EAST LIVERPOOL - City native and novelist Rick R. Reed made the trek from his home in Seattle to visit family and to have a public reading from a portion of his works.
"I come back home once or twice a year, at least, to visit," Reed said between signing copies of his books at Coffee Fusion and Tea Company in downtown East Liverpool. "All my family is still here, and it's good to visit."
Reed's most recent novels include Dead End Street, a young adult horror novel, Orientation which the writer says is about lost love, reincarnation, and sexual orientation and the novel Deadly Vision, a paranormal story about a psychic reluctantly caught up in the murders of two teenage girls in her small western Pennsylvania town.
The ability to connect with a live audience for a reading of his material is a strong point for Reed.
"I like the feedback," he said. "I'm writing by myself, alone in a room with a computer and looking at a monitor. It's good to hear the reactions from a crowd sometimes."
Reed had that opportunity often when he lived in Chicago.
"There were a lot of open mic nights around in areas where the crowds were receptive," Reed said.
Sometimes, depending on the audience, Reed scales back or steers away from the more sexually suggestive or more intense aspects of his creative works.
There is a lot of humor that Reed can draw from as well.
In August, Reed said he moved to Seattle but he still enjoys coming back to East Liverpool to meet up with family and friends.
More information on the author and his works can be found at his www.rickrreed.com Web site.
