This week I’m hosting Trish Perry with Unforgettable, Ruth Axtell Morren with A Gentleman’s Homecoming, and Veronica Heley with False Money. If you want to enter the drawings, 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 (March 27th) evening.
Interview with the heroine from Unforgettable by Trish Perry:
1.Rachel Stanhope, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I’m a business owner. That might not sound like much, but female business owners aren’t all that common yet—not in 1951. My poor father can’t get used to the idea and still seems to think I’ll walk away from it all as soon as the right man comes along.
2.What do you do for fun?
Well, my work is fun. I run a dance studio, and I absolutely love dance. Doing it, teaching it, competing in it. I also enjoy spending time with my immediate family—my parents, my two brothers, and their wives. And their kids . . . sort of. Finally, an interesting man has started bringing his niece and nephew to one of my classes. His cockiness irks me a little. But there’s something there . . . I find it fun to think about him.
3.What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Spending time alone with my brother’s kids is right up there on the list. I love children when they’re a little older—old enough for me to really relate to. But I was the baby of my family and never took care of toddlers. They’re gooey. And they can smell my fear.
4.What are you afraid of most in life?
Public humiliation, at least for the moment. I still struggle to forgive my old boyfriend, who shocked me with a kind of public humiliation that could actually be repeated if I’m not careful.
5.What do you want out of life?
I want to succeed with my dance studio, and of course I would eventually like to fall in love with someone who will sweep me off my feet but be willing to let me stand tall on my own when I want to, too.
6.What is the most important thing to you?
I’m very ambitious. I get quite caught up in anything that might help my studio to progress and gain positive notice. But I never want to lose site of my blessings and where they come from. Even when I experience loss, whether personal or financial, I know my life is full of blessings. And when I face disappointments, I hope I’ll always remember to face God.
7.Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
I adore romances, I’ll admit. So, of course, I’m a Jane Austen fan. But at the moment I’m reading Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. I saw a wonderful movie of the same name this past year—I love both Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy—and the story of this huge family fascinated me. This book is their true story.
8.If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would relax about the present. I mean, I do tend to react—inside, anyway—awfully dramatically to whatever I’m experiencing at the moment. I may not always show it, but that’s what I do. Sometimes it’s best to maintain a more long-term view of daily occurrences. I think that has something to do with faith and trusting that God has one’s best in mind. I’m afraid that way of thinking doesn’t come naturally to me. I have to work at it.
9.Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
No, no pets for me right now. I spend too much time at the studio. It wouldn’t be fair to keep an animal cooped up in my apartment so long. If I could have a pet, though, it would be a dog. I’m a dog lover—the bigger and furrier the better.
10.If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Oh, there are so many different periods I would love to visit. Maybe the late 1500s, Elizabethan times, when men and women really began to engage in couples dancing in earnest, with lifts and such. It would be fun to watch the art of dance develop into the romantic recreation it is today.
