The New You

Just like the old one, only better

I don’t care what anyone says, I love the freshness of a new slate at New Years, however fleeting it is. I wish it was News Years all the time!

Holiday vibes

Hat kissing: high degree of difficulty

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Me, elsewhere

1 - I’m doing a series of posts on Instagram about things I’ve learned from 6 years of The First Time podcast/being an author in general. A lot of it’s about interviewing other writers, which is weirdly hard to find advice on. Mostly because Google reads ‘interview’ and thinks you’re going for a job.

While the content of the series is good, I haven’t spent a lot of time on video quality. Which is to say, my summer hair is at its absolute worst (particularly in this one) but it was either do in the time / space I had, which apparently didn’t extend to hair brushing, or not do it at all. We all make choices.

The most popular one so far is entitled ‘Three Questions debut authors WILL be asked in interviews’ but the one that I personally have found the most helpful in life is What I say to myself before a Big Thing #1.

2 - Linked with the above, I’m excited to be coaching writers this year. It’s something I’ve thought about for a while. More info on my website but here’s a snippet of the rationale:

Three things:

1) When my debut book came out, I wanted someone to talk to, to be neurotic with, who could listen and encourage and give me advice. (That was basically the premise of The First Time podcast!).

2) Doing publicity and talking about your work is hard at first. It’s so public and you can feel like an imposter— last week you were in the audience and now suddenly you’re on stage. It’s stressful! But it doesn’t have to be.

3) A way that writers can build their profile is to interview other writers, as part of a podcast or festivals or even on their own social media channels. It’s harder than it seems! I’ve interviewed a hundred+ writers, including many, many, many debut authors. I see both interviewers and interviewees make the same mistakes and I think they’re easy to fix.

3 - The First Time has a summer series, which is a fancy way of saying we’re re-releasing favourite episodes from the last couple of years in case you missed out the first time or like them so much you want to listen twice. The first one is an interview I did with RA Spratt. If you have kids aged maybe 5-12, you MUST make them read RA Spratt books. I reckon the Nanny Piggins books are the best kids books in Australia. RA Spratt is The Most Beloved author in my household, which is kinda awkward seeing how I’m an author too (AND THEIR MOTHER) but *shrugging emoticon*.

Hope you’re getting some downtime,

Katherine