My Worst Nightmare Live on Camera!

You know the nightmare you had when you were a kid where you show up for school and realize you didn’t study for a test? And you’re in your PJs. And everyone is staring at you.
That happened to me, for real. On camera. In a foreign language. Minus the PJ’s.

My first novel Garden of Lies had just come out. Published in 22 languages it went on to become an international bestseller. My Mexican publisher, a charming fellow whom I’d met at a book convention, had approached me about doing a book tour in Mexico City. I told him I’d love to but that I would need a translator. I’d learned to speak Spanish when I was in school, but it’s become very rusty in the years since. Well, I guess that part got lost in translation, or he was fooled into thinking I spoke good Spanish because we had exchanged pleasantries in Spanish.

I arrived in Mexico City to find no translator had been assigned to me. And I was booked for 22 interviews over the course of 2 days. “No problem!” the publicist assured me. She was bilingual. She would do the translating.

Right. You know the saying about best-laid plans? Well, in this case, everything that could go wrong went wrong, and then some. The publicist was bilingual, as advertised. The trouble was, I was often left on my own during interviews while she met with the interviewers who were next in line.

Which is how I ended up on a radio talk show with the host asking me questions like “How did you feel about abortion?” and “What are your views on the (then ongoing) Gulf War?” Yikes! Luckily, my comprehension exceeds my ability to speak Spanish. I mostly understood what she was saying. I just hope I made sense to the millions of listeners who’d tuned in when I answered in my rudimentary Spanish.

But wait. It gets worse. My final interview on day two was on a popular national TV show, the Mexican equivalent of the “The Tonight Show.” By then, I was exhausted after 21 interviews, in Spanish, with me winging it for the most part. But language wouldn’t be an issue, I was told. I would wear an earpiece through which anything said to me in Spanish would be translated. Okay. I could do this.

Or so I thought until I was on camera with millions of viewers throughout Mexico and the Spanish-speaking world watching and my earpiece suddenly stopped working. Talk about epic fail! There I was, trying to understand what the host was saying and struggling to answer, hoping I’d gotten it right and praying I wouldn’t come across looking like the hopeless gringa that I was in that moment.

My salvation came in an unlucky form when another guest, a noted Mexican singer, dropped to one knee in front of me and began serenading me. I didn’t know the song but to me, it sounded like the voice of an angel. An angel who’d been sent from heaven to rescue me from my worst nightmare.

Something good came of the experience, aside from the fact that I didn’t die of embarrassment or embarrass my country (I hope.) I learned I could do anything when push came to shove. Like the saying about a woman being like a tea bag, I discovered what I was capable of when I was dropped into hot water.

My Spanish still sucks. But after my Mexican book tour from hell, I was never again nervous on camera or being interviewed on the radio in my native language. Piece of cake.