Excerpt
CHAPTER 15



I IS FOR INTERVIEWS
Time to put your best foot forward ~ Structure Q&A’s for interesting interviews

As an author, interviews become part of your life. Some interviews are structured with carefully crafted questions and answers, others as casual conversation. Online interviews are the easiest to get and the easiest to do. More interviews equal greater visibility.
How do I find places to get interviewed?
Visit websites dedicated to your genre or to profiling authors. Send a friendly email with information about your book or upcoming book, and ask if they would consider interviewing you. Be sure to include a cover image and a little about the book and yourself. Sign off with a link to your website. Remember, this is another form of query, so you don’t want to write more than necessary to jumpstart their interest.
What happens when they answer and say “yes”?
It isn’t unusual for online interviewers to simply submit a list of questions and ask you to supply the answers. Consider the questions carefully, because answers trigger an impression about you, your characters or your techniques in bonding with your audience.
Many questions in the straight Q&A format are so over-used or irrelevant, the result is boring. There are a ton of stock questions, and often interviewers appreciate suggestions for new areas they can explore. Maybe there is some sage advice you would like your readers to know and it doesn’t fall under the typical category of: What suggestions do you have to offer aspiring writers? Perhaps you want to talk about an experience you know will be great—one that no one besides you and a few friends or family know about. Look for the sequence of questions to flow smoothly—to create arcs just like those in the stories or books you write.
Things to ask yourself
Before reviewing the questions, think about the tone you want to use for your answers. Is this the place to exercise humor, answer in precise language, and use a conversational, chatty tone or what? Is there an opportunity to slide in subliminal promotional mentions of your other books, columns or say you’re available to speak to groups, and do it in a way that doesn’t take over the interview? How much detail should you provide?
Determine what readers might want to know
So much of this depends upon the genre of your book or story and the tone of the website. Be sure to look at some of the interviews already posted and see if there is a similarity in the books or interview technique.
For example, if all of the authors interviewed write sci-fi and you write historical romance, you might want to ask the interviewer what their audience would find interesting about your or your books. It is to your benefit if the interviewer’s questions strike some chord with the reader. You never know when an avid fan of intergalactic travel novels has a grandmother who just loves historical romance and can’t wait to buy your book for her.
Readers often want to know things they haven’t learned in other interviews. Provide the interviewer with something they can use to couch the question in a distinctive way, or even suggest adding questions or taking some out. They might ignore your suggestions, but on the other hand, many are delighted at new ways to liven things up.
Here’s an example of a spin on the typical question: Where do you get your ideas? Maybe you’ve had a real “dust-up” with an HOA president and that creates an opportunity to talk about something specific. Hey, this is one of my own nightmares. I’m waiting for the opportunity to slide it into an interview and someday I’ll write the story.
Interviewer: Authors get ideas in many ways. I understand you’ve been toying with something that happened quite a while ago involving an HOA. Care to share?
Author: Talk about ideas, I have to find a way to use this one. It happened years ago and involved the President of the HOA for the complex we lived in at the time. He made our life hell and cost us many thousands of dollars. I’ve wanted to get even for so long. As a mystery author, I could kill him in a dozen ways—in print, of course.
Interviewer: But you haven’t done it yet, have you?
Author: No, I haven’t come up with just the right story. But it will happen. He will be floating in the pool, slumped in the lobby, cracked over the head, fed poisoned mushrooms—see, there are just so many ways to do it depending upon the story.
Interviewer: And when you finally write it, do you hope he will read it and know it’s him?
Author: Can’t happen. He had the nerve to really die a few years ago before I could do him in.
Something like that has lots more oomph than dry questions and answers and offers a natural segue into discussing various kinds of mystery novels the author has written. Then the interviewer could follow with why mystery writers choose certain ways to do people in.
Live interviews
This is one place you have to shine. If the interviewer has given you a preview of his questions, formulate some answers that sound totally “off the cuff”. Don’t make it sound like you’re reading from a script.
This isn’t an interrogation, so it’s perfectly acceptable to tell the interviewer in advance about topics you don’t want to discuss. For example, if you write chick lit, cozy mysteries, or humor, you might have a character who is a bumbling attorney but you don’t know much more about law than what you see on TV. For your genre, you don’t have to. Technical questions about points of the law might be a breeze for a lawyer, but not for you, so don’t take the chance. If you’ve already alerted the interviewer, and they persist anyway, you have a perfect excuse to laugh it off.
Imagine giving an answer like: “Oh, Thomas, you’re so funny. You know Lucinda Laughingstock isn’t an attorney, so why would she know that?”
Every valid suggestion about how to give animated readings or engaging speeches applies here. For example if you’re on the radio, remember to smile because it can be heard in your voice. Allow your voice to reflect emotion instead of a flat presentation. And please, give the poor interviewer something better than one word answers. Terse answers make the job of drawing out the guest’s “sparkling personality” so hard and never impresses the listener.