I’ve lost track of the number of interviews I’ve give in the last two weeks.

There have been interviews over the phone, interviews via email, interviews in person around my kitchen table, in coffee shops, in radio studios, television interviews with and without bright lights. It’s not a huge number but it’s big enough I’ve lost track.

There was the interview that didn’t happen, an Irish Radio station that wanted me on their show at 10 in the morning. That is, three hours after midnight in the mountain west. They asked via email, I answered, they never replied and I thought it was off…until the phone rang at three in the morning. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to get their studio phone connected to mine (without success,) so the interview didn’t happen and I’m sitting up, wide awake at four in the bloody morning.

The U.K. radio interview that did work went well enough, but the line was so bad, and the dj’s accent was so pronounced, I had to ask him to repeat every question.

Fortunately, he wanted to record his interview so I didn’t have to get up at 3 in the morning. It was morning for me and afternoon for him.

So, in doing this, I finally figured out why they call it press.

It’s like ironing. You run the hot iron over and over the shirt until all the wrinkles are out of the material. Or, specifically, you answer the same questions over and over again untiil you feel like a broken record. (Note for the young: records are these things made of vinyl and if they got scratched badly enough, they tended to repeat the same track over and over again. Think of it as looping, done without intent.)

Maybe it’s just me. In any case, I’m sitting there every time going, “Is that my voice? Do I really sound like that?”

Is that the sound of a voice be pushed flat by a hot iron?

A press?

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Addendum: The phenomenon I’m describing is really about my own failure to come up with sufficiently different answers to the same questions. I’m not irritated with the press. Publicity equals more book sales, a good thing.

As seen on BoingBoing.