Surviving the Bad Clown Media Frenzy

This past week and a half has been absurdly busy for me. It started on a Friday when I was asked to comment on the clown panic for People magazine.

Over the years I've occasionally been interviewed by national news media, including in 2014 when I was on Good Morning America being asked for my analysis of a new Loch Ness Monster photo, but nothing on this scale. All was fine and I thought the news media attention had waned for a few days.

But the creepy clown reports on the news and social media spawned copycats in other countries, and suddenly the e-mails started coming in and my cell phone started burning up (not literally, it's an iPhone, not a Galaxy).

What happened was that when reporters from other news media saw me quoted in People, they realized that there actually was, improbably enough, an expert on bad, evil, and scary clowns, and it happened to be me! Within a week I was recognized as one of, if not the, top experts in the world on this specific topic (along with Loren Coleman and a few others).

For three solid days I was doing back-to-back interviews for about 12 to 14 hours: NPR, Jenny McCarthy's Sirius XM show, CNN, BBC, CBC, CTV, Time magazine, Voice of America, and dozens more, print, radio, podcast, television, you name it. I did my best to keep up with them, and got in the habit of using two kitchen timers on my desk going at the same time to remind me when I have five minutes before an interview--and the one afterward, to make sure I didn't miss it.

I woke up at 5 AM to appear live on a lunchtime chat show in Dublin, Ireland. I was interviewed by journalists in Stockholm, Sydney, Rio de Janiero, and Hong Kong (I submitted video and my comments translated into Chinese subtitles)... And I have three more interviews scheduled this week! I am glad that my work is being noticed, and that people are interested in the book, but to be honest I'm looking forward to a quieter week ahead, so I can finish my next book!