Shad Fest 2015: Researching the Next Chapter

  A local celebrity

As I may have mentioned (about a thousand times) Andre and I have been living in limbo these last few months.  Our house is in the market and half of our furniture is in storage, while we wait for the next chapter of our lives to begin--hopefully in the town of our dreams, Lambertville, New Jersey.

What's so special about Lambertville?

It's a small town--charming, picturesque, quirky, and with a startling number of artists per capita--the kind of place that would make the perfect place to live--or the great setting for a novel.

You can probably guess where this is going, right?  Over the last few months I've been working on a new writing project. Another YA reimagining of a classic work of Brit Lit, it's set in a fictional New Jersey river town that bears a passing resemblance to a certain actual New Jersey river town.

The Delaware Raritan Canal

So of course I take every opportunity I can get to research my novel-in-progress.  One great recent opportunity was Shad Fest--an annual event that celebrates the arts in the Lambertville, local small businesses, music, and--of course--the annual running of the shad.

Shad fishing demonstration

As we wandered from booth to booth, I took a ton of photographs and tried to soak up the small town spring festival vibe.

The shimmering river town light:

and the low-key, dog-friendly atmosphere:

While we wait, fingers-crossed, to see where life takes us next, at least I can build my own imaginary little river town, word by word, photo by photo, memory by memory.

We can't get no satisfaction