“WET GODDESS is your typical Romeo-Juliet story, except that Juliet is a 400-lb. (180 kg) marine mammal with a larger brain than Zack, the story’s human narrator,” Brenner explained.

Also, most novels don’t contain photos. Brenner’s does, although some have been retouched to disguise the human subjects and the location, a Sarasota-area amusement park called “Florida Funland.” The rationale for the photos is answered in the story, an autobiographical, satirical and metaphysical account of protagonist Zachary Zimmerman’s slow slide toward an act of love that will distinguish him from most of the human race.

“While attending New College of Florida, I was asked by an aspiring author, a wealthy woman of great personal magnetism, to shoot some photos of the dolphins at this amusement park with the idea they would get published in her book,” Brenner said. “Well, she never finished the book, and after several years I decided to do something with the photos. So I wrote WET GODDESS.”

It is, Brenner freely admits, the proverbial autobiographical first novel.

“You know the cliché in writing workshops, ‘Write about what you know,’” Brenner quipped. “This is what I know about dolphins, and most of it is information you won’t find in any scientific treatise. It can’t be quantified or readily explained, just described.”

Ruby, Zack’s cetacean paramour, doesn’t share his human sexual inhibitions. As the real dolphin in the pool behaves more and more seductively, Zack comes to believe she’s also communicating with him telepathically. The experience pushes him outside the box of human experience, with unexpected results for both parties.

The book’s release coincides with some marine biologists’ calls for dolphins to be granted “non-human person” status, an idea first proposed by Dr. John C. Lilly in the 1960’s. Lilly appears as a character in Brenner’s novel, as do some other real-life dolphin researchers.

“My idea was to see how close I could get in fiction to the reality of my experience, which was fundamentally unbelievable,” Brenner said. “I think I succeeded rather well, given the difficulty of explaining what it feels like to encounter an archetypal creature like a dolphin in her own environment, on her own terms.”

Excerpts from WET GODDESS have been published in PENTHOUSE and the historic, 1974 Project Jonah anthology Mind In The Waters.

WET GODDESS, a 354-page trade paperback, is available from Eyes Open Media for $14.95 U.S., $19.95 overseas, plus $5.00 S/H. Florida residents please add 6% SST ($15.85). PayPal, checks or money orders are accepted. Brenner’s web site at www.wetgoddess.net includes a blog, order form, biography, dolphin photos, AV files and more information.

Share this article with: