- Series Origin – the original Lukas appeared as a segment of a novel that began: “Lukas was a figurer. He liked to figure things out” which established the character as someone who warranted his own novel.
- Lukas ages in the series—from the Ghost Train where he’s 13-years-old, having just completed Gr. 7, to being a 14-year-old who has completed Gr. 8 in the Wîhtikow Rex, and finally in the Ice Dragon he’s in Gr. 9 and about to turn 15-years-old.
- Supernatural encounters – Lukas is tested in all three novels by supernatural events that challenge his values and expand his interests.
- Character development – the first two novels are straightforward, plot-driven stories, but his older self in the Ice Dragon has to confront personal and social issues that require him to grow as a person.
- Although the author grew up with television, he has only owned one for 10 months of his adult life—he is a lifelong reader and if he is looking for plot-driven entertainment, he prefers Young Adult novels, which made the Lukas series an easy step.
Lukas and the Ghost Train
- The author was a railroader in his 20s and spent three years as a trainman, so, the events are authentic to vintage railway practises.
- The novel was written after hearing about a ‘ghost train’ in Southern Alberta from Shirley Lowe, an Edmonton History Laureate. Given the author’s train experience, the concept of a ‘ghost train’ resonated with him and adapted it to the existing Lukas character and built the novel around him.
- A head-on collision created the ghost train and the author maintains contact with the senior railroaders with whom he worked—ironically, his favourite conductor wouldn’t discuss how to ‘fabricate’ a head-on collision.
- Prince Charles Elementary School – Judy Gatto was a Gr. 3 teacher at the school who was also in a book club with the author and she invited him to read it to her class—he had no idea at the time that he would continue after this first novel which he’d written as an exercise because the subject appealed to him.
- To launch the novel in September 2022, the author drew on his relationship with the Alberta Railway Museum and had them run a locomotive through a 7-metre banner festooned with enlargements of the front and back book covers.
Lukas and the Wîhtikow Rex
- The Wîhtikow Rex is the second of the Lukas Encounter series and is the first to be workshopped with an elementary school class. With the idea for the novel in hand, the author approached Rob Ellis, a Gr. 4 teacher at Prince Charles and read the novel to the students as he wrote it—essentially kid-testing it, but also soliciting feedback and even suggestions.
- The author began hiking at Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park in the late ‘80s, and has even written a suite of five poems about the Badlands (two of which were aired on CBC Radio’s Alberta Anthology program). The idea of Lukas (and his cousin, KC) accidentally ‘resurrecting’ a T. rex skeleton at Dry Island came to him while he was reading the Ghost Train to the Gr. 3 class. Given the First Nations character of the school, he incorporated a strong, female First Nations paleontologist and enlisted Michael “Mahkoos” Merrier, a Métis Elder and pipe-carrier to provide spiritual guidance as the novel was created.
- Alberta is an epicentre of dinosaur research with many species having been found in the province’s Badlands, and in the Peace River country. No other province has two dinosaur museums: the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Wembley (near Grande Prairie).
- Philip Currie connection - The author encountered Dr. Currie while hiking at Dry Island in 2003. At the time, Dr. Currie was leading a research group that had re-discovered a long-lost dinosaur dig dating from the early 1900s. Dr. Philip Currie agreed to speak at the launch after the author approached him via email.
- Lukas Illustrations – The Wîhtikow Rex is the first of the Lukas Encounter novels to be illustrated with a retro-look a la the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Highly respected illustrator and fine artist, Rick Jacobson, contributed the cover and interior B&W illustrations—ironically, although he has been living and working in Toronto for a number of years, but he’s from Saskatchewan and graduated from at Calgary’s Alberta College of Art and Design—and he’s visited Dry Island. He is working on the Ghost Train, before he illustrates the Ice Dragon.
