Edna was a part-time librarian in the town of Garfield. She and her sister Rose share a home they inherited from the death of their parents. Edna has always led a normal life working and helping Rose get a college education. Then a strange phenomenon started to happen. She started to hear an audible voice in her head. If she obeyed it, she would accomplish good things for people and their pets. Then the instructions started to involve people in dire situations but it was always for their good. She found an old man with dementia and was told the directions to get him home. Then there was silence until it was time to go to someone’s aide again. She found that the voice also gave her unusual powers over certain objects. After following the verbal directions to a location, any locked door would just open in her hand and padlocks would spring open when she touched them. The events became more serious as time progressed but it always produced good for someone, even if it was a victim that she helped. The entire idea of saving and helping people started to boggle Edna’s mind. She lay in bed and wondered what or who was trying to drive her crazy with no explanations of what was going on in her life. She was having these thoughts when the voice gave her a spiel of why the activities bothered her so if she was only doing good for people. Who are you or what are you? Why me? These thoughts all came to her mind as it was decided that the voice in her head could be called Gideon for the sake of conversation instead of the voice in her head. Now she was helping Gideon do these things for people. Gideon told her that when she asked the right questions of the right people, she would find out who he was. It turns out that Gideon was not bound to any location and she saved her sister’s life while she was in college twice. Rose had come home for a two-week break from college and Edna was beside herself and thinking that she was going insane. Over that two-week period, Edna had to divulge the information about Gideon to her sister. Then Gideon started to speak to Rose as well as Edna. They started to be used as a team and things were happening all around them. Edna stops a kidnapping as Rose stood by and protected her. The potential danger of some of these feats was chilling to the bone as Edna questioned the option of not obeying any more but knew that people could lose their lives if she did not continue. Gideon had them go to a church one day and tell the pastor that the missionaries that had gone from his church were in great danger in Africa. This was happening eight thousand miles away and Gideon was still having them do what could be done from the church. The pastor became a friend and a source of support to them dealing with Gideon. The pastor becomes liaison between the information the sisters have and human traffickers around the country being reported to the FBI. During an episode of joining a father that was looking for his son successfully, it led to Edna falling in love with the son and their eventual marriage. When John and she were walking in the park one day, Edna sees some drug activity and Gideon gives her the address of a narcotic shipment to a DEA agent. This creates a new relationship with new dangers but has some monetary rewards for Edna. Edna thinks that she should have remained a simple librarian as the activities and dangers evolve around her life. You can read all about the start of these adventures in “Secret Missions” and there are four more in the series as everything escalates in their lives – Armand Ferland

I am going to take you on an episode of how some of my books are created. The journey from sitting in my living room to the placement of my story characters into an active and thrilling storyline. Let’s begin with Tom Banks as he brings us “Standing Guard.” Tom lives on his vegetable farm, alone. Tom has lost his wife, son, and daughter and now sells vegetables to keep his land. The book goes into how these all left him at different times and how they left him lonely. He is working his crops when the sound of two cars striking each other, beside his garden, gets his attention. When it is over, one car lies on its roof, with an injured young woman lying there unconscious. The rescue culminates with the young woman being transported by helicopter to a trauma center. Evidence at the scene and the second driver leaving the scene brings up an attempted murder conclusion for the police. This is further supported by Tom’s being shot at when the driver returns at night. For Tom, who is a Vietnam veteran, this means war. The actions he takes to protect himself and Cindy Farr, that was the woman injured as someone tried to kill her in the car, takes on some of the training from his military days. It becomes a cat and mouse game between the two factions of good and evil. Several people lose their lives in the battle over the course of time as the police seek out the one that is really trying to kill both Tom and Cindy. The reason becomes clearer when Tom remembers having found a wedding band at the scene of the accident. Then the hunt is on for the owner of the ring as the one who is trying to get it back by killing people if necessary. The sheriffs, detectives, and Tom soon find out who is trying to kill them but there is no proof of his guilt yet. They will find the proof over time and stop the killing. The character, Tom Banks, is purely fictitious to me as well as all the other characters I create. The storyline of a hero and a villain are common in the literary world. I only bring in some aspects of my characters that I want to maintain as I create them. I do not have them use profanity because I don’t feel that is a necessity in life so I don’t have it in my books. I do bring in the concept of violence and trauma to build the story into an exciting, action-packed story. I tend to bring on the feelings of all the characters and reactions to violence as well as the feelings of loss from the trauma. I found Tom from the days of my youth. I found him as I try to teach people to look at more than one side of the story that life brings you. I personally related to the hero side of the story and added some Vietnam veteran action as well with the training he used to fight an unknown foe. That is how we find Tom “Standing Guard” in a modern world.