Lights, Camera... Action!

Late Thursday afternoon, I got a phone call from a woman who said, "Hi, Terri. This is Kathryn Bursh, a reporter for Channel 10. I'd like to come by and interview you about your book."

Um... picture me speechless. (I know, I know; hard to do.)

So yesterday morning, bright and early, Kathryn and her cameraman, Tim, came by and spent a good bit of time taping me in my office, getting me to talk about Dead Girls Are Easy, and even taking me down to one of the local bookstores to get some footage there.

Later that afternoon, I got a call from the afternoon DJ for our biggest local radio stations, Mike Reeves at Q105,who'd heard about the upcoming news broadcast and wanted to play it up during rush hour drive-time. He very sneakily (and sweetly) taped our conversation before he told me it was taped, because he didn't want me to be nervous knowing I was on the air. So he did teaser lead-ins for the news, talking about how hard work can make dreams come true, and even played songs like "Don't Stop Believing" and one of my all-time favorite Rod Stewart songs, "A Reason To Believe".

And before I knew it, there I was on the 6 o'clock news. You can see the actual news story by clicking on this Channel 10 news link, then clicking "Video Story". (There's a 5 second commercial about car insurance or something you have to sit through at the beginning. Sorry, but I don't know how to get rid of that part.)

Immediately after the news he played the interview he'd taped earlier on the radio, so I got double billing in Tampa media yesterday.

My two questions after seeing the broadcast were these. "Do I really sound like that?" and "Do I really look like that?". Do we ever see or hear ourselves the way other people do?