Welcome friend. The other day, I told my husband I wanted time to reflect on interviews. As I began listing the authors I’m hosting over the next few months, I realized I couldn’t finish the list. Not because I had lost track, but because I wasn’t really counting. I was naming each author, connecting them to a book, remembering why I had said yes to that conversation.
Somewhere in that moment, I paused, and decided to write this piece. Welcome to the third post in The Blogging Shelf.
On Armed with A Book, I have now hosted over 165 interviews. But that number doesn’t quite capture what these interviews have come to mean to me. This piece isn’t about how to conduct an interview. It’s a reflection on what interviews have become in my blogging life — a way of reading more deeply, connecting more meaningfully, and returning, again and again, to books and the people who create them. Let’s take a tour together!
My Relationship with Interviews
I can’t remember the moment when interviews became a thing on my blog rather than just “something I also do”. I remember the initial excitement of talking to an author and then, with joining book tours, being able to get interviews easily. The first overhaul I did to my interviews was when I was writing for The Nerd Daily and did my first interview there with Lisa DeSalem about The Puppetmaster’s Apprentice. It brought interviews into focus in a new way for me as I got to see how other bookish websites did them. I have since embraced that format and with access to published authors through publishers and publicists, my innate desire to be connected has only continued to be fuelled.
I am a reader who asks questions. I am curious about the spark of the first idea behind a book. An interview is an opportunity for the writer to shine alongside the book, to talk about its creation process, and how it has changed. Sometimes, I ask about the changing landscape of publishing if authors have tried multiple routes. Most of the time, I ask about what they hope readers will remember from a book. I love engaging with the book at a deeper level through an interview. Reviews are my take but interviews let me see the author’s take – when they set out to follow an idea into a full fleshed book and how long it took to get there. It is inspirational and I love being inspired.
The Feeling of “So Many I Can’t Count”
As I said in the introduction, I told my husband I wanted time to reflect on interviews and as I started to tell him all the authors I am hosting in the coming months, I could not complete my list. There was thrill of way too many to count but I was not even counting. I had been mentioning each person by name and connecting them to a book. This moment reveals so much in hindsight.
It shows how far I have come. In 2019/2020, I used to make sure I had 2-4 interviews lined up to post each month. Now I work on interviews when I get around to them and post when I can. Since I don’t do tours much, I am no longer meeting a deadline. I also get interviews with authors whose books have been available for months. Both of these aspects have been quite freeing. I wonder how much of the pressure I had put on myself to post an interview at the time of publication date was valid and necessary. It was good to build the habit but now, I am past that.
I also really love remembering authors by name and book. Each interview is a connection, an opportunity to get to know someone, to spend time with the creator. They matter. I am reminded of an exchange with an older friend when I was in my teenage years, sharing my poems with him. I told him I had written 500! He said now you can stop counting. In my personal life, counts are a great way to show continuity. But it is not really the number that matters, it is the return, each time to a practice. Counting offers a beautiful way to quantify the returns while the details of what happened at each iteration are the true magic.
Asking vs. Being Asked
There are authors I have reached out to and gotten interviews with and those that have come my way through publicists. I have so many regular publicists bringing amazing books and authors into focus each month that asking for an interview myself is a comparably rare thing I do. There may be different pieces of thinking and work involved in getting an interview but ultimately even the ones I get through publicists are also chosen by me. I ask for interviews. Or I accept the offers to host.
I love both aspects – the asking and being asked.
When I reach out, there is a lot of nervous energy. I want to convey how much of an honor it is to be able reach out to the author/publicist – there are many authors out there I would love to talk to but I cannot find their contact information so the ones who do make themselves available even if they don’t respond is by itself a reminder of a possibility. When I reach out to interview authors who appear on podcasts and are sought after, I often mention that I am just a reader wanting to talk to them. My blog is something I do for a hobby. I don’t say this to downplay who I am and what I do. I say this in the hope that the author/publicist is reminded that books are written not for promotional purposes but to get a story or knowledge in the hands of those who want it and would enjoy it. I am one of those people.
A lot of my self-made requests relate to already published books. I believe it says a lot to ask to be interviewed about a book that is not brand new off the press. It shows how much the book matters to the person who read it and how timeless the content is. Like I said earlier, I am a reader asking questions.
Motherhood & Interviews
At the time of writing this post, I have crafted questions for 14 authors over the course of three months. I am surprised by this volume because it is actually on par with what I used to do before I became a mama. It may not look like I have slowed down overall, but I know I have. My process is no longer the same. Before, I would write my book review, come up with my questions based on my thoughts, compile them into a document and send them off. What used to get done over a weekend now takes 5 sittings scattered over a week. As a parent of a toddler, time is always of the essence and I take every 5 min window I can get when I have decided to work on something.
It isn’t just the time that goes into interviewing that has changed. Interviews have changed too. I will sometimes ask authors with children how they make the time to write and I try to do the same as what they do. Thank you Mara Williams!
Before I had my daughter, I knew I would eventually expand into children’s books. As her reading tastes develop, my interviewing changes. I have indeed started interviewing authors of children’s books. Those are not my typical interviews because I think of the questions as a parent reading with her child. I wonder about the themes of the book that I can maybe emphasize when we read or skip altogether. I think of myself as a child if she can’t read the book just yet and contrast the book with what I knew. There is much more to thinking in these interviews than my typical interviews and I am enjoying this.
Time, Reading, and Imperfection
A lot of interview opportunities through publicists tend to have a recommended posting timeline of the publication week, if not within a month. Adding to the publicist’s efforts in creating a buzz for the book in the same time period is the way I support these professionals.
Early in motherhood, I considered dropping interviews altogether. I did not have the time. But the people I was going to talk to were people I wanted to talk to. I could not give up interviewing. Something else had to change.
I gave up a rule I had held myself to: I will read every book before I interview the author.
I intend to read all the books whose authors I host but life has other plans and I have many interests. So, in the moments when I can’t find time to read the book I rely heavily on:
- The author’s bio and my curiosity about them
- The book’s synopsis – I will sit and highlight sentences that caught my attention. I try to be a reader of my blog who has not read the book. What would I want to know?
- Questions I like asking all my authors: their favourite quote/chapter, a takeaway that they want readers to have after finishing, changes from first draft to final copy, etc.
- The first couple chapters of the book – I look for who the characters are, what sticks with me after a few pages, how the book is structured. Anything and everything that piques my curiosity as I read.
- Authors note if the book has one. These always give me insights into what mattered to the author and might have something that I want to know more about.
Writing interviews without reading the book is a craft I am still developing. My inner critic loves resurfacing when I do these. It can feel like an opportunity missed – the one golden chance of asking questions of someone I wanted to talk to. “oh if I had read the book, I would ask better questions”. That the chance to interview this author will never come again.
I counter this with the fact that I have hosted the same author a few years after the first interview. I remind myself that just like I evolve as a reader, they change as writers and I’m still interested in talking to them – it is one of my favorite things. It is possible that our paths will cross again. Jennifer Chow is one such person. Authors keep writing and I keep reading. Where is the missed opportunity?
I tell myself that it is enough to ask what I want to at this moment of time, whether I have read the book or not. I also remind myself that what I ask is not guaranteed to be answered. Maybe the question just did not convey what I meant to ask. I will never know. I do not get attached to my questions. At the top of my interview questions I have a note: “Thank you for the opportunity to interview you! Please feel free to skip any questions that don’t resonate with you. I hope you enjoy answering these.” What I ask may not get answered and yes, sometimes I am disappointed, but I cannot force someone to share something. I am ever thankful for Ariel for bringing this line into my interview practice when we interviewed Joanne Ramos about The Farm all those years ago.
If I could go back and talk to my new-to-blogging self, I would tell her that all that she does is enough. She already has a meaningful connection as the author is willing to talk to her. She does not need better questions. She does not need more questions. She just has to show up armed with the questions she wants to learn from them about.
Memorable Interviews
As I close off this reflection, I want to share about three memorable interviews.
On the already-happened list, first up is Andrew Rader. He is actually the only phone interview I have ever done. Back in 2020, we connected on Twitter when he released his book, Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. I remember spending hours transcribing our 13 min recorded phone call and then sharing it to the blog.
Kylie Lee Baker is an author I love returning to and she is the first fan mail I ever wrote. In 2023, I had just finished reading The Empress of Time, the second book in The Keeper of Night trilogy. SK and I loved discussing the first book and were excited to do the same for the second. Kylie had mentioned book bloggers in her author’s note and that had given me courage to reach out to ask for an interview. I also shared a link to The Keeper of Night discussion with her. She responded! She read the discussion post and said it’s one of the most thoughtful and interesting posts about her book she’s ever seen. That email is archived safely in my mailbox. Since then, we have exchanged emails occasionally and I continue to follow her. Her writing grows darker (Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng) and my digestion isn’t as strong but I am always rooting for her and will read her books if I can. I hope to have another chat one day.
The final interview from my long list of favourites that I want to mention is Premee Mohamed. A local author, I happened to mention Premee to Ariel and we have loved discussing her The Annual Migration of Clouds trilogy. It had been a while since Ariel and I interviewed together and I can’t describe how awesome it is to discuss a book series with an author and a friend. You just have to try it for yourself.
There are many authors I have reached out to over the years who said yes to interviews. I think fondly of Temi Oh (Do You Dream of Terra Two?), Moses Ose Utomi (The Lies of the Ajungo series), and Adrienne Tooley (Sofi and the Bone Song) who responded to my requests even though they did not get around to answering my questions. I have learned to not stay disappointed for long. I have learned to accept that some interviews will just not work out and keep reaching out to whoever I want to talk to.
My Identity as an Interviewer
I have heard many authors say that they enjoyed answering the questions. They often describe my questions as “thoughtful”, “great”. I hold these words close to my heart. They remind me to keep showing my curiosity and keep asking questions. When I create questions, I want the author to know that they were not pulled from a generic question bank. My questions are based on who the author is, what the book is about, who I am and where I am in life. I am coming to learn more from them.
I have also started to ask more intimate vulnerable questions. I have recently started to see myself as an essayist and when I had the chance to interview Justin Feinstein who himself is an essayist, I asked him about it. Talking to Zenia Wadhwani about her children’s picture book, Fly in the Chai, in my Growing up with Books series, I asked her when she started to give chai to her daughter and the difference between real markets and childhood memories of markets.
I ask so that I may be able to bring their experiences into my own life.
Every season of life gives me new questions to ask. Since starting the Growing Up with Books series and inviting kids books authors to them, I have come to realize a new way of writing interviews. When I interview authors of books I read for myself, I usually keep my own review separate from the interview. I want readers to meet the author and their ideas before encountering my interpretation. But in my Growing Up with Books series, I want the reader and the author to know where I am coming from. My daughter, my own experiences from when I was a child, this life that has shaped me as a reader provide context for the questions I am asking. I want to share them.
Concluding Thoughts
Interviews, to me, are about books and people. About the reader, the writer, the world, the time, the work that goes into creating something meaningful. They are another window into a story—one that only the author can offer as the person who knows it most intimately — and because I love stories, sometimes, I want to stay longer in their world.
Books arrive in my life as finished objects, but interviews remind me that they were once ideas, questions, drafts, and doubts. They bring me closer to the person behind the pages — their process, their voice, their way of seeing the world. And in asking questions, I find myself reflected too: what I notice, what I value, what I carry forward.
A book is new to a reader whenever they pick it up. Through interviews, I get to extend that moment—return to a story, sit with it longer, and invite others to do the same.
I may not read every book before I ask my questions. I may not always ask the “perfect” question. But I show up with curiosity, care, and the intention to connect. That has been enough. I learn from both the art and the creator.
Over the years, interviews have become more than a category on my blog. They are conversations I return to, relationships I build, and small moments of attention that say: your work matters, and I’m here to listen.
I’m the kind of fan who doesn’t need to meet the person. I would rather spend hours reading and writing questions for them, and then sit with their answers later. This is quality time for me with the author.
It is my way of loving books. And the people who write them.
It is my way of being true to my curious self.
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