Radio Recap

Saturday morning I did my very first radio interview! I was the guest author on Hour of the Wolf hosted by Jim Freund on WBAI 99.5 FM (in NYC). It aired live from 5-7am.

If you'd like to listen to the interview, the recording is now available online. Click here to listen to the streaming audio. If that doesn't work, click here to play the mp3 file (takes about one minute to download with a high-speed connection).

I won't be offended if you didn't hear it live. It was 5am on a Saturday, after all. To reach the radio station on time, I had to set my alarm for 2:58am, which just plain felt wrong. In fact, I kept cycling past the 2 as I set the clock because my already-sleep-deprived brain simply couldn't process that I was planning to wake up at that time. As it turns out, I didn't need the alarm because I woke up on my own once an hour with a song blaring through my mind. You know the song "Video Killed the Radio Star"? Well, my brain morphed it into "Sarah's Gonna Be a Radio Star" and then proceeded to sing that in my head very loudly throughout the night. Yes, my brain is sometimes annoying. You should hear it when it gets stuck on that Meow Mix commercial song...

Anyway, I arrived at the radio station at 4am (way early -- I thought it would take a while to get a cab, but apparently, in Manhattan, there are still lots of people coming home from bars at this time of night, so there were plenty of cabs around). The place looked just like a radio station should: a big program schedule on display, a recording studio visible through a window in the wall, speakers all around.

At quarter of five, the host Jim Freund -- a really nice and very knowledgeable man who tells fascinating anecdotes (in other words, exactly the kind of person you'd want to host your first radio interview) -- arrived. At a little before five, we slipped into the recording studio as the prior show was wrapping up.

And then it began! In case you do listen to the recording, and you would like to skip around to different parts, here's the basic breakdown of the show:

- Hour of the Wolf theme music and Jim's introduction
- 20 minutes of cool fairy-tale-ish music
- Jim and I talk about writing, my book INTO THE WILD, and fairy tales for another 20-30 minutes
- A shorter music break
- Starting at around 6am, one hour into the show, I spend about 40 minutes reading four scenes from INTO THE WILD
- We finish up with a few more minutes of chatting

Do I look like a radio star yet?

I think it went really well. It was really surreal talking into this enormous microphone and knowing that anyone anywhere could be listening to me. (The show is broadcast online as well as on the air.) I'll never know who was listening or what they were thinking -- that feels weird but also cool. I can see why people fall in love with being on the radio.

One person who I know was listening was my husband. He woke up at 3am to give me a wake-up call (yes, I sang him the "radio star" song when he called) and then stayed awake to listen to the entire show live. How cool is that?

And despite fears to the contrary, I did NOT howl at the moon during the show. :)

4 days until the Wild is unleashed...