Where research can take you...

When Minnie decided to advertise the Lilac Bower as a haunted house, we both got more than we bargained for.  How were we to know that actual paranormal investigators would show up?  We both expected people who would be excited by some creaky doors and flickering lights.

So when the paranormal investigators showed up with cameras, thermometers and digital voice recorders, we knew we were in trouble.  Minnie because her advertising scheme was in trouble and me because I had no idea what the investigators do on a ghost hunt. I doubt they sit around and wait for a ghost to jump out and say Boo!

Luckily, some local investigators were making a presentation at our library and I could do some research.  They explained the tools they use and what those gadgets are supposed to detect.  It was all very interesting and exactly what I needed to learn until they started talking about places they had investigated and what they had found. Most were safely hours away from my home.  Their ghostly figures, weird shadows and hair-raising voices could stay safely in my mind's mythology.

DO YOU WANT TO READ A GOOD WESTERN?

TODAY OUR INTERVIEW IS WITH JERRY DRAKE whose fourth Avalon Western novel, Breaking Trail, was available February 4th, 2010. He has published three other Westerns with Avalon: The Gunfighter’s Apprentice (2006), Sierra Skullduggery (2008), and Aftermath, (2009) Jerry lives in Denver and is a member the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers organization as well the Western Writers of America. At eighty-three, Jerry describes himself as “spry.”

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LATEST NOVEL.
Breaking Trail tells of Tom Patterson's youthful hardship, his service in the Civil War, his stint as a mounted guard for the Union Pacific’s rail building enterprise, and his duties as a fledgling lawman in western Kansas.

YOUR CAREER HAS BEEN AS A WRITER/DIRECTOR IN FILMS AND VIDEO. Do you have any interesting stories to tell about those days?
Because I’ve written and directed somewhere around 2000 projects in my career, there are quite a few. Here’s one: We were shooting a tongue-in-cheek commercial involving a fake bank robbery, to tout the need for bandits to “always rely on a dependable used car.” Even with a conspicuous police presence around the shoot, the actors making their getaway were alarmed to be pursued by a couple of cars of vigilante citizens who thought the robbery was real. Police intervened before things got out of hand.