This week I’m hosting Lena Nelson Dooley with Catherine’s Pursuit, Jeanette Windle with Congo Dawn, Pam Hillman with Claiming Mariah (no giveaway on this blog ), Vannetta Chapman with A Home for Lydia, and Angela Ruth Strong with Lighten Up. If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (Feb. 24th) evening.
Heroine Interview from Congo Dawn by Jeanette Windle:
1. Lieutenant Robin Duncan, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I’ve never really considered myself to offer anything of particular interest, especially in comparison to the male Duncan line’s illustrious heritage as U.S. Marine Corps officers clear back to the halls of Montezuma and shores of Tripoli. There are those who might consider graduating at the top of my class as the first female Duncan Marine Corps officer worth some mention, perhaps even the Medal of Honor I received during my Afghanistan service. But those would not include my own family members.
2. What do you do for fun?
It has been so many years since I’ve had opportunity for fun, I could not even say. But in a long ago, simpler life, I loved exploring the new countries and peoples to which my parents’ careers introduced me as a child, then later as a deployed Marine. Someday if circumstances change, my idea of fun would be to show my niece and namesake some of those places. Or travel there with someone else I love. But that at least is a dream now beyond any likelihood of realization.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Addressing issues of my past—the family secrets, lies, hurt, betrayal. It is so much easier to stuff them deep below the surface of my thoughts and keep plodding ahead one more step after another.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
To fail the last two people this world still holds who command my love, loyalty, absolute devotion: my 4-year-old niece and namesake, Christina Robin Duncan, and her mother Kelli, my only remaining sibling. But fear cannot be a factor of choice and action, and I will fight to my last breath before I fail them as I failed to save too many others.
5. What do you want out of life?
What I want, I can’t have so there is no point in discussing it. What good does it do to unearth old pain and grief? Though when I saw him standing there in that Congolese border control hut with that look in his eyes, for just one moment I thought—no, that’s just wishful thinking. Bottom line, life isn’t about getting what you want, but surviving, enduring, and doing what has to be done. So dwelling on what I want out of life is just a waste of time and energy that detracts from the mission at hand.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
Family, honor, duty, above all personal cost.
7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
Most of my reading time these days is consumed with non-fiction background material and situation briefs for whatever new country my current mission assignment takes me, at the moment the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ituri rainforest conflict zones. But when I do get opportunity to read fiction at this point, any strong action plot where the good guys win and evil gets kicked to the curb is a welcome escape from the true state of affairs that rule this planet.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’m too tired of having people try to change me to have any real inclination to change myself. Why can’t people just accept who I am—a woman and a Marine, a good one at that! Though there are moments, when I let my guard down, that I can admit wondering what difference it might make to be a little more feminine, outgoing, carefree, more interested in social events and domestic affairs than the workings of an assault rifle. Maybe if I’d been more like Kelli, he wouldn’t have felt it necessary to disappear. No, I won’t go there! In any case, I can barely stand all that girlie drama from the sister I love. I’d rather be rolled over by a tank than live with that in my own head.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Moving from one military base and embassy outpost to another, we never had occasion to keep pets growing up. Much less once I myself was in the armed services, then traveling the world as a private military contractor. But if the day ever comes and a miracle happens so that Kristi and Kelli are safe and I can leave this life, I’m looking forward to the shine in Kristi’s eyes when I let her pick out a puppy to be guard dog and family pet for our first real home.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
I would go back to August 8, 1998 in Nairobi, Kenya, where instead of swimming at a pool party with all my expat friends, I’d warn the US embassy of an impending bomb attack in time to save my mother’s life—and change the future course of my own.
