Does the Appearance of an Author Matter?
Or: If I don’t have eyebrows, will people still buy my book?
One of the more peculiar experiences I’ve had recently occurred while I was being interviewed about my debut novel, A Reluctant Spy. The incident in question actually took place during my pre-interview, when my interviewer was sounding me out about the twists and turns of my thriller.
I was paranoid about revealing spoilers. And no, I absolutely would NOT give away any crucial plot points in the interests of providing a killer interview.
My interviewer, whom I will call John, was a Londoner with the affect of a character from Midsomer Murders, the dodgy villager of a certain age who repots plants.
As John burrowed into the features of my novel, I turned my head sideways to jot down notes.
In the middle of pondering my answer to the tricky question, “Is your brilliant protagonist actually you?”, John said, “Wait! Stop! There’s something personal I must ask you. We can’t go on. There’s a tricky problem that must be fixed—now.”
Startled, I looked at him quizzically. Why would he interrupt me at such a delicate moment, just as I was pondering how much to say about my brilliance?
“Roselyn,” he said, in his plummy Oxbridge voice, “this is really embarrassing, but, ah, the problem does need to be resolved before we continue.”
By now I was alarmed. Were there damp patches near my armpits? Was my bosom inadequately encased? Was I inadvertently drooling?
John leaned conspiratorially toward the camera and said, “I’m being thoroughly distracted by your eyebrows. When you turn your head to write something down, your eyebrows don’t move with your face. They stay on the screen for a split second afterward, a disembodied pair of perfect eyebrows. It’s extremely disconcerting, and I fear it’ll cause a problem for our followers when we do your actual interview.”
I must confess I’ve been told a lot of things by a great variety of men in my life, but never that my eyebrows were problematic. In the wide spectrum of personal flaws, this was an easy one to fix. The villain of the piece was Zoom, who provided me, the user, with a checklist of features to improve my appearance during any Zoom call: Enhanced eyebrows, Pink lipstick, Rosy cheek gloss, Darker hair color, and so on. What I had done—in an admittedly weak moment—was check the Eyebrows option in an effort to fix the pathetic pale fuzz above my eyes. I had made the calculation that my listeners might ask themselves: What kind of thriller would emanate from a writer without visible eyebrows?
Never fear, Dear Reader. As in the novel, I deftly solved the problem—before the actual interview!
Perfect Eyebrows, every time.