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In my last post, I wrote about appearing again on Shelagh Rogers’ wonderful weekly show on CBC Radio One, The Next Chapter. Well in the days after it aired, Operation Angus, which, after six months, had dropped off the Canadian Fiction bestsellers list, made a triumphant return. That’s the power of Shelagh Rogers. I’m grateful!
I’ve had the very great pleasure of spending time with the wonderful Shelagh Rogers, host of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter many times in the last 14 years since McClelland & Stewart published my first novel. We’ve hung out at various literary festivals from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan to Woody Point, Newfoundland, and I’ve been on her flagship show, The Next Chapter on three or four occasions over the years. What I’ve always loved about Shelagh is that she is the same person “off the air” as when she’s in front of the microphone interviewing Canadian writers. The very same person. Thoughtful, charming, curious, engaged, and lovely in every way. The latest evidence is my interview with her on The Next Chapter that aired this past Saturday. You can hear it here or click on the image below. Thank you, Shelagh!
In a circuitous and convoluted way, I owe at least some of my writing career to podcasting. How? Well, in early 2006, I bought my first iPod nano and loaded it up with, not music, but podcasts. I trolled through iTunes and discovered a treasure trove of content. I stopped listening to the car radio and never walked a block without my ear buds firmly rooted in their eponymous ports. Back then, I listened almost exclusively to shows about social media and public relations, my day job for the last 23 years. I was amazed at what I was learning while walking to work, or folding laundry, or shovelling snow. I rarely listened to music. Many of the shows to which I subscribed were homemade by fellow PR professionals. And they were good, and most of them still are. Four months later, in April of 2006, a colleague, David Jones, and I, started Inside PR, the first and still only Canadian PR podcast. We learned by doing. Each week we’d record a half-hour show about public relations, upload it to the internet, and field listener comments from all over the world. We did that every week for over four years and more than 200 episodes. It was a year ago that David and I passed the torch to new hosts, my co-founder Joe Thornley in Ottawa, Martin Waxman in Toronto, and Gini Dietrich in Chicago. Inside PR is still going strong, week in and week out, five years after we started it.
So where’s the connection to my writing? Well, it was co-hosting and producing Inside PR that gave me the idea to podcast The Best Laid Plans, chapter-by-chapter back in 2007. Were it not for the very encouraging response from podcast listeners, I may never have actually gone through with self-publishing the novel. So I owe podcasting a debt of gratitude. Since then, my weekly podcast listening has only increased. While I still subscribe to PR podcasts, I also listen to a raft of book-related shows. Every weekend, when I open up my iTunes, a whole new set of podcasts automatically download into my library and then into my trusty iPod Nano, the fourth one I’ve owned. Here are the bookish podcasts I listen to each week when walking to and from the office or riding the subway. All of these are available for free on iTunes:
All of these great shows keep me very well plugged-in to the book scene, with lots of author interviews, book reviews, and news about the publishing world.
On those rare days when I discover half-way to work that I’ve left our house without my iPod, I promptly turn around and walk back home to get it…
Long time listener, first time caller. I’ve been a Shelagh Rogers fan for more years than I care to remember – right back to her early days on Peter Gzowski’s Morningside. I’ve always loved the tone she strikes and the chemistry she unerringly finds with her guests. (And I can confirm, the Shelagh you hear on the air, is the same Shelagh you get when the “ON AIR” light is extinguished.)Â I actually met her at the very first Podcasters Across Borders gathering in Kingston back in 2006. I’m sure she remembers the giddy fan she’d just met as he struggled to find something pseudo-intelligent to say. Instead I think I just gushed “I’m a big fan!” etc. etc. How embarrassing. But I’ll always be grateful for her commitment to Canadian literature and her desire to keep the CBC engaged and leading in literary programming. So I’m a charter subscriber to The Next Chapter podcast and listen every week.
Needless to say, it was a thrill to join her on this week’s The Next Chapter to talk about The Best Laid Plans and Canada Reads (click on the graphic above to listen). I was nervous at the start, but seemed to survive. Thank you, Shelagh, for making what was a big deal for me, feel as comfortable as a conversation in a gorcery store checkout-line.
Welcome to terryfallis.com where award-winning novelist Terry Fallis blogs about his writing life and podcasts his novels.
