The Danny and Park Novels Good News Podcast

Today’s guest is a good friend of mine and an overall great guy: the one and only, Dr. Richard Groover. Richard has been an educator  for decades and was a reserve deputy with the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office for twenty years. Richard has been a fan of my books and podcasts, and I’m a fan of his, so it seemed like it was time to bring him on an episode and pick his brain on a variety of topics....

I've been following multiple news stories in the press recently, and have been posting about them as well. Well, I decided to do a short, solo podcast about my thoughts. In it, I told about the superintendent of Richmond Public Schools, the Interim Chief of Police, and a few other things that are on my mind. No script, no outline, no guests. Just me talking. Let me know what you think. Do you...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is New York Times Bestselling author Don Bentley. Now I have to say something first about the audio of the episode. Number one, I stutter my words when I introduce Don a bit because I was discombobulated. I usually call my guests, but this time, Don called me. Unfortunately I had my phone set to ignore unknown numbers, so I totally misse...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Jack Roney, author of the crime novels The Angels Wept , The Demons Woke and The Shadows Watch . Jack got on my radar because of the marketing for his first book, The Angels Wept . To say that the book was everywhere be an understatement. Every time I’d open Facebook or Instagram I’d either see the fantastic cover of the book,  a post...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is bestselling author and native Chicagoian, Tracy Clark. Tracy’s book, Hide , popped up in my suggested reading page on Amazon, so I read the description of the book and immediately hit ‘buy now’.  As I say to her in our conversation, once I started reading it, bam! It was off to the races. After I finished it, I reached out to her to s...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Tim Hendricks, author of the debut novel, The Instructor . Tim’s book showed up in a NetGalley email and I clicked on the link to check out the book’s description. It looked like a winner, so I requested it and got approved to read it. From page one on it was a scorcher!  So, naturally, after I finished it I searched for his website h...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guests are Tom and Jen Satterly, a husband and wife team who are also authors and the founders of the All Secure Foundation, and VIRAGO, a division of the All Secure Foundation that empowers women to help their combat warrior heal from post traumatic stress. I came across Tom and Jen when I picked up the book that he co-authored with Steve Jac...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Tyler Lane, an investigative reporter for WTVR, a local CBS affiliate here in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve been following Tyler’s reporting for awhile and like his style. It seems as if the country’s attention span for news stories that matter is short, compared to obsessions with other stories that are much more  frivolous. Tyler breaks...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Meredith Spies. I was browsing through a local television station’s website one day and came cross a story that was titled, “He killed her mom. Nearly four years later, she gave him a hug.” I was intrigued and read the article. The story moved me so much, I sent Meredith a message through Facebook and asked if she’d be interested in c...

Today’s guest is Sam Allebaugh. If you listened to my interview with Meredith Spies, you know that Sam was the driver of the single axle dump truck that struck and killed Meredith’s mother, Karen Giles. After I interviewed Meredith, she asked if I’d like to interview Sam as well. She thought that he’d be willing to talk to me about what happened and its impact on him. I told her that if he was wil...

Today’s guest is Colette McEachin, Richmond’s Commonwealth Attorney. Colette and I have known each other for nearly three decades, so I obviously wanted to get her on the show. It’s taken me almost six months, but I finally roped her in to doing an episode.   I’ve asked so many people their opinion on why crime in Richmond seems to be so rampant, but Colette’s three F’s, Family-Friends-and Firearm...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Pat O’Meara, creator of the absolutely fantastic YouTube channel, My Old Car. Pat’s channel popped up in my suggestion list one day, so I clicked on the video and after watching it for all of two seconds, subscribed to his channel. I reached out to him to see if he’d be interested in being on the podcast, and after he made sure that I...

 Today’s guest is Keith Thornton Jr., a former volunteer firefighter, EMT, police officer and Chicago Emergency Communications dispatcher. Keith’s currently a supervisor in an Emergency Communications Center in a suburb of Chicago. I reached out to Keith on Facebook because of a tragic situation in Chicago where one police office was killed and another gravely wounded. Keith was the police dispatc...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is author and Vietnam veteran Fred Allen. I was on Amazon searching for my next book when his novel, Stingers- Vietnam War, Helicopter Gunships showed up on my feed. I bought it, started reading it and couldn’t stop until I got to the end, which is always a sign of a fantastic book. Fred had put his email address at the end of the novel,...

Welcome back the the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today, we call back over to London to talk to Hannah Alexander. I came across Hannah on Instagram when I was posting about my hip replacement. She sent me some encouraging words on recovery, so I started following her page and I’m so glad I did. She’s an amazing person and a joy to talk to.   I’m sure after listening to our conversation, you can tell...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Todays guest is a wonderfully frequent flyer to the show, author and mom, Gloria Lucas. On this episode we talk about Gloria’s new book, How Deep the Ocean , due to be released in November of 2022.  I hope you enjoy the episode, then afterwards head on over to her website and check out all of her writing, to include, obviously, her new full-length nov...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Raven Rollins, a fellow podcaster from Ada, Oklahoma. I came across Raven when one of my previous  guests went on her podcast. I decided to check out her website and I liked what I saw. So I reached out to her and asked if she’d like to be a guest on my show. After all, her podcasts focus on true crime and I’m a retired Homicide detec...

 Today’s returning guest is Gloria Lucas. Gloria is the author of an upcoming full-length novel and she’s  one of fifteen authors in the upcoming anthology, Fiesta Nights , which is going to be released on September 15th. The release date of Fiesta Nights also just happens to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month.   Are you ready to preorder Fiesta Nights ? You ought to. Also, if there is a local...

     Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Andrea Dunn, the author of the new content journal, My Body Boss, Living Wyld with RA.  Andrea got diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis when she was 24yrs old. At the time of her diagnosis she was in Daytona Beach and was working essentially two full time jobs at a high school trying to ignore the problems of RA and a dysfunctiona...

Today’s guest is New York Times bestselling author, Peter Abrahams. I’ve been a reader of Peter’s novels for over twenty years and am thrilled that he agreed to be on the podcast. The interview was originally scheduled for a week prior, but a work issue came up and I asked Peter if he could reschedule. He gave me another date and that one fell though on my end as well. He patiently sent me a few m...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is Noemi from Creative Souls. I came across Noemi’s Instagram page and was instantly hooked on her positive message. And since that’s what this podcast is all about, I had to invite her to come on the show, so I sent her a message. She answered me right and away and we got it set up.   I think she came up with a fantastic idea of collabo...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is my friend and former RPD co-worker, Jose Cartegna. Jose was a Richmond Police officer for seven years and the last few of those years served as a detective in the Youth and Family Services Unit of the Major Crimes Division. Jose and I talk about how he came to Richmond from Connecticut to be a Richmond police officer, his time in Patr...

Welcome back to the podcast, I’m Jamie Baynes. Today’s guest is retired NYPD detective and bestselling author, Vic Ferrari. I’m a huge fan of independent authors and Vic’s books popped up on my Amazon recommendation page. His books looked  interesting so I bought one. After I read about 20 pages, I bought ALL of his books.   As you can clearly tell, I’m a big fan of Vic and his books. Vic writes l...

 Today’s guest is Officer Brenda Ruiz, the inspiration for the The Giving Notes Project song written by Emily Roig. Brenda and I talk about how her life experience became the subject of Emily’s song, what major event led her down the path to becoming a police officer, and the challenges that she faced as a woman and Hispanic officer in the City of Richmond.  I can’t tell you the amount of respect...

Today’s guest is Mark Brown, the founder of The Giving Notes Project . On a previous episode, I spoke with Emily Roig who is one of the musicians associated with the amazing group. She suggested that I talk to Mark for more information so I sent him an email and asked if he’d like to come on and talk about his creation. He readily agreed and here he is. If you follow the news, or politics or the m...