Abigail Rieley

Writer and Author

Tag: Publicity (Page 2 of 2)

Another day of Interviews

26th November 2008 / / 0 Comments

Today I was in Phantom FM on Phantom Daily with Simon Maher.  I think the interview went well.  It was nice to be able to talk about the websites and the American side of things.

While I was researching Devil in the Red Dress I was fascinated by the more high tech side of the case (as I’ve mentioned here before this was very much a trial of it’s time.)  I’ve linked to the websites mentioned in the trial (and in Devil) and I think you’ll agree they’re not the most convincing scams ever.

In many ways Sharon was a spammers dream…judging by the kind of websites she tried to enter into criminal activity with, she’s the kind of woman who would receive an email from Yasser Arafat’s widow asking for help to get his money out of the country (I know there have been a lot of different one’s since but that was always my favourite and anyway I’ve now got a better spam filter) and fall for it.  After all, she did sent €15,000 to someone behind a website who’d modelled their pitch on a T-shirt shop.

It was a nice relaxed interview and it was good to be able to talk about the more bizarre aspects of the case.

I think I also managed to convince the drivers of the taxis to and from the studios about the book as well…

Anyway, I’m still working on the trailer…I have a script now and an idea for an unusual approach…watch this space anyway…you will see the finished product here first!

The Book Marketing Continues…

25th November 2008 / / 0 Comments

I’m really tired this evening so this won’t be a long post.  Today I went out to East Coast FM in Bray, Co Wicklow, to do an interview about Devil in the Red Dress.  It went well I think.  Tomorrow afternoon it’ll be Phantom FM…I’m doing quite a tour!

This weekend we’ll find out what the first week’s sales have been like…nerve wracking stuff!  It’s so frustrating to have to just sit back and wait…

I’ve been playing around with Twitter all day, the people following me must have been driven mad.  The new possibilities in book marketing offered by the Internet have always fascinated me and now I have a book to market I want to try some of them out.

So there’s this blog for a start…as I’ve said before I had been running an anonymous blog until I started writing Devil.  That’s when it seemed like a good idea to register my own domain and start blogging officially so to speak.

I also use Twitter.  It’s an interesting idea to be able to tweet about interviews I’m doing or news about the book.  Stephen Fry has used Twitter like this brilliantly.  I’ve got a long way to go before I reach his numbers of followers – have to become a national treasure so!

Finally there’s the idea of a book trailer…that I’m busy scripting but it should be appearing on a Youtube channel near you sometime soon.

I remember when I was a teenager being sent out to drop around flyers for shows I was working on.  I suppose this is simply the modern equivalent….

Finally the End Really is in Sight!

5th November 2008 / / 0 Comments

So Sharon Collins and Essam Eid woke up this morning knowing how long they’d be looking at the same four walls.  It’s hard to believe that after all this time the story finally has an end.  Now all that’s left was to give my story an end which shouldn’t have been so difficult since they’re one and the same story.

It was a ridiculously busy day yesterday.  The sentence hearing went on most of the day and by the time I finished work it was almost ten o’clock so I was looking forward to a fairly gentle start to the day before settling down to writing.

But some time after 8 the phone rang and there was a voice saying they were calling from the Gerry Ryan Show.  Now Gerry Ryan is one of the top broadcasters in Ireland.  He’s also a pretty integral part of the Sharon Collins story.  One of the most lurid elements of the trial was a certain letter recovered by gardai from the hard drive of one of the computers Sharon had access to.

This letter, only part of which survived, had been written in a fit of pique around April 2006.  It was part of an email to the Gerry Ryan Show and the section that survived was a catalogue of allegations about PJ Howard’s sexual tastes.  Now Sharon has said that these allegations were taken out of context and PJ has said they are just totally untrue but the Gerry Ryan letter is still one of the most distinctive pieces of evidence.

Well today it wasn’t Sharon contacting the show, it was the show contacting me.  I ended up reminiscing with Mr Ryan himself about his appearance in court.  An unexpected start to the day to say the least.  And after the Gerry Ryan Show it was Neil Prendeville on 96FM in Cork to follow up on a piece I did for him before the sentence yesterday…all before 10.30 in the morning.  Then Spin 103 just before 2.  I suppose this is what they mean by publicity – I’m feeling positively over exposed but if it gets The Devil in the Red Dress out to a wider audience then needs must.

But the main work of the day was writing my final chapter.  In fairness this is a story that pretty much tells itself but there was still an awful lot to cover just giving an account of yesterday’s events.

It’s now almost done and now the real work begins.  It’ll be a while yet before I can stop telling this story but I’m beginning to look forward to moving into the next phase of this author business.  Right now though I’m so tired I could fall over so a more in depth post will just have to wait until tomorrow.

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