3/21 HJ Radio Show Weekly Recap: Chris Verstraete

Apologies for not posting this show recap the Wednesday immediately following Chris Verstraete’s appearance on the show. Adding radio to my repertoire increased my work load, and well…I’m still figuring out how to juggle it all.

But I figured better late than never, right?

In case you missed Chris’s show, no worries. You can listen anytime via ParaMania Radio’s handy On Demand section. Click here for the Haunt Jaunts On Demand archives.

Technical Difficulties

I have to confess I was thrown a bit off my game for Chris’s show. We’d had thunderstorms in Nashville the afternoon of her show. Complete with a very active lightning show.

I messaged Brock about an hour before the show telling him I hoped we wouldn’t lose power.

As luck would have it, the storms cleared before showtime. Brock and I hooked up on Skype, then he zapped Chris in, and then…two minutes before we’re set to go on, my microphone started acting up. It was Feedback City!

Brock and I disconnected, then he called back, but we couldn’t connect via Skype at all. So we had to go to Plan B: cellphone.

That was marginally better, but still some feedback. Great.

I was trying to sit very still hoping that might help. (And can I just say, sitting still is not my forte. It is very hard for me; I’m an animated talker who uses her hands even when I’m on the phone!)

Luckily, however, Chris is one of those kind of guests who jumps right in. She wasn’t afraid to run with the conversational ball and that helped a lot.

Talk About Butchering Things

I tried to kick things off with a game, but it went horribly wrong. It was supposed to be a Mad Lib type game where I asked Chris for words or numbers to fill in blanks that I took out of the “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father 40 whacks” rhyme. (But Chris didn’t know it was the rhyme we were filling in.)

The numbers worked fine, but I goofed up on verb type…so, yeah. Whoopsie Strikes Again! (“Whoopsie” being my nickname –for good reason.)

However, it gave us a laugh and seemed about par for the course given the technical difficulties.

Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter

Then we talked about Chris’s Book: Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter.

I asked Chris the basics about her book, like how she got the idea, etc.

We also talked about the rooms in Lizzie Borden B&B and which she’d want to stay in. (To be fair, she asked me first, but it was going to be one of my questions to her!)

And we talked a little about the post I wrote where I wondered Could Zombie Ghosts Be Haunting the Lizzie Borden House?

I also asked Chris about an article I’d found that mentioned the maid’s cat that had been killed prior to the Borden murders. (And which was reported Abby found in the basement shortly before she was murdered.) She hadn’t made any mention of that in her book, so I wondered if she’d heard anything about it?

Did Lizzie Do It?

Speaking of questions, the one I wanted to know and that people in the chat room wanted to know Chris’s opinion on was: does she believe Lizzie did it?

She wasn’t sure. It seemed likely, but at the same time not. Would Lizzie have had the strength? And there was the matter of evidence. They hadn’t gathered it like they would’ve these days, so if Lizzie did do it she had time to destroy crucial evidence that may have linked her to the crime.

Chris also referenced Rebecca F. Pittman’s book The History and Haunting of Lizzie Borden, which makes the case that Lizzie was the killer.

 

Chris’s Links

It was a fun interview and I had a great time talking to Chris. Very excited she was able to come on!

We also shared some links on air and in the chat room. Here they are for easy reference:

• Chris’s Site: http://www.cverstraete.com/
• Chris’s Blog: http://girlzombieauthors.blogspot.com

Show Promo Trailer

I got a spark to make a promo trailer for Chris’s show. Check it out. Might become a habit making these things. We’ll see…