Authors at Saturday’s Blueberry and Book Festival

This year’s 2022 Berkshire Blueberry and Book Festival, planned for July 23 in Berkshire, N.Y., has many interesting authors who will share the day with guests.  

One author new to the festival is Aniiyah Klock. She is a certified Herbalist, Licensed Massage Therapist and Intuitive Energy Healer and who makes and sells herbal medicine from plants grown and wild harvested from the hills of Richford, where she and her husband and a menagerie of rescue animals live a quiet homesteading life. 

“Aniiyahgrams, Heart Wisdom from the Unseen World” is a collection of dream messages that she has received over the past 10 years, with some prophecy, some clear instructions and reminders on how humans need to live in the current and future world, and some personal near death experiences.

After 35 years in engineering, Lenora Riegel spends her time writing and drawing her ‘Finger Lakes Tales’ for children in which she exemplifies coping skills, mindfulness, authenticity, bravery, and growth mindset. She feels reading together helps children deal with stress and anxiety. 

‘Pepper The Salt Potato’ accepts himself for who he is. In ‘Quaver Has a Feeling’, Quaver explores his emotions through music in a collaboration with Binghamton Philharmonic’s Wallenberg Legacy Project. Check out all seven children’s books including five picture books and two middle grade novels at the Blueberry and Books Festival or online at siphrebooks.com. 

Local author Linda Crowley returns to the Blueberry and Book Fair following her inspirational memoir, “Me, Ruby, and God: A Journal of Spiritual Growth.” With original prayers and delightful illustrations, this short book lives up to its potential to both entertain and change the reader. A few copies of this book will still be available.

This year Linda brings her two latest stories that promise to capture the imaginations of young readers as well as those just listening. Stingy Jack is a retelling of the old Celtic legend of how Jack o’ Lanterns came to be. The lavish illustrations bring the story to life. Her second book, “Has Anybody Got a Match?” is an imaginative story about a small girl meeting her first dragon, and helping him to solve his problems. It quietly illustrates the importance of listening and helping others. 

Berkshire native Pamela Morris has been a storyteller since the age of nine, when she wrote and illustrated her first children’s book, Bill the Worm Who Ran Away.  It would take another 45 years for that story to be re-created and published in the fall of 2020. Four more Bill the Worm books have followed. Her next children’s book is in the works, featuring an all-new character, Wacky Jackie.

But Pamela has more up her writing sleeve than cute, wiggly worms and a fun-loving, purple-haired lady. She’s published two murder-mysteries set in Barnesville, the fictional version of her hometown and its surrounding areas and a third, Death at Devil’s Elbow, is in the works. The Witch’s Backbone, a YA coming of age horror story is also set in Barnesville and nearby Myer’s Knob, what locals to the area will recognize as Speedsville.

Darker still are three ghost-centric Horror novels. Dark Hollow Road is set in Eastern Pennsylvania; ‘No Rest For The Wicked’ in Northern Virginia, and her most recent, The Inheritance, takes place in West Texas. In June 2022, Pamela released her first collection, ‘Not Your Grandma’s Fairy Tales: A Twisted Treasury of Tales Retold’. 

Award winning author Carol Henry’s light romantic suspense adventures are described as “Indiana Jones meets romancing the Stone”. Her repertoire includes American historical, holiday, and contemporary light romance novels, which reflect her own travel adventures.  She is also Historian for the Town and Village of Candor and has written several books about the area, as well as an historical novel, Ribbons of Steel, with Candor history woven into it. At the festival, Carol will be featuring her Family Favorites Cookbook with several generations of family favorites, as well as her other works. Visit her website at www.carolhenry.org to learn more. 

The festival welcomes M. L. Stoughton back from their very first festival. Author of the young adult paranormal romance series Pleasantwick, Micheale is excited to share her latest project. She’s taking on a new genre and a new name as Michele Lindsey, releasing her first in a series of historical western romances in January 2019. Yetta’s Yearning remained in Amazon’s top #100 for American Historical Romance for five months.

She is member of RWA (Romance Writers of America) and its local chapter, STAR (Southern Tier Authors of Romance). Her first novel, Pleasantwick, won a gold medal in the 2017 Readers’ Favorite Awards and was chosen as the “Official Selection” for Young Adult Fantasy in the 2017 New Apple Summer E-book Awards.

Although unable to attend this year’s festival in person, copies of Lynn Acton’s recently published What Horses Really Want: Unlocking the Secrets to Trust, Cooperation and Reliability with photos by her husband, Jerry, will be available along with works by other local authors in the lower Community Hall. Books by Ray Hunt and Maurice Stoughton, Jerry Marsh, Charles Yaple, and Eileen Morock will be available.