Swagger

A couple of the book promo sites I signed on with offered an interview opportunity. (Don't get me wrong ~ this is offered to anyone who lists a book with them.) The interviews are just a series of written Q and A, and I thought, hey, why not? I think, "hey, why not?" far too much for my own good. My two-second reasoning was, any publicity is good. My problem is, I'm not interesting. There is very little about my life that bears mentioning. And if the questions don't even relate to my experiences, trouble brews. One of the questions was, "What two or three books would you take with you to a deserted island?" I suppose I should have responded with, "Why in the world would I deliberately go to a deserted island?", but I wanted to be a compliant interviewee, so I endeavored to answer. I'm not one of those people who loves a book so much, I read it over and over. Most books are ehh. Not bad; not great. I only remember starting two really awful books in my whole life; ones I couldn't even finish. One was due to the writer's braggadocio (it was an autobiography). I think, in discussing his romantic life, he actually referred to women as "dames".  The other book was supposed to be a statement on current culture-slash-humor. It was so superficial, and the humor was so bad, I actually felt embarrassed for the author. 

As for books I would pack for my mythical three-day cruise, I didn't know. I went with a couple that are classic true crime and then I threw in Stephen King's "On Writing", simply because I saw it sitting there on my bookshelf. 

My interviews showed up in the requisite newsletters, and in one I was situated directly after some guy who clearly relished talking about himself. And in very dominant, self-assured terms. As in, "Wow, my life is awesome and here's why." He actually wrote, "I’m an award-winning designer, writer, director, and now an Amazon Best Selling author." I guess not so award-winning that he could land a publishing deal, and he has to use free promo sites to push his book.

I don't want to be that guy, but I'm intrigued by the genesis of his confidence.   

Know how pitiful my little Q&A looked next to his? Me, with my tiny home-snapped photo and he with his professional head shot (casually posed)?

Maybe they just weren't the right questions. When did you fall in love with reading? When does anybody? That's kind of banal. Where were you born? Ooh, hard one. (The guy I referenced went off on a tangent and talked about the dogs he had growing up, whereas I thought I was just supposed to answer the question.)

I'm a terrible self-promoter. Always have been. I can never say, "My work is great!" even though some of it is pretty great (I'm thinking about my songs, not necessarily my prose.) If an acquaintance tells me how awesome one of my songs is, I answer, "Ehh, it's okay, I guess", when I should be launching into, apparently, the history of all the pets I've owned.  

If I intend to become a world-famous author, I will need to become much more interesting.