Someone’s in the Kitchen with Kimmy!

In the kitchen! Yay! I can do this. I know the kitchen. I love the kitchen. I keep saying, “My next house will be nothing but a giant kitchen and bedrooms.”  Have you seen my website? (Dear God please say yes.) www.kimstagliano.com.  It’s a retro kitchen.   But what does the kitchen have to do with writing? Plenty. Writers have voices. Sometimes we hear voices too but that going to be another post during crazy week later this Spring. 

My writing voice is like a fingerprint. It’s a style unique to me – as your writing voice is unique to you. My Amazon reviews have had a theme running through them. “After I read your book I feel like we just sat down for a cocktail and I got to know you.” Or, “It was like we were in a room together just chatting.” I wanted my memoir to be what I learned many years ago from a deathwish of an experience called, “Kim is going to sell some items on QVC.”  Yes, I played Carol Merrill (look her up young ones) on QVC. Think Vanna White except instead of letters it was product.  At QVC training they stressed that they wanted their on air “talent” (used very loosely in my case) to appear to be having a “Over the fence chat” with a neighbor. That is to say, they wanted us to be friendly and colloquial. Maybe even a little cheesey. I was too scared to be anything but myself – and it worked out OK. So I guess that makes me friendly, colloquial and cheesey. Which is better than obsequious, purple and clairvoyant. (Again, hit the Google kids, “Steve Martin” should be in the search.) Lord I wish I had a tape of those appearances. Here’s what happened.  My husband was working for that German company that let him go in 2003 catapulting us into financial chaos and the crux of my book.  Hold on, I’m Babelfishing  swears in German for a second….  OK, I’m back.  The company was called Leifheit and they sold fabulously wonderful kitchen gear. I was tapped to appear on QVC to sell (listen to this) an ironing board and a cake carrier with ice packs in it.  You haven’t lived until you’ve ironed on television while cold sweat drips down your back.  So I flew to Philly to QVC and appeared not once, but twice at 7:00am cheery and chirpy and scared to freaking DEATH.

I was on “In the Kitchen with Bob” for the cake carrier segment. Let me tell you, QVC Bob was not Sesame Street Bob. He wasn’t all that nice to me.  He planned to beat the cake box with a baseball bat to show how tough it was (I thought, dude, it isn’t a Samsonite ad!) and he fake swung it at me.  “Ha ha! Bob!  You’re so funny beating the terrified guest!”  And he screwed up the sales of the cake box.  It floppped like souffle with an elephant doing Zumba in the kitchen.

As I’m writing this post I’m about to leave to appear on TV in San Diego. I’m still nervous, but no one has taken a Louisville Slugger to me in the studio yet, so I think I’ll be fine.

Think about your own writing. What rooom of the house are you? I’m the kitchen for sure. Some of you might be the bedroom. Or a non-fic writer strictly office. Where does your voice live inside your house?