How to get syndicated on CBC radio

I’m making my CBC Radio debut in Nova Scotia! And BC! And Yukon! And Saskatchewan! And…

How is this possible, you ask?

Dr. back POD front cover 5x8 72Through the magic of CBC Radio Syndication. I didn’t know this existed, but when I reached out to Sandy of Ontario Morning to talk about The Emergency Doctor’s Guide to a Pain-Free Back, he suggested syndication.

Through syndication, you’re assigned a producer who submits an open call to CBC Radio shows across the country. The shows bid on you during the day, and then by 3 or 4 p.m., you get a schedule of which shows you’ll speak to from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the next day.

“But…what if nobody wants to talk to me?” I said.

My producer, Vanessa, laughed. “I’ve never seen that happen.”

Still, I was concerned, until I got my Thursday schedule.

10:00

Gander – Central Morning

Leigh Anne Power – Host

Twitter: @centralmorning

10:15

Ottawa – Ottawa Morning Robyn Bresnahan – Host

Twitter (show): @OttawaMorning

10:30

Kitchener-Waterloo 

Host: Craig Norris

Twitter: @cbckw891

10:40

Ontario AM 

Wei Chen – Host

Twitter: @CBCOntMorning

10:50

Cape Breton (Sydney) – Information Morning 

Steve Sutherland – Host

Twitter: @InfoMorningCB

11:15

Sudbury – Morning North 

Markus Schwabe – Host

Twitter (show): @MorningNorth

Twitter (host): @cbcmarkus

11:45

Kelowna – Daybreak South 

Chris Walker – Host

Twitter: @cbckelowna

12:00

Prince George / Prince Rupert – Daybreak North 

Hosts: Russell Bowers (PG) Carolina DeRyk (PR)

Twitter handle (show): @daybreaknorth

Prince George hosts: Carolina: @rupertsmaven

12:15

Vancouver –The Early Edition 

Rick Cluff – Host

Twitter (show): @cbcearlyedition

12:30

Whitehorse – A New Day 

Sandi Coleman – Host

Twitter (show): @cbcanewday

12:45

Regina – The Morning Edition 

Host: Sheila Cole, Twitter handle: @sheilacolescbc

CBC booth face with ER back smallerMy son Max said, “So, you’re going to be flying for ten days?”

“No, that’s the power of radio. I’m driving to Ottawa, and then I’m going to talk to people from coast to coast about back pain.”

My husband laughed at me. “Miss ‘What if nobody wants to talk to me.'”

Honestly, I didn’t know this was possible. Amazing. I love, love, love the CBC. And then tonight, I’ll be making my debut at Chapters Rideau with Stockholm Syndrome before coming back for more syndication interviews on Friday.

On the weekend, I’ll storm the Cornwall and Area Pop Event.

Then I get a day off before I’m the hospitalist at the Glengarry for the week.

WOOT.

CBC lobby leg up

I asked my host, Alexandre, to take a picture of me in the lobby, using my laptop. He obliged. Ottawa Morning’s Robyn Bresnahan admired my boots! She looked fabulous, even though she only had three hours of sleep. It’s a gift, I tell you.

If you want a chance to win a signed copy, drop me a line in the contact form with CBC as the subject and a message with your address and why you want to win.
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Yay! You can buy it on Kobo.

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Yay! You can buy it on Amazon.ca Also available through your local booksellers and other e-tailers.

P.S. I’m writing this on Parliament Hill. A security guy asked me what I was doing. I was standing at wall, typing on my laptop, instead of sitting like your average person. Because I’ve got this book on back pain. And, like I told Markus Schwabe of Morning North, “Sometimes, you have to decide if you’ll do the healthy thing, even if you look weird. I’ve always chosen looking weird, myself.”

Secret stories from my Ontario Morning/Ottawa Morning interviews, 50% off sale, plus 3 Quick Tips to get *you* on CBC Radio

First of all, thanks to everyone who listened to my Stockholm Syndrome interview with CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning on January 27th. You can listen to the replay here:

Ottawa Morning has scheduled my interview for today, February 2nd, at 7:45 a.m. Depends on the news, though, so stay tuned. Literally.

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Now I’m going to geek out about the coolness. I did my interview with Ontario Morning in studio 39, a small, tech-less booth in the hallway. Karine did a sound check for me before the technician in Toronto, Mike, added the audio to my earphones. At 8:20, Wei Chen asked me cool questions, including if I would ever quit medicine. Then Karine led me through the newsroom to the Ottawa Morning studio. I was agog at the 360 degrees of television.

Ottawa Morning was just finishing up its live program. I sat in a comfy chair in the hallway, listening to host Robyn Bresnahan read out people’s Tweets on Lebreton Flats while I surreptitiously took pictures of all the goings-on.

Robyn Bresnahan came out to shake my hand, but she’s so friendly that I felt like hugging her, so we did. She’s good friends with Christina Peeters, my hair stylist, which is only one degree of separation. Robyn admired my boots, and I told her we were boot twins because she had nice black ones.

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Full outfit. I know you can hardly see the knee-high red boots, but they’re beautiful and made in Canada!

(When I came home, my daughter, Anastasia, was very excited. “Did you wear your red boots?” She’d wanted me to wear them for Daytime Ottawa on Rogers TV.)

IMG_7017 Robyn led me into the studio with a round table, chairs, and multiple microphones, while the technician stayed behind glass in the next room. I’d never been in such a big recording studio before, with one side all windows. Just beautiful.

Robyn asked interesting and perceptive questions. She’s a very expressive interviewer, widening her eyes and nodding encouragement as you speak.

Here’s the interview!

After we turned off the mike, because we’d just talked about the hostage-taking in Stockholm Syndrome, she mentioned that the BBC takes reporters for hostile situation training. During that week, she was riding in a van when a bunch of ex-special forces guys pulled the ten of them over at gunpoint and threw them in a building with a tin roof. They were braced for a fake kidnapping, but it was still scary.

A lippy Greek reporter kept posturing and telling the “kidnappers” where to go. Robyn was worried because he kept drawing attention to their end of the hut.

They shot him. With blanks, but it still meant they dragged him out.

Meanwhile, Robyn’s strategy was to tell them she was pregnant. “I know your culture respects family.” She ended up as one of the five hypothetical survivors.

IMG_7019In real life, while she was working with the BBC, Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza. Every day, on the news, the BBC would announce, “Just so you know, it’s been 100 days since he’s been gone…” They weren’t optimistic about his fate, but it turned out that his kidnappers actually let him listen to BBC’s World Service, and them remembering him was one of the only things keeping him going.

After 114 days, the kidnappers released him, and Robyn said she learned a lesson. You never know what’s going to happen. You can read Alan’s own account of his ordeal here.

Are you a writer/artist/entrepreneur who wants to be on Ottawa Morning?

Here’s the inside scoop. Robyn said it’s a tough sell. They’re more a news show. However, it is possible if you…

  1. Have an interesting personal story
  2. Send a short pitch. She emphasized the short part because she gets 200 e-mails a day.
  3. My addendum: pitch to the producers. Producers seem to schedule the guests. Robyn is the host and will interview you, but you need send your concise pitch to the producers.
Click to buy.

Click to buy.

Good luck! And thanks to anyone who picks up Stockholm Syndrome. If you grab it at Kobo here, all my titles are 50 percent off, until midnight only, using the code JAN1650. Hooray!

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CBC Radio double shot: Ontario Morning tomorrow, Ottawa Morning Thursday

Do I love CBC Radio? YES, I DO.

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Triple docs: Dr. Paul Irwin, Dr. Melissa Yi and Dr. Diane Poilly. More pics at http://melissayuaninnes.com/launch-party/

Wei Chen will interview me for Ontario Morning tomorrow at 08:20. Tune in at 95.5 FM in Cornwall, or listen online. Wei interviewed me for Terminally Ill last year, so I’m very excited to tell her about Stockholm Syndrome.
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Can’t make it tomorrow? Tune in on Thursday for my interview with Robyn Bresnahan on Ottawa Morning. Glengarrians may also know Robyn through her work with Child Haven and through her husband, who grew up in Alexandria.

P.S. I’m trying my hand at being a hospitalist next month. I’ll be taking care of patients on the ward as well as in the ER at the Glengarry Memorial Hospital.

Happy dance!!!!!!!

From CBC Radio to Kobo’s Top 50

I love you, CBC Radio listeners. I think you’re my tribe.

Wei Chen interviewed me on Ontario Morning this beautiful Tuesday. If you missed it, you can download the podcast here (the one labeled “Single mom student entrepreneur,” which is someone else. Matt and I are cheerfully married, and I’ve graduated. I’m still a mom entrepreneur, though).

Terminally Ill shot right up and cracked Kobo’s Top 50 e-books. Not per category. I mean, right now, it’s #1 in Mystery, Hard-Boiled, #2 in Mystery, Women Sleuths, and #5 in Mystery & Suspense.

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But I mean in all of Kobo’s books (no idea how many those are, but since Mystery & Suspense includes almost 65,000 books, the grand total must be impressive), Terminally Ill has currently clawed up way up to #27. So if you click here (http://store.kobobooks.com/), you can see my name go by, along with a few others you might know.

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Like James Patterson, Harlan Coben, Jodi Picoult (I’ve read nearly all her work), Joseph Boydon (The Orenda was amazing), Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Clive Cussler (“Did you beat Clive Cussler?” said my husband. Yes, actually, I did), Veronica Roth, Sylvia Day, Bella Andre, Christina Baker Kline (I’m a big fan of her anthologies), George R.R. Martin (strong work), Marie Force, and John Grisham.

Total fangirl moment.

Squee! Thank you, CBC & Kobo!

I just have to add that Dr. Tim Heeley-Ray asked me what “Squee” meant, so I explained that it was an expression of extreme joy. And this is a moment of extreme joy.

For a limited time only (48 h), all newsfeed and newsletter subscribers will receive a secret promo code for a FREE Kobo copy of Terminally Ill. The code will arrive in a newsletter on Thursday, March 27th. Thanks! Group hugs! High fives!

From Elvis to CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning

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On Saturday, “Hope Sze” successfully resuscitated “Elvis,” to great acclaim. Photo by Margaret Caldbick.

Wei Chen will interview me on CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning program tomorrow at about 8:22 a.m. So please tune in (there’s a live stream online here, on the right side bar) and/or Tweet @CBCOntmorning. I’ll reveal a secret code for a free Kobo copy of the e-book!

For anyone who’s wondering about the back story, and isn’t sick of my spam (I was going to give it a rest, but I do want you guys to listen to me on the CBC, Tweet, and pretend I’m popular. Because that would make up for, say, when I was thirteen years old and my classmates would call me bag lady):

On Saturday, the escape artist, Elvis Serratore (Mark Leslie Lefebvre) was chained and nailed in a coffin and dropped in the St. Lawrence River, but Dr. Hope Sze (moi) brought him back. In other words, we acted out the opening scene of Terminally Ill for two appreciative audiences who fought through a blizzard to get there.

Today, I struggled to write. Anastasia’s latest game is that I’m the baby and she’s the mommy, so I’m mostly supposed to lie down, cry, pretend to drink milk, and play with the toys she brings me. A little difficult to juggle my laptop at the same time.

When I did get a break, I should’ve doubled down to work on The Goa Yoga School of Slayers, but saw that I’d gotten this on Twitter:

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When I called Sandy Mowat, he said, “I thought you sounded like someone with a dual career who might enjoy talking on the radio.”

“You would be right!” I exclaimed. I asked how he’d found me.

“We go through all the newspapers, and I found the article in the Standard Freeholder.”

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So, as part of this book launch, I’ve had one previous article in the Standard Freeholder, one in The Seaway Valley News, one in The Seeker, and fingers crossed that I’ll get a mention in the Glengarry News (their reporter, Margaret Caldbick, took the amazing photo above at the Alexandria book launch). But it took Todd Hambleton’s latest article to get the attention of the CBC. Just like in the publishing business, you’ve got to reach critical mass before you might catch someone’s eye.

Or ear, as the case may be tomorrow, on CBC Radio’s Ontario Morning. Check us out!