Category: Newsletter

Dear readers, 

We’re delighted to announce the next five titles from Blackwater Press. Spanning the battlefields of the First World War, the forests of an imagined world, Victorian Central Asia, and the Alaskan wilderness, these forthcoming books showcase the breadth and diversity of our publishing programme.

Thank you, as always, for supporting independent publishing and the authors whose work makes it possible. We look forward to sharing these remarkable books with you in the months ahead. 

Warm regards,
Blackwater Press 

We’re delighted to announce that pre-orders are now open for the second book in our Recollections: The Long Eighteenth Century series: An Absent Life, the first full biography of Elizabeth, Duchess of Albemarle, written by Paul Boucher.

Drawing on unprecedented access to family records, Boucher brings to light the tragic and compelling story of a woman history all but forgot. Elizabeth’s life reflects the fate of so many women of the past: married young, denied agency, and left with little voice in shaping her own future. As her mental state deteriorated, she was declared “mad” and died in obscurity, effectively erased from history by her own family.

This remarkable biography not only restores Elizabeth to her rightful place in the historical record, but also raises urgent questions about the nature of “madness” in a world where women were denied even the most basic autonomy.

For readers drawn to women’s history, British history, scandal, and the untold stories of the past, this is a book not to miss — a story so extraordinary it seems almost unbelievable, yet every word is true.

Pre-order now.

We have two pieces of good news to share this month.

Editorial Services Are Back

Our Blackwater Press Editorial Services are now available again.

If your manuscript would benefit from professional editing before submission, or if you’re planning to self-publish and want expert guidance, we’re here to help.

Explore our services at services.blackwaterpress.com

Please note: manuscripts we are paid to work on will not be considered for publication by Blackwater Press.

Submissions Are Open Again

After a pause, Blackwater Press is once again considering new manuscripts.

If you’d like to become a Blackwater Press author, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

Read the submission guidelines and submit your manuscript at blackwaterpress.com/submissions

Hello Blackwater Friends,

Once again Flòraidh MacDonald Ford has agreed to take our questions for Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day. She joins us from her heated stool in Elizabeth’s home office. Please read our previous interviews with her here and here.

Good morning Flòraidh, and thank you for joining us again this year.

Good morning, and thank you for having me. We have a lot of catching up to do!

So we do; let’s get started. And this year we have some questions from your internet public as well.

(Rolls over, shows belly).

Current body count:

44. When I get to 50 our lawyer said he’d buy me a steak. It’s good to have a goal.

Caused any chaos this year?

I think that depends on how you define “chaos.” But a few events stick out. One morning I wanted mommy to get up so I leapt to the top of the dresser and knocked over a full vase of flowers. It was a mess! Another morning, she didn’t get up immediately when I meowed, so I jumped up and clawed her head and the pillow and then stood on her throat and howled. Now I have to spend the night in the basement.

Did you learn anything from this?

Me? No, but mommy should have learned that it could have all been avoided if she’d just get up at 4 a.m. Oh, there was also the time I knocked over a full glass of red wine onto white carpet… After engaging in several rounds of chemical warfare mommy had to borrow a steamer…

(Stretches long with tummy exposed. Pulls front feet up to resemble a bunny).

What do you think of your sisters, Sally and Lucy?

Well, they’re dogs. So far as dogs go, they’re alright. I like to bat their tails and sometimes I take a swipe at Lucy just because I can. Sally found me, so I try to be nice to her, but I love lying against the kitchen heat duct and making the door move and trapping her in the hall. I could do that all day! (Submitted by Kaaren Ford).

Do you know when Blackwater’s submissions will reopen?

Soon. I’m ready to roll on a few new books. And I’ve discovered I really like sitting on the keyboard of the computer! Almost as nice as my heated bed.

What’s the nicest thing you did this year?

I sent some food and treats I don’t like to less advantaged cats. I also picked out a new collar from Made By Cleo for a kitten who is soon to be welcomed into his new home. He looks like me, but fluffy. I even had it gift-wrapped! (Submitted by Samantha Stafford).

Do you have any advice for Elizabeth in the coming year?

Yes. Get up earlier. Don’t talk when I’m having laptime. Childless cat ladies are still the best but there’s always room for improvement and personal growth. (Submitted by Samantha Stafford).

What are you saying when you howl?

Is ann aìr a shon fhèin an ni an cat crònan.

Flora, to what do you owe your keen litter-rary sensibilities? Parental influence? Innate talent? And what is your favorite time of day to review manuscripts? Any “pet” peeves we authors should avoid? Thank you.

Thank you for this question. I think parental influence has a lot to do with it: the night Sally found me and I got to go home I flopped down on the manuscript of Ma Chère Maman. The Flounder and Ballad of Cherrystoke soon followed. I think being read to as a kitten made a big difference so now I can judge quality. I’m always on call for reviewing a manuscript: if the papers are out, I’m ready to flop (or not). I think it’s well-known that we don’t accept any manuscript in an animal is lost or killed. Avoid that and avoid comparing yourselves to Hemingway in the cover email, don’t send a manuscript with the tracking turned on, and use full sentences. And please, no dragons. (Submitted by Sheila McEntee).

Do you have any predictions for 2026?

I’d like to see some more submissions in our Recollections series, and I’d be especially keen on manuscripts related to Flora MacDonald or other women of her time and place. I hope I get even more time to snuggle and knock things over and eventually stop having to sleep in the basement.

If you were a book, which book would you be?

That’s a really hard question. I like a book to be long and engrossing enough that I can get a good snuggle in while reading it, but not so long that the book is too heavy to be held up, and it has to rest on me. I also really enjoy the Jenny and the Cat Clubseries by Esther Averill. (Submitted by Vivien Williams).

What’s your favourite bird?

I have two bird feeders in front of my house, so I spend a lot of time running from window to window to monitor. I like cardinals, and starlings are interesting too.

Do you believe in international law, or can a small country be taken by force?

Thank you for this question. Given historical precedents, especially from the eighteenth century, it’s how nations were built, but it doesn’t always work out. I can think of a few notable examples that ended in ignominious and crushing defeat for the invading force. But if I were an outside cat, I would want to annex the neighbour’s yard, and no one will tell me I can’t do it.

Do you always look grumpy or did something bad happen just now?

If you’re referring to the picture Flora et Florae in the post, mommy had just told me to stop eating that African violet and just because my name means flower doesn’t mean I can eat them. It’s an ongoing debate we have. And I win because that violet has my teeth marks on it now.

You like to brag about your “body count.” What is it you kill…and what do you do with the bodies?

Rodents, primarily. Bugs and lizards are also included in the total. I like to show mommy, but she doesn’t like that. Sometimes there’s a burial at sea. I’m also known as the Angel of Death. (Submitted by Samantha Stafford).

How do you really feel about living in Kentucky?

Um, well, I don’t get as carsick anymore, but otherwise it’s not that different routine-wise. I don’t see as many other animals from the windows, so it isn’t as interesting as West Virginia., and nothing compares to the Yurt. (Submitted by Jenny Totten). (Folds in half, licks behind).

Flora, do you go outside? And if you do, what are your activities there?

I’m a housecat but I love fresh air, so when the weather is suitable, I take the air in a large dog crate on the back porch. I sniff, meow, and sometimes my lizard friend stops by. (Submitted by Susan Weisser).

Do you prefer the English or the Gaelic spelling of your name?

Gaelic, but I answer to both.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Tha iongantas air a chat earball a bhi aìr.

(Launches self at Christmas tree scratching post trunk, chasing tail while going in a circle around it with her toy unicorn in her mouth).

I think we’ll leave it there! Until next year, Flòraidh~!

by Kate Whouley

“Should you call me Maestra? God, no. That’s as bad as poetess.”  

The speaker is Hannah Schaeffer, the musical protagonist of The Maestro and Her Protégé, at the pinnacle of her conducting career. Hannah was just 10 years old, though still pretty sure of herself, when she showed up one early morning in the 1990s, refusing to stay in the background of a novel I’d just started writing. A month or two later, this strong-willed character headed off to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. 

I’d never been to Paris, but I did know something about Mademoiselle Boulanger. A musical master, she was a teacher to almost any 20^th century American composer you can name—Aaron Copeland, Philip Glass, Elliot Carter, Quincy Jones; the list goes on. And through her American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, she influenced generations of musicians and music educators you might not be able to name, including my freshman-year music theory professor. Whenever he mentioned his studies with Boulanger, his tone was reverent—but there was also something else I could hear. Something that reminded me of the way I felt right before a dreaded theory “individual” with Dr. Hartzell. Something that made me pay attention.

Born in 1887, Boulanger was the first woman to guest-conduct the New York Philharmonic—in 1938—the same year she broke the gender barrier with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. (It wasn’t until 2007 that another woman took the podium at Symphony Hall.) A colleague of Fauré, a friend to Stravinsky, a mentor to Leonard Bernstein, Nadia Boulanger was an indisputable genius. As a teacher, she was known to be strict, unyielding, severe, and unapologetic. And she stopped teaching only weeks before she died in October 1979.

It was about sixteen years after Boulanger’s death that her imaginary student began to inhabit my pages. For the next few years, I followed Hannah around, listening, and also accumulating a serious reference collection to help out with all the historical and musical figures that were a part of her story. When an unrelated project took me to Paris, I hiked across town and up the hill to the cemetery where I knew Nadia Boulanger was buried. I can’t say why I started there; I’m not a grave-visitor by nature, and I could have located her apartment on Rue Ballu or visited Trinité, the church she attended every Sunday. But I headed to Division 33 at Cimetière Montmartre.

The tomb of Famille Boulanger hosts a coffin-shaped garden and a gray-white stone that rises up like a gothic window, sculpted with trailing flowers, etched with three generations of Boulangers, and worn by the work of guarding souls. That morning, I found a black and white photo hidden in the unruly groundcover that had overtaken the garden trough. A page cut out from a book, I was pretty sure, it had been slipped into a double-sided Lucite sleeve, edges scotch-taped against the elements. Another surprise: a single long-stemmed red rose soaking in a white marble vase. I touched the rose, not yet open, and I picked up the photograph. Mademoiselle, as she was known to her students, was seated at a grand piano, unsmiling, and, it seemed, looking straight at me.

Right then, I started to cry. Not little weepy-in-the-eyes-squint-back-tears kind of crying, but the uncontrollable, thank-God-I-have-a-Kleenex kind of sobbing. I felt bereft, inconsolable. Not to mention: puzzled. I sat down on the flat gravestone next to the Boulanger family tomb, blowing my nose, sipping from my water bottle, grateful that Division 33 was otherwise unoccupied.

Collecting myself, I understood something more about the people on my pages. Hannah, I realized, had grown up to be a remarkable woman—possibly breaking through a glass ceiling that Boulanger could barely see in the distance. I sensed that Hannah had paid a price for her prodigious talent and musical success. And I was beyond certain that she missed Mademoiselle. Because even though we’d never met, I missed her too.

For the next several years, whenever frequent flyer points and my day job allowed, I returned to Paris, borrowing an apartment in Boulanger’s neighborhood. I visited her grave, rehabilitated the garden, replaced the photograph every six or nine months, and delivered fresh flowers to the heavy vase. I took to feeding the cemetery cats and got to know some of the other cat-feeders who made their way into the book. Graveside, I met a handful of Mademoiselle’s students who came to pay their respects, and I was accepted into the fold, the student of a student.

Was I Kate or Hannah as I haunted the 9^th arrondisement, stopping by Boulanger’s apartment building, picking up buttery croissants at a nearby bakery, and shopping in the little grocery at the end of her street? It was a kind of “Method” writing that I loved, but alas, real life was also filled with stories that needed sharing. Two memoirs later, I felt the novel still tugging at me. Hannah and Nadia, persistent and not exactly patient, made new requests. In service of their story, I walked across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and visited the green room in Lincoln Center. I attended open rehearsals of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was introduced to Philip Glass, who turned down my impromptu invitation to spend a winter afternoon remembering Mademoiselle. I’ve soaked in the neighborhood surrounding Carnegie Hall, and scoured the auction catalogue detailing the contents of Leonard Bernstein’s Manhattan apartment. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve met Hannah’s parents, her grandmother, her kindly quintet coach (perhaps my favorite character in the novel), her first love, her best friend, her fire-starting student, and the Paris detective who annoys her at first sight. I’ve thought a lot about how it might feel to be an absurdly talented and ambitious woman in a profession (still) profoundly dominated by men. And thanks to Hannah and Nadia, I’ve visited a world where glass ceilings can be shattered, a world where dedication and determination matter, a world where the sky is visible, a world where a million kinds of love transcend the routine inconvenience of death. I invite you to join me there. We’ll be in great company.

Here is a story of foreignness, identity, and the leap into the unknown.

Blackwater Press is delighted to announce the launch of Running on Rooftops, by Andrea L. Stout, a poignant fictional memoir exploring what it means to step beyond one’s borders—geographical, emotional, and personal.

Anne Henry knows next to nothing about China—and even less about teaching. But when she accepts a one-year position at a Yinchuan English school, she finds herself navigating clashing worldviews, discovering friendship amid cultural collision, and confronting what it means to belong. From the dunes of the Gobi Desert to the dizzying heights of Mount Everest, Anne’s journey is a meditation on curiosity, connection, and courage.

With prose both vivid and tender, Stout captures the contradictions of being young and foreign—the beauty, the chaos, and the quiet heartbreak. As author Kate Mueser notes, “It’s a book for all humans, one that will inevitably leave you changed.”

About the Author
Andrea L. Stout is an American writer and university lecturer in literature, writing, and storytelling. She has spent more than two decades living and working abroad across Asia, Europe, and North Africa—experiences that deeply inform her reflections on foreignness, identity, and place.

by Robert A. Ford, author of The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined

For me, the Battle of Cowpens has never been one more entry in a parade of dry facts. It has always been something that resonated very personally. Many years ago, my father taught tactics at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College. He had a special interest in the Revolutionary War in the south. He was a brilliant man, and like many brilliant people, had trouble communicating with those of us less gifted. I was only seven years old, but he regaled me with tales of Nathanael Greene, the American commander. “An idiot!” “An incompetent!” I can still hear him deriding and mocking Greene, “the hero of Greene’s Disaster, Greene’s Defeat, and Greene’s Ultimate Humiliation!” Being only seven, I was not completely sure what Greene had done, but I could tell it was bad.  

But Cowpens; that was another story entirely. Morgan was a genius. Morgan was the finest tactical mind born on American soil. To him, Cowpens was the Holy Grail of tactics, the example he held up to his students as the right way to do everything. For my part, I was not at all sure what had happened at Cowpens, but I knew it was monumental.  

As I grew older, my father and I drew apart, and we shared very little. But history was one thing where we could always find common ground. When I retired, I finally found the time to catch up to my father’s extensive knowledge of the southern war, Cowpens in particular. It was, of course, everything he said it was. Morgan was a genius. His plan was a tactical masterpiece. Ultimately, for me, however, Cowpens will always be a window into my own past, a look into a sunnier time when as a small boy I sat by my father’s desk and marveled at things beyond my horizon.

Robert leads a solitary, sheltered life with his younger brother and Scottish father in a small Innu village haunted by dark, mysterious forces. He knows very little of the outside world, but he does know one rule:

NEVER TOUCH THE FLOOR AT NIGHT.

After all, doesn’t everybody know that? Doesn’t the whole world subscribe to this rule?

As his certainties crumble, Robert experiences spine-chilling events that no teenager (or grown up) should ever have to face.

… and if we’ve tickled your imagination, we’re happy to announce that R. R. Davis’ new book, Squid Boy Raven Girl, is officially out on the 12^th August!

R. R. Davis is author of another book published by Blackwater Press: The Various Stages of a Garden Well-Kept, the generational story of a Greek family who moved to America to escape a small life and remain stuck in old secrets and untold stories. A very different novel compared to his second one, which just goes to show how eclectic a writer he can be.

Happy reading!

Nearly 250 years ago, the American colonies defied a king, defeated one of Europe’s most formidable military forces, and laid the foundations for a nation built—at least in principle—on freedom, enlightenment, and equality.

At Blackwater Press, we’re excited to announce the first title in our new series, Recollections … The Long Eighteenth Century: The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined by Robert A. Ford.

Recollections … The Long Eighteenth Century will showcase fresh research and new editions of works spanning roughly 1690 to 1820, with forthcoming titles exploring music, women’s history, and more.

Ford’s The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined takes a hard, insightful look at a key turning point in the American Revolution. At Cowpens, Daniel Morgan—a backcountry American leading a largely backcountry militia—delivered a stunning defeat to Britain’s most feared commander, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, and his professional army. Historians have analyzed Morgan’s brilliant tactics for over two centuries, but Ford’s research brings a fresh perspective to this pivotal battle.

So even if you’re not exactly feeling patriotic this year, why not take a moment to reflect? Pre-order now for September publication. And remember, “Don’t Tread On Me” wasn’t always a symbol of the far right.