Welcome to The Interview Online Blog

It was an exhausting, but exhilirating day at the London Book Fair yesterday.

This is the big shin dig for the publishing industry. Sadly many of exhibitors weren't able to dig many shins as unfortunately they were unable to leave their home airports.

The theme this year is celebrating South African writers - big big stand but few SA writers or publishers. However the wonderful South African satirist Pieter Dirk-Uys was there - sadly his alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout was unavailable. If you don't know her who her rather outrageous political views go to her

Home Page s/he is a SA national treasure and counts Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu amongst her fans.

I mangaged a short interview with Pieter but unfortunately he wasn't feeling too terrific so didn't do it in character. One woman even came up to him this afternoon and credited him with bringing down apartheid. Well that's what he though was outrageous.

Walking around the stands so many were empty because of all the cancelled flights.  Many many publishers were very interesting what we're doing but no-one was in a position to sponsor anything. Well you wouldn't expect it really would you. But excellent contacts were made and we shall be following them all up.

Meanwhile commiserations to Amanda Craig and Sadie Jones who so very nearly made it to the Orange Prize  for Fiction 2010 Short list.

Having waited up until past midnight on the evening of 16/17th March, we are absolutely delighted that two of "our" authors interviewed on this site, have been long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.

Amanda Craig for Hearts and Minds and

Sadie Jones for Small Wars

You can view the full list on The Orange Prize for Fiction Home Page

In some small way, we feel that we have earned something of a reward ourselves. We did request interviews for Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall) and Sarah Waters (The Little Stranger) but were turned down.

Sadie Jones was a delightful interviewee and could not have been more generous with her time. Videoing an author is not something where, like audio you can be in and out within the hour - sometimes even half an hour. It takes time to rearrange the furniture and getting the positioning just right.

Quite often when you interview individuals, there is a feeling that you both know you have a professional job to do so let's pretend we're being friendly and get on with it. Others (like Sadie) seem genuinely interested in the site and there is no pretence. We had fun and games trying to decide how to add a bit of colour to the scene and the best on offer was a bowl of beautiful ripe tomatoes, yes tomatoes. Well they looked lovely next to her. However looking at them as I edit, well now I'm not so sure. Please let us know what you think when it's published.

The interview is "in production" which I reckon is probably just a euphemism for "just not ready". But it will be soon.

Meanwhile the excellent news is that Baroness Rendell of Babergh - otherwise known as Ruth Rendell has kindly agreed to an interview later in this month. We have to extend our grateful thanks to Neil Armstrong of www.neilarmstrongfilms.com who has kindly offered to film it for us so that we can concentrate on the questions rather than cue lights.

There's much happening behind the scenes here at The Interview Online. Having just conducted a delightful interview with the veteran journalist Virginia Ironside, I can safely promise you an insight in to the sixties - that's not just the 1960's but what it's like to be 60+. Yes Ms. Ironside honestly, truly, prefers older age to being young. Her new book The Virginia Monologues - Twenty Reasons why Growing Old is Great just about convinced me that there is a lot to look forward to in the decades ahead - and had me laughing out loud along the way.

We're waiting to hear about an interview with Sadie Jones talking about her new book Small Wars. By all accounts it's a terrific second novel after the runaway success of her debut The Outcast. We can't say must more than that since we've only reached 30 pages in. The publishers are very positive about a video interview but we haven't yet had 100% confirmation from the lady herself. Indeed just writing about it here, I'm trying to convince myself that we're not superstitious on The Interview Online.

OK then, I'm not going to tell you about another bid we have for a writer, we'd just love to interview and photograph. In all honesty it's not looking too good. So even if we don't get to ask such questions as "why have you departed from your usual landscape of war-torn France for your latest book?", at least we tried for a highly favoured bearded writer.  All that has given us the idea of maybe offering a prize if you can guess which author we're talking about. Not for the moment - but I'd be delighted if you have guessed who it is!

Keep reading…

NB