Harp & Fiddle hosts scary storytelling October 30

If you're too old to trick or treat and don't fit in that Halloween costume, you can still celebrate Halloween on Sunday, Oct. 30, (technically Halloween Eve) at The Harp and Fiddle, 110 Main Street, Park Ridge. That's when Christian A. Larsen will do some scary storytelling from his ghosts and gangsters novel THE BLACKENING OF FLESH from 5 to 7 p.m.

Larsen will be joined by Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo who writes fiction and poetry with a Latin American slant especially superstition, folklore, legend and myth. Pelayo owns and manages Burial Day Books, a boutique press that features established and emerging writers of the macabre. Burial Day Books publishes monthly short fiction and a yearly anthology of work, the Gothic Blue Book that pays homage to the Gothic Blue Book genre of the 18th century.

The Maine South graduate, whose first book—LOSING TOUCH—was a Bram Stoker Award semi-finalist, was between projects and started reading up on crime in the town where he grew up. "Although Park Ridge has always been a very safe place, when I discovered an actual crime, it became the germ for Blackening," he said. Partially set in a fictionalized version of Scharringhausen's Pharmacy which did business for decades at the same address where The Harp and Fiddle serves up burgers and sandwiches, salads and Irish specialties these days, Larsen's book explores the notion of right and wrong.

CAPTION

Declan Stapleton, owner of The Harp and Fiddle, with author Christian A. Larsen and Bill Scharringhausen at 110 Main Street where Scharringhausen’s Pharmacy did business for decades. Partially set in a fictionalized version of the pharmacy, Larsen's book explores the notion of right and wrong.