In the last couple of weeks I’ve been a little overwhelmed at the level of media interest in my book. Not that I’m complaining for a second, but I had never anticipated how exhausting it would be to talk about myself (which clearly defines me as Gen X rather than Y!), answering similar questions as if they had each been asked for the first time, with one ear on listening and responding thoughtfully to the interviewer, and the other on the overall tone and message of the interview: I don’t want listeners thinking my book is all gloom and doom. Last Friday evening after six radio interviews I collapsed on the couch with a headache and woke up five hours later. I hadn’t been that exhausted mentally since I had written parts of my book.
This week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Sarah Macdonald on Radio National’s “Life Matters”. On the program’s website an audio file of my interview is available here for the next four weeks. Although quite intense, the experience was so enjoyable because it was clearly evident that Sarah had read my book closely and had really responded to it. It’s impossible to expect all radio presenters to have read your book – so many are competing for publicity attention every month – but in this case it made the interview feel more like an extension of the writing process than the selling process that inevitably follows publication.
