The Live Video Interview: Geat Ready!
One of the great things about being an author are all the nervous experiences you get to live through on the path to stardom. I got a chance at a pretty good nervous experience recently, being featured on a live internet broadcast. You can see it at stackstv.net. The December 14th episode.
I was asked to be on the show because of the content in my novel, The Flesh Statue. The show, actually called stackstv.net, is geared towards the hip-hop audience and it just happens that my novel deals with many elements of the hip-hop culture, if not the music directly. Willing to approach an untapped audience and at the same time work on my interview chops I more than gladly accepted the invite.
I must expound on the idea of sharpening my interview chops. While researching publishers, many of them either implied in some way or said openly that they would like their authors to have an online presence. A few even suggested that as an author you should have social networking skills. Keep in mind they didn't say have a facebook page or go on goodreads, they said have skills while doing it. Sure, I have a website. Sure, I have a facebook page. I even have a twitter account, but a lot of the times I'm lost while working with this stuff. Which brings me back to my main idea. I was going to sharpen my chops by doing this live broadcast.
Now I've done plenty of online interviews but with those you can think about your answers and rewrite them. I've done blog talk radio as well. At least with blog talk radio you can hide your face, which is something I always like to do. I'm not saying I'm an ugly guy. What I'm saying is, well, put it this way, I once had a journalist instructor who said I had a radio face. You tell me what that means.
So I do this interview. IMPACC, an emcee who interviewed next to me, said I looked pretty relaxed, and so did several other people. I thought that was great because "relaxed" isn't the word I would use.
First off, as I'm answering some question, I forget what the question is while I'm answering it and so my mind is simply shooting off all kinds of ideas. I'm thinking about work the next day, I'm thinking about my website, and then I'm thinking about what my website should look like, but I don't think about the actual question I was asked because I couldn't remember what it was. Somehow I worked it out or somebody did. It didn't help that the camera man is laughing at me. The Director is smiling as well and then I realize that maybe I have a booger hanging and they know they have to wait till the end of my segment to tell me. Meanwhile I'm still being asked questions. But it's hard to answer the questions because realistically there's this incredibly huge light basically sitting on my head. They use the light for the cameras but I'm just saying they're huge and hot and I wasn't really expecting it.
I'm thinking, man, I didn't even comb my hair, while telling the host about some imaginary person I invented years and years ago.
What gets me is this: since I was trying to improve my social networking chops I tweeted my followers (whatever that means) and hit up my facebook "friends" so they would get http://stackstv.net/ some viewer traffic and other things you do while improving your social networking skills, so in the back of my mind these people are looking at me as if I have a booger in my nose from some smart phone or computer somewhere, if not that night then some time in the future. Therefore, radio face. Lisp. Gap between my teeth. Stuttering. Heat lamps. I loved it. I'd do it again. It's one of those things authors live for. You know, all those nervous experiences that put you on the path to stardom. So hit me up on facebook, twitter and myspace and befriend me here on goodreads and while you're at it give me a call because I have three different phone numbers you can contact with and if that's not good enough then email me. We can figure this out.
Drop by ulharper.com to check out interviews and videos and cool stuff like that. http://ulharper.com/
The Flesh Statue
I was asked to be on the show because of the content in my novel, The Flesh Statue. The show, actually called stackstv.net, is geared towards the hip-hop audience and it just happens that my novel deals with many elements of the hip-hop culture, if not the music directly. Willing to approach an untapped audience and at the same time work on my interview chops I more than gladly accepted the invite.
I must expound on the idea of sharpening my interview chops. While researching publishers, many of them either implied in some way or said openly that they would like their authors to have an online presence. A few even suggested that as an author you should have social networking skills. Keep in mind they didn't say have a facebook page or go on goodreads, they said have skills while doing it. Sure, I have a website. Sure, I have a facebook page. I even have a twitter account, but a lot of the times I'm lost while working with this stuff. Which brings me back to my main idea. I was going to sharpen my chops by doing this live broadcast.
Now I've done plenty of online interviews but with those you can think about your answers and rewrite them. I've done blog talk radio as well. At least with blog talk radio you can hide your face, which is something I always like to do. I'm not saying I'm an ugly guy. What I'm saying is, well, put it this way, I once had a journalist instructor who said I had a radio face. You tell me what that means.
So I do this interview. IMPACC, an emcee who interviewed next to me, said I looked pretty relaxed, and so did several other people. I thought that was great because "relaxed" isn't the word I would use.
First off, as I'm answering some question, I forget what the question is while I'm answering it and so my mind is simply shooting off all kinds of ideas. I'm thinking about work the next day, I'm thinking about my website, and then I'm thinking about what my website should look like, but I don't think about the actual question I was asked because I couldn't remember what it was. Somehow I worked it out or somebody did. It didn't help that the camera man is laughing at me. The Director is smiling as well and then I realize that maybe I have a booger hanging and they know they have to wait till the end of my segment to tell me. Meanwhile I'm still being asked questions. But it's hard to answer the questions because realistically there's this incredibly huge light basically sitting on my head. They use the light for the cameras but I'm just saying they're huge and hot and I wasn't really expecting it.
I'm thinking, man, I didn't even comb my hair, while telling the host about some imaginary person I invented years and years ago.
What gets me is this: since I was trying to improve my social networking chops I tweeted my followers (whatever that means) and hit up my facebook "friends" so they would get http://stackstv.net/ some viewer traffic and other things you do while improving your social networking skills, so in the back of my mind these people are looking at me as if I have a booger in my nose from some smart phone or computer somewhere, if not that night then some time in the future. Therefore, radio face. Lisp. Gap between my teeth. Stuttering. Heat lamps. I loved it. I'd do it again. It's one of those things authors live for. You know, all those nervous experiences that put you on the path to stardom. So hit me up on facebook, twitter and myspace and befriend me here on goodreads and while you're at it give me a call because I have three different phone numbers you can contact with and if that's not good enough then email me. We can figure this out.
Drop by ulharper.com to check out interviews and videos and cool stuff like that. http://ulharper.com/
The Flesh Statue
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