SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU

Sweet Embraceable You: 8 Coffee-House Stories
by Jack Fritscher
314 pages. $14.95
Palm Drive Publishing, San Francisco

1. "Couples," and the changing nature of two people coupling, is the running theme of the eight tales in Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories. Author Jack Fritscher, recently coupled in Vermont on the seventh day that same-gender Civil Unions became legal, celebrates gay couples in his breathless autobiographical story, "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way." Fritscher is a storyteller who has been around the block in more than thirty gay magazines. He knows the soul, heart, and funny bone of the lesbigay world. (Continue or cut to paragraph 3, 4, or 5.)

2. These Embraceable stories include the "fast-read" of Kweenasheba, a four-person one-act comedy that you and your lover and another couple could read out loud for a hoot after supper. For readers who have never had the chance to read an actual screenplay, Duchess: Berlin 1928 reads so clearly, you can see, on the movie-screen in your head, every "queen's" favorite fairy-tale heroine, the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia escaping lovers and villains in the streets of Berlin, two steps ahead of Sally Bowles in Cabaret. In fact, Duchess is a "film noir" story of a person refusing to couple when coupling means losing one's identity. (Continue or cut to paragraph 4 or 5.)

3. Actually, all these stories are so vividly cinematic that the eight of them are like going into a Cineplex 8 and changing theaters to see all eight films for one admission. "Rainbow County" reads like Hitchcock, as the odd couple, a barber and a perhaps-serial-killer hustler, jostle suspensefully for power at the corner of 18th and Castro in San Francisco. "The Story Knife" tells the independent-film version of a handsome Catholic priest's reawakened sense of desire for a yummy cabin-boy from Genoa; set on a cruise ship heading north to Alaska, this couple–priest and young man–is united by a love that overpowers the priest's desire for video-making and the boy's desire for cash. In "Mrs. Dalloway," this coupling theme "triangulates" among the mother, the son, and the son's lover, with everyone refusing to surrender; yet the three arrive, through same-gender marriage, at a healing sense of family. In "The Unseen Hand in the Lavender Light," a young boy grows up in a movie theater surrealistically powered by Hollywood images of coupling which make him finally explode. (Continue or cut to paragraph 5.)

4. The author, a true humanist of gay consciousness, in these stories celebrates women who are coupled to gay men as mothers, wives, and friends. The son-mother-grandmother story, "Silent Mothers, Silent Sons," sews up a heart-breaking tale of how silence equals death, and, worse–before death–loneliness and isolation, because no one dares speak the secret that lies beneath nearly every family.

5. Fritscher is the best kind of author: one who disappears behind his well-developed characters, dialog, and plots. The diverse stories range from edgy to nostalgic, comic to romantic. The "voice" of the storyteller is pure entertainment without agenda. The style of the writing is lustrous. The author edits himself down to the polished bone, so that every word, every rhythm, every comma propels the feeling of the story. Sweet Embraceable You is recommended for travel, beach, and bedside reading.

(REMEMBER TO REMOVE THE PARAGRAPH NUMBERS)


	PRESS PACKAGE SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU coffee-house stories Short Fiction by JACK FRITSCHER Press Release Press Package Cover Letter Sample Review


	PRESS RELEASE Palm Drive Publishing is pleased to announce the publication of SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU: COFFEE-HOUSE STORIES by Jack Fritscher With SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU, Jack Fritscher joins fellow author Anne Rice, famously crosses literary genres. These 8 entertaining stories, defining diverse, spin a fast read: edgy in some tales, nostalgic in others, lustrous always. Fritscher is the best kind of award-winning author: one who disappears behind his characters, dialog, and textured plots. His stylish fiction carries the 21st-century reader back through the glimmering door of the 20th. Here is human lover, new and ageless, in all its tender genders, comic banana splits, identity ironies, and family silences where people crave not sex, but intimacy and connection. The Stories include: the breathless satire, "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way"; the college-faculty comedy, "The Unseen Hand in the Lavender Light"; the priest's Alaskan cruise-ship adventure, "The Story Knife"; the Hitchcockian suspense-thriller, "Rainbow County"; the hospital-issue drama, "Silent Mothers, Silent Sons"; and the tale of two surrogate couples all wrong for each other in "Sweet Embraceable You" (told twice: as brilliant little story and as snappy one-act play). This fresh collection of diverse entertainments also includes an easy-to-read indie screenplay, "Duchess: Berlin 1928." Jack Fritscher is the author of five short story collections, four novels, three nonfiction books, two produced plays, and two screenplays. His fiction as well as feature articles and essays have appeared in more than 30 magazines, including "Modern Drama" and "The Journal of Popular Culture." His writing has won many awards nationally and in the San Francisco Bay Area where he frequently reads. SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU: COFFEE-HOUSE STORIES by Jack Fritscher Trade paper — 5.5 x 8.5 — 314 pages, $14.95 ISBN 1-890834-35-1 Release Date: July 2000 For more Information or to Request Review Copies, contact: Mark Hemry, Publisher vox 707-892-1930 fax 707-829-1568 Email mark@palmdrivepublishing.com www.PalmDrivePublishing.com

	For Review Consideration Letter Sweet Embraceable You: 8 Coffee-House Stories by Jack Fritscher 314 pages. $14.95 Palm Drive Publishing, San Francisco FOR YOUR REVIEW CONSIDERATION... Dear Reviewer, Seldom, in a long career track, does a best-selling author prove as versatile a storyteller as writer Jack Fritscher whose 12th book, and 7th book of fiction, SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU: 8 COFFEE HOUSE STORIES has been published by Palm Drive Publishing. A copy of this diverse collection of stories, refreshed with a "fast-read" play and an easy-to-read screenplay, is offered for your review consideration in this age of diverse values, old and new-style weddings, and families of women and sons. For quick reference, check the notes on the back cover of the book. We value, along with the author, your time, opinion, and tear sheets. Enclosed is an SASE for a copy of your review for the literary-history archive files, as well as your inclusion on the websites www.PalmDrivePublishing.com and www.JackFritscher.com. If you are an internet reviewer, or if your review–published in a paper magazine or newspaper–is posted, please send the URL to mark@palmdrivepublishing.com. Questions? Requests? Graphics additional to the book's cover? Please call, fax, or Email. Sincerely yours, M. T. Hemry Publisher ABOUT SWEET EMBRACEABLE YOU: 8 COFFEE HOUSE STORIES

	SAMPLE REVIEW You may print this text whole, or in part, or incorporate parts of this text in your own review, credited as you wish. OKAY, YOU MOVIE QUEENS! SWEET EMBRACEABLE GAY COUPLES, NEW FICTION Sweet Embraceable You: 8 Coffee-House Stories by Jack Fritscher 314 pages. $14.95 Palm Drive Publishing, San Francisco 1. "Couples," and the changing nature of two people coupling, is the running theme of the eight tales in Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories. Author Jack Fritscher, recently coupled in Vermont on the seventh day that same-gender Civil Unions became legal, celebrates gay couples in his breathless autobiographical story, "Mrs. Dalloway Went That-A-Way." Fritscher is a storyteller who has been around the block in more than thirty gay magazines. He knows the soul, heart, and funny bone of the lesbigay world. (Continue or cut to paragraph 3, 4, or 5.) 2. These Embraceable stories include the "fast-read" of Kweenasheba, a four-person one-act comedy that you and your lover and another couple could read out loud for a hoot after supper. For readers who have never had the chance to read an actual screenplay, Duchess: Berlin 1928 reads so clearly, you can see, on the movie-screen in your head, every "queen's" favorite fairy-tale heroine, the lost Grand Duchess Anastasia escaping lovers and villains in the streets of Berlin, two steps ahead of Sally Bowles in Cabaret. In fact, Duchess is a "film noir" story of a person refusing to couple when coupling means losing one's identity. (Continue or cut to paragraph 4 or 5.) 3. Actually, all these stories are so vividly cinematic that the eight of them are like going into a Cineplex 8 and changing theaters to see all eight films for one admission. "Rainbow County" reads like Hitchcock, as the odd couple, a barber and a perhaps-serial-killer hustler, jostle suspensefully for power at the corner of 18th and Castro in San Francisco. "The Story Knife" tells the independent-film version of a handsome Catholic priest's reawakened sense of desire for a yummy cabin-boy from Genoa; set on a cruise ship heading north to Alaska, this couple–priest and young man–is united by a love that overpowers the priest's desire for video-making and the boy's desire for cash. In "Mrs. Dalloway," this coupling theme "triangulates" among the mother, the son, and the son's lover, with everyone refusing to surrender; yet the three arrive, through same-gender marriage, at a healing sense of family. In "The Unseen Hand in the Lavender Light," a young boy grows up in a movie theater surrealistically powered by Hollywood images of coupling which make him finally explode. (Continue or cut to paragraph 5.) 4. The author, a true humanist of gay consciousness, in these stories celebrates women who are coupled to gay men as mothers, wives, and friends. The son-mother-grandmother story, "Silent Mothers, Silent Sons," sews up a heart-breaking tale of how silence equals death, and, worse–before death–loneliness and isolation, because no one dares speak the secret that lies beneath nearly every family. 5. Fritscher is the best kind of author: one who disappears behind his well-developed characters, dialog, and plots. The diverse stories range from edgy to nostalgic, comic to romantic. The "voice" of the storyteller is pure entertainment without agenda. The style of the writing is lustrous. The author edits himself down to the polished bone, so that every word, every rhythm, every comma propels the feeling of the story. Sweet Embraceable You is recommended for travel, beach, and bedside reading. (REMEMBER TO REMOVE THE PARAGRAPH NUMBERS)

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