09Aug

“Almost Nailed It!” — My Appearance on Coast to Coast AM

• Saved in: A Real Piece of Work, A Truth Stranger Than Fiction, Chris Orcutt Books, Fiction Writing, Helium-3, Interview, Journalism, Mystery Writing, Novels, Podcast, Radio, Radio Interview, Research, Screenwriting, Speechwriting, Technical Writing, Technology & the Internet, The Dakota Stevens Mysteries Series, The Rich Are Different, Writing Experiences
• by Chris Orcutt
• with 2 Comments

It was long. At 2 hours on the phone, it was by far the longest inter­view I’ve ever done.

But it was worth it.

To do the inter­view, I had to stay up way past my usu­al 10 p.m. (East­ern) bed­time, and I had to pound down half a gal­lon of cof­fee before­hand, but it was worth it.

I had to spend the entire after­noon before the inter­view bon­ing up on my helium‑3 research and tak­ing a long nap, but it was worth it.

I had to dri­ve a half-hour to my wife’s office to take the call from the stu­dio (I don’t have a land­line at home) and endure sus­pi­cious looks from her col­lege’s secu­ri­ty peo­ple (because it was 1 a.m.), but it was worth it. For one thing, on the way in we stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts, which was about to close, and I got their last cof­fee roll.

Right from the out­set of the inter­view, dur­ing his beau­ti­ful, elo­quent intro­duc­tion of me and the sub­ject of helium‑3, Coast to Coast AM guest host Richard Syrett showed that he tru­ly is a mas­ter of the radio medi­um.

Con­trary to what some peo­ple might think, not every­one can do pro­fes­sion­al­ly what he does. He led me along per­fect­ly in his ques­tions and plugged my nov­els and my work as a writer sev­er­al times dur­ing the show. He is one of the great ones, and I would be proud to do anoth­er inter­view with him in the future.

Lis­ten­ing to myself after the fact, I noticed a few hitch­es in my speech, a few ver­bal tics that annoyed me a bit, but part of me was over­whelmed with a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to get it right. This is an intel­li­gent audi­ence, I’d been told, and I had to get my facts straight. Get the facts wrong, and I’d be toast. Thank­ful­ly (for the most part, I think), I got them right.

While I did the inter­view, Alexas sat on the oth­er side of her office lis­ten­ing to it on a local AM radio sta­tion. As she has done some­times dur­ing my oth­er inter­views, now and then she looked at me, shook her head and mouthed the words, “I can’t believe I know you.”

Pshaw. :)

As I men­tioned sev­er­al times dur­ing the pro­gram, any lis­ten­ers inter­est­ed in read­ing the source mate­r­i­al that I con­sult­ed to write A Truth Stranger Than Fic­tion can find it all here.

Over­all, I think the inter­view went as well as a first-time inter­view with that large an audi­ence could go.

I guess you could say that I “almost nailed it.” :)

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Tagged: alternative energy, Big Oil, Chris Orcutt, Coast to Coast AM, energy, fission, fracking, fusion, He3, helium-3, interview, Lockheed Martin, moon, Moon Express, moon mining, oil, Orcutt, radio, Richard Syrett, University of Wisconsin Madison

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