Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Riverdale Avenue Books Publishes a Novel and Memoir for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

New York, NY: (October 1, 2023) Award-winning publisher Riverdale Avenue Books has released Perennial: A Garden Romance, a romance novel, and Tornado, A Breast Cancer Log, memoir in journal form, for Breast Cancer Awareness month, which occurs every October.

The author of both titles, acclaimed author Mary Anne Mohanraj wrote Tornado, her day-by-day detailed journal as a blog during her three- year journey through breast cancer diagnosis, surgery, chemo, radiation and reconstructive surgery.  It is a bold, honest look at this experience that one in eight women living today go through.

 

Mohanraj also used her breast cancer journey to create a beautiful novel of romance and rebirth with a main character who has undergone this experience in Perennial.

 

Said Publisher Lori Perkins, who is a breast cancer survivor herself, “Perennial is the kind of book I really needed to read when I was undergoing treatment. It lifted both my spirits and my soul.”

 

About the Author

Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of Bodies in Motion and The Stars Change, founder of Strange Horizons and director of The Speculative Literature Foundation. Previous anthologies she's edited include The Best of Strange Horizons, vol. 1, Aqua Erotica, and WisCon Chronicles, vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, which was recently long-listed for the BSFA Awards. Mohanraj is Clinical Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her research and writing interests include Sri Lanka and its civil war, transnationalism and diaspora, domesticity and parenting, chronic illness, science fiction, and sexuality.

Friday, January 12, 2024

Riki Wilchins Blasts Evangelical Onslaught Against Transgender Kids in New Book

 

When Texas Came  

 

for Our Kids

 

How Evangelical Extremists Launched a War on  Transgender Teens

 

 

If we went back to 2020, we would be shocked at lives of transgender children—they change their names and birth certificates, played school sports, and got puberty blockers and hormones freely in all 50 states.

 

But in just three years it would all disappear. By the end of 2023, over 1,000 bills would be introduced more than half of state legislatures that sought to criminalize nearly every facet of their lives.

 

 What happened?

 

When Texas Came for Our Kids is the first and the definitive account of how white Christian nationalists— enraged from a string of devasting Supreme Court defeats—pivoted from gay people to transgender youth and made them the new face of the culture war.

 

And it all began in Texas, which enacted the first effective ban on gender-affirming care by redefining it as felony child abuse, instantly criminalizing hundreds of loving families overnight and sending many fleeing across its borders in panic.

 

When Texas Came for Our Kids is packed with scores of on-the-ground interviews and never-before-told detail collected over years of research.

 

Also available is the companion book—"When Loving Your Kid Is a Crime: Parents of Transgender Youth Speak Out.” Nine first-person accounts by families who fled Texas and other red states because they feared their queer child would be taken from them and placed into state foster care.

 

Review copies of both available at www.NetGalley.com or by contacting TransTeensMatter@gmail.com

 

---

 

Riki Wilchins is the author of a 10 books on queer theory and transgender politics, including

Read My Lips:  Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender

Gender Queer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary 

Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Prime

Burn the Binary:  Selected Writings on the Politics of Trans, Genderqueer & Nonbinary

TRANS/Gressive:  How Transgender Activists Took on Gay Rights, Feminism, & the Media

 

Riverdale Avenue Books

Lori Perkins, Publisher  www.riverdaleavebooks.com  

 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Lambda-Award Winning Erotic Romance Author Ryan Field Has Passed Away

I received an email from the husband of one of my favorite writers last night informing me that my author had passed away that morning.

It shook me.

I knew Ryan Field was sick. He told me in August that he wouldn’t be able to work on any new projects for the immediate future because he had started chemo, but I hoped he would push through and rally after treatment (as I did with my own breast cancer) and because I didn’t even want to consider a world without Ryan Field.

I started working with Ryan in 2007 when we spoke on the phone and he told me he used to love het rom coms, but always switched the sexes in his mind. We both agreed that we loved An Officer and a Gentleman and he quickly dashed off An Officer and His Gentleman for Ravenous Romance, where I was then the Editorial Director. It not only charmed me but many of our readers, and he went on to re-tell many of the rom coms of popular culture from a gay point of view — When Harry Met Sal, Gay Pride and Prejudice, Pretty Man, etc. One of my favorite titles that he wrote for me was Valley of the Dudes, his retelling of the Jacqueline Susann classic Valley of the Dolls.

He brought so much creativity and joy to the romances he wrote for us. I was always eager to see what he came up with.

The last original title we worked on together was The Wizard of Pride, a gay retelling of The Wizard of Oz, and it is classic Ryan Field.

I will miss him so much, although he must have written close to 100 books over the past 25 years when he was making his living as a writer. I haven’t read them all, so I know where to go when I need a friend.

But I will miss him every day.

Don’t ever think that an editor doesn’t truly adore her authors. He was really a part of my editorial family.

We’re going to try to work on putting together some sort of award/grant/memorial/prize in Ryan’s name, so please look here for that announcement. And if you want to help, or have ideas, please feel free to reach out to me, lori@riverdaleavebooks.com.

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

What It Means When We Say October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I’ve known October was Breast Cancer Awareness month for much of my adult life, being very familiar with the pink ribbon and some of the fund-raising events.

Even though I had read that breast cancer detection was up in the past few decades, and that women were getting breast cancer more often at a younger age (under 40), I somehow thought I would be immune. I thought that if I did get cancer, it would be a result of my young adult smoking or some genetic pre-disposition from my dad’s side of the family where we’d managed to get lung, colon and pancreatic cancers.

 

I went to get my annual mammogram a few months late after we were let out of lockdown (15 months instead of 12) and was shocked when the technician said, “you need to schedule a biopsy as soon as you leave this office.” I had breast cancer. 

 

That’s when I learned that one out of eight American women get breast cancer.

 

And when I started telling friends and family that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer, I found that I knew a lot of women who had had breast cancer--my next door neighbor, my publicist, my journal-writing teacher, my fellow authors (especially my romance-writing colleagues).  I also met two men who had had breast cancer (carriers of the BRCA gene). I was shocked, because it was everywhere, and I never saw it.

 

So this October, I want you to really see ME, so you can see how pervasive this illness is, and yet how fortunate we are to live in a time when breast cancer is “the good cancer,” and so many of us cancer survivors can be cured and/or treated.

 

I guarantee you that someone you know is going through a breast cancer scare, or being treated for breast cancer, or is taking care of someone with breast cancer right now.

There are many ways to translate breast cancer awareness into support.

 

Of course, you can donate money, especially to the various Hope Kits that sent out by the National Breast Cancer Foundation (https://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/breast-cancer-support/hope-kit/).  They really make a difference when you feel so alone.

 

Once I was better (after surgery, chemo and radiation), I donated my time to start a journaling through cancer writing workshop at Mt. Sinai, where I had been treated.  It is my way of giving back.

 

I also published two breast cancer books at Riverdale Avenue Books.  Perennial is a sweet breast cancer romance, which I would have LOVED as a gift when I was undergoing chemo and convinced no one would ever love me again.

 

The same author, Mary Anne Mohanraj, kept meticulous, detailed, heartfelt notes of her own battle with cancer, chemo, radiation and reconstruction which we published as Tornado. This is an honest guide of what lies ahead for the breast cancer patient. You can get digital copies of both of these books 50% off with the code PINK on the riverdsleavebooks.com website.

 

If you know someone going through this can, give a little extra love and good vibrations.  It means the world.

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Celebrate Charles Bukowski's 103rd Birthday with Bukowski: On Film



August 16th would have been the 103rd birthday of the acclaimed Los Angeles author and poet Charles Bukowski and New York Times best-selling author Marc Shapiro has spent the past year interviewing directors and actors who have worked with Bukowski over the years to bring us the definitive volume on Bukowski ‘s contribution to cinema in the just published Bukowski:On Film

If ever there was a match made in hell, it was legendary writer Charles Bukowski and the movies. Bukowski hated movies and moviemakers with a passion. The late writer would often chronicle his dislike in short stories, poems and novels. On the other hand, Hollywood filmmakers, from all strata of the industry, flocked to the powerful, raw and magnetic energy of his stories and poems and the cinematic possibilities they held.

Marc Shapiro delves into this complex hate/love relationship between author and auteur(s) with countless interviews of those who made cinematic sense of all levels of Bukowski films, from student efforts, to art house, to even the short experimental ones. The book also explores the obscure Bukowski films that were not so much released as escaped to. Of course, Shapiro also looks closely at the handful of major studio features coupled with close Bukowski confidants who offered up their reasoning behind the late author's hatred for the industry that, in many cases, he profited from.

Bukowski: On Film takes a deep, probing, often humorous and psychologically insightful, look at Bukowski and those who were driven by passion to try to get Bukowski right.

Shapiro is currently working on a group biography of Beatle Kids for Riverdale Avenue Books to be published in 2024.

Saturday, July 1, 2023

Celebrate Christmas in July with RAB

This year, like every year, Riverdale Avenue Books - award-winning hybrid publisher - celebrates Christmas in July! And, like every year, Riverdale Avenue Books is giving their readers a special promo code to get any of their Christmas titles for 50% off.

Just use the code “XMAS23” when purchasing on Riverdale Avenue Books website, and you’ll automatically get the title you like half off. Whether you’ve wanted their Christmas books either digitally, physically or as a hard copy, you can now get it for 50% off!

“We all need a little extra joy this year,” said Riverdale Avenue Books Publisher Lori Perkins. “Everyone knows that Christmas is the most romantic holiday of the year, but most people are too busy shopping, taking care of family, baking and decorating to enjoy the sales.  RAB gives you a whole summer month to curl up with as many hot holiday hunks as you possibly can.”

Readers also have a chance to enter into Erie Gay News’ book giveaways here. Contestants will have the chance to enter to win Jingle Balls: A Christmas Anthology, Holiday Gay: Tales of Love, Lust, and Other Seasonal Gifts, and A Christmas Carl. If you’d like to participate in all three, you’ll have to enter in each three so make sure to do so before the deadline!

The full list of books including in Riverdale Avenue Books Christmas in July promotion is listed below:

Dyke the Halls: Lesbian Erotic Christmas Stories Edited by Linda Alvarez

Jingle Balls Edited by Cecilia Tan

Hot for Xmas by Trinity Blacio

A Christmas Carl by Ryan Field

Forever Bound with Tinsel by Chloe Stowe

Christmas Magic by Cecilia Tan

The Naughty Angel and Her Three Very Wise Men by Trinity Blacio

Naughty Mommy and Santa’s Helpers by Trinity Blacio

The Naughty Stepbrothers by Trinity Blacio

A Christmas Tail: Book Four of the Masters of the Cats Series by Trinity Blacio

Holiday Smut edited by Lori Perkins

Whips & Chains & Candy Canes by F.L. Bicknell

Her Three Men by Trinity Blacio

Hot for Winter by Trinity Blacio

A Scarlet Christmas: A Femdom Christmas Carol by DL King

Bad Santa by Lise Horton

Her Stepbrother’s Christmas Gift: A Once upon a Stepbrothers Novella by Rachel Kenley

Home Alone for Christmas by Lori Perkins

Wrapped Around Your Handlebars by Ana Lee Kennedy

Frosty, Inc. by Trinity Blacio

Holiday Gay edited by Maitland McDonagh

Friday, June 16, 2023

Beyond Worship: Meditations on Queer Worship, Liturgy & Theology Wins Bronze IPPY Award in Religion Category

What better way to celebrate Pride than to win an Independent Publisher’s (IPPY) Award in Religion during the month that celebrates the LGBTQ+ community?

Said Riverdale Avenue Books publisher, Lori Perkins, “I am also so honored that this inclusive LGBTQ+ title received an award in the “religion” category and not just LGBTQ+. “

The book started as a digital zine published by Manhattan’s Fort Washington Collegiate Church’s website with only a few contributors. Under the direction of Minister James Admans (they/them) and funded by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, the zine Beyond Worship sought to collect any written material by LGBTQIA+ authors that could be shared in a worship space. The goal was to not only demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ members of the church are accepted, but part of the community and have something to contribute.

When Publisher Lori Perkins, a member of Fort Washington, read the zine, she was immediately inspired to expand upon the idea of belonging in a community not just to LGBTQIA+ members of Fort Washington, but any LGBTQIA+ person struggling to find a sense of belonging in a community that they can call home and wanting, but struggling, to find their relationship with a higher purpose.

Beyond Worship seeks to show LGBTQIA+ people that they are divine, here for a reason, and have so much to contribute to their communities.

Whether a poem, a short story, a psalm, a meditative guide, or an academic paper, each LGBTQIA+ author in this anthology explores what it means to find community and love in a society that tells them they are undeserving of both. From all over the world and from a variety of faith traditions, each author’s piece shows readers different ways of being in a world worth experiencing.

Rev. Admans commented on the experience of putting together this collection, “I'm thrilled to share this collection of pieces by LGBTQIA+ religious and spiritual authors. We live in a time where queer and transgender people are taught that our faith journeys are invalid. Beyond Worship shows otherwise. Not only can LGBTQIA+ people flourish in our faith, but we can be theologians with profound teaching and insight.”

A virtual IPPY Awards ceremony will be held on Tuesday, June 20th at 3:30.