Shop N Stroll with Your Pup and Delaware River Fest with Slate Belt Rising and Blue Flame events
Yesterday, Parisian Phoenix Publishing and Echo City Capers (and even William Prystauk, author of the Kink Noir series) attended the Third Annual Shop N Stroll with Your Pup at Wind Gap Park.
Joseph Swarctz of Echo City Capers and I had a long but enjoyable day chit-chatting with other vendors, dog people, families, even other writers and business owners, and one old boss from my newspaper days (now taking photos for Town Topics some of which can be seen here).* Echo City Capers almost sold out of their new compilation, Bunnies, Cookies and a Robot!
Kimberly Stocker, owner of Blue Flame Events, organizes these events as a volunteer with Slate Belt Rising. As a graduate of Bangor High School and a resident of Bangor, she donates her time and skills to contribute to the economic development of her community. I also grew up in the Slate Belt (Upper Mount Bethel Township, four miles outside of Portland).
So many dogs. Schnauzers, pitties, cocker spaniels, Greyhounds, something called a Native American Shepherd, puppies, geriatric dogs, small dogs, big dogs, service dogs, improperly trained ‘service dogs’, and people doing a great job training their dogs. (See photos in our Substack newsletter.)
And so much dog stuff! I almost bought my daughter’s pitbull/mastiff/black lab mutt a pearl collar, but I lost track of the vendor or maybe the vendor sold it.
I met a lot of good people that may pop up in this newsletter in the future including self-published author J.L. Beers who was at the event promoting her debut ‘spicy’ young adult novel, The Truth Behind The Moon, which in her words is appropriate for a mature 16-year-old. We traded books on the premise that we would give each other’s fiction a read and post reviews— because Parisian Phoenix believes in community and that extends to farmers and independent authors.
Throw in some frisbees, a metal toilet one foot off the ground that looked like it came out of a prison cell, a food vendor selling shaved ice portion the size of basketballs, some late seventies Classic Rock, bacon on a stick and funnel cake and that just about sums up the day.
And this is what my daughter’s dog thought when I got home, sunburned and apparently very intriguing:
We had so much fun that we have registered for Delaware River Fest in Portland, where, among our normal activities and merchandise, we will do some free tarot workshops promoting Shuffling & Scribbling (buy here) and have signed copies of my first novel in the Fashion and Fiends series, Manipulations, (buy here) where (and I had legitimately forgotten about this) the first chapter takes place in Portland and many of the subsequent chapters occur at Étienne’s country home in Upper Mount Bethel Township (and the villain is squatting in an abandoned church in Williams Township out by Dominique’s food forest).
* I respect local news in any form, and I love scrappy journalistic operations. But small organizations would really benefit from learning and/or recruiting some basic graphic design skills. Just because you have Photoshop does not mean you know how to use it. Just like people who think the camera transforms one into a photographer, an Adobe subscription does not magically make you an artist. And maybe, but it’s probably unlikely, I will share how Larry Cory’s Blue Valley Times influenced and shaped my career when it might have killed it.
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