This week I’m hosting Davalynn Spencer with As You Are at Christmas (ebook), Vickie McDonough with Stitched with Love, Ada Brownell with Joe the Dreamer: the Castle and the Catapult, and Christa Allen with Threads of Hope. 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 (March 3rd) evening.
Interview with the hero from Joe the Dreamer: the Castle and the Catapult by A. B. Brownell:
Margaret: Joe Baker, for a 14-year-old, you seem to have many challenges. Tell me the most interesting thing about you.
Joe: I don’t know if I’d say it’s that’s the way I would say it, but my parents are missing and I and my little sister may be in danger, too. And now my dad’s old boss is saying Pop stole a valuable computer program for a brain chip to control epilepsy. My dad created that program at home on his own time. But I can’t prove it. Mom and Pop disappeared and haven’t come back. That’s why I’ve been reading the Bible, praying, and hoping God answers prayer. In my dreams I become Bible characters, though, and I wake up shouting or yelling so now my uncle believes I have a mental illness like post-traumatic stress syndrome. His psychiatrist friend thinks I might need to go to the state mental hospital’s juvenile unit.
Margaret: Surely you have some good things happening. What do you do for fun?
Joe: Friends come over. We shoot hoops, plays football, go bowling, tubing, on the natural water slide in the mountains. The water slide is where I noticed the castle and my friends and I think they’re using prisoners there to build a wall. I joined a Christian gang that tries to prevent and solve crimes with things like water, sand, marbles, rope, noise and a pet skunk instead of blades or bullets, and they’re going to try to help me find my parents.
Margaret: What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Joe: I tried to put off calling my uncle and going to his house to live, but the police and my friend Pete’s dad insisted. I hate going to appointments with that psychiatrist. How can reading the Bible and talking in your sleep make you crazy?
Margaret: What are you afraid of most in life?
Joe: That my parents are dead.
Margaret: What do you want out of life?
Joe: That my parents will be back and everything will be like it used to be. Then I could dream of using my music, attending a great college, marrying somebody like my friend Pete’s twin sister, Petra.
Margaret: What is the most important thing to you?
Joe: Right now, I can’t see beyond today, looking for Mom and Pop and trying to keep that Gorilla-like man that broke into our house away from me. I’m sort of confused. One day I think I have faith, and the next I’m doubting.
Margaret: Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book?
Joe: I don’t like fantasy, wizards, or weird stuff, although I do like C.S. Lewis. I loved Gunner’s Run by Rick Barry, and although its way out there, I liked Nightmare Academy by Frank Peretti.
Margaret: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Joe: My parents wouldn’t be missing.
Margaret: Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Joe: We have a Black Lab dog named Hefley, and we chose him because he’s the greatest dog ever. He has a great heart, trained easily, and I think he’d give his life for us. He was injured when the man broke into the house the night my parents disappeared and stole my computer.
Margaret: If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Joe: I’d go back to earth’s beginning and ask God if I could watch him make the universe, people, all the animals, sea creatures, birds. And I’d ask why He loves us so much.
