So, in my continuing effort to document a local TV show I’m involved in, I present the latest installment. Roll ’em!

We filmed this week and it was everything I expected it to be! Well, ok. That’s a total lie. I had no idea what to expect and when it was over, it was nothing like what I had imagined.

So, Princeton Community Television is just like every other local TV station. It’s run out of some municipal building’s basement. I walked in at my prescribed time to find some of my writer’s group friends along with some folks I didn’t know. We were all there to talk on different topics. I was scheduled to talk about Kindle Direct Publishing. Friends of mine were there to talk about NaNoWriMo. Another lady was there to talk about anthologies. You get the picture. Trick was, they were all there… and it was well beyond the time they were supposed to start. Needless to say, I had a wait ahead of me.

It was an entertaining wait though. I met a few more people. A traditionally published author who had once worked for Plume as their Art Director. She was there to discuss cover art creation. Another guest was a therapist who worked specifically with authors and writers (I should have gotten her card). We all chatted and talked about what we did, waiting through the technical difficulties the filming had experienced early on. I even got makeup. Being a pasty pale redhead, I was afraid I’d just wash out on camera.

Mind you, I wasn’t particularly nervous. It’s been a while since I’ve sat in front of a camera, but I did musicals back in college and high school, so I’ve stood in the spotlight before. However, there was the added pressure of filming live to tape. This meant that they were going to shoot the entire segment in one shot and, if someone screwed up badly enough, they’d have to reshoot the entire thing. Meh! No pressure, right? Just chat for five minutes without screwing up too badly. 😉

Finally, about an hour and fifteen minutes after my scheduled time, I was called in. I sat down at a high table across from the co-hosts, Keith and Jennifer. Keith and I had met previously, both through the writer’s group we belong to and during the lead-up to the show. He’s also a self-published writer with several dystopian suspense novels under his belt. It was nice to see a familiar face across the table and, to be honest, he looked a little more nervous than I felt. I was only their 4th interview and this was the first night of filming. We had a little chat to break the ice and chuckled over wearing makeup. The setting was very basic. We had a monitor behind us with the name of the show on it; Writers2Writers. There were three cameras, but nothing like the cameras you see in movies and such. These were remotely controlled and looked a bit like fence posts! They gave me a clip-on microphone and I was ready to go before I could even think about what I was going to say. They did a five count and we were off.

Now, if you know even a little bit about self publishing, you know that it’s a myriad topic. As I mentioned before, the topic for my segment was Kindle Direct Publishing. We had 5 minutes. So, yeah… you can image how detailed it got. It was essentially over before I knew it. And that was it. A half dozen questions on the fly and it was over. One take. Boom. Done. Next!

It was fun. It was quick and dirty and we probably made some mistakes. But, it was still fun. I’m hoping to be able to help them market the series as I think it’ll be a helpful guide for people just starting out with self publishing. The small segments might just give you enough confidence to move forward in a particular area. The series is supposed to be 10 to 11 episodes long, with 3 to 5 segments per episode. It premiers in late September/early October. I’m looking forward to seeing the end result and sharing it with my fellow writers. Stay tuned!