If you’ve just completed your masterpiece and are ready to publish, come hear from an expert panel on what to do next.

Local published authors Ed Perratore, Samantha E. Talbot, and Richard Finn share their learnings and advice on navigating and managing the byzantine, confusing, frustrating, and intimidating publishing industry to successfully get your book out to the public. Bring your own questions to this conversation. All queries welcome!

Copies of each author’s books will be available for purchase and signing. (This event is free.)

About Ed Perratore

Ed Perratore’s books include two horror novels: The Coven Tree and Hindred Spirits. He is well into a third horror novel, based in upper Westchester. His other published book is the nonfiction work One Man’s Journey: A Walk on the Croton Aqueduct Trail. Ed’s career has been in magazine writingand editing at Consumer Reports, PC Magazine and other renowned publications; but his earliest roots in horror are from TV fare such as Chiller Theater, Creature Features and The 4:30 Movie.

About Ed's Books

The Coven Tree, a horror novel set in New York’s Adirondack Region, relates a dark and torturous journey for Johanna and Daniel Keane and their teenage son, Randall, after they unwittingly allow—into their own home—the instrument of their family’s destruction.

The horror novel Hindred Spirits tells of Natalie Leffingwell, nine, one of many children—mostly the abused—who cope by willing their spirits to exit their bodies for a few hours at a time. In case of physical danger, children learn to quickly reunite. Nevertheless, one night Natalie becomes trapped as a spirit. Lonely, she needs a friend and resolves to win one...even if she has to kill.

One Man’s Journey: A Walk on the Croton Aqueduct Trail is the author’s informative, reflective and often humorous account of two round-trip hikes he took on the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail in New York’s Westchester County. This memorable work of literary and historical nonfiction includes 60+ photos.

About Samantha E. Talbot

Samantha (Sam) Talbot is a proud introvert, weirdo, and lover of the morbid, mysterious, and macabre. You can often find her communing with the birds of Brinton Brook Sanctuary, skulking among the tombstones at any of Westchester’s many old cemeteries, or paddling along the Croton River. A self-taught writer and eternally curious autodidact, she took a detour into spec screenwriting before recently returning to novelcraft.

A Thunderbolt Into Nettle is her second self- published work. The first, The Weight of Moonlight, was a digital-only offering through Smashwords in 2005, and has since been pulled by the author. She is pleased to join fellow authors Ed and Richard to inspire others to embrace their own stories.

About A Thunderbolt Into Nettle

Lady Astrid Rimensberger, headstrong daughter of the lower Silesian nobility, travels to Csjethe, Hungary to retrieve her sister, who has mysteriously ceased all communication with her family after being chosen to attend a conservatory for young ladies headed by that region’s notorious countess, Erszébet Báthory.

After being turned away at the castle gates, and subsequently failed by the Hungarian Palatine, Astrid realizes she has no choice but to shed her title and enter the castle in the guise of a servant to continue her search.

Lady Astrid will have to cross the steely societal boundaries of class and gender - as well as traverse her own dark inner terrain - to save not only herself, but also the souls of all those the countess and her attendant witch have sacrificed in service to their perverse legacy.

About Richard Finn

Richard Finn was born in Manhattan and has lived for more than 20 years in Goldens Bridge with his wife Andrea and their two grown daughters Stephanie and Jacqueline. He graduated from Colgate University where he played varsity tennis.

Finn has spent his professional life in the sports industry, beginning with a long and accomplished career as a sports journalist for USA Today, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Associated Press.

He branched out into sports publicity working as the Public Relations Director for the hugely successful 1999 Women’s World soccer tournament and then for more than a decade at the New York City Marathon. Presently, Finn is a tennis teaching professional at the Saw Mill Club in Mt. Kisco, the Bedford-Katonah Recreational Department, Briarcliff High School, and Horace Greeley.

Hildy’s Promise, started in 2020 as a pandemic shutdown project, is his first full-length novel. Being a fan from childhood of suspense, thriller, crime novels and movies has inspired this tale of greed, murder and duplicity.

About Hildy's Promise

Hildy Swanson, a wealthy Westchester County socialite and community benefactor, is kidnapped at gunpoint in her home in the New York suburbs on a beautiful spring day. After leaving a ransom note on the kitchen counter, the two masked kidnappers lock Hildy in the cellar of a deserted farmhouse alone and fearful of the men’s intentions.

Because she inherited a considerable fortune after her first husband died, Hildy is a tempting mark for the kidnappers. When RG Cassidy, Hildy’s husband, returns home, the former golf champion finds the strange ransom note ordering him to meet the kidnappers for 18 holes of golf to win Hildy’s freedom. The note also includes a large cash demand. The next day at the first tee Cassidy is told of an unnerving set of rules for the game.

The case is a challenge for a fast-growing suburban town that has drawn two upstate New York cops to its expanding force. But there is bad blood between the two lead Swanson case investigators, a no nonsense Captain Charlotte McBain and Samuel Garrett, a detective with a bad gambling habit. Their tension underlies and complicates the case that goes well beyond the rural and suburban boundaries of Westchester County.

Birdies, bogeys, and blood flow in this mix of greed and treachery in a taut crime story.

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