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A Q&A with Patrick Colm Hogan
JR: A People Without Shame is a strange book, full of contrasting parts. At times diary, at times legend, at times transcript, at times article, it seems as though the novel is trying to demonstrate how difficult it is to convey its subject matter in a conventional manner. What do you think of this interpretation? […]
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Mission to Madagascar: The Sergeant, the King, and the Slave Trade
by David H Mould In 1817, a decade after Britain banned the slave trade to its colonies, a 30-year-old East India Company sergeant with no diplomatic training embarked on a risky mission. James Hastie travelled for almost a month from the coast of Madagascar through the tropical rainforest to the central highlands. His mission—to persuade […]
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On Writing
by Cameron Alam Once upon a time, I thought historical fiction was written the way a house is built, brick by brick, word by word, the author using her mortar of craft to adhere words together into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters as the story is formed. When I sat down to write […]
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Twenty Fingers for One Dollar
By Kate Mueser “So, is it autobiographical?” Those who know me well will ask that question when they read my debut novel, The Girl with Twenty Fingers, about an American used-to-be pianist in Germany who plays Mozart’s works for piano four hands with an elderly German man. “Absolutely not!” I would reply. “But Kate,” they […]
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Ma Chère Maman—Mon Cher Enfant
by Elizabeth Auld What does French baroque music have to do with letters from World War I? The answer is not obvious but, in this case, one of simple coincidence. Two scholars of the French Baroque from both sides of the Atlantic become friends; finally, their spouses meet. The rest, as far as this book […]
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On Disrupting a Cherished Musical Tradition and Creating New Appalachian Ballads
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August 2022
Tuscawilla: Stories of a Farm has been our best seller this month. We thank Robert Tuckwiller for his idea to sell copies at his booth at the State Fair of West Virginia. There really couldn’t be a more perfect setting for selling this book: the Fair features prominently in Cary’s memoirs, and one must pass […]
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July 2022
July has been another jam-packed month at the various Blackwater Press locations! The biggest news is that we now have distribution in both the UK and the US and Canada. While direct sales will always be the most lucrative way for us to sell books, most shops would rather not deal with a publisher directly, […]
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June 2022
It’s difficult to believe we’re already halfway through this year! We are busy preparing our next six books for (hopeful) publication in the next six months. If you’ve ever wondered what a publisher does, it’s a combination of reading, editing, emailing, coordinating, researching, typesetting, filing, thinking about metadata, marketing….a little bit of everything really, especially […]
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Farewell Roger Angell
You’ll have seen our short story contest is open once again this year, and thank you so much to all of those who have already submitted, responding to our theme of ‘ink’. The short story is a beautiful thing, and just over a week ago, a man who left an indelible mark on the form […]
