The first NYLA conference I
attended was held in Saratoga Springs. My wife and son came along and since I
had evenings free it felt like a mini vacation too. One of the guest speakers
for the weekend was Edgar Award winning author Julia Spencer Fleming. I was familiar with her work, but hadn’t read
it. Regardless, I was looking forward to
meeting her. I picked up a copy of her
first book for myself and one for my mother-in-law. It was almost her birthday
so I thought I’d see if Julia would sign them for me.
She did
and we had a nice conversation. I gave her my card and invited her to come do
an event in Wellsville sometime. She had
some early connections to Western New York, so I thought that might be enough
of a draw. I told her I would be in touch.
Back at
the library we did the first of her Clare Fergusson books for the book club and
it was a big hit. She was pretty popular
with our regulars. I reached out via email to see if we could set something
up. After months of emails and proposed
dates we finally found something that would work. We set a date in March of 2017 and the promotions began. As part of the deal she also agreed to be on the All theBooks Show so Eric and I were excited and a little nervous about that.
Eric
and I mulled over the best way to do it.
We figured the simplest way would be to set up the podcast equipment
backstage and do a quick Q&A before we started. Alternatively we could do
it live on stage with the audience there.
That felt a little daunting, but the idea of doing a live podcast
interview was too exciting. We settled on having her do her talk, then doing
the podcast interview before taking questions from the audience. Eric could get
it set no problem.
Then,
Eric had to go out of town for a funeral.
Obviously there was no warning on that and we had everything set. Still,
we decided to press on and I would do it solo.
Eric set the equipment before he left and library staff helped with some
of the logistics on the day of the event. I didn’t like the idea of him missing
out so I did the next best thing and printed a picture of his face to hold up
on a stick when he would normally talk. From my conversations with Julia, I
knew she was a good sport and would play along.
The
interview went great. She really engaged with my questions and was a really
game for jokes with the Eric sign. She got
a kick out of his delighted expression and “hipster beard.” Afterwards everyone
hung around to get books signed and take pictures. The whole thing went great.
We cut the interview into episode 85 of the All the Books
Show, beginning at the 35 minute mark. Take
a listen.
https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-80-take-five-with-julia-spencer-fleming
https://soundcloud.com/allthebooks/episode-80-take-five-with-julia-spencer-fleming
