This week I’m hosting Vickie McDonough with Song of the Prairie (US and Canada only) and Veronica Heley with Murder in Time (ebook copy 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 (Aug. 31st) evening.
Interview with the hero from Song of the Prairie by Vickie McDonough:
1. Aaron Harper, tell me the most interesting thing about you. I don’t know that I’m all that interesting. I did grow up on a remote stage stop much of my life. The high points of our week was when the stage came through and we got to meet the travelers and hear the latest news and about life in other places. Ma would fix our guests a hot meal, and my two brothers and I would sometimes don aprons and help serve it.
2. What do you do for fun? Most folks in these parts work hard and sleep hard, but we do sometimes get together for a shindig in celebration of a wedding or some other event. Those times are fun as we visit with neighbors that we don’t see very often and sometimes have ridin’, roping, or shooting competitions. Lately, I’ve been ridin’ over to visit my friend Phil Dunn and playing with little Benjy, Phil’s adopted son.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it? I recently had to tell a friend that one of her kin had died. I dreaded doin’ that something fierce, but it had to be done.
4. What are you afraid of most in life? Failing my children like I failed their mother.
5. What do you want out of life? I want to be a good father to my two young’uns, to be known as a godly, honorable man who keeps his word and is someone you can rely on, and one day, I’d like to marry again—if I ever find the right woman.
6. What is the most important thing to you? My children are away, attending school in Windmill, the nearest town to our ranch. I need to find a way to bring them home and still see that they are educated. They’re living with my brother, Josh, and his wife. I hate that I had to send them away. It makes me feel like I’m not a good father.
7. Do you read books? If so, what is your favorite type of book? The Bible is the main book I read. Sometimes during the long winter, I’ve been known to read a novel or two, but there’s too much work to see to the rest of the year.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? There are times I wish that I wasn’t so responsible. Does that sound awful? Maybe it comes from being the oldest brother and always watching out for Josh and Ethan. There have been times I wish I could ride off and let someone else tend to the problems, but I don’t. I feel it’s my responsibility.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet? No pet, just a horse. He’s almost a part of my family. In fact, most days I spend more time with him than I do my own kin.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why? I’d go back to the day my wife died, and I would have escorted her to visit friends instead of assigning the task to my youngest brother. He and I have both suffered greatly because of that.