And so there comes a time in every writer’s life when she must stop googling, twittering, face booking, emailing, writing the odd sentence and actually promote the book. My lovely PR people, Midas [midaspr.co.uk] have set up a number of radio interviews for me to talk about Valentine. On the one hand I am of course thinking hurrah! The more people know about my book, the more people might actually read it which is sort of what you want, but on the other is the fear of sitting in front of the microphone and going completely blank and mute or else babbling. As a former radio producer I should know all about radio, but actually I have never been interviewed. I have always been the other side of the glass partition, producing the interview and quite often thinking get on with it as the guest went off on one! So I did what I usually do, which is panic, and witter around for a while before taking decisive action and booking someone to do a session of media training with me. The someone was Ian Peacock, who I used to work with back in the radio day and who now runs his own media training company [talkconsultancy.com] Ian was brilliant at getting me to think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it and did a number of as live interviews with me. He also said it was fine to gesticulate and move around during the interview – anything to make you feel more relaxed. And I do love a bit of gesticulation when I talk.
I can’t find a picture of me gesticulating in the present but here is one I made earlier – in fact when I was 18, love the earrings, shame about the eyebrows, still at least they have not been plucked into oblivion. And the hair – a product of henna- which if I recall was a bit like sitting with a giant cowpat on your head for the best part of six hours only to end up with a hair that had only slightly changed colour but had a v healthy shine, if one could only ignore the odour…Anyway I have just done my first two interviews one for my local station – BBC Surrey and Sussex, with the very friendly Allison Ferns and one for MANX Radio and the equally friendly Bob Harrison. Now I have about six more to go….
I was v pleased with the reviews of Valentine on Amazon. It is so lovely when you know someone has liked your book and has got the humour, and as I read them I was saying ‘That’s so exciting!’ when Twin One burst my bubble and said, ‘That’s not exciting, swimming under water is exciting.’ Ah well…Children can be so cruel, I said nothing and ate their stash of Oreos…Twin one is on the right and yes in their world it is normal to wear swim wear as day wear….
