There's quite the literary scene coming together in Butler County.

Whether fiction or nonfiction, many county residents have put literal pen to paper and written books whose settings range from another planet to a real, but forgotten medieval realm to present-day Alaska.

Karen McLain of East Butler has written a science fiction novel, “The Mayari Chronicles: Initium,” that grew out of the pandemic lockdown and an animé television show.

McLain said, “When COVID hit, I was home watching TV. I was watching ‘Rwby.’ I was a fan of the creator of the show, Monty Oum. He passed away.

“Watching the show, letting my mind wander, thinking how the show could be different, and the story just kind of came from there,” she said.

McLain describes her novel as “teenage young adult fantasy fiction.”

“It’s on a different planet. It needs to have odd words,” said McLain. The plot centers around students from different backgrounds having conflicts and learning they have to work together because they are going to be a team.

“There’s this one girl, Medious, is quite special because of the color of her eyes. That plays into it and causes a lot of problems,” said McLain.

It must have caused quite a number of problems because, McLain said, she has numerous sequels all lined up to be published.

“Initium” is Latin for beginning after all, said McLean.

“I just came up with the idea, what if the show was different and it came together, so I started writing and it came out as that massive,” she said.

Using a laptop, she said the first book took a couple of months to compose the first of a projected 10-book series.

McLain said she sent a copy of the first book to Atmosphere Press which agreed to publish it as a print-to-order proposition.

The first book, “Initium,” was published in September. “I have nine sequels ready to be published. I don’t have much to do,” she said.

She said “Initium” can be purchased at Amazon.com and the Barnes & Noble website.

“I’m a homebody, so I don’t know if anybody has bought it. I had some autographed copies that I handed out. I donated a copy to the Butler library,” she said.

Whether the rest of the series will see print is still up in the air. “They’re waiting to see if it makes enough money to publish the second one,” said McLain.

A previous piece of art also inspired the mother-daughter duo of Stacey Pardoe of Slippery Rock and her daughter, Bekah, 12, a sixth-grader at Slippery Rock Middle School, to take up writing.

“Last winter, we were reading a mother-daughter devotional, and we decided we should write one ourselves,” said Pardoe. After brainstorming topics, they started writing, and eight months later they had a 250-page book.

“We wrote on a computer and exchanged files back and forth,” she said.

Their devotional, “Girl to Girl: 60 Mother-Daughter Devotions for a Closer Relationship and Deeper Faith,” should be read together by a mother and her daughter, the daughter ideally being between 10 to 17, she said.

Each chapter consists of a Bible verse, a commentary from Stacey and Bekah, discussion questions to ponder and a prayer. “It’s meant to be read out loud and prayed together,” she said.

There’s also a journaling section where mothers and daughters can share their thoughts.

The book should be a help to mothers whose daughters are entering the sometimes difficult teenage years, she said.

“It’s designed to keep the lines of communication open,” Pardoe said. “This is an age where it can be tricky for moms and daughters.”

“I wrote it for mothers of faith who want to pass that faith on. It’s just a tool mothers can use to teach about their faith,” she said. And it had an unexpected side effect.

“This book project has helped us to stay close and talk about what’s going on in our lives,” she said.

The book is available on Amazon.com, in both print and ebook formats.

While Pardoe said the book sales are doing really well, she and Bekah won’t be jumping into writing a sequel any time soon.

“Bekah told me she wants to take a year off to live some more life,” she said.

Janet Piper of Butler, a 1980 graduate of Butler High School writing as Juliette Godot, used her experience as genealogist and her own ancestor as inspiration for her historical novel, “From the Drop of Heaven.”

Piper graduated from Butler County Community College with a degree in applied science and then went to Geneva College to earn a bachelor’s degree.

“I was a software engineer at Carnegie-Mellon University for 15 years and had been doing genealogy. I really didn’t have training in writing a book,” she said. Still the story of her 12th-generation grandmother, Catherine Cathillon, and Piper’s discovery of the now-forgotten European principality of Salm compelled her to give writing a try.

“Catherine was my dad’s grandmother’s name who lived on Hickory Street in Butler,” said Piper. “He came from France to work at Franklin Glass. She died very young of an overdose of morphine. She mismeasured the dose.”

“It took me 10 years to research and write this book. Salm, it’s French now, but was once its own principality back then,” said Piper. “That’s why I thought it would be a good book.”

“From the Drop of Heaven” takes place in 1582, a time when books are banned, and witches were thought to live next door. According to the book’s publicity, citizens of Salm pray the way they want, while Catholic and Protestant fanatics in surrounding towns believe theirs is the only truth. Everyone is a heretic to one side or the other.

Banned books in tow, Martin, an accused seditionist, seeks safety in Salm. He teaches Nicolas, the mayor’s son, to read. Though Nicolas knows Martin’s books are banned, he cannot resist them.

Catherine Cathillon and her family live in isolation. Though Catholic, her father’s mistrust of the church prevents her from joining the community. However, a chance meeting with Nicolas changes everything. He reads to Catherine. When she learns what life is like outside their farm, she begs him to teach her to read. But class differences force them to meet in secret. During the lessons, they fall in love, but their romance is exposed, and spurned lovers swear revenge.

Piper said at the time neighboring Lorraine “was very Catholic. Salm was Protestant and Catholic and to the east was the Holy Roman Empire. That Salm had freedom of the religion sort of resonated with me as an American.”

“My 12th-generation grandmother was a real person. Most of the people in the book are real people. While it’s fiction, most of the things that happened in the book are real.

In the process of researching the book, Piper traveled to France in 2012 and met a cousin who was descended from Cathillion. “She showed us where Catherine lived, the mountain, the lake, all the different places where Catherine lived.”

The French cousin used the research to write a fantasy that featured casting spells, said Piper. “But I wrote a book about a regular person caught up in the revolution.”

“From the Drop of Heaven” has garnered Piper two awards. Having recently moved to Florida, she joined an writers’ group where members would read chapters of their work and get feedback. One of the members got Piper to submit the novel to a contest to get a critique of the full book, and “From the Drop of Heaven” ultimately won the Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association.

“I wrote on a computer while I was working and raising two kids. The amount of research was just unbelievable. I don’t speak French so I had to run things through a rough translator,” she said.

“I just kept working on it. I never thought that it was done. I’d still be working on it, if they hadn’t talked me into entering that contest,” she said.

Piper said her novel was published in August by Brown Posey Press, a subsidiary of Sunbury Press.

“I did enter it in another contest and it got a 5-star award from the Historical Fiction Company,” said Piper.

“’From the Drop of Heaven’ is available from Amazon, the Sunberry Press website and I think it should be at Target,” she said.

Piper doesn’t know if she wants to try to write another book. But she did have advice for aspiring authors.

“If you want to write a book, do it, but as soon as you are done don’t publish it, a lot of a people do that,” said Piper. “Do write it, but get feedback from people and critiques. Don’t just self publish.”

Cranberry Township author, educator and resident Christian A. Shane’s novel “Salmon Survivor” is also an award-winner taking the Bronze Medal in the 2022 Moonbeams Children's​ Book Awards and the ​First Place Preteen Children's category in the 2022 PenCraft Literary Excellence Awards.

According to Shane, “Salmon Survivor” is a story about navigating loss and grief after the death of a parent or loved one. After Jack's father drowns unexpectedly in a fishing accident, Jack struggles with life returning to any sense of normalcy.

Due to the loss of his favorite fishing partner, Jack gives up his love of fishing and journaling, until he is forced to travel from Pennsylvania to Alaska to meet his grandfather, a grizzled fishing guide. Over the summer, Jack challenges himself to do something his father never accomplished, catching the Alaskan Salmon Slam: all five species of Pacific salmon in one year.

Dealing with his grief, Jack traverses the path back to himself and discovers a parallel between the cycle of life and death in salmon and the loss of his father.

Shane said his Alaskan adventure novel for grades 4 and up is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound.