Hero Interview from Deadly Additive by Donn Taylor

This week I’m hosting  Krista Phillips with Sandwich with a Side of Romance, Donn Taylor with Deadly Additive and Janet Bly with Stuart Brannon’s Final Shot. 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 (September 30th) evening.

Interview with the Hero of Deadly Additive by Donn Taylor:

1.  I’m pleased to meet you, Jabez Eliel Sledge. Tell me the most interesting thing about you.

You learned my full name? You’re a good researcher. Most people just call me Jeb. How’d I come by that name? At birth I weighed thirteen pounds, so my daddy figured I’d grow up pretty big. He was right: I carry 250 pounds on a six-foot frame. Then he figured anyone that big would be a troublemaker, so he named me Jabez, which means “he makes sorrowful.” Truthfully, I have made a few folks sorrowful, but only when they thoroughly deserved it. Daddy wanted to tame me down, so he also named me Eliel, “God is God,”—his way of reminding me that I wasn’t. Seems like he was right on all counts.

I guess the most interesting thing about me—if anyone knew it—would be the difference in my public and private life. People know I’m a Special Ops veteran of Afghanistan, got shot up training Colombian local defense forces, and sometimes get ornery when I lose patience. Private life? I guess you’ll dig that out of me with further questions.

2.  What do you do for fun, Jeb?

There’s not a lot of fun in my life. I’ve spent most of it risking my skin for noble causes. But when time permits, I like a leisurely meal in a good restaurant with quiet music and servers that don’t introduce themselves. Afterwards, at home, I put on some soft-music CDs and read.

3.  What is the most important thing to you?

This world has many noble causes that need defending against their enemies. I want to make my life count by taking the personal risks required to defend those causes.

4.  What do you want out of life?

I want to know the world is a better place because I took risks to defend others from evil.

5.  What are you afraid of most in life?

An answer I don’t have. I’m fine as long as I’m in action, but afterwards it seems like the world is empty of value. E.M. Forster described that feeling: “All things exist. Nothing has value.” I think I’m most afraid of finding out Forster’s character was right. If so, then I’ve taken all those risks and gotten myself shot up for a concept of goodness that doesn’t really exist.

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

Finding out why the world seems empty of value: I’m afraid that may be true.

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

I’d anesthetize the part that keeps wondering why supporting noble causes isn’t enough.

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

read all kinds, but I really like the classics—Homer and Aeschylus, Virgil, Dante and Milton. Among the novelists I like Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Wolfe. I also read some of the lighter stuff, like Gavin Lyall’s The Wrong Side of the Sky and anything by Jack Higgins.

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

I’m away from home too often to keep a pet.

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

I suppose it would be the time of Virgil’s Aeneid. I feel a certain kinship with Aeneas because he spent his life doing dangerous, thankless jobs to promote some greater good that he might never see. That’s the highest purpose one can find in life, isn’t it? Or is it.…?