Before being deployed as a National Guard officer in July 2004, I was a newspaper editor. As such, I spent a lot of time conducting interviews. I had worked in other writing assignments prior to that and had developed a sort of “open-ended” style of interviewing my subjects. I liked to start out with open-ended questions then “turn up the heat” later in interviews. This was particularly effective when I wrote hard news stories. I recently, however, found myself on the other end of the microphone as a local newspaper columnist was interviewing me.

Actually, he took a play from one of my latest playbooks – the e-mail interview. He was quite good at it, especially the open ended part.

Michael Hoover is a columnist for the Hanover Evening Sun and he’s also the Hanover, Pa. poet laureate. He asked me to be a guest columnist and I agreed. This interview and rather interesting (if I say so myself) story is his way of introducing me. Honestly, if I didn’t know me a little better than I do, I’d say the person Hoover is writing about here is one damned interesting individual – at least, he sure made it seem that way. That’s the mark of a good interviewer.