In this episode, of Bookable Space we’re joined by P.M. Raymond. P.M. reads from Things are as They Should Be and Other Things to Die For. It’s rich discussion about writing Southern gothic, what writing New Orleans makes possible, creating fictious places, crafting a short story collection, and more. 

About the book:

THINGS ARE AS THEY SHOULD BE and other words to die for is an interconnected Southern gothic noir journey from reconstruction New Orleans to a present-day Louisiana landscape of terror. Littered with transgressive messages and exploring the limits of greed and vengeance through the lens of race and gender, THINGS ARE AS THEY SHOULD BE unites the supernatural with human failings.

Bio:

P.M. Raymond is an award-winning author from New Orleans. She is a 2025 Horror2Comic Semifinalist, 2024 Sisters in Crime Eleanor Taylor Bland Award Winner, and 2024 Claymore Award and Killer Shorts Screenplay Finalist. Her work has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Writer's Digest, Punk Noir, and Dark Yonder.

Where to buy:

Uncomfortably Dark Horror

Bookshop.org

Your local library

Independent bookstores – my favorites include:

Quail Ridge Books

McIntyre Books

Malaprops Bookstore

 About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

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In this episode, of Bookable Space we’re joined by Scott Gould. Scott reads from Peace Like a River. It’s an engaging discussion about revising characters, returning home, knowing a place well enough to lie about it, writing process, diving into a good story, and more.  

About the book: Peace Like a River, the latest novel from acclaimed Southern writer Scott Gould, weaves a lyrical and heartwarming tale of fathers, sons, and grandfathers, and the intricate bonds that define them. Sixty-something Elwin McClennon returns to his hometown in Lowcountry South Carolina— and the dying father— he fled fifteen years before. Accompanied by Thom, his odd and precocious thirteen-year-old son, Elwin embarks on a journey to reconcile with his father, and their complicated pasts, along the banks of the syrup-slow Black River. A captivating exploration of forgiveness, redemption, and the enduring bonds of family, Peace Like a River invites readers into a world where love and loss intersect with the healing power of nature and introspection.

About Scott Gould: Scott Gould is the author of six books, including The Hammerhead Chronicles, winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction, and Things That Crash, Things That Fly, which won a 2022 Memoir Prize for Books. His other honors include a Next Generation Indie Book Award, an IPPY Award for Fiction, the Larry Brown Short Story Award and the S.C. Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Prose. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, Pithead Chapel, Garden & Gun, and New Stories from the South, among others. He lives in Sans Souci, South Carolina.

 About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of Bookable Space was recorded live in front of an audience and streamed on Facebook Live. This episode includes the edited audio. In this episode, Helen reads from Black Swan Shock. It’s a lively discussion about writing place and space, writing stories readers can space into, writing from experience, writing the future, and more.

About the book

Olympian Marla Case retires and considers becoming a medical responder. Before committing to that, she is caught in a massive earthquake. Reacting with her physical skills and newly acquired understanding of some emergency medical actions, she helps victims. However, personal tragedy also affects Marla, and she struggles to find catharsis herself.

About Helen Hynson Vettori

Helen Hynson Vettori (pronounced: HELL-lun HIN-suhn Ve-TOR-ee ) has always lived and worked in the Washington, DC area. Her knowledge and experiences gained as an EMT/paramedic and federal emergency manager enable her to write award-winning books with credible and thrilling Black Swan plots. She lives in Leesburg, VA.

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, Alex Crockford reads from The Time Capsule Murders: A Cambridge Mystery and talks about writing place, developing characters, the past as inspiration, and more. It is a delightful episode complete with character voices.

About the Book

Seventeen years ago, bumbling law student Roger Whiteley and a group of his contemporaries gathered for a pre-graduation party in Cambridge. During the evening they made secret predictions about their futures, which they locked away in a time capsule. The group reassembles in college to open the capsule on the allotted date, but less than twenty-four hours into their reunion one of them is stabbed to death and the capsule itself goes missing. Whiteley is dragged into a treasure hunt with his eccentric former criminology tutor, Gerald Sinclair, as the unlikely duo race to track down the time capsule and unlock the mystery before the killer finds it. 

About the Author

 By day, Alex is a solicitor. He lives in Cambridge with his wife, eleven-year-old son and two rather large, bumbling ragdoll cats.

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, Brad Goldberg reads from Z vs V. We talk about writing vampires and zombies, writing Manhattan, creating your own rules, and more.

About the Book

Kyle, one of the few remaining humans, struggles for survival in a world ravaged by both zombies and vampires. Trapped in Manhattan, he and a young girl, Chloe, face dangers from both undead forces, including Chloe's own vampire father who wants to turn her.

About the Author

I grew up in Chester County outside of Philadelphia. After earning a degree in Communications and Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University, I studied film at UCLA. As a trailer editor, writer, and producer, I’ve created thousands of pieces of advertising for motion pictures and TV. My fiction has been published in Best Indie Speculative Fiction: Volume IV, Bards & Sages Quarterly, Mobius Blvd., and on RipplesInSpace.com and Teleportmagazine.com.

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, Deborah Derrickson Kossmann reads to us from her memoir Lost, Found, Kept. It’s a moving discussion about writing life, writing family, and writing home.

About the Book

 How does a psychologist fail to recognize that her intelligent, sensitive, and book-loving mother has created "the worst hoarder house ever seen?" After making the horrifying discovery that her mother had no water in her house for at least two years, Deborah Derrickson Kossmann begins the otherworldly excavation of a childhood home she hasn't been inside for three decades.

Moving back and forth in time, from this surreal nightmare of an archaeological dig to recollecting her past and long buried family secrets, Kossmann seeks to untangle a web of complicated familial relationships. In her lyrical and unflinching quest, she comes to understand what's been lost, what's been found and what's been kept in both her own and her mother's life.

About the Author

Deborah Derrickson Kossmann won Trio House Press's inaugural 2023 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award for LOST FOUND KEPT: A MEMOIR (January 2025). Her essays, feature articles and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, Nashville Review, Memoir Monday, Psychotherapy Networker and PSYCHE to name a few. Deb is a clinical psychologist who lives in Havertown, PA. https://www.lostfoundkept.com/book-lost-found-kept-memoir-deborah-derrickson-kossman

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, Vicky Pinpin Feinstein reads from Beyond Fear and Suspicion, The New Americans in Little Ethiopia. It’s a discussion about writing and telling people’s stories, building trust, and accepting challenges that bring us closer to the stories we want to tell. The episode was recorded in 2025.

About the Book

What happens when a Filipino immigrant tries to know her Ethiopian neighbours? A journey through the heart of Little Ethiopia in a Washington, DC suburb, Beyond Fear and Suspicion: The New Americans in Little Ethiopia braids the stories of former refugees, asylum seekers, students, and diversity visa recipients through forced exits out of their native land, all while still reeling from the traumatic effects of wars, famine, and repressive regimes. Returning to her DC area home after living in Sydney, Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein found that many Ethiopians had moved to the suburb of Silver Spring. In this enriching story of a Filipino American’s curious desire to know these people living and working in what was once an iconic American hometown, fear and suspicion greeted her at every turn. But Vicky was determined. Traveling to Ethiopia, she discovered a fresh perspective on identity, belonging, and the labyrinthine workings of a people divided by ethnicity, politics, and trauma. Beyond Fear and Suspicion: The New Americans in Little Ethiopia chronicles the connections and tensions between “others” struggling to find their way in, illuminates the often-shifting ground of who and what is an American in the 21st century, and reveals the emotional truths behind their courage, redemption, persistence, and hope.

About the Author

Vicky Pinpin-Feinstein is a writer, former college lecturer, communications technology and society professional, and author of A Thousand Little Deaths, an account of her experience growing up under the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. With graduate degrees in the Social Sciences, her career focused on media and society at various institutions. Working with refugees inspired her to write Beyond Fear and Suspicion. She received an Individual Artist and Scholar Award from the Montgomery Arts and Humanities Council. Vicky lives by her motto that life is a curious mix of a love for organization and randomness.

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton is an award-winning novelist, academic, event host, and podcaster, and lives a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, Jean Burgess reads That Summer She Found Her Voice. It’s an engaging discussion complete with character voices. Jean shares insights into writing places we love, writing from life and research, and writing about timely themes like feminism in the late 70s, racial injustice, and more.

About the book

Set against a backdrop of 1970s Baltimore, this is the story of 23-year-old Margie Stevens as she tours the country as a singer in a

swing band and how she clarifies her own views on emerging feminism, social injustice, and personal spirituality – eventually discovering her

authentic voice as a woman.

About the author

Jean Burgess is a writer, editor, playwright, and workshop presenter. Before diving into a writing career, Jean taught theatre and speech communications on both the secondary and college levels for twenty-three years. She holds an M.A. in Theatre from

Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre from New York University.

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space we’re joined by Julie McDonald Zander. Julie reads to us from The Reluctant Pioneer and talks about writing fact and fiction, research, and more.

About the book:

Matilda Koontz cherishes her life as a wife and mother on a Missouri farm, but her hardworking husband wants to claim free farmland in the Pacific Northwest. When he suggests selling the farm to trek two thousand miles across the Oregon Trail, she balks. 

But in the spring of 1847, Matilda and Nicholas Koontz and their sons embark on a grueling journey westward. Fresh graves testify to dangers of disease, accidents, starvation, and a multitude of hazards threatening her family and her beloved’s dream.

With new struggles at every turn, Matilda wonders how she can protect her sons on such a perilous journey. Will they reach the trail’s end? Will the babe growing inside her womb survive?

 When tragedy strikes, the question changes: How can she possibly continue?

This pioneer woman’s journey is inspired by a true story.

 Author bio:

Julie McDonald Zander, who holds a bachelor’s in communications and political science from the University of Washington, worked as a newspaper reporter and editor before launching Chapters of Life (www.chaptersoflife.com) to capture and preserve life stories. She and her husband live in the Pacific Northwest, where they raised two children. Her nonfiction book about Matilda, Washington Territory’s Grand Lady, was a finalist for two national awards. This is her debut novel.

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Bookable Space, we’re joined by Nikki Alexander. Nikki reads from Arc of the Universe and talks to us about writing about space, the pursuit of equality, and what space and place make possible for the book.

About the Book:

Arc of the Universe is a contemporary fiction novel exploring themes of social justice and moral courage. Carrie Davenport, a Black law professor in North Carolina, has the career opportunity of a lifetime to design a system of government for a new experimental settlement on Mars. Can Carrie regain faith in herself and in democracy to craft the “government of the future” after an instance of police violence destroys all trust in institutions?

Author Bio

Nikki Alexander is a debut fiction author based in the greater Washington, DC area. She earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School. When she’s not lawyering or writing, she enjoys tap dancing and attempting to keep her temperamental houseplants alive.

About the Host

Author of Remembered and Curdle Creek, Yvonne is a novelist, writer, academic, event host, and podcaster, and aims to live a literary life bringing people together over stories. 

For information about Yvonne's books, events, and more vist https://www.yvonnebattlefelton.com/ or sign up to Yvonne's Substack https://yvonnebattlefelton.substack.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.