Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Parisian Phoenix has registered for the third annual Delaware Riverfest in Portland, Pa., August 26. Portland businesses have been struggling lately, primarily because of a road closure of Rte 611 but also weekend parking issues thanks to river tubers who, due to their location in the water, don’t spend time in the downtown.

Portland has a special place in my heart because it’s the closest thing I have to a “hometown.” I grew up in the Slate Belt, in Upper Mount Bethel Township, in a farmhouse that I like to say is halfway between Driftstone Campground and Tuscarora Inn.

And Portland is a special place to Parisian Phoenix Publishing— and struggling writers take note of what I’m about to say. I didn’t find my voice for my first novel Manipulations until I took the main characters and delivered them to Portland. My characters all have backgrounds wildly different from mine, but when I made them converge in Portland… the familiarity of it all freed my writing mind to focus on them and not on the setting.

For example, the villain mentions the town’s pedestrian bridge, which used to be a covered bridge across the Delaware connecting Portland to Columbia, N.J.

“Want to take a walk?” he asked. If her water power had attracted Neferkaba’s attention, then Lughaidh knew what kind of place would please her. He did his best to hide his discomfort with a quiet cough. “There’s a bridge, a block away. It goes across the river. I thought…”

Or in a later chapter where Étienne d’Amille acknowledges the traffic light… yes, the one traffic light.

A boring seventy-five minutes later, the Ferrari coasted into Portland. The one traffic light in town stood at the bottom of a small hill, and Étienne caught it red or he probably could have made it the three blocks down Main Street with the engine in neutral. The bar sat on another knoll, sandwiched between an antique store and a Methodist church.

and then he gets pulled over…

Étienne’s hand slipped from the steering wheel. He quickly regained his grip, but the car had swerved over the double yellow line. The thickness of the night made it easy to spot the flashing lights behind him. He glanced at the speedometer.

“Putain!”

Étienne stopped in front of the grocery store. After passing a field sobriety test and receiving a speeding ticket, Étienne drove carefully home with his agitated wife who didn’t say a word for the rest of the night, not even a ‘thank you’ when he cooked her crêpes with Nutella and bananas.

I didn’t really think about it until a few weeks ago, but the whole book is peppered with cameos from not only Portland and Mount Bethel, but homage to the Lehigh Valley with coffee shops in Easton, witchy rituals where the Twin Rivers meet, and a villian who squats in a church in Williams Township.

The series eventually “visits” Manhattan, Paris, Djibouti City and Djiboutian countryside— all places I have been, all places I love. But like people, setting is a character and deserves rich development that makes “her” come alive in the same three-dimensional way we hope our characters breathe.

So, you see, without Portland, I might have never finished Manipulations and without the Fashion and Fiends series, I might have never developed this publishing company. (Buy the Fashion and Fiends series here.)