February / March 2011

We love good books, just like you do

Welcome to Bywater Books

Dear Readers,

We're delighted to announce our first two eBooks: Miss McGhee by Bett Norris and Last Chance at the Lost and Found by Marcia Finical. They are both available now through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and will be available soon through our website and other eBook retailers. We have many more eBooks in the pipeline and will let you know when they become available. Finally, Bywater has joined the digital age!

This month, we're profiling Marcia Finical. Her first novel, Last Chance at the Lost and Found, won a "Goldie" for best General Dramatic Fiction from the Golden Crown Literary Society. See Author Profile and Spotlight below.

Do you run a Book Group? If so, we think you'll like the sound of this: discuss one of our books, and the author will join your meeting in person (if geography permits), by webcam or over the telephone. For more information, see Book Group below.

We're almost into March now, so we're about to start tweeting as part of Women's History Month. Join us now — twitter@BywaterBooks.

As always, we at Bywater strive to bring you the finest in lesbian romance, mystery, and literary fiction.

Till next time!

In 1977, Marcia Finical knew she was going direct to Hell. A Baptist, she was playing it straight, but what attracted her was other women.

Then came Anita Bryant. As Marcia explains: "She turned up the heat about being gay and I felt an incredible amount of pressure from her." Eventually, Marcia realized, "…if you take the whole religious angle that we're evil or sinful or deranged or abominations or whatever from Leviticus and match it up with the Ten Commandments, there's no mention of gayness there. There is, however a commandment, Thou shall not lie, which was the one that encapsulated my entire life. I was living a lie pretending to be straight and I figured better not to lie than to jump through the hoops of not eating shellfish or mixing fibers in my garments."

And so, along with many gays and lesbians across the country that year, Marcia decided that her response to Anita Bryant would be to come out. "At first it was totally scary." (And it's worth reminding readers at this point that Anita Bryant's campaign to Save the Children was initially very successful.) But Marcia wasn't about to go back in the closet, and she now became an activist: She volunteered at the King County Rape Crisis Center, fund-raised for the Women's Funding Alliance, and "I was around during that period of Take Back the Night marches, women's consciousness raising, the rise of AIDS, partying, cocaine, smoking dope, nuclear disarmament marches."

It was a time, she says now, "when activism among women and lesbians possibly was at its height, before lesbians started going in a million different directions." A time when "we actually had a meeting about getting a dream board with women of color and blue-collar women and making it a utopian board where all women's issues would be addressed."

A time, in other words, "that was slowly fading away."

So Marcia turned author, to capture it before it could be forgotten. Last Chance at the Lost and Found, now available as a Bywater eBook, was her first novel and also the winner of the first Bywater Prize for Fiction. It's the story of Bunny LaRue,a drop dead gorgeous lesbian lingerie model who falls in love with Sunshine, the most politically correct woman in southern California. And yes, its tongue is firmly in its cheek: Marcia may have been an activist herself, but she looks back now and wonders how it was ever possible to argue — passionately — over whether to call yourself a Feminist Lesbian or a Lesbian Feminist. "We grew and changed," she says, "hopefully for the better."

Today Marcia lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her dog, two cats, and a collection of xeric plants. Anita Bryant's album There's Nothing like the Love between a Man and a Woman was never released.

Calling all Book Groups!

Have you ever wanted to know what an author thinks about her own book? After all, you know what you think, and your friends will tell you what they think. So why not give the author her turn?

Choose a Bywater title to discuss at your Book Group, and we'll arrange for the author to join your meeting — in person, by webcam, or over the phone.

The host of the Book Group will receive a complimentary copy.

For more details: please contact Michele at KarlsbergM@aol.com

Congratulations to Sally Bellerose! On February 18, it was announced that her short story Fishwives is a finalist for the Saints and Sinners Fiction Contest. For the list of all the finalists, click here. Alongside the other finalists, she will be reading at the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival on Thursday, May 12. Fishwives will soon be published shortly in an anthology featuring work by all the finalists.

Good news too for Stella Duffy! Her novel Parallel Lies just received a rave review from award-winning author Victoria A. Brownworth, posted on the Lambda website. "Parallel Lies" is, she reckons, the "perfect title". She explains that the book "was first published in the U.K. and Bywater Books was smart to reissue it here in the U.S. … Duffy has a keen eye for the slickness of life lived on alphabetical lists. … The picture she paints with her deft and snarky prose has all the starkness of hyper-realism."

Finally, Brownworth concludes, this is "One of the best written lesbian novels — genre or otherwise — this year. Two thumbs up. Four stars. Not to be missed." To see the whole review, click here.

Cynn Chadwick's latest title, Angels and Manners, also picked up a recommendation in the Wisconsin Gazette. Reviewer Gregg Shapiro lists it as one of his "hot books to warm up cold winter nights" — click here.

It's hard to know whether Mari SanGiovanni will be pleased about this or not: after all, Howard Stern is famous for not reading books. Somehow, though, he's heard about Mari's book Greetings from Jamaica. Want to know what he and sidekick Robin Quivers say about it? Click here.

Cynn Chadwick and Bett Norris
will both be appearing at the Queer Studies Conference at UNC Asheville, held March 31 to April 2.

Stella Duffy
· will be telling True Tales as part of Jewish Book Week in London, UK on Saturday, March 5 at 9 p.m.
For more information: info@jewishbookweek.com

· will be in conversation with Jonathan Church as part of the Havant Literary Festival in Havant, UK on Monday, March 7at 7:30 p.m.
Spring Arts and Heritage Centre
56 East Street
Havant
Hampshire PO9 1BS

· will celebrate International Women's Day with Monica Ali, Sophie Kinsella, Lisa Jewell, and Rebecca Chance. The event takes place at Brixton Library, London, UK on Friday, March 11at 7 p.m.

Lisa Gitlin
will be reading at Busboys and Poets, 14th & V, on Sunday, May 8, 4 to 6 p.m.
Langston Room
2021 14th Street
NW DC 20009
For more information: (202) 387-7638