Thursday, June 28, 2007

Media whirl part 2

The media interest continues - yesterday TV station NBN filmed a segment for the regional evening news, and ABC Online contacted me and later posted an item on their news website. Today, I had an interview with ABC Radio Canberra, and tomorrow morning I have one scheduled with ABC Radio in Central Australian. I suspect that will be the last one, other than the Radio National one we have scheduled for next week, just before I go.

It's very cold here, and after all the excitement - and frantic workload at work to juggle around it - I took tonight off, and watched Dr Who on TV. Now I'm finishing my bedtime cup of chamomile tea, and listening to the wonderful music of Falling You at magnatune.com. I'm itching to buy some more music from magnatune - they have some great stuff, and 50% of the income goes directly to the artists - but I'll have to wait until after Dallas, when I might have some $$ again.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Media happenings

It’s been an amazing couple of days. My university sent out a media release yesterday morning, about my being a finalist in the RWA Golden Heart Award. I expected the local paper to pick it up, and perhaps the regional radio station, but the response has been overwhelming - I’ve done two radio interviews today, for the local regional radio station and the regional station for the north coast, a television news segment, an interview for the major news agency that feeds across the country, and I’m lined up for another TV news interview tomorrow, and a spot on Radio National next week, just before I fly out to Dallas.

The interviewers have been quite good, although Barbara Cartland or pink chiffon negligees have been mentioned in most of them. Because of the early British influence on the romance genre in Australia, the two most common things that non-romance readers tend to say when romance is mentioned is 'Barbara Cartland' and 'Mills and Boon'. However, I think I did an okay job in talking about the diversity in the genre.

I saw the TV segment on the local news tonight, and I was quite happy with it - although our TV reception for that channel is pretty bad, and it didn't record very well at all. And, of course, the sweater I was wearing made me look fat :-)

The cameraman took some pictures of me at my computer at work 'writing', so I had to write something. Yes, on the news was the close-up of the screen where I had written the amazingly elegant prose 'His chair squeaked as he pushed it back.' Okay, so I'm not going to win the Nobel proze for literature with that! However, it is very hard to just write creatively at the conclusion of a media interview, when there's a camera looking over one's shoulder.

So, it's all been quite an experience, and an incredible response from the media. I was expecting the local interest, but the rest is quite a surprise. And the pleasant part is that it shows that there is a growing interest in the media about the romance genre - which can only be a good thing. I hope I've done the genre justice today.

As far as I can tell, none of it's available online, so I can't put links up to the interviews. However, next week's segment is on Radio National, which is streamlined live, so I'll put a link for that up closer to the time.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Contest success

I found out earlier in the week, but couldn't say anything until it was officially announced:

My two entries in the RWAustralia Single (Title) and Loving It contest placed second and third. The manuscripts are Dark Legacy, the loosely-linked sequel to my Golden Heart finalling book; and Shadows and Light.

Both manuscripts have been challenging to write, for various reasons, and each has had a number of versions, so I'd entered them in the contest primarily for the feedback, to see if what I'd done with each of them worked. It seems so :-)

Big congrats to Melanie Scott, who won the contest. She's also a double Golden Heart finalist, and I'm really hoping I'll be giving her a huge cheer (or two!!) and pouring champagne for her at the awards night in Dallas. Mel was one of the first people I met at the first romance writers conference I attended, and she deserves every success.

Speaking of Dallas, in three weeks exactly I'll be heading to Sydney airport to get on the plane to San Francisco, and from there to Dallas.

From winter in rural Australia to a luxury hotel in a huge, bustling hot city - it will definitely be a contrast! I am becoming quite excited, although there's a huge list of things I need to finish before I leave. I don't usually pack ages before I go away, but because I'm taking summer clothes that I'm not currently wearing in freezing winter temps, I have started piling some things on the guest bed. I may even start making a list, soon :-)