by Janis Patterson
I’ve always had a rule that if a person or company contacts
me out of the blue wanting to do wonderful business with me I stay away from
them. Things that sound too good to be true usually are.
So - when I received an email from a man named Geert Sels
asking for an interview I almost ignored it. The gods of stupid authors were
looking after me, though, because as the request came from Belgium I was
intrigued and investigated. Turns out he is not only legitimate, he is a very
respected journalist in Europe. He wanted to do a feature on me and A KILLING
AT EL KAB for De Standaard Cultuur, one of Belgium’s most popular newspapers.
We did the interview by emails – in English – and I waited. Mr.
Sels was both charming and amusing and it was a treat to work with him. Used to
the glacial pace of book publicity, I was astonished when within a week the
interview was printed. Mr. Sels sent me a transcript of the interview – in English
– the same day, and about a week later I got two full newspapers, sent by a
dear friend who lives in Belgium.
I flipped through the paper quickly… and am so glad that Mr.
Sels used the book cover image I sent him, because without it I wonder if I
could have recognized the story – it had all been translated into Dutch! A
little research showed that De Standaard Cultuur is printed in the Flanders
area of Belgium, where Dutch is the everyday language.
Whatever – it was a great rush to be solicited for an
interview in a respected European daily newspaper – even if I couldn’t read
what I said!
4 comments:
CONGRATS!
Wonderful!
Congratulations.
Good luck and God's blessings
PamT
How exciting and what an honor. Would love to read the text of your interview--in English, of course! (Aside--one of my books was published in Chinese, and I still wonder what it would sound like translated from Chinese back into English. How different would the more subtle points be? Would funny parts still be funny? I have copies of the book but have never found anyone to read it to me.)
I've heard others talk about some of these "too good to be true" scenarios surprising them. What an honor for you. Even if the article was in a language a lot of people you know don't understand, the book cover with it makes it something you can share with everyone.
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