Happy Friday! I was going to go blogless this week (sounds like missing a support garment) but then something came up that I had to share. Drum roll…

Last summer, I did my very first podcast interview, and it’s just gone live. Seriously–me with talky words! I didn’t remember a thing I said during the whole thing until I read the transcript five minutes ago. But here’s what I do remember, for a little peek behind the curtain on the realities of getting a podcast to air.

• The internet was not our friend. Living in the East Hawaii boonies, I have temperamental satellite internet, so (shh, don’t tell anybody) I snagged an empty room at my husband’s office for an hour. Except it wasn’t for an hour; it was only a few minutes, because the first time we tried the interview, Alexandra’s Canadian internet wouldn’t hold a connection. (Am I the only who assumed they’d have better internet than Americans?) So we rescheduled for a week later. And of course, on that day, the traffic to my husband’s office was heavier and I arrived panicked and severely sleep-deprived and feeling slightly ill because…
• The weather was not my friend. The night before the interview, we had severe thunderstorms in East Hawaii almost all night and not enough Valium to pacify our Rhodesian Ridgeback. (Perhaps we should have saved it for the humans.)
• But Alexandra was. 🙂 I may not remember what words came out of my mouth, but I did enjoy speaking with Alexandra Amor. She was such a genuinely warm person (how could she not be, as a Canadian with that lovely name?), and it was a great treat making a connection with another mystery writer. Writing is a pretty lonely profession (lately, even the dogs are like, Human, it’s time to leave the house and bring back new smells), so it’s always nice when you can tell someone about listening to the (character) conversations in your head and hear them say “I know!” instead of “Stay where you are; we’ll send someone to help you.” [Slight digression: someone in a writer group shared this hilarious humor piece recently about people working from home. For the record, I don’t watch meerkat videos or porn, and I don’t eat ham.]

So, if you’re a podcast person, have a listen here and you can hear Alexandra wax euphoric about visiting Hilo, Hawaii. Or if you’re not a listener, you can check out the transcript there as well. I should warn you (remember the sleep deprivation) that I’m a little stream of consciousness. It may be less jarring if you listen rather than read, and you can hear my southern accent sneak in from time to time, as tends to happen when I’m sleep-deprived. 😉 And if you’re a historical mystery fan, be sure to check out Alexandra’s A Town Called Horse series, set in frontier British Columbia. The first in series is free now across all platforms, and you can get the prequel from Alexandra for free as well. Love those covers! I’m going to be visiting the San Juan Islands soon for the first time (Happy Dance!) so it only seemed appropriate to pick up the first in Alexandra’s other series, Love and Death at the Inn, set on a fictional west coast Gulf Island. I’ve decided to wave to a random island from the ferry and pretend that’s where the characters live. Oh, please–you’re readers, too! Like you don’t wave at fictional characters. 😉