My PubIt! Interview

This week I was asked by Barnes & Noble to do a promotional Q&A video for their PubIt! program. I have several of my books available on the BN site through PubIt!, and my experience with them so far has been fantastic, so I happily said yes.


First snag: the film crew wanted to come shoot the video at my house.



My house is small, filled with baby toys (not to mention a precocious baby!), and, while I try to keep it tidy, my recent deadlines have meant I’ve left the cleaning up to the boys. (You can imagine how that has gone.) Luckily, my mom lives nearby and graciously offered to have the film crew come to her house instead. She even had her house cleaned the day before. Score!

Second snag: BN set the date for my shoot while I was on vacation in San Diego. I was planning to return home on Sunday… and they scheduled the shoot for Monday.



Big Scary Lights



Gah! One morning to get camera-ready? I have two small kids. I usually need more time than that to get standing-in-line-at-Starbucks-ready. Luckily, I do have my PhD in Power Shopping. I told the man he was on kid duty and hit the nail salon first thing in the morning. Got a killer manicure, ran to the beauty supply store for fab on-camera make-up, ran to the drug store for a 2 hour teeth whitening kit, then hit the mall (with Whitestrips in place) for a new outfit. Unfortuntely, I didn’t stop at home for my coupons, so ended up paying a really horribly high full price amount for the outfit, but so worth it. (Business expense, right?)

I then packed all my stuff up and headed to Mom’s where I spent the next hour practicing my interview answers to myself over and over and over and over…



More Scary Lights

 The film crew arrived early, and they were fantastic! They set up all their stuff in the living room, including some very large, very intimidating lights. (gulp) We did a quick sound check (I felt so Hollywood!), then the interviewer told me to go ahead and do my introduction.

Third snag: Introduction?! I didn’t know I had to do one of those! I had nothing prepared! I stared dumbly at the interviewer and asked, “Um, what introduction?”

“Just tell us about you and your books.”

Right. Sure. I know who I am and what I write, right?

Only it was really hard to remember with those big lights shining down on me and that camera staring me in the face, film rolling, recording my every tongue trip. Three flubbed attempts later, I think I finally got the name of my High Heels series right. (“Spy Heels… wait no, In High Heels… no, I mean High Heels Mysteries. What kind of series? It’s the romantic comedic… I mean romantic comedy mysterious… um, do all of those lights have to be on?”)

Finally we got to the questions that I actually recognized and actually had answers for, and things went a little more smoothly. For all the freaking out I did, the interview only took 20 minutes, and then the film crew was packing up. They were just taking all their evil lights out to their car again when…


Bird in a Box


Fourth snag: … a bird flew in the door. Right in the front door! It flew into the living room and slammed its little bird-brained head into the back windows. Then slammed into the front windows. Back to the back windows again. We all freaked, grabbed brooms, paper, a couple cardboard boxes and me (in super high heels, mind you), my mom, the interviewer, and the cameraman all chased the bird around the living room, trying to coax it outside again. Finally it slammed into a window hard enough to stun itself and we were able to scoop it off the floor, into a box, and set it outside. (Luckily, the box was empty when we checked again a few minutes later, so he did recover and fly away. I’m pretty sure he’s blogging to his bird friends right now about what a crazy experience it was.)

But even with all the snags, I’m told the footage actually came out okay. I’m not sure yet when the interview will be live on the Barnes &Noble site, but I’ll be sure to link it when it is!


~ Trigger Happy Halliday


P.S. SPYING IN HIGH HEELS is currently the #1 bestselling free Kindle book in the UK! Does that make me an “international bestseller?”  ;)