Ask!
August 23, 2008
What irony that an interviewer has to be told to "ask." My questions usually spring from curiosity about an author's book, body of work, or even about their process. It is a different kind of question my literary manager wants me to ask of the authors I know.
When I am reticent to act...or ask...I often get a nudge from the universe. Most of us do -- it only takes being aware of this deeper source to reap the pleasure.
So, I am digitally editing an interview last night around eight when Christina Katz, author of WRITER MAMA, pops into my mind. I begin having a conversation with her -- in my head, subconscious role-playing, if you will -- about how to find focus amid all my passions, meanwhile making a living. Now I haven't seen or talked to Christina since December when I moderated her Writer Mama panel at a Willamette Writer's event.
Ping! An email sails in.
No kidding.
It is from Christina -- sending a cheer to me on Facebook. And to her other 451 friends. But her timing blows me away, so I email her back, telling her I'd just been thinking of her, and may I call.
Ping! Call anytime.
So I do.
She opens with "Your website needs focus." Holy crap, what's going on here. It's only slightly off the topic I was thinking of earlier -- like my entire life. Christina is talking about promoting the book I wrote. She asks what it's about. I reprise "It's called BookMark: Life-Changing Secrets I Learned from Interviewing Authors. It's a memoir about how, when I was four, my mother -- alcoholic, suicidal, schizophrenic -- not only divorced my father, but forbid me to speak of him, changed my name completely, cut his pictures out of all photos. And then she married a tall, dark and handsome pedophile who beat up my dad when he tried to visit a year later, and forbid him to come back. I survived the rapes and the violence and the uncertainty by vanishing into my books. And, I could see angels. When I became a journalist in my search for Truth, and serendipitously began interviewing authors, I learned how to live, and piece back together the life I had lost." Every author taught me something, and actually, I learned about the Law of Attraction from some of them more than twenty years ago. What I couldn't do, was break through all the self-limits that were created through the abuse and abandonment. Now, I have broken through, and I am compelled to share how I did it. BookMark isn't self-help -- it's stories. And you'll find what you need in its pages.
Christina listens, and we talk about what I really want to do -- to help you transcend the trauma. This is actually the impulse behind every book blog. At some point, Christina says, I must create a website just for my book.
I ask about writing for magazines other than for The Costco Connection, and she pours out tips. Later, I pull her book, WRITER MAMA, off my shelf and flip through it. It's got every detail I need in there. Plus, she has a new book coming out in October GET KNOWN BEFORE THE BOOK DEAL.
She asks my sign. "Leo," I say.
"That's the ta-da on your website," Christina says. "What's your moon?"
I reply, "Pisces." She tells me I'm excellent at emotional rapport -- that's the Pisces." And my ascending sign is Scorpio -- the intensity, the desire to dig deep. All makes sense! That's why I love to interview.
After our hour-and-a-half conversation is over -- thank you, Christina -- I realize how the advice from my literary manager, Ken Atchity -- echoes universal wisdom.
"Ask," he told me.
I ask.
And, I receive.
What irony that an interviewer has to be told to "ask." My questions usually spring from curiosity about an author's book, body of work, or even about their process. It is a different kind of question my literary manager wants me to ask of the authors I know.
When I am reticent to act...or ask...I often get a nudge from the universe. Most of us do -- it only takes being aware of this deeper source to reap the pleasure.
So, I am digitally editing an interview last night around eight when Christina Katz, author of WRITER MAMA, pops into my mind. I begin having a conversation with her -- in my head, subconscious role-playing, if you will -- about how to find focus amid all my passions, meanwhile making a living. Now I haven't seen or talked to Christina since December when I moderated her Writer Mama panel at a Willamette Writer's event.
Ping! An email sails in.
No kidding.
It is from Christina -- sending a cheer to me on Facebook. And to her other 451 friends. But her timing blows me away, so I email her back, telling her I'd just been thinking of her, and may I call.
Ping! Call anytime.
So I do.
She opens with "Your website needs focus." Holy crap, what's going on here. It's only slightly off the topic I was thinking of earlier -- like my entire life. Christina is talking about promoting the book I wrote. She asks what it's about. I reprise "It's called BookMark: Life-Changing Secrets I Learned from Interviewing Authors. It's a memoir about how, when I was four, my mother -- alcoholic, suicidal, schizophrenic -- not only divorced my father, but forbid me to speak of him, changed my name completely, cut his pictures out of all photos. And then she married a tall, dark and handsome pedophile who beat up my dad when he tried to visit a year later, and forbid him to come back. I survived the rapes and the violence and the uncertainty by vanishing into my books. And, I could see angels. When I became a journalist in my search for Truth, and serendipitously began interviewing authors, I learned how to live, and piece back together the life I had lost." Every author taught me something, and actually, I learned about the Law of Attraction from some of them more than twenty years ago. What I couldn't do, was break through all the self-limits that were created through the abuse and abandonment. Now, I have broken through, and I am compelled to share how I did it. BookMark isn't self-help -- it's stories. And you'll find what you need in its pages.
Christina listens, and we talk about what I really want to do -- to help you transcend the trauma. This is actually the impulse behind every book blog. At some point, Christina says, I must create a website just for my book.
I ask about writing for magazines other than for The Costco Connection, and she pours out tips. Later, I pull her book, WRITER MAMA, off my shelf and flip through it. It's got every detail I need in there. Plus, she has a new book coming out in October GET KNOWN BEFORE THE BOOK DEAL.
She asks my sign. "Leo," I say.
"That's the ta-da on your website," Christina says. "What's your moon?"
I reply, "Pisces." She tells me I'm excellent at emotional rapport -- that's the Pisces." And my ascending sign is Scorpio -- the intensity, the desire to dig deep. All makes sense! That's why I love to interview.
After our hour-and-a-half conversation is over -- thank you, Christina -- I realize how the advice from my literary manager, Ken Atchity -- echoes universal wisdom.
"Ask," he told me.
I ask.
And, I receive.
Labels: Ask, Ask and you shall receive, BookMark, books, Christina Katz, GET KNOWN BEFORE THE BOOK DEAL, interviewing, Ken Atchity, transcending the trauma, WRITER MAMA
posted by Diana Page Jordan @ 8:10 PM
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