Buffalo Books: New novelist looks forward to new conference/book fair

By P.A. Kane

The debut novel of Michael Parzymieso (Parzy-mee-so), The Dale is a supernatural thriller set in the woods surrounding the Quabbin Reservoir, just outside Belchertown, Massachusetts — where the author lived in the 1980s. Built in the 1930s to supply Boston with water, the reservoir swallowed whole towns, wiping them from the map. It is in this scarred, unsettled landscape that teenage protagonist Caroline Sullivan, along with her friends William and Daniel, come face to face with a malevolent force hungry not just for fear — but for their souls.

Parzymieso is a language arts teacher in the Buffalo Public Schools and is a passionate supporter and organizer of Western New York writers. We talked to him about his debut novel, The Dale, writing and upcoming events he is planning.

PAK — You’re from New England. What was your journey to Western New York, and how did you start writing?

MP — Actually, I was born and lived here in Buffalo until I was 11. In 1982, my mother moved to Western Massachusetts following my stepfather’s job, and we settled in a town called Belchertown. I stayed in Belchertown through middle school and part of high school, then came back to Buffalo in 1988 and graduated from Bishop Timon High School. 

As for writing — I’ve always been creative. My aunts and uncles have been sending me little drawings and stories I made up for them when I was eight or nine years old. I was writing in middle school and all the way through college and have always been trying to put together a book. My first book was literary fiction and never really went anywhere. It didn’t get published, and it wasn’t really all that good, honestly. But I’ve been writing constantly since I was five or six years old.

PAK — The Dale is a supernatural thriller, but the story is set and follows the real history of the Quabbin Reservoir, which was built in the 1930s to supply water for Boston. Also, the construction of the reservoir literally erased several towns from the map. What led you to make this the setting, and are there accompanying legends associated with the area? 

MP — So that is a fantastic question. I love talking about this part of the story. Growing up in the 1980s in Belchertown, there were probably 6,000 people. It was a typical small New England town, with the incredible exception that it leaned into the Quabbin reservoir. And not only is the reservoir a big, huge lake with billions of gallons of water, but it’s also a huge demarcation line with the town property. 

It’s all forest and hills that had been abandoned for 50 years. When I was growing up there in the 1980s, walking around and exploring the woods with my friends, we found an old cemetery at the top of Junket Hill Road. There are multiple Model T’s — a little cluster of them. There are old cellar holes from houses that have been washed away. It wasn’t all that hard to imagine that there would be a small shuffle of buildings lost in the little valley. So the area begs to be a setting for a ghost story. It begs to be the setting for a supernatural thriller. 

And if you’re in those woods, one of the most unique things you’ll discover is that it’s super quiet. If you stand at the end of the road where I lived, there’s a gate, and once you go past that, there’s nothing — just you and the restless wild. So, if you go about a quarter mile and stand there, it is absolutely dead quiet — it’s scary — scary enough that you don’t want to go much further. There were times I’d be with my dog, and the dog wouldn’t want to go further. And with my friends — we’d get freaked out, and bolt. 

At the same time, it’s also one of the most beautiful places in the world. At the end of that road, it’s also one of my most favorite places — walking the shoreline, hanging out with friends or being on a boat fishing the Quabbin. I did it last summer.

It’s got the feel of two different places. It could be haunted and one of the most wonderful, magical places you can imagine. Of course, the old folklore of New England is that spirits, fairies, ghosts and whatever haunt those deep woods. So again, it just made the perfect setting. 

PAK — Is the evil in The Dale buried in the land, the past, human folly or maybe all of the above?

MP — So, I started working with a good friend who is a Benedictine monk to get the exorcism, faith and nature of evil thing correct. He made the point that nothing God makes can be evil because God made it. He also pointed out that inanimate things like a rock or the ground can’t be evil — evil is something unique to the human experience. Inanimate things can be infested with evil, but by themselves can’t be evil. 

If you look at the book from a Catholic or good-versus-evil standpoint, evil arises when people are at their lowest points. That’s where evil enters the human soul. When you are broken, and you have lost your faith, and you have fallen into despair, that’s when you’re vulnerable to possession. You’re not vulnerable when things are going great, and your marriage is fine, and you’re getting good grades in school, or your baseball career is on fire. You’re only really susceptible when things go really badly for you. And from the standpoint of writing character, I didn’t want to write that some inanimate rocks were evil. I tried to focus on what is in the vulnerable human soul. How is it that people who are normal can experience this horrible infestation of possession? So, instead of an evil place, I went for human vulnerability.

PAK — Your novel is complex with shifts in time, deep historical references and characters who might not be what they appear to be on the surface. What are a couple of things people might want to keep at the front of their minds before they dive into the novel? 

MP — The first thing I want to point out is that everybody in the novel, who is not the main character, Caroline, thinks they’re doing the right thing for her. This is important because nobody asks what she wants, what she thinks. And this is realistic. As teachers, when we’re working with children who are struggling, quite often we don’t ask, “what do you want? “We’ll ask them what the problem is. How do you feel? But very rarely will kids be asked — “what do you want?” And that’s the question they’re waiting for. With someone, quite possibly, going through a psychological break, like Caroline, I wanted to make sure that was realistic and respected. 

The second thing is that every place that you see in that novel is a real place. It is a real historical area. And I wanted to respect those four towns that are no longer with us. I tried to respect the memories of the people who once lived in that valley. And if I didn’t do that, then I wouldn’t be respecting the struggle those people went through to try and save their towns against impossible odds. They were going to lose to Boston. They didn’t know it, but they were going to lose. I just felt it was important to tell their stories, particularly the parts that take place in South Enfield. The echoes of those towns are still there. As we mentioned before, you don’t have to go far past your property line to be in the Quabbin and see traces of those towns — cellar holes, cemeteries, little bits and pieces of glass, the remains of a structure, or an old pond. But what you see most are walls. Right in the middle of the woods, there would be a stone wall. And that stone wall used to be the barrier to a field, and a hundred years ago, it would have been full of cows or pigs behind those walls that are all gone. So it was important to tell that part of the story, to make it real. And respect the area’s memory.

PK — You write the novel’s murky, hard-to-name evil — and the characters’ emotional responses to it — with a lot of confidence. Is that kind of psychological and atmospheric writing where you feel most at home?

MP — It is, and this was my first try at it, and it happened to go off really well. The first novel I wrote was a piece of literary fiction, and it was OK. Wasn’t great. It didn’t get any traction. I didn’t find a publisher, and I really didn’t push it all that hard, because I didn’t have confidence in it. 

In this book, I did something that I hadn’t tried before. I started writing character as an emotional piece. I started connecting a picture to an emotion. Going at it from there made it much easier, and the story improved. I’ll give you an example of this. Back in the ’90s, there was a Labatt’s Blue billboard on 190 between downtown and South Buffalo. The ad featured a girl, but you only saw her profile. She had  short hair, and was in a bar, and you could tell she was mad about something. And you could look at that picture of that girl and be like — “I know that girl. I just pissed that girl off, right?” And that really sort of struck me, that if you write from there, if you write from using those emotions when you’re writing about that person, you get a much better story. 

That conflict between the supernatural and the natural becomes a heck of a lot easier if it’s an emotional, spiritual battle, as opposed to a plot-based struggle. If you do emotional and spiritual, then the thematic is a lot easier. And if you start with the emotional and then the thematic, the plot just pops out. If you have the history of the areas, you’ve got the visual, then it becomes even easier. And then pretty soon you’ve got this atmosphere you’ve created. 

Both my editor and beta readers responded positively to it, but it wasn’t publishable initially. My editor said you have to do X, Y and Z to make it publishable.   But that one minor change to writing from an emotional perspective really sparked everything else.

PK — In the novel, there’s a battle raging within your protagonist, Caroline Sullivan, and there is disagreement on the treatment plan — her doctor seeks a pharmacological solution, and her priest seeks a spiritual one. Why did you want to place science and religion in opposition?

MP — Well, of all the questions, this is the one I struggled with the most. I played them against each other because they’re supposed to work hand in hand. In other societies, it’s quite different, but over the years in ours, there’s been this clash between faith and science that doesn’t have to be there. I wanted to address that, and the best way I could do it was to put people who worked together have a falling out, and then have them find a way back to each other or not, which I kind of leave as an open question. 

In the novel, I also wanted to address the moral guardrails of science. This is an open question in science — genetic research, when life begins, when life ends, etc. Where does science end and faith begin? I don’t think I solved that riddle, but as a person who loves quantum physics, astronomy, and as a person of faith, I wanted people to think about this conflict that doesn’t have to be there. Both can stand on their own merits.

PAK — While suspense pushes the reader forward, the novel has its share of twists, turns and is highly detailed. What is your process as a writer — do you outline extensively or are you more of a seat-of-the-pants writer? And what advice would you have for someone who wants to get in the supernatural thriller game?

MP — I typically write a complete draft, or a complete section. Then my next writing session will start with me briefly going over that last section to make sure I know where I am, adding little bits here and there, not a lot, then moving on to the next piece. I’ve only mapped out one novel from start to finish, and that is the one I’m working on now, which isn’t in the series. It’s something completely different that sort of dropped on me during a free period at school. Two years ago, I mapped out the entire novel from start to finish, with all the twists and turns. I’m writing that now, but that is the only time I’ve ever done that. Usually, I just write and write by the seat of my pants until something is good and interesting, and let characters do what they have to do.

To get into the supernatural thriller game, there are a couple of things, as we talked about before. Start thematically: what do you want to say? And then the plot comes second. The plot will come from the characters you create and the thematic thing you want to tell the world. And that would be the first piece of advice I would give to people. 

The second piece of advice is to do extensive research. There is nothing worse than writing something and finding out that it’s wrong. For my book, I had to figure out the steps to an exorcism — the expulsion of the entity from the soul and its banishment. There’s a process to it. So learn those types of things. Learn what goes into a good ghost story. Figure out the way ghosts are created. Do the research. If you do that research, your work will come across as legitimate. Hire a good editor and just be ready to do many, many drafts. I mean, that’s really it. There are no shortcuts, right?

PAK — This is your first novel. What surprised you most, both good and bad, through the publishing process? 

MP — Well, I didn’t know I was going to have a second job. I was expecting everything to be done for me. But the reality for a new writer is that you’re setting up all your appearances and events. You’re the one calling radio stations, emailing newspapers and putting out press releases. It’s gratifying, but it’s a lot of work. It’s been six months since the novel was published, and the results of all that work have been absolutely fantastic. I’m selling books. I’m getting lots of hits on my website. And I already have an active schedule for next year. But that was the biggest surprise. 

The second thing that surprised me was how welcoming the writing communities here in Western New York and in Western Massachusetts have been to me. Since the book is set in Massachusetts, I’ve done a lot of touring in that community, and the embrace I felt from there, and the Buffalo writing community, has been nothing short of extraordinary. I’ve met some really great writers, all of them just out of this world good. And they’re people you look up to, and you hope your writing can someday be good enough to gain their respect. And they work with you on conferences and events, and it’s been a wonderful surprise to see how welcoming the community has been. I’ve got a list of a hundred people that I’ve already worked with in just these six months. It’s been great.

PAK — You’re putting together a massive writer’s conference in April 2026. Tell us about it and how people can attend or get involved?

MP — Well, the Writers Conference and the Book Fair are meant for people in the area who haven’t gotten published yet. I’m putting together a bunch of speakers who can help them in the process. We’re also looking to add publishers and editors. That way, when you go to this Writers Conference, you can figure out where you are and who is going to be best suited to get you from where you are right now and cross the finish line to being published. The idea of having publishers there is that you could have maybe a 10-minute meeting with them and sort of figure out what they’re looking for, what they need from you. We want to give all the incredible talent here in Western New York, Central New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania a place where you can have the opportunity to have your work published or get on a path to publication. 

We’re also bringing in a lot of people who have already been published. They’ll be part of a huge book fair to give people a little bit of the inspiration they might need. That’s why the event is called Inspiration. I want this not to be just a pie-in-the-sky dream. I want people to be able to experience what I and others have experienced. To be able to go through the publishing process and see your work out in the world, because we all have something important to say. So, this is an opportunity for people to take that next step as writers to be published.

PAK — What are you working on now, and when can we expect to see it?

MP — The next book, Afterglow, isn’t a sequel but it is a follow-up, standalone with the same characters — Caroline, William and Daniel. Thematically, this novel is about the aftermath of unspeakable trauma. Plot-wise, it’s a chase and a race against time. If The Dale was about saving a soul, then Afterglow is about convincing someone they have a soul to save. It’s a chase and a race against time. 

It’s about finding the strength to forgive when the last thing we want to do is forgive. It also addresses the change that happens after trauma, the change we don’t want to admit is occurring, and we don’t recognize when we look in the mirror. It’s about facing those changes that we don’t want to admit to ourselves are happening, and about making a choice: Am I going to be a person defined by that trauma or face it head-on and lead the life I am supposed to lead?

I’m hoping Afterglow will be out in October.