Breaking Ground: Shippensburg Book Festival 2018

Hannah Nawa, a go-getting entrepreneur in Shippensburg, Pa, decided that her town needed a book festival.

But instead of waiting for someone else to do the work, she started one herself. That led to a great day for us at Peschel Press and quite a few other local authors as well.

The first Shippensburg Book Festival took place on Sunday, 2 December 2018 in an old and interesting building called The Thought Lot. The Thought Lot hosts several businesses, all of them unique and interesting.

Hannah runs one of the shops: Whiskers Vintage and Vinyl so if you need a terrific piece of vintage clothing plus the appropriate piece of period music to go with it, she’s your girl.

She arranged one of the nicest book festivals we’ve attended. The building had plenty of free and convenient parking. She supplied us with tables and chairs to display are wares. There was even coffee and tea to keep us fueled during the day. Best of all, she spread the word to ensure many, many readers found us.

We did very well. We sold books, gave cookies to everyone and cloth grocery bags to book buyers. So, it looked like, did everyone else, based on seeing people happily carrying bags of books. Hannah was able to get a wide array of authors so there were children’s picture books, poets, non-fiction and self-help, an array of genre fiction, and plenty of romance via of the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers to choose from.

Other Authors at the Festival

Bill took plenty of pictures of the other authors so here’s a selection.

I met Tory at the PennLive local authors day, so I was glad to run into him again here. I had meant to buy his “Tales from the Cafe” at the time, so I was able to remedy that this time. You can find his books at Sunbury Press.

Crystal Stine radiated cheerfulness despite the gloomy weather and early morning. She’s the author of “Holy Hustle: Embracing a Work-Hard, Rest-Well Life,” and she certainly embodied the message of her book that day! Being of a practical mind, I was also curious about her table set-up, and we talked about her standup banner (which comes in one piece and sets up in seconds) and her postcards and wonderfully-smelling soap, made by a friend of hers (if my memory serves me). All in all, I was really impressed with her professional setup and polish.

Kathryn Lee Martin displayed two book covers that caught my eye, so I stopped to find out more. Her Western steampunks series consists of two books: “The Bone Roses” and “Garden of Ashes.”

Being at the next table over gave me a great opportunity to chat with Shawn Reilly Simmons, who also publishes as Sherry Knowlton. We quickly discovered that we shared some common interests. She’s involved with running Malice Domestic, which we’re planning to attend for the first time this year. She’s also catered movie shoots, and she used those experiences for her Red Carpet Catering mystery series (whereas for four days I was an extra on a movie set). I ended up buying the first book in the series, “Murder on a Silver Platter.”

I recently met Misty Simon through the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers group. She has written a couple mystery series, one of which is set in a town not unlike Mechanicsburg. I read the first one, “Cremains of the Day” so I picked up the second “Grounds for Remorse,” which is waiting its turn in the TBR pile.

I spoke with a lot of people, but I have to say the most interesting one by far was “Manyfaces,” and for that I’ll turn the post back over to Teresa.

You may be noticing that my Peschel Press official uniform has a slogan on the front about ‘be careful or you’ll end up in my novel’. Well, Face will appear somewhere on Mars in one of my Steppes of Mars novels. How could I not take advantage of such a gift from heaven! He was fascinating and happy to talk. His tattoos are all Cherokee tribal markings, and he sewed his stunning buckskin outfit by himself.

He did offer to show me his loincloth and leggings but I chickened out. Face insisted that his underpinnings were as authentic as the rest of his outfit but, alas, I have no photographic proof. What can I say? I felt awkward asking my own dear husband to take a picture of me admiring another man’s underpinnings.

To finish off a great day, we had a great dinner at CJ’s American Pub and Grill in Shippensburg. As always, eat local and keep your money in the community! We also treated ourselves to this fantastic raspberry and white chocolate dessert at CJ’s and it was worth every single calorie.

We had a great day. We sold a lot of books, we met a lot of wonderful people, and Hannah, we hope you arrange for the second annual Shippensburg Book Festival in December of 2019. Peschel Press will be there, and we’ll have new titles for Shippensburg’s readers.