The Interview Online is feeling quite grown up…

An agency working for The Observer Magazine contacted us
at the end of last week.. They needed to fill a small advertising space very quickly for next weekend's issue - for a very reasonable fee would we be interested?
Advertising? ADVERTISING? Isn't that something that really big companies do? Oh well, we decided to see what it feels like.

Click here to view what their art department has done for free.

The ad to appear in The Observer Magazine on 18th July. If you happen to see a copy, do tell us if you think it works......

It also prompted us to extend the deadline for the draw for a free copy of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. All you have to do to enter the draw is to complete The Interview Online Survey. If you're not that bothered about the draw, we'd still love to hear your views. You may complete the survey anonymously. This results are invaluable.

Media watchers will be keeping a very keen eye on how this develops. Eversince the birth of the Internet we have been more or less used to free on line services and yet no-one seems to wonder why this is odd.

We pay for our newspapers and yet expect the same material to be freely available online. We are happy to buy a magazine and yet want the very same pictures and copy to be out there for grabs. Yet many would argue that once you have paid for your online connection why on earth should you have to pay again. Surely content providers should be able to raise revenue through advertising?

Clearly for those of use who are offering high quality online material we have an interest and will be watching Rupert Mudoch's every move on this matter.

Would you pay for online content? Do tell us what you think

Well that's what the good man Mr. Morrison wrote in an email after we had sent him the link to his interview (and he granted permission to print)

Personally I think he was being über-gracious, since he could not have made the interview more pleasant and easy. There is in fact quite a bit more of the interview (him talking about the new Jackie Kay book for example) which I do hope to edit soon and post up onto the site. If you are reading this in mid-June and there is still only one interview, please please send me a reminder.

Those of you with a sensitive ear however, will have noticed that there is a change of microphone halfway through the interview. How did this happen? How could someone with nearly 30 years experience make such a basic error? Where did all that BBC training go?  Well she is asking herself the very same question. Many marketing people (and indeed a few friends)  might scream "Never apologise, never explain"  However here at TIO, we tend to go for a more  "Wear you heart on your sleeve" approach  which is why I'm prepared to tell you what happened.  When I picked up the back-up camera, into which Blake Morrison's microphone was plugged , I thought I was spooling forwards to clear the DV tape in order to record some cutaways. You've no doubt  guessed the next bit… Yup, too busy talking about Wolf Hall, or Amanda Craig or the Orange Prize for Fiction and I spooled backwards instead of forwards, thus wiping all his sound from the first crucial five minutes.

Well of course the plan is hire a camera crew so that one can concentrate on making the interviews even better. The publishers meanwhile seem determined to get as much free publicity as possible and are determinted not  to help. So we are working on locating that elusive sponsor or apply for funding. Just as soon as we've moved the pigs from the tarmac.

Fortunately I had backup sound recording from a distant microphone. Did you really want to know all this?  Does the listener really give a toss? Well whilst I would like to know, I certainly feel better for the telling of it.

So when Random House all but insisted that I interview Carsten Jensen for The Interview Online my heart sank to the bottom of the nearest pond. Then suddenly some fifty pages in to We, the Drowned it was almost as if I'd turned into a fair wind and the book had me on sitting on the bow, the wind in my face enjoying every exhilarating wave in this epic novel.

It's the story of a small community of some 3,000 souls in a small Danish island in the Baltic over a hundred year period. Although Marstal is still very much in existence (indeed Jensen came from the town) and its history is well know, the tales are mostly fictitious. These are stories taken from the town's archive and embellished - tales of how these lads all went to sea as a pre-determined career option since there was precious little else they could do to earn a living. And the women and kids left at home? Did they ever know they would see their husbands, brothers, sons or fathers again? Like heck they didn't.

As you will hear in the interview, you had to be tough to survive. "You boys from Marstal, you are everywhere" says a character in the book and given that they sailed the seven seas, apparently it wasn't that extraordinary for neighbours from round the corner at home would bump into each other in a port in Newfoundland or China.

We, the Drowned has already changed tourism in Marstal in Denmark. Hotel managers love Carsten Jensen as tourists flock to the small museum to find out more about the history of this small town. Jensen is a national celebrity having not only won the Danish equivalent of the Man Book Prize but also the Olof Palme Prize. Few British papers seem to have reviewed this book which is a shame - perhaps there is some prejudice in reviewing books in translation. However one can't help feeling that it's success will be down to those who enjoy a good read.

Interviewing Carsten Jensen was a pleasure, although it was enormously difficult to keep the interview short and I do hope you'll forgive me for running at  7'44", there was much more I could have included but I didn't want to push my audience's patience. I am grateful to Marstal's museum for the archive pictures by the way.

Despite the fact that the hardback edition's 690 weighs in a just under a kilo, you can be assured that We, the Drowned is not a heavy read. "Unputdownable" is a cliché but you just do need to rest your arms once in a while.

And in case anyone is interested, Carsten Jensen is married to the author Liz Jensen. The fact that they share a surname is purely co-incidental, Liz being of Danish extraction and who speaks beautiful Danish herself - as I overheard her at the book launch which took place at Danish Embassy in London. Somewhere in my archives I do have interview with her about My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time. It was an interview in the very early days of www.theinterviewonline.co.uk - I must remember to get it out and upload it Liz - do remind me.

Read the blog post about this interview - interviewing Carsten Jensen

We've just heard that the former Observer Ballet Critic Jann Parry has won the 2010 Theatre Book award for her superb biography of choreographer Kenneth MacMillan.

Watch the video we recorded with Jann towards

the end of last year which you will notice is divided into several chapters.

Congratulations Jann.

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.

Pity about the weather here in the UK but it's a good reason to get stuck into the 4 books I'm reading at the moment - including Carsten Jensen's 600+ pager "We, the Drowned". We have an interview booked with him next week - no pressure there then.

Plus there's the interview with Aminatta Forna to edit and upload. And then there's the London Book Fair to look forward to the week after next. We're hoping to finally get that interview with Booker winner Hilary Mantel.

The allotment will have to wait!

It was delightful to meet Aminatta Forna to record a video interview for The Interview Online although I do sympathise with the nonsense writers have to go through just to publicise their book. As if it weren't bad enough having your afternoon disrupted by a journalist, you then have to pretend that you are lifelong friends when you know damn well it's highly unlikely you'll ever see them again.

However for me I always, without fail,  enjoy the experience and do hope that when I leave it has been at least slightly painless if not  pleasant for the interviewee.

Most people are extremely gracious - offering you tea or coffee while you rig the cameras. Both of you know this won't take all day so we have to try and fast track the niceties and pretend that we've already met a couple of times already. After I have taken several photographs of her, Aminatta completely disarmed me by saying that her husband's first career was as a photographer. Great start eh? Still she has such distinctive features that even an indifferent shot comes out well. Nonetheless I have agreed to let her veto the shots before I publish any here or send them to Writer Pictures. So if you see a photo here, you'll know it's been OK'd

What did we talk about? Well apart from the book of course, we discussed the role of aid agencies in developing countries. Her views would provoke heated debate and as a founding trustee of Street Child Africa, I do have some experience in the Third Sector. When it comes to corruption in Africa we agree that of course it happens, but then European governments are hardly squeeky clean...

Her home is beautiful and dressing the frame is made easier by her ornaments. The book is about posttraumatic stress in Sierra Leone, although when pressed, she says that it's more about love and relationships which could have taken place in any war torn country.

The Memory of Love (published by Bloomsbury) follows the story of Elias Cole in the mid 1960's in the west African country as well as modern times when a young British psychiatrist Adrian comes to help at a  local hospital. Although Forna never actually names the country, she has famously written about the Sierra Leone and her dissident father in The Devil who Danced on the Water.  We can therefore only presume that it is that country. We follows Adrian's friendship with surgeon Kai who looks to America for his future while having to treat appalling injuries as well as routine incidents in the local hospital. We also follow  Adrian's stubborn determination to treat Agnes whose mental injuries are beyond western imagination. The novell is enriched with a large large cast of characters, all of whom have to survive on their own terms.

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.

The Kingston event was billed as "in conversation with Richard Cohen" (visiting professor of Creative Writing and Publishing Studies at Kingston University and editor).  However more than once I wished during the 90 minutes that it had indeed been a conversation. A question was asked and then Ms. Mantel was abandoned to the audience until she came to a full stop. Cue next unrelated question. Yes she of course fascinating however there were moment when I would have like the interviewer to press her for more details.

Nonetheless some elements were gripping. We heard (as many may already know) that Ms. Mantel is a cradle Catholic, that she doesn't consider herself  a historian (academics will no doubt collectively sleep more soundly now), that she wanted to recreate the poisonous atmosphere at the court of King Henry VIII, that the role of the historical fiction writer was to fill in the gaps which, like intricate lace making, paint the entire picture ("The gaps where the facts run out" she claimed,)  that in suffering from migraines all her life she often felt the presence of "an other being alongside", that Ivy Compton-Burnett inspired her.  When an audience member asked her whether she had a tragic view of humanity, after a pause she replied "no, a satirical view". These were indeed enlightening moments. However we could have done with a few more.

The "author meets their audience event" has been established for some time now and the numerous literary festivals highlight  the fact that writers need to be performers as well as artists.  Perhaps this also applies to their interviewers.