Category: Newsletter

March was fast!  

Mid-month we were delighted to be invited to have a stall at the Celtic Village at Charleston’s seventh annual Celtic Calling. It was a somewhat different experience compared with anything we have attended so far, with a whole lot of tartan and a whole lot of bagpipes, but Blackwater Press was received exceptionally well and we sold a good many books.

We introduced our new tote bags (US only, for now) at the event, thanks to our City of Charleston grant. Aren’t they pretty? For $9.49 only!

On Monday April 3 Cameron Alam’s much-anticipated Anangokaa will be published. Check out the latest review here, order here, and read her blog post on the inspiration for her novel. 

On Tuesday April 4, Joseph Horowitz is reading from his forthcoming novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York at the Argento Music Project in New York. Go, if you can, and pre-order it if you can’t. 

On Thursday April 6, Melanie McGee Bianchi will be in conversation with award-winning banjo player and author Pete Kosky and our very own Elizabeth about the ballad narrative in Appalachian literature, at 5.30pm at Booktenders in Barboursville, WV. The program will repeat the next day at noon, at the main branch of the Kanawha County Public Library in Charleston. 

Check out the latest review of The Ballad of Cherrystoke here. 

And if that wasn’t enough, we have two books coming out in May: The Flounder by John Fulton and A People Without Shame by Patrick Colm Cogan, as well as one in June: Mission to Madagascar: The Sergeant, the King, and the Slave Trade by David H. Mould. 

And Kate Mueser recently interviewed her heroine, Sarah Johnson, for Books By Women. 

We’re introducing a standing 20% for pre-orders for all newsletter subscribers! Spread the word: don’t let your friends miss out on good literature! 

Peace and love. 

Hello, dear subscribers. We’re repeating ourselves here, but February has been as action-packed as usual!

Our next books are out in April: Anangokaa by Cameron Alam on April 3, and Joseph Horowitz’s The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York on April 29. Both are available for pre-order, and will be strong additions to the collections of any historical fiction fans.

The Marriage comes with some bonus material. Gustav Mahler was a major character in early twentieth-century music, and his time in New York was remembered vividly by musicians who worked with him there. These recordings, made in 1964, are available as extra contents, along with a listening guide. Since recording technology was not available in Mahler’s lifetime, we’ll never know how a performance he led sounded, but we can get close. Dmitri Mitropoulos’ 1940 recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D Major, “Titan,” with the Minneapolis Symphony is regarded as stylistically close to how Mahler directed his own music, and we hope you enjoy listening and reading about it.

Now, time for some bragging:

The Historical Novel Society recently published reviews of two our titles: Anangokaa and The Stone Maidens.

We also learned that our North American distributor, Small Press Distribution, has recognized two of our books: Ma Chère Maman—Mon Cher Enfant was on their January bestseller list, and The Girl with Twenty Fingers was chosen for their SPD Recommends list. We couldn’t be happier.

Speaking of The Girl with Twenty Fingers, check out Kate’s video about how she managed to write a novel with three very small children.

Some other news:

We are delighted by how quickly our reputation has grown, but with that comes a massive load of manuscripts to consider. We’ve decided rather than getting any further behind our ideal response time, we shall stop accepting new manuscripts until further notice. We will make an announcement once submissions are open again. Of the problems we could have, this is a good one!

And we leave with this exciting news for next month: we’re trialing free shipping for the whole of March on domestic orders (US & UK). Simply use the code freemarch23 at checkout and a ‘free shipping’ option will pop up. If you were waiting for an excuse to order, wait no longer!

Without standing up, he lifted the book from a stack on a chest next to his chair. “What a coincidence. I’m sure you know that today would have been Mozart’s birthday: January 27, 1756.”

The Girl with Twenty Fingers

Hello all, and congratulations on making it through January – it wasn’t too bad, was it? We hope you’ve been eating lots of chocolate (or not, if your resolution dictates!) and treating yourselves to the steamiest baths. If there’s one thing winter’s good for it’s snuggling up with a book, and Kate Mueser’s gorgeous debut novel – The Girl with Twenty Fingers, released on Mozart’s birthday – is exactly the sort of hygge read you need 🙂 .

“A must read for fans who love stories about secrets, family and second chances.”

Kerry Lonsdale
Wall Street Journal, Washington Post
& Amazon Charts Bestselling Author

Check out lovely Kate talking about the book.

FYI European customers – we ship our books from the UK, which is having a bit of a meltdown with international post following a cyber attack. We can still ship orders (and have been doing so!), but for the time being it may be a little more expensive as we use a courier instead of the Royal Mail. Hopefully all resolved soon!

What else has been going on? Oh yes, we have a new member of Blackwater – Dr Luca Guariento – who hates big introductions so we won’t give him one. Luca will be taking over a lot of our typesetting and e-publishing and many other things. Welcome, Luca! We’re delighted to have you and we’ll leave it at that! That’s now one partner in West Virginia, one in Italy, and two in Glasgow – Glasgow is winning!

This month also saw The Stone Maidens author Ioulia Kolovou feature in the University of Glasgow’s Creative Conversations series with author of Hear No Evil, Sarah Smith. It was a fascinating discussion and great to see so many attendees picking up Ioulia’s book courtesy of John Smith’s Bookshop – so many I couldn’t get a picture of the table in time! Here’s one of the venue instead – not bad at all!

And since we’re on a Glasgow theme, we’ll round off by mentioning that our books are now getting stocked in Glasgow Libraries, which we’re over the moon about. Another step up for our little company, in what is shaping up to be a pretty exciting year!

Well, first and foremost: MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone! We hope you are having a lovely festive season. Some of you may be without water or electricity due to the recent weather emergencies; some may be affected by the emotional overload these holidays bring; others may be struggling for a million different reasons. Let’s seize this opportunity to take a moment and reflect on how things could be worse; let’s appreciate what we do have, and should not take for granted. Whether it’s a roof over our heads, a cup of hot coffee, a change of clean clothes, a snuggly puppy, or dear ones to hug.

Never a dull moment here at Blackwater Press; in fact, we have some super exciting news to share with you.

Our little independent press has just been awarded the Small Business Investment Grant by the Mayor of Charleston, West Virginia! More than seventy small businesses applied and we are beyond thrilled that we were among those selected for our contribution to “economy, culture, and character – while also providing unique experiences and fostering relationships within our community,” in Mayor Amy Shuler Goodwin’s words. As a small business, this really gets us dreaming of new horizons and possibilities. We already have a plan, and we cannot wait to put it into action!

To help us out and to learn about publishing from the inside, from January 8 we’ll have an intern, Ryann Province. Let’s all give her a virtual round of applause! Ryann is a freshman majoring in creative writing and video production. This internship has been possible thanks to our recent partnership with Marshall University (Huntington, WV), to whom we are very grateful.

To add to the excitement, we are very proud to be the press that publishes Joseph Horowitz’s first novel: The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York. Horowitz  is an award-winning cultural historian and author of several monographs and books about music, as well as being a concert producer and radio broadcaster – and more. Read all about his novel in his own words.

This is the final newsletter of the year, and after a very productive year and a steep (if rewarding) learning curve for us all on several levels, we are so looking forward to next year’s titles:

The Girl with Twenty Fingers by Kate Mueser
Mission to Madagascar by David H. Mould
Lips That Touch by Zoë Strachan
A People Without Shame by Patrick Colm Hogan
The Boy from Nowhere by Richard Robison
Anangokaa by Cameron Alam
The Marriage by Joseph Horowitz
The Flounder by John Fulton
Guilt by Carter Taylor Seaton
Symbiosis by Milagros Lasarte
Three Lives of St Ciarán by Inés Gregori Labarta
While Dragging Our Hearts Behind Us by Boni Thompson
The Medicament Report by Eric Percak

Aaaaand that’s a wrap! We hope you enjoy the rest of the Christmas holidays…see you in 2023! Our warmest wishes for a happy new year when it comes.

It’s November, and the biggest, most seasonal, news is that our Small Business Weekend/Civilized Saturday/Cyber Monday/Not Black Friday (!) sale continues through this Sunday, December 4. All of our books are 25 percent off. FYI: books make excellent gifts 🙂 .

The next bit of good news is that Elizabeth Auld’s long-awaited translation of Lucien and Louise Durosoir’s war-time correspondence has been published: Ma Chère Maman – Mon Cher Enfant. This is the world’s first English edition of their letters and has a little something for everyone. World War I, music, the complexities of a mother-son relationship during one of the darkest periods in human history… We are really happy with this one.

John went to The Greenock Writers’ Club and held an interactive session on editing; thank you very much to everyone there and we’re very excited to see the writing that comes out of that talented cohort. John is looking forward to returning to discuss the trials and tribulations of small press publishing next year.

Oh, and there is the small matter of our next book: The Girl With Twenty Fingers by the incredible Kate Mueser (link to her page).

This will go on sale Monday, December 5. Why? It’s the anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791. You don’t need to know that to enjoy the book, but it’s a nice little factoid and helps Elizabeth justify all her music degrees. We’ll publish it on January 27, Mozart’s birthday. Read more about the inspiration for the novel here, in our latest blog post by Kate.

And here’s a wee reminder this busy book-buying season: Amazon Kills. Our distributors demand that our books are available there, because in order to reach the most readers they must be, but please, try to buy our books (and any other books) elsewhere! You can support local bookshops (US and UK) through other platforms like Bookshop.org and IndieBound. We all have to work together to keep small publishers and smaller shops alive. We’re likely preaching to the choir, but tell your friends! Our friends at IndieBound have this to say.

And on that note, if you want to see our books in your local shops, the best way is to go into the shops and ask. Demand leads to supply. All of our titles are listed on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, so please do leave a review!

And here’s a turkey called Ellie that chased Elizabeth across a parking lot. See you next month.

October 17 was the publication of Ioulia Kolovou’s novel The Stone Maidens, followed by a reading and discussion with Zoë Strachan at John Smith’s bookshop at the University of Glasgow. Thanks to all who attended this great event—our first in-person launch! And to who all who have purchased copies: it’s a gripping multi-generational saga of how lives and families become intertwined, set in a changing Argentina.

Elizabeth represented us at the West Virginia Book Festival October 21-22. The vendors’ hall was packed with authors, other presses, and book-related businesses. Nearly everyone who stopped commented on how lovely our books are (yes, thank you Eilidh!) and sales were high. So high that Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm and I Piped, That She Might Dance are now out of stock in the US. A new print run has been ordered, and there’s always the ebook version of I Piped, That She Might Dance in the meantime.

We were delighted to learn that Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm is being used as a textbook for the Future Generations University, located in Pendleton County, WV. Says Strategy and Impact Officer Jenny Totten, “We’re just learning that there are some educational materials that don’t exist, and this book is perfect for our masters in community development program.” Jane Cary had wanted to be teacher; we like to think she would be proud that her book and her knowledge were being used in this way.

Do you want to use one of our titles for a class? Just let us know and we’ll make sure you get enough copies!

We recently collaborated with old-time musician Pete Kosky on two new ballads to complement Melanie McGee Bianchi’s The Ballad of Cherrystoke and Other Stories. Check them out here and here, and then read the article Elizabeth wrote on ballads and tradition for LitHub.

If you’re a user of Goodreads or Storygraph, our books are now listed, thanks to our new intern. Please go review them! The more reviews the better! Tell your friends!

And, we’re sorry to announce that US publication of Ma Chère Maman—Mon Cher Enfant: The Letters of Lucien and Louise Durosoir, 1914-1919 is delayed, but the UK publication is still on schedule for November 11. This blog post by the translator and friend of the Durosoir family, Elizabeth Auld, is an excellent introduction to this fascinating and moving collection.

September, where to begin? How about with Melanie McGee Bianchi’s The Ballad of Cherrystoke and Other Stories being named a Distinguished Favorite at the NYC Big Book Awards! Blackwater also dipped its first toe into the digital world with an eBook to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Iain MacDonald’s award-winning novel I Piped, That She Might Dance.

We will be releasing more and more eBooks as time goes on, to help make our titles accessible to as many readers as possible. This is in no small part thanks to shiny new Blackwater team member, Luca Guariento, who we are absolutely delighted to have on board. ???? Everyone say Welcome, Luca!In Edinburgh it was great to have a table at the Indie Book Festival 2022 at the Scottish Storytelling Centre. Huge thanks to everyone that came down and to the team at Stairwell Books (https://www.facebook.com/StairwellBooks) for organizing. And that brings us nicely on to our fantastic next author, Ioulia Kolovou, who performed a reading from her forthcoming novel The Stone Maidens at the festival.

The Stone Maidens is officially out on October 17th, with the launch at John Smith’s Bookshop at the University of Glasgow on the 19th. Ioulia will be in conversation with renowned Scottish novelist Zoë Strachan; this is not one to miss. Entry is free, and more details can be found here.

And as readers of Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm will know, it’s apple butter time! Big Jane’s niece and nephew, Kaaren Cary Ford and Frank Cary, participated over two weekends in the annual apple butter making at Edgewood Presbyterian Church just outside of Lewisburg. In all, they made over 140 gallons of apple butter.

And there’s more! The winners of the second Blackwater Press Short Story Contest were revealed earlier this month as well. Congratulations to all, and stay tuned for the ensuing collection.

Phew, we could go on but we’d better stop it there! Bring on October x