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.