When my first book, Nobody Nowhere was up for publication my landlord helped deal with the business side of things, with my agent and publishers.

We had several bidders for the book, each with their own take on things. We were offered more by one company but the publisher came into the house having just done a horrifically violent book about a psychopath and raved about that success and did all his socialisation and impressiveness stuff with my landlord, Mr ‘Miller’ as if I were invisible.

Then the publisher from Transworld/Doubleday came over, warm, shy, quiet, all the time in the world, spoke directly with me through Mr ‘Miller’ (for back then I could barely speak to strangers if they initiated… only ones at bus stops or a new employer to try and get a job) and she spoke with me where possible, brought some donna friendly books they’d published for me to look at and basically that was that… I said to Mr ‘Miller’… ‘that one’, ‘that’s the one’ and so they got to publish Nobody Nowhere.

They were wonderfully Donna friendly people and liased brilliantly with the UK team who followed through wonderfully. I took a bit of adapting to… like in the US my publicist (a bolshy full-on NY publicist) had lined up a whole load of live TV interviews and I left the room and saw my publisher (a lovely quiet woman) and explained I couldn’t do this or work with that one so she got me a quiet gentle publicist to work with who knew pushing me wasn’t gonna get what they needed, and that they had to adapt their visions of publicity… so we did radio and print interviews rather than camera with the exception of one of America’s best known TV journalists, ABC newsman Peter Jennings who flew to the UK.

Peter was totally what you see is what you get, clear boundaries, able to adapt, empathic. Him and me walked around a park in circles because I couldn’t stop and sit or face anyone before a camera then and the cameraman had to follow us but back in the bushes…Needless to say it was an unusual form of interview for him and though I basically showed nothing or said nothing that really showed how deeply moved I was by their efforts to adapt, I so warmed to these wonderful people and how they gave a damn and adapted. It was so little to do but so much from my perspective. Anyway, I heard Peter Jennings died this week. He was a good and nice person, a stranger, but the first American TV journo I ever let film me and only the second US TV journo to ever film me (the other was Edie Magnus from the Connie Chung Show years later). I was ‘person of the week’ on Peter’s news show in 1993. When we’d finished filming he said he could see how relieved I was that was over and showed me to a van where they were editing the footage we’d just shot, showing me firsthand the jobs behind the faces people see on the screen. I was also interviewed by CBC’s late great warm and gravelly Peter Gzowski… Both were my favorite male journos.

Very nice after a life of equating 20 years of men with abuse, sexual harassment, exploitation and very negative things. To emerge into a world where thoughtful, caring males existed helped heal a lot of broken attitude on my part. I believe so strongly in the magic of strangers, male and female, and how they contribute to change and heal things without even knowing.

… Donna Williams

http://www.donnawilliams.net