A fellow writer approached me through social media asking if I would be interested in being interviewed.

I nearly said yes without thinking. I’m building my brand as an author, thinking about crafting a short story collection, exploring novel length projects, and all publicity is good publicity right? Right?

I took a step back and investigated the source. While the author and I followed each other on social media, to my knowledge we’ve never interacted other than a few “like” clicks. That wasn’t a deal breaker, I’ve done interviews with others I didn’t know and it went well, but then I looked further.

They would only use the interview behind the paywall of their Patreon, and I won’t be able to share it for a month. Hmm… I was becoming less and less keen. Their previous guests were a children’s book author, a political journalist, a game designer… All the same questions, no individuality.

I passed on the interview. I’m a speculative fiction author and I didn’t feel this was a good use of my time and energy, but I wanted to know who the author was, so I “stalked” their public social media. Half their posts were political and the other half were “Join my Patreon” posts, with no engagement with other writers.

My takeaway?

Being asked to the dance is nice, but make sure you’re comfortable with who’s driving you home.