Teresa & Bill Peschel
Bill and Teresa Peschel have a favorite author—and it’s no mystery.
The couple runs Hershey-based Peschel Press, which has published Bill’s continuing series of annotated Agatha Christie works. These include “The Complete, Annotated Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” “The Complete, Annotated Man in The Brown Suit” and “The Complete, Annotated Murder on The Links,” to name a few.
Then there’s Teresa’s detailed, 400-page “Agatha Christie, She Watched” subtitled “One Woman’s Plot to Watch 201 Agatha Christie Movies Without Murdering the Director, Screenwriter, Cast, or her Husband.” Earlier this year, the book earned her an invitation to host events at the International Agatha Christie Festival in London.
“Agatha is always, always readable,” Teresa said. “People assume she’s a nice, cozy mystery writer, but she’s not. She has a very dry sense of humor. In her books, anyone can be the victims, anyone can be the murderer.”
The Peschels spent two weeks abroad for the September festival. Teresa hosted “Agatha Christie, She Watched,” where she shared her observations of viewing of 201 Christie films and took part in “All About Agatha Live! The Greatest Screen Adaptations” with other Christie media experts.
“Thousands of people walked through the festival to attend at least one event,” she said. “I got at least 300-plus at my programs.”
However, there’s more to Peschel Press than just a focus on Agatha Christie. The publishing house offers a variety of “Intriguing, Intelligent, Idiosyncratic Books,” according to its website.
Bill noted and annotated a casebook series based on the works of Sherlock Homes, including a volume of “the strangest Sherlock Homes parodies ever written” by renowned writer/cartoonist James Thurber.
Teresa writes under the pen name of Odessa Moon in her continuing series, “The Steppes of Mars.” On a flip, her interests in “sustainability, resource depletion and finding a balanced life” led her to author Peschel Press’ “Sew Cloth Grocery Bags” and other volumes.
Also, the Peschels jointly penned an indie authors series, “Career Indie Author Quote Book” and “Career Indie Author,” the latter subtitled, “Tell your stories and build a business that will last a lifetime.”
“These tell everything about the business of indie writing,” Bill said. “It’s hard to find your market in this.”
Indie writers, he said, only earn around $1,000 per year on average.
“You don’t make enough to buy a cup of coffee,” he added, with a laugh.
Role Models
Bill and Teresa launched their publishing house together in 2010 as a way “to do what we want to do.”
“We can make a book the way we envision it,” Teresa said.
Bill, who grew up in North Carolina, started out his career as a typesetter. He became a news reporter after internships at The Charlotte Observer and The Charlotte News. He also worked as a stringer for The New York Times while earning a journalism degree from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
From there, his career took a winding path.
He worked for The Avalon Hill Game Co. in Baltimore, editing the company’s magazine, debugging computer games, and writing and editing instruction manuals. In 1990, he became a copyeditor for The Rock Hill (N.C.) Herald, where he also wrote book reviews. In 2000, he joined The Patriot-News as a copyeditor and book reviewer, where he remained until 2012.
His first book, “Writers Gone Wild,” a collection about writers’ successes and failures, was published in 2010 by Penguin Random House.
Teresa began writing books four years after launching Peschel Press.
“I had always told myself stories to make myself fall to sleep,” she said. “I didn’t start writing them down until 2014, when I was 54.”
Bill does all page layouts and designs every book cover and e-book. Peschel Press books are published through Amazon’s print-on-demand service.
“If you work with a print house, you have to do a minimum order, which we don’t want to do,” Bill said. “We’re available on Amazon. For an indie writer, this is the only way to go.”
Peschel Press books are also sold locally at Cupboard Maker Books in Enola and Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop in Mechanicsburg.
Debbie Beamer, owner of Mechanicsburg Mystery Bookshop, described the Peschels’ fiction as “entertaining” and their Agatha Christie books as insightful and informative.
“[Bill’s] books are amazingly helpful in explaining British terminology and meanings of various passages in the books,” Beamer said. “Teresa’s book on Agatha Christie movies is truly one-of-a-kind. It is well-researched and provides a fascinating look at the different incarnations of the Christie movies.”
Likewise, Cupboard Maker Books owner Michelle Haring complimented the couple for their “work ethic, their enthusiasm and their persistence.”
“They are perfect role models for other indie authors,” she said.
For more information, visit www.peschelpress.com or visit Peschel Press on social media.
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