being 33. I couldnt really believe it but then I tend to live outside of that mentality most of the time. I don’t tend to care what people think I just do what I want and it mainly makes me happy.

What are your favourite internet resources?

Do you have any advice for others?