Dauphin County Library Celebrates Local Authors

The Dauphin County library system held its annual local authors day at the East Shore branch, so Teresa and I went out to see what was happening.

First, we hung out with Samantha Prescott and Sherry Knowlton. We talked a lot about book covers and the process behind getting them designed. I was especially impressed with Knowlton’s thrillers featuring Alexa Williams. The covers are on-genre and eye-catching, yet variable enough in color and subject to be individually distinguishable. Putting a blurb from best-selling thriller writer Steve Berry on her business card was equally impressive.

Prescott is the author of the vampire YA “Taken, Awoke, Reborn.”

Rachel J. Good grew up near Lancaster County and has ties to the Amish community, so it’s not surprising that she has a line of inspirational novels set there. (She offers for free a PDF of the first chapter from her novel “Change of Heart” as well). Her books also include authentic Amish recipes. In a smart form of line extension, she also produced an Amish quilt coloring book. But what also impressed me was that she also had two books in a Western series for 7-10th graders.

While I was talking with another author, my wife talked to Julia Mallory about her book, “Black Mermaids.” With the help of illustrations by Taqiyya Muhammad, she uses poetry to reimagine mermaid mythology. What impressed Teresa and I was her idea of imaging them as the spirits of African slaves who jumped overboard to escape their captors. Teresa was very impressed by the effort she’s putting behind her book (she had apparently just come back from an event in New York City to appear here).

I know that Mallory is writing poetry for children, but I think that is also an awesome origin story for a horror novel. I guess it was suggested by my recent reading of Mira Grant’s “Rolling in the Deep,” in which her mermaids are nasty, vicious, and very very dangerous. But when I was younger, I thought that “The Cat in the Hat” was about a home invasion and kidnapping, so I’ve always been prone to gloomy thoughts.

At another table was “Mr. Mike” Sgrignoli, creator of children’s books about dinosaurs, and Nadine Poper, who specializes in stories about dachshunds, illustrated by Kaitlyn and Jessica Reber.

With Mr. Mike, the event took a particularly weird turn. We were talking about his books and his other work which involves visiting schools, emceeing the children’s stage at book festivals (as I note from his website, he’ll be doing that at the Day of the Book festival in Kensington, Md., on April 22.

Event promotions aside, we talked about his CD of dino-related music. Mike used to drum for bands back in the day, and we talked about the bands we saw. I was recalling when I roomed with a family in Chapel Hill, N.C. in the early ‘80s when I attended UNC. I kept blanking on the family’s name, but described the kid, a boy of about 10, who played the guitar like Clapton and looked like a young Mick Jagger. I did recall that he grew up to play for a little-known band called the Flat Duo Jets.

“Oh, yeah, I know them,” Mr. Mike said (note: quote not accurate). I kept trying and failing to drag out more names, but described the scene in Chapel Hill at that time. New bands were forming and disbanding, and we’d see groups like REM before they became monster hits.

“Then there was the group,” I stammered, “where the drummer was this girl.”

“Sara Romweber?” he said.

“Yes! She was a member of the family I was living with!” My voice might have went up an octave.

“Let’s Active?”

“You know Let’s Active?” and I’m afraid I shouted something like funque. In the library.

Mike remembers seeing the band in D.C. after Sara left the group. During the concert, he was close enough to the new drummer to ask, during the show, whatever happened to her.

After that, more names came flooding out: Don Dixon, Mitch Easter, X-Teens, Fabulous Poodles, Arrogance (and their side band, Dogbreath). They were all part of the Chapel Hill scene that at one point seemed like it could have become as big as Seattle became when Nirvana came around.

We talked more about musicians who made it big and those who didn’t, and why that happened. But I was still riding a high of meeting, more than 35 years later, someone who knew the group who rehearsed in the same house I rented a room from for two years. A family with members in Wikipedia.

And who wouldn’t remember me from Adam, but that’s all right.

“You know,” he said, “you ought to write about that.” And I think he’s right.

Cara Sue Achterberg exposed me to a nifty candy giveaway. With the help of Crow Hollow Crafts, she created candy wrappers featuring her book cover and website information.

But what impresses me more are her books. “Practicing Normal,” about a family coming apart under an array of problems has endorsements from Jacquelyn Mitchard, Kate Moretti, and a name familiar to me, Caroline Leavitt (who loved “Writers Gone Wild”). Her previous books, “I’m Not Her” and “Girls’ Weekend” sound like the kind of books Jennifer Weiner would approve. She also has coming in August “Another Good Dog,” a memoir about her family and the 50 dogs they’ve fostered over the past few years. This tells me she has a unique voice worth listening to.

I have a fondness for time traveling stories, so I talked to Todd McClimans. His “American Epochs” series combines science-fiction with history and is written for middle grade students. The three books in the series cover the Revolutionary War, the Underground Railroad, and the Civil War.

Finally, there was the romance writers panel in which we heard stories about how they celebrated their successes and what writers influenced them.