Tory Michaels' World

Today I get to interview another interviewer. How's that for meta? Tory Michaels's World hosts interviews with a plethora of authors.

Browsing your blog it quickly becomes apparent you have a standard list of questions. How long did it take you to form that list? How often do you review it for possible changes?

I will generally tweak the questions for an individual author, and if it’s one I know personally (rather than from a blog-tour I volunteered for), I might try to introduce little factoids by changing a few questions. I pretty much keep to the 7-10 questions because I don’t want to take too much time, either for the author or any of my readers.

How do you select the books/authors you interview on your blog?

I’m a tour host for both Bewitching Blog Tours and Sizzling PR. Additionally, I was fortunate enough to have author friends who helped me get started until I got up and running with the blog tours. Every so often I get really lucky and get a NY Times best seller (upcoming visit from Alyssa Day in May).

How far in advance do you plan your interviews? Do you ever shuffle posts when someone has a release date?


I have dates set about halfway through June and one out in August. I’ve been easing back a little in volunteering for hosting duties lately because I was a little burned out and just frustrated with life in general. I won’t swap posts unless specifically asked, but what I will do is frequently put in an extra interview day. When I started up, I was only planning on Thursdays, but then I kept stumbling across people I wanted to help out, so put in Monday, which also fills up a lot. And, if all else fails, I’ll do an interview on their release day. Every so often, I glitch and schedule 2 interviews for the same day (May 3 in particular).

Double the fun! Do you read the stories in advance? Do you read some after? What makes the difference?

I’m not a reviewer, so, because of my limited budget, I don’t read many of them. I should, and I certainly get some “I wanna reads” off the blog, but unfortunately I just can’t get to everyone.

Totally understandable. My TBR list is large and growing. Occasionally you post an article that is not a review. Do these strike you spontaneously? Does something prompt you do something else?

If you look back, before January I never did interviews. But then I got a contract and I wanted to start giving back (and, yes, more selfishly, I wanted to do something to bring readers in to my blog). I was actually considering a rant post today (4/27) about the obscenity from Tim Burton that’s due out shortly (Dark Shadows, which makes a MOCKERY of the name/franchise). I of course want to promote my books or talk about my writing. Writing (and my frustrations) and my pregnancy/children were just about all I talked about before I started doing the interviews.

Slaps her own hand for not doing more thorough research. Do you ever get tired of doing interviews?

Sometimes I do, and lately it’s frustrating because almost no one’s coming by and commenting any more. I have all these wonderful authors coming and willing to give away books, yet I maybe get 2-3 comments per interview. I hurt for the authors, because here they are, putting themselves out and no one comes by (or at least comments). I do get a little tired of the interviews, which is why I’ve got a couple of spot-light only spots coming up in June. I just recently stopped doing my Six Sentence Sunday ‘cause my readers were falling away on that too (though that was probably because I stopped visiting the blogosphere too – heh).

Shakes the dust bunnies out of her comment section. I know what you mean. Speaking of comments and readers, how did you build your audience?

Most of them are writers, I believe. Though I think there are a healthy minority of readers. There are a handful of bloggers too. I just blogged, and most recently, I put in as a condition of the blog hop that if they wanted to win, they needed to follow the blog, in addition to commenting. Heh.

Jots that idea down for future reference. Make bloggers follow the blog... why didn't I think of that. Sorry, speaking of your book coming out. Let's get the details on that! Blood Rage is the first book of the Dream Walker War. The second book, Blood Mage Rising is freshly released. Both are available from Evernight Publishing. You can find Tory on Facebook and Twitter.

Ask the questions I forgot. That's what comments are for.