Flames & Interviews

Hello subscribers!

On Wednesday, a new DT Blog post went online, namely on the theme of “Dark Tourism & Flames”, as I had already more or less announced at the end of the previous post about the “Stans” (and especially Darvaza, the flaming gas crater in the Karakum Desert).

The new post came with the same featured photo as the one above, plus 24 further photos of flames in various locations and with various sources and functions. “Eternal flames” play a particular role, such as the huge one pictured above that I saw at the large war memorial in Murmansk in northern Russia. In fact I found so many eternal flames in my archives that I had to be strictly selective and picked “only” seven. Other flames included wildfires, campfires, burning effigies, Zoroastrian fire temples and the legendary blue flames at the sulphur mine inside the crater of the Ijen volcano in Indonesia. I think it’s one of the more visually appealing Blog posts.
  

Then on Thursday afternoon I had another live TV interview, this time with a morning news station in Chicago (the time difference to Vienna is seven hours, so it was 4 p.m. here when it was only 9 a.m. over there). The interview was only between five and six minutes long, but it’s amazing how long the prep, the psyching up and also the coming down afterwards takes … hours.

I don’t know if any of you have ever done live TV interviews, but I can tell you it’s a strange situation. The late Frank Zappa, who must have given hundreds, if not thousands, of interviews (and never lost his calm and collected manner), once called it the most unnatural communication situation you could be in. And for me it was only the second time I’ve done anything like this.

It just flashed past … swoosh, and then it’s suddenly over. Fortunately I was able to fall back on some tried-and-tested comments, especially about Chernobyl, so that helped. In the end it went OK, I never stammered or lost my thread, although if you listen closely you can tell from my breathing that I wasn’t as relaxed as I was pretending to be.

Afterwards I asked whether it would be available online too so that I could share the link in my DT Newsletter. Within minutes I was sent this link to the video recording on YouTube! So here I am, suddenly on YouTube!

I must say I’m glad I didn’t know that this video would appear straight away on YouTube and would be there “for perpetuity” (well, as long as YouTube exists). Otherwise I would probably have been much more nervous about making mistakes. Though at one point that did in fact happen …

And here comes the prize question: spot the error! Hint: it’s in the bit about the submarine. I hope that most viewers who won’t be alerted to there being anything wrong will not notice it (though it’s actually quite a blunder). But see if you do. Feel free to send me a reply to this Newsletter specifying what the error is. In any case, I’ll reveal the answer in next Sunday’s Newsletter and also how many readers spotted it.

What was really nice about the programme was how many photos they featured in the background (some provided by the publishers, some from other archives or possibly “nicked” from my website). It was also cool that the interview ended with that still image of my book’s cover and my main website’s URL on screen.

Now let’s see if it moves anything in terms of book sales and/or website visits. It was only on morning TV in the middle of commercials (the usual American TV floods of screaming adverts almost drowning everything else out … I had to sit through it for about 20 minutes awaiting my turn, and it was hard). So I have no way of knowing how many people will have seen it live. Under the YouTube video it says 169 people have viewed it (at the latest count just now). So far no comments have been added.
  

Some written pieces, including bits of interviews, and features about the book are also coming up, but I have to wait for the links. I’ll pass them on when I get them.
  

Other than book promo, I should now return to updating my website. I still have some gaps to close.
  

But this is it for this Newsletter.

Have a good week and stay safe!

Best,

Peter