This week I’m hosting Gail Gaymer Martin with Rescued by the Firefighter (she will give away 2 copies of The Firefighter’s New Family US and Canada only) and Janet Bly with The Lost Manuscript of Martin Taylor Harrison (US and Canada only). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on your post 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 (Mar. 30th) evening.
Interview with the heroine from The Lost Manuscript of Martin Taylor Harrison by Stephen and Janet Bly:
1. Lynda Dawn Austin, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I’m a New York City editor on a journey to the wild parts of the west and I can’t go without my case of expensive glass bottle perfumes. I wear a different scent with an unusual name every day. Always have. Always will. Hard to pack on the back of a horse. Or keep safe on a rough riding dirt or gravel trail in a pickup pulling a trailer.
2. What do you do for fun?
I’m a 30-year-old single work-a-holic who would really like to take a vacation sometime. Like to Largo, Florida to visit family. But there’s always another book to edit. Or an author to nudge to deadline. Or stacks of manuscripts to critique. And now a crazy man claims he possesses the genuine last novel of Martin Taylor Harrison, the writer who disappeared decades ago and his books are still bestsellers. That project could tie me up for a long time.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Looking in the mirror at the crow’s-feet around my eyes and other inevitable signs of the aging process.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
To come to the end of my days and never done anything of importance, not accomplished something significant for the world, for myself, for God. That, and heights. I’m terrified of glass elevators, cliff sides, rooming at anything higher than third floor in a motel or hotel. That’s why it was so crazy to take that trip by horse down into the Grand Canyon.
5. What do you want out of life?
To succeed in the publishing career. To make a name for myself and for the company for which I work. But also, I want to be able to bring out the best in a male relationship, not the worst. For some reason, I’ve been making boys mad at me ever since I was six-years-old. I can’t seem to be whatever it is they want me to be. Take James, for instance. He never gets angry with anyone and he left my place for the last time after screaming at me.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
To find the missing manuscript that may be authored by Martin Taylor Harrison. And to find a guy who really knows me and gets me, to attract someone who truly understands who I am and what I go through.
7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read? Any of the western adventures by Joaquin Estaban, one of the authors at Atlantic-Hampton, my publishing company. He writes about a lifestyle so different than mine. So intrigues me.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?To be better able to stay calm, cool and collected in the midst of crises and high stress situations.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
I don’t have a pet of my own right now. But my cowboy guide out west, Brady Stoner, has a dog named Captain Patch. He wears a black patch over one eye. When I asked Brady why, he said, “A mule kicked him in the head when he was a pup. He lost his right eye. And he thinks the patch is cool. It seems to impress the lady dogs. That dog will never bark unless you take the patch off. Then he goes ballistic.”
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Back to the 1920s and early 1930s, the heydays of Martin Taylor Harrison. That would provide real up close and personal research on him and his vanishing from public view. I’m so drawn to the story of this intriguing man.