Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Perhaps “Writing Books that Inspire Us” is not the right title for this one, but “writing books that inspire me” sounds so pretentious. If you’re a regular around here, you might want to skip to the next paragraph as I’m going to cover some basic information you already know.

I am Angel Ackerman, the founder and publisher here at Parisian Phoenix Publishing. We released our first book September 11, 2021 and know have 15 published books, 16 if you count one second edition rerelease. We create craft books for authors that don’t fit the commercial publishing mold. We follow a traditional publishing model, which right now means any royalties go into a communal pot that pay for marketing, supplies and “the next book” in support of all our authors. I was recently elected president of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group. This is my third term as the group’s president, having last served about 15 years ago.

The publicity chair of the group revived an old blog the group had in storage (metaphorically) and asked the board members for their writing craft book recommendations. As a publicity whore, I wanted to cite Ralph Greco Jr.’s Writing Dirty Words because if it wasn’t my favorite writing craft book– why on earth would I release it into the world? Order the book from Amazon here.

In my defense, I appreciate Ralph’s sense of humor, his practical writing advice and his pop culture references. My main criticism of the book is his overuse (but technically correct) use of the semicolon. And the cover is positively brilliant. I think you might need to be “of a certain age” to appreciate it but the matte printing and torn paper design harkens back to the day when naughty publications came wrapped in plain brown paper to protect the not-so-innocent.

I opened my makeshift office (my daughter and I placed the top of the dining room hutch on the table and thought we could tuck all the Parisian Phoenix paraphernalia in there. Here are the books that regardless of my memory of them, I felt important enough to keep at hand. (** This does not include my Chicago Manual of Style, my super thesaurus, my Turabian Manual for Writers, my St. Martin’s Handbook or my Bible. Those are reference books. And very important to have on hand.)

My shelf includes (click to view listing on Bookshop.org):

• Walking on Alligators by Susan Shaughnessy
• an old and new copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
• Stephen King’s On Writing.
• On Writing Well by William Zinsser
• Will Write For Food by Dianne Jacob
• A Writer’s Paris by Eric Maisel
• https://bookshop.org/a/84335/9781582971827Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass
• How to Publish Your Articles by Shirley Jump

But of this list, the one book I’d pick to share is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. It’s probably been 20 years since I read that book and I remember how he talks about distilling your writing down to its most powerful delivery. As someone who flip-flops between many styles and genres of the written word, his advice gave me ideas on how to deliver clean and clever prose.

See the Parisian Phoenix list of all sorts of favorite writing craft books here on Bookshop.org, and know that this list compiles everyone’s favorites and not just mine.