As a writer and author of books you are always looking for different ways to get your books in the hands of readers. Many marketers try and get you to push yourself to get out there and promote yourself. They say things like if you want to get books into the hands of readers you have to let them know they are available, push yourself, see yourself. This last one is relevant because people like to connect with other people and if readers can connect with an author then they’re more likely to buy their books.

Taking that advice on board I contacted my local radio station to introduce myself as a local author. I informed them of my work and left it at that. Never thinking I would hear from them I was totally surprised to receive a reply with an offer to come on their morning show.

Nerves hit me immediately and it took me a few days to pluck up th ecourage to reply. Any public engagements fill me with dread, I am a typical introvert that suffers with social anxiety so being an author was the perfect occupation for me. Locked up in a room, alone with just my ideas floating around my head was an ideal situation until social media caught on and readers like to connect with authors. There’s that word again, connect, I find it extremely difficult to function in social situations, I do it and I put on a good face but after, it leaves me drained.

So, I finally plucked up enough courage to reply, I mean, how hard can it be, to have a conversation on the radio, over the phone, piece of cake right?

Now I guess you’re expecting some horror story where everything turned out a disaster. Sorry to disappoint but it was actually quite a fun time. We chatted about where I came from because where I live now is not where I grew up and the DJ, Andy could tell by my accent. So we had a few laughs, we talked about my writing process and then we played a variation of the word game WORDLE. It was fun and over before I knew it.

If anything this morning taught me it is this, no matter how bad you think things are going to be, if you take time to breath and relax then you can get through it. Sometimes what you think will be terrible can actually turn out to be fun.