Wow, that is really slick. My hat's off to you. I thought I was doing good
when I caught Tazendra channeling Sherlock Holmes, but I never would have
caught this Easter Egg at all. The funny thing is that I was just thinking,
on my way into work, about starting up a "compiled easter egg" thread.
Bantam's logo is a cock/rooster, so that is possible if the Phent = pheasant
connection works. I think the clue in this one is the street address. None
of the others list an address at all. "14 Fishmonger Street" sounds like a
play on words. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find an online directory that
lists physical addresses for the big publishers. Even their own websites
seem to avoid mentioning much in the way of actual contact information.
If we assume that the opinions of Sticks mirror the opinions of actual
writers then we could look at which houses have published Steve's friends
like Megan Lindholm, Emma Bull, and Roger Zelazney. Steve hasn't, to my
knowledge, ever published anything with Del Rey, for instance, so the
opinion expressed by Sticks would be one he heard from other writers who
HAVE worked with them.
One thing I'd consider is that the three that are properly identified all
have the name recognizably altered. That is, there's a contraction, an
alternate phonetic spelling and an acronym but the actual name is there in
the story. That might argue against Phent and Greenbough being some sort of
substitution where the name is symbolic of an entirely different word.
Personally, I've always pronounced "bough" to rhyme with "Ow!", like "Ow,
that hurts!". ("A loaf of bread beneath the bough, a flask of wine, a book
of verse and Thou...") That doesn't totally preclude the bow and arrow line
of inquiry but it suggests that it could be the wrong tack.
Interesting puzzle, at any rate.