Blogtalk Radio Star

I was on the radio on Monday 25^th January.  Don’t rush to BBC iplayer – I haven’t made the BBC yet!  No, this was internet radio.  If you want to listen, go to www.blogtalkradio.com/murdershewrites where I have half an hour’s very pleasant conversation with Sylvia Dickey Smith, the author of the Sidra Smart mysteries.

I’m not sure how it works at Sylvia’s end, but as far as I was concerned it meant sitting at my desk in what we rather grandly call the study, drinking a very large cup of tea out of my Captain Kirk mug (to make me feel inspired!) and nattering on the phone about writing. I had to remember to tell the nearest and dearest not to turn the hot water as the gas heater in the study goes Whumph whenever a hot tap is turned and it sounds like a minor explosion.

Sylvia had asked me previously what I wanted to talk about and I thought that a full half hour on My Books to an audience who, with the best will in the world, probably hadn’t read them, was a bit much.  (The audience are meant to be so gripped by the conversation that they rush madly to their bookshop, library or Amazon to find out for themselves who this amazing writer is, chatting so urbanely on their PC.)

Soooo – let’s talk about writing, I suggested.  After all, one of the reasons for listening to programmes like this is, if you’re an unpublished writer is to find out how the lucky beggar speaking actually did it.  I know that’s what I wanted to know, anyway!  Go to writing conventions, was my advice.  There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that takes the mystique out of the whole author thing quicker than meeting authors.  I remember, years ago, gazing at a most inoffensive women signing her books at a convention.  If she’d asked me what I was starring at, I’d have thought of something tactful to say, but what was actually going through my mind was, “Gosh, she’s so ordinary. And she writes books.  Wow.”  If you’re at a greater level of sophistication then I was then, don’t feel too superior;  getting published is so horribly hard that I thought anyone who’d actually done it must have a Superman vest and the vegetable resources of a Popeye.  If you can’t get to a convention (and they can be expensive) watch out for author talks at your local library.  If you’ve actually read the writers’ books, you’ll get a lot more out of it and there’s usually plenty of chances to talk one to one.

You can hear the full thing for yourself if you log onto Blogtalk Radio but I think I’ll come back to this theme next time.