Amber Miller’s hero interview

This week I’m hosting Amber Miller with her book, Copper and Candles, Virginia Smith with her book, Murder at Eagle Summit, and Amy Wallace with her book, Enduring Justice. If you want to enter the drawing for the book, 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 (May 17th) evening.

Interview with the hero of Copper and Candles:

1. Brandt, tell me the most interesting thing about you.

That would likely have to be the fact that I have willingly taken a job as a common refinery worker in order to learn the full scope of the jobs I now oversee as manager. I assumed a hidden persona and withheld my identity from everyone, including a certain young lady who works at the copper factory nearby. It came with its fair share of consequences, but if I had to repeat the experience, I don’t know that I would change anything.

2. What do you do for fun?

I don’t have a lot of time for fun, what with working at the copper refinery six days a week for 10-12 hours every day. Some of the other workers and I get into some mischief and find ways to relieve the tension of the workday, but I’m so exhausted by the time the day is done, I barely manage to eat before falling into bed each night. However, once a year, my family travels to Mackinac Island at the end of the summer. The time spent there allows me to get away from everything and focus on nothing at all.

3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?

Standing up to or confronting my father in matters of business when he has made such a success of what he’s attempted. Who am I to suggest that there might be a better way or a more viable solution? My father can be a rather formidable man to approach.

4. What are you afraid of most in life?

Afraid? I don’t know that I have any real fears like that. I must say that I don’t desire to have anyone believe me to be shallow or insincere in any way. But my biggest fear is that I might disappoint my father and have him view me in an unflattering light.

5. What do you want out of life?

I would love to succeed at the work I do and one day rise to management to follow in my father’s footsteps of starting small and making my own mark.

6. What is the most important thing to you?

Maintaining my integrity, no matter what the circumstances.

7. Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?

Oh yes. I am a voracious reader and find myself attracted to adventurous stories such as Robinson Crusoe or Journey to the Center of the Earth.

8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I wish I wouldn’t allow my anger to get the better of me when important and key issues are at stake. It almost cost me dearly.

9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?

No. There really isn’t a place for a pet in our home, but I do love wild animals such as eagles, mountain lions, wolves and moose. There aren’t many here in the city, but when my family travels to the more uncivilized areas of the state or even up north to Canada, we discover a plethora of them.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?

Travel to another time? Is that even possible? I have read about things like that, but only in fictionalized stories and exaggerated imaginations of the people who tell and write them. It does sound intriguing though, and if I could do it, I might choose a time before so much industry took over the expansive lands of the United States. The wild open frontier has an appeal all its own.