Joe Townley was already on his way to distinguishing himself as a pianist of stature, having won first prize in numerous Southland piano competitions, before a hand injury cut short a promising future. With a career as a concert pianist sidelined, Joe turned his creative instincts to writing. Yet it would be many years before he ventured to write a full-length novel. The result, an adaptation of one of his many screenplays, ¡°The Apocalypse Project¡± was published in 2000.
.In March 2002 his next novel, ¡°On Ghost Trails¡± was released. In it he introduces Trevor Langley to the literary world. Trevor is a private detective working out of Norfolk, Virginia who gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to help a beautiful young lady solve the riddle of some mysterious occurrences going on in her hometown near to Norfolk. Writer, Stephen M. Yarnell found On Ghost Trails to be an intriguing blend of mystery and the supernatural, calling it "a rollicking good ghost yarn.¡± In it you¡¯ll find drama, humor, and thrills and chills aplenty, including a slam-bang, hair-raising climax that is guaranteed to keep you turning pages into the wee hours¡all the elements that make reading mysteries a truly enjoyable experience.
But Joe didn¡¯t let the injury to his hand permanently derail his gifts as a pianist. A fifteen-year sabbatical from the keyboard allowed his hand sufficient time to heal to the point where he could practice for short intervals without aggravating the nerve damage done to his right index finger through a freak accident while practicing. From there it was only a matter of traversing the long, difficult road back to rebuilding his technique with painstaking hours of carefully designed finger exercises.
But the results appear to have paid off. Joe is back to playing with some of the technical facility that earned him accolades as a rising star of the music world. You, the visitor, can judge for yourself whether the results have been worth the journey. For selections from ¡°On Ghost Trails¡± and to hear Joe¡¯s piano artistry, click on the link to his personal web page to view him as he performs the piano music of Rachmaninoff. It is here that Joe gives us a poignant peek into what is¡ And what might have been.