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Prolific Writer Covers All Topics from Travel, Food, and Romance to Paranormal Mysteries
Cheré Dastugue Coen, an award-winning journalist, has been writing her whole life. Never experiencing writer’s block, she is the author of books of local interest such as “Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History,” “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana,” and “Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Tour of Acadiana,” the cookbook travelogue “Cooking in Cajun Country” with “Cajun” Karl Breaux, and “Magic’s in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets” with Jude Bradley.
She has worked for Variety magazine in Hollywood, The Advocate in Baton Rouge, and Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, and currently writes freelance for Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission, AAA Southern Traveler; New Orleans Magazine, Louisiana Life, Country Roads of Baton Rouge, 337 and many others. She pens three blogs: Weird, Wacky and Wild South, Louisiana Book News, and Haunted Deep South.
For those hungry for a good love story, Cheré also writes Cajun Romance Novels under the pseudonym Cherie Claire, which titles include “Emilie,” “Rose,” “Gabriel,” “Delphine,” “A Cajun Dream” and “The Letter.” There is also the Cajun Embassy series including titles such as “Ticket to Paradise,” “Damn Yankees,” and “Gone Pecan.”
Her most recent book, “Ghost Trippin” released on Valentine’s Day this year, was the fourth book published as part of her Viola Valentine paranormal mysteries. The series features a New Orleans travel writer who experienced the opening of a psychic door after the trauma of Hurricane Katrina, and who now sees ghosts who have died by water.
Cheré Coen moved to Lafayette in 2005, right before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast. She brings a lifelong love of writing and a joie de vivre for life to all of the stories she creates.
This Discover Lafayette podcast interview introduces you to a very talented and delightful woman who has dedicated her life to journalism. The uncanny ability she possesses to write prolifically about the region she loves, the Deep South, will motivate aspiring writers to learn more about how a determined, freelance author can make a career publishing their works.
Thanks to our sponsors: IBERIABANK, Rader Solutions, and Lafayette Convention and Visitors Commission for making this podcast possible!
