Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Sighted in Public

For any of you Hobart readers (viewers?), I'm doing a public reading at the Republic Bar in North Hobart this Sunday 7 February. The event runs from 3-5pm, with two featured readers and an open mike. I'll be reading from Siren Beat, and copies of the book Siren Beat/Roadkill will also be available for sale.

Public appearances are one of those weird things that you have to learn to do as a writer once you get published - unless you fancy being a hermit author, which only works for very few of us. I used to get terrified before standing up before a crowd, until I learned from experience that I could generally manage quite well, far better than I ever thought I would.

So now I tend to go to these things criminally underprepared, trusting in my ability to talk confidently and sound vaguely intelligent. I'm sure I will come a cropper with this technique sooner or later...

Anyway, the important task between now and Sunday is figuring out which bits to read, what to talk about, and hopefully which scenes are smutty enough to be interesting to potential book buyers, but not SO smutty that I blush, drop the microphone and have to run away very fast.

There may be tentacles. Watch this space, and I will report back on how it went.

Cheers,
Tansy

1 comment:

Thoraiya said...

Good luck Tansy!!!

Also, in case you really ARE sick and not just chucking a sickie to try and get out of the reading, you can't go past codeine as a cough suppressant when you need to do public speaking and don't want to re-enact the cinema scene from "Outbreak".

If codeine doesn't agree with you or you don't have a stash leftover from childbirth, can I recommend theobromine?

It's the constituent of chocolate which makes it deadly to dogs, but is an awesome cough suppressant in humans. 100 grams of 70% cocoa (or more) dark chocolate should stop coughing for a good 6 hours.

I hate dark chocolate but I have used it several times, all for workshop type events, and it works like a charm.

Thoraiya