Parisian Phoenix Publishing

Larry Sceurman and I, and perhaps Seneca Blue, will share our experiences writing about local settings in a panel for the Easton Book Festival. That panel will be at 2 p.m. Sunday October 20 at the new location of Book and Puppet Company, our favorite local independent bookseller.

The three of us all use the Lehigh Valley in different ways in our fiction. Larry creates a historical, nostalgic version of the Lehigh Valley in his stories which blend truth, story and fantasy into snapshots that feel familiar on multiple levels. Seneca created a fictional steel town in her romantic comedy, Trapped, based on South Bethlehem. As for me, setting was key in finding my voice for my horror series.

Although my stories travel to Paris, New York, Chicago and even more exotic locations like Djibouti City, what made the story make sense to me was when I gave the famous fashion designer a weekend house in Pennsylvania’s Slate Belt. His fabulous riverfront get-away is based on the farmhouse in Upper Mount Bethel Township where I lived in my youth. And the bad guy squats in an old church in Williams Township, not too far from where I live now. And Easton also makes an appearance in the novels.

In the fourth novel of the series, Road Trip, one of the three Zweigenbaum siblings who anchor the novel attends Lafayette College. The school, the Lafayette Inn, Wawa, and the McDonalds downtown all make an appearance– and if I remember correctly, the viewpoint character buys his underage sister beer at College Inn Tavern.

And for fans of Bethlehem, the Fashion and Fiends crew spend some time at the Hotel Bethlehem in book five, Absolution. I’ve completed the first draft, but that novel remains in cold storage while I work on other projects for a while.

But back to the Easton Book Festival, I will also be on a Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group panel earlier that day (noon) Plot vs. Protagonist.

Nancy Scott and Maryann Riker will be on hand at the Small Press Expo promoting Justarip Press. Both Nancy and Maryann contributed to Not an Able-Bodied White Man with Money, our anthology featuring marginalized nonfiction voices from throughout the Lehigh Valley. They have worked on a variety of chapbooks together which are available on Amazon.

For those of you not familiar, the Easton Book Festival is now in its sixth year and tries to connect community, businesses and writers/authors in a free festival that showcases the best of the city and the best of the area’s literary culture.

Easton Book Festival’s mission is to inform, educate, enrich and inspire people of all backgrounds in our community through cultural and literary programs and to otherwise foster intellectual discourse and civic engagement.