PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release, 04/02/2016
From: Eyes Open Media
(415) 640-5013
PUNTA GORDA, Fla./NIKEL, Russia — The interspecies romance novel that shocked America is now available in Russia.
Thanks to a unique international collaboration, “Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover,” which author Malcolm J. Brenner self-published to international publicity in 2010, has been published in a Russian language edition by its translator, Anton River. He is distributing the book via social media and on Amazon with Brenner’s permission and encouragement.
“Wet Goddess” tells the story of Zachary Zimmerman, a young male college student who falls in love and has a sexual relationship with a female dolphin in an amusement park. Brenner, a self-described zoophile, admits the story is largely based on his experiences while attending New College of Florida in 1970 and ’71.
River, 27, lives in Nikel, Murmansk Oblast region, an industrial town about 12,000 in Russia’s far northwest, near the border with Norway. “Anton contacted me on Facebook in early August last year to let me know he had purchased a copy of ‘Wet Goddess’ and translated it into Russian so his family and friends could read it,” Brenner said. “I was impressed by the amount of effort he put into it. ‘Wet Goddess’ is filled with 1970’s American slang, puns, regional accents and out-of-this-world scenes. It took him about six months to translate all 341 pages of it, a mammoth piece of work. So I suggested we form a partnership to publish the book in Russia.”
River further showed his multiple talents by laying out the book and re-doing the cover, which was designed by Brenner’s daughter Thea Boodhoo, in Cyrillic.
“We had difficulty finding a publishing company in Russia that would handle ‘Wet Goddess,’” Brenner said. “The first one Anton tried was a ‘vanity press’ that wanted $6,000 to publish the book. The second said they couldn’t do it because the book was pornographic, even though there are exceptions in Russian law for works of literary and artistic merit. We finally found a company, Editus, that would handle the manuscript as I had written it, and I’m very grateful to them for not exercising any censorship.”
Brenner’s book has sold about 1,350 copies in 18 countries. “I hope ‘Wet Goddess’ sells well in Russia, as the country has an active industry capturing and selling dolphins and whales for entertainment,” Brenner said. “If there is a message from my book, it is that dolphins are the non-human people of the sea, and they deserve to be treated like such and left in freedom.”
To obtain a copy of “Wet Goddess” in Russian, contact River at asterite@icloud.com.
For more information, or to schedule an interview, contact Brenner at (415) 640-5013 between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on east coast DST.
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Malcolm J. Brenner 