Author Mark LaFlamme & Readings from the Crypt…

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Past Event ....... October 29^th, 2009 — 6:30 pm

Thursday, Oct. 29, 6:30 p.m. in Callahan Hall, “Readings from the Crypt, and Beyond…,” a special Halloween-season literary event featuring selected “spooky” readings from the works of horror writer Mark LaFlamme presented by a cast of noted Maine actors. A Q-&-A with the author will follow and copies of his books will be available for purchase and signing. Free. FMI: 513-3050.
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Further details:
The writings of Lewiston author Mark LaFlamme will be the focus of a unique, Halloween-theme literary event set for Thursday, Oct. 29, at the Lewiston Public Library. Open to the public free of charge, the program will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in Callahan Hall, located on the library’s third floor.

Dubbed “Readings from the Crypt, and Beyond…” the program will feature a cast of Maine thespians presenting selections from several of LaFlamme’s works, including both his published novels and various short stories, essays and other musings which have yet to make it into print.

Though LaFlamme’s day job is as a reporter for the Lewiston Sun Journal, where he has been covering the crime beat since 1994, his avocation as a fiction writer began at the age of six when he penned a story about a child-eating pit that existed – he fantasized – in the woods behind his house. He has produced countless other short stories and essays since then, and in 2004 came out with his first novel “Worumbo,” the tale of a young reporter with blossoming psychic abilities who, while exploring an abandoned Maine mill, stumbles upon government experiments involving mind control. A year later, LaFlamme wrote and published “The Pink Room,” about a physicist who attempts to use the science of string theory to bring his daughter back from the dead.

In 2007, LaFlamme published “Vegetation,” the tale of a man at war with the world of plants, which was followed last year with “Dirt: An American Campaign,” a political novel which he describes as a determined – but failed – attempt to break out of the horror writer mold, as the story opens with a graverobbing in the dead of the night. It is this scene which inspired the theme and title of the upcoming program at the Lewiston Public Library, according to LPL cultural coordinator Cindy Larock. “We have been wanting to bring Mark here for some time,” she said, pointing to not only his rising success as a novelist but his popularity with many local residents for his witty and sardonic weekly Sun Journal column, “Street Talk.” Here he shares his nightly experiences rubbing elbows with downtown-Lewiston’s denizens of the night – in his words, “street drunks, prostitutes and the mysterious people who live near the river” – giving rise to his conviction that “some of the greatest stories are those that never make it to the news page.”

This column, in which LaFlamme admittedly revels in “venting his frustration and disdain for editors by comparing them to bats, spiders, extraterrestrial slugs, and other beings too diabolical to describe,” has earned him multiple citations as top news columnist from media groups in both Maine and New England, and in 2006, LaFlamme was named Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press Association. Upon publication of “The Pink Room,” he was cited by veteran Maine editor David Griffiths as “one of only a handful of horror writers who are comfortable telling his macabre tales from inside the belly of the beast.”

Halloween, says LaFlamme, is his favorite time of the year – so much so that it is his habit to take the week preceding Halloween off from work at the newspaper to pursue exploits which have included, in past years, “ghouling around Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in Baltimore, spending a night in Sleepy Hollow, and hanging out in Salem.” He says that he plans to prepare for the upcoming event at the Library by sleeping in a coffin in his basement until show time.

Copies of LaFlamme’s novels will be available for purchase and signing at the Oct. 29 event. For further information on the “Readings from the Crypt” program, contact Cindy Larock at LPL, 513-3050. The library is located at 200 Lisbon Street at the corner of Pine Street in downtown Lewiston.

Posted: Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 in Presentation, Read Aloud, Seniors, Teens, Teens and Kids