Look and Listen

Biography

Goldie Browning’s twisted imagination and fascination with the paranormal began in early childhood with her grandmother’s ghost stories and her brother’s retelling of classic fairy tales, such as Snow White and the Seven Little Frankensteins and Cinderacula. Almost every vacation she takes includes a stay at a haunted hotel or castle, as well as visits to famous cemeteries or catacombs. She loves anything by Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, or Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her first and favorite job was as a secretary at a military mortuary in West Germany, followed by more mundane employment which included being a newspaper reporter, a real estate agent, a substitute school teacher, and a legal secretary. She finally settled down to a long career as a courtroom deputy clerk for two federal judges before retiring and getting to do what she wants to do when she grows up—be a writer. Not long after finishing Night Journey she was stricken with cardiomyopathy. She received an implanted cardio-defibrillator and was evaluated for a heart transplant, which ironically paralleled the plot of Night Journey. Luckily, time and medication worked their miracle and she made a full recovery. Her experience, as well as someone near and dear to her in need of an organ transplant, has transformed Goldie into an advocate for Organ Donation and Living Wills. The best thing she ever did was marry her high school sweetheart Alan a long, long time ago. She’s living happily ever after with husband and family, which includes a menagerie of fur people, on a wooded hill in rural North Texas. She's now started a new venture as Editor for Storyteller Publishing, as well as her New Year's Resolution blog "Haunted Destinations." Visit me at www.Goldiebrowning.com

Inspiration

My inspiration for my book NIGHT JOURNEY came during a weekend at the very, very haunted 1886 Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It's a fabulous old hotel, beautiful yet creepy, with a macabre history that simply sparked my imagination. The blue fluorescent cloud floating in a corner of "Theodora's Room" in the middle of the night was also pretty inspiring. After attending the ghost tour and hearing about the man, Dr. Norman Baker, who turned the derelict hotel into a cancer hospital during the Great Depression of the 1930's I was hooked. He claimed to have the cure for cancer--and we all know they haven't discovered that yet. After three years of defrauding those poor, sick people he was tried and convicted of mail fraud. His hospital was shut down and he was packed off to prison. Ironically, he died almost twenty years later of liver cancer. So much for his cures. Anyway, NIGHT JOURNEY takes a little bit of Dr. Baker, and mixes in an exciting time travel/ghost story. One reviewer called it "The Shining meets The Notebook." It's a ghostly tale that blends the past with the present and the living with the dead.