Interview with Lesa Trapp (AngelLesa) | Sound Authors Radio

January 6, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is Friday, October 3rd and I have the pleasure of speaking with Lesa Trapp whose handle is AngelLesa online and she hosts the Odd Mind, a radio show and she has 3.2 million listeners each month – that’s pretty amazing. She has the Odd Mind Magazine as well. She’s a writer, she interviews authors. Welcome to the show.

Lesa Trapp: Thank you, thank you so much, I’m glad to be here.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about your show.

Lesa Trapp: All right. Basically I let the voice of the authors, musicians, comedians, artists have a voice. For a long time the independent authors and Indie type people never really had a voice and so I gave them an outlet and from there each artist brought in a listening base and they stayed. And it grew and grew and so it turned into a magazine as well.

Dr. Kent: What is the magazine?

Lesa Trapp: The magazine, the first part of the magazine shows all of the shows I do for four months. I put it out quarterly and it tells like their product, if it’s a book it gives a synopsis and it gives the bio of the person and it lists all of their websites. And anybody can get it and they can read that or go listen to their show and listen to them live. That part of the magazine has short stories, poetry, articles on writing and photography and then we have a bunch of fun space.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about now on your show, interviewing the authors kind of like this show; what’s the key for you to getting to the heart of an authors story, of their biography? Do you take it to them?

Lesa Trapp: You mean like in asking the questions?

Dr. Kent: Exactly.

Lesa Trapp: Okay, I like to find out the human side of them and I find that the listeners when they relate to the authors, they seem to like them and they find that they’re human. So I like to ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up and how they got into writing and where the stories came from. Its unbelievable how many people write in and say gosh, I really liked this guy. I’ve done that too so it kind of brings the authors to the people.

Dr. Kent: How many of your authors have really shocked you on the show? How many of them make you say, oh my goodness what did they just say?

Lesa Trapp: Well I’ve had one author who he went to a friend’s house when he had his interview and there were too many people there so he did it in their closet and so it was Scott Nickleson and the whole interview he was in a child’s closet looking at clowns and talking to me.

Dr. Kent: What do you read? Do you enjoy certain kinds of books or do you like them all?

Lesa Trapp: I really like more the murder mysteries and sometimes romance if there’s a storyline to it. I don’t like just love affairs. I want a storyline. So I really like I could try everything but I always go back to the detective novelist or the murder mystery or something.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about how you got into this. You’ve published yourself, you’ve self published and the Odd Mind Magazine is out there for the world to read, you’ve got this radio show; how did you get into this business?

Lesa Trapp: I started in March and I ran across a guy that had a radio show and I asked him how he did it and he told me. And he showed me how to do it and I told him I had a bunch of author friends. So I called a few of them and they came on and interviewed with me and other authors found out and all of a sudden I went from doing one show a week to I’m doing five a week.

Dr. Kent: And you love it.

Lesa Trapp: I am, I do love it and I’m booked all the way to December with five shows a week.

Dr. Kent: Wonderful, what kind of authors do you choose? Are you discriminatory? Do you like certain ones or all of them?

Lesa Trapp: I take everybody who calls me and I tell them to pick out a day because as I look at it, I don’t know what the listeners like because they come from everywhere. I just had one on yesterday about knitting and you wont believe how many people called in!

Dr. Kent: About knitting?

Lesa Trapp: Yeah, and I don’t knit.

Dr. Kent: So are you thinking of starting to knit?

Lesa Trapp: Oh no, I’m too busy, I’m raising four kids plus the writing and the magazine.

Dr. Kent: Four kids! My goodness.

Lesa Trapp: I call myself a breeder.

Dr. Kent: I don’t know how you have any time to do this radio show.

Lesa Trapp: I just do it one hour at night and then I deal with the kids, luckily they’re in school.

Dr. Kent: Can anybody interview with you? How do people get a hold of you?

Lesa Trapp: Well from the site, all they have to do is email me and then I’ll tell them to go pick out a day. I keep like the month at a glance date up on my site and so I tell them to pick out a date and that’s the date they get. I tell them to send me their information but everybody’s welcome. I get musicians, comedians, authors, artists, all of them.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you. We’re both on the blog talk radio network. I’ve been chatting with AngelLesa, she has a show called the Odd Mind and clearly I’m sure you’ve had some odd minds on the show.

Lesa Trapp: Oh I think we’re all odd minds aren’t we?

Dr. Kent: I think so and I love the graphic you have of the odd mind with words coming out of the mind like suspense, drama, and provocative. Well it’s been a real honor chatting with Lesa Trapp and we should all tune in!

Lesa Trapp: Thank you so much!

Dr. Kent: We’ll keep in touch. My next guest on the show will be Judy Collins. It’s going to be my honor chatting with this legend of music. We’re going to listen to some of her songs and talk with her about many, many years in the business; for decades. Here’s a song from Judy Collins to start us off and then we’ll speak with her after that song is done. This is a song that made her famous in some ways, way back when called Send In The Clowns. It’s a stunning song.

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