I sold my homework, again.
Twenty years ago, fresh from surviving Emirates Ab-Initio training, emotionally bruised and knickers barely intact from the whole ordeal, I listed my 400 pages of cabin crew interview research on eBay.
I threw a cover together in Microsoft Works (Yes, Works, not a typo.) Slapped on a generic title — The Cabin Crew Interview Made Easy. Hid behind a pseudonym, of course, because let’s be honest: I had zero expectations and failure feels far less humiliating when it’s wearing someone else’s name.
Then I gave it a low-faith starting price of ninety-nine pence — One penny less than the £1 I once charged for a sprig of mistletoe outside the Year 9 boys’ toilets.
For twenty-nine days, not a peep. Which, incidentally, is the same reaction I had from nineteen airline interviews. Then, in the dying gasps of the auction, a bidding frenzy.
It was like being back at an Emirates open day — manic, unpredictable, slightly damp.
The “book” sold for £63.
Just like that, I became an author. And the book, an overnight success.
Sort of.
Two tiny hiccups remained:
- I wasn’t an author.
- And I didn’t technically have a book.
In reality, what I’d actually sold — was my homework, again. Only this time, the buyer had higher ambitions — and PayPal.
I had seven days to reanimate my notes into something that looked vaguely paperback-shaped, before that electronic chime of success became a soul-crushing refund request.
So I turned my bedroom into a print shop.
A week of toner fumes, jammed paper trays, and Pritt Sticking later — my first book was born, slightly warped, slightly sticky, and miraculously, with a barcode.
A month later, Mel — my first reader — became a trainee cabin crew. Even the spine survived.
After that, things got… unexpectedly busy.
Soon I was coaching hopefuls over email, handing out books at my front door like dodgy DVDs, praying the spines held long enough to pass as legitimately published.
Hard to believe that was twenty years and six editions ago.
Since then, the book’s grown up. Got itself an actual spine. And so have I. Sort of.
I’ve been dragged along with it — heels scraping, learning, fixing things as I go. Like the edition missing every single letter P.
If you’ve never read a book without Ps, it’s a trip. Or should I say, a tri_.
In truth, the most vital omission from those first editions was not the letter P. A more important letter was missing: I.
It was me. I was missing.
No voice, no backstory, no name. Only a procession of pseudonyms, behind which I lurked, watching from the shadows. Come to think of it, that’s how I approached the first nineteen of my airline interviews.
Over 20 years, I’ve ghosted myself through more than nine pen names.
Never told anyone how a girl in a boy’s school shirt, with no lipstick and a tendency to self-destruct in interviews, reverse-engineered nineteen rejections, then landed a place at one of the most selective, prestigious airlines in the world.
Now, two decades on, I’ve finally written myself in. Still using my original pseudonym, though. Let’s not get carried away — she was the overnight success, after all.
What began as a hacked-together, home-printed, Pritt-Stick-bound manual became a bestseller, then a community… And now — finally — a course.
Still grounded in the same research. But this time, not cobbled together in six days. And I’ve actually had creative writing lessons so it no longer reads like it was written by someone hiding under their own desk.
Same scrappy schoolgirl attitude. Same ridiculous collar. Only now with the polish of Emirates training and the unapologetic sass of Virgin — at least, that’s what I still tell myself.
Everything I know. Everything I wish I’d had. Everything I’ve learned from twenty years of helping other people get their wings. It’s all in Crew Crosscheck the cabin crew interview finishing school.
Welcome to the relaunch.
No ink, no glue, no more book spines, but I finally found and included mine.
