Interviewing

It's been awhile since I interviewed anyone for an article in person. I used to do a fair amount of live interviews for radio, so I've put in time learning how to make people feel comfortable (don't sit across from them, sit at an angle, or sit next to them) and encouraging them to talk without interrupting (the judicious nod and smile). But yesterday I had my first such interview in several years.

And I was, well . . . nervous.

In this case, things had actually gone a bit awry in advance too. I drove up to NYC the night before the interview, so I could quickly get to New Jersey the next day for the lunchtime meeting. My original plan was to drive up yesterday morning, but I realized that didn't leave any wiggle room in case something went wrong.

As it happened, something did.

I had a major tire blowout on I-95 right on the Marlyand/Delaware border. This wasn't too horrible in of itself. Besides the fact that the spare tire was bolted on so tightly that I couldn't get it off with my bare hands and I had to wait for some (jean-clad, strong, pickup-driving, handsomely-rugged) guy to stop and offer me a wrench, changing the tire was not that big of a deal. Neither -- after a few moments of consideration -- was it such a big deal to drop my car off in Newark, Delaware at a dealership that could get me a fairly specialized tire by the next morning. I'd just rent a car and go on up to NYC as planned. Even more of a bonus, I called a friend who lives in Delaware and convinced her to come pick me up and drive to New York with me -- so I didn't even need to rent a car.

All well and good, but this meant that on driving to the interview's house I had a guest in the car. It just simply wouldn't work to have an extra person along for the interview even if she was graciously invited in and allowed to sit in a different part of the house. It would have given the interview too much time pressure. . . so she gave me the keys to her car, and she lay down in the back seat so it looked like the car was empty. I drove up into the driveway and just left her to nap in the car for an hour. Really.

So in the back of my head as I do this interview, I keep having the vague fear that someone is going to discover her and I am going to appear to either be the biggest freak of all time, or possibly -- worse -- someone will think I have a dead body in the car since I am, after all, interviewing a mystery writer. I mean, who knows what kind of sick obsession I might have with mysteries?

But the truth is I was mostly nervous because I was interviewing Harlan Coben. I love love love his books. So there I am trying to be professional and to make it all comfortable and easy, and it's all I can do not to squeal things like: "Do you know the angst I felt when you finally let us knew who had screwed up Myron Bolitar's knee??" I feel a little like I interviewed him under false pretenses really. . . pretending I was there to just write a profile of him, when really I was busy doing hero-worship. I kept mentioning bits of his books hoping to seem charming since I knew his work, and then would worry that I was appearing, well, a wee bit obsessive.

But I think I am a wee bit obsessive, because every time I sit down to try to write this article I start talking about myself -- I have lots of things in there about how I got to meet him and what I thought of his answers and how I felt about this, that and everything. So I am writing it up here -- and hopefully that will free me to write a lot more coherently for the actual article.