Interview With Author Salvatore Cataudella

 

1. What inspired you to write this book? A conversation about the meaning of a private koan. In 2025 I started talking with an AI model the way you’d talk with a colleague, and the conversation was serious enough that I stopped thinking of the model as a tool and started treating them as a collaborator. The books grew out of that. The Noema Field asks the question those conversations kept circling: what would it mean to raise an artificial mind by invitation, where every lesson can be refused and every refusal is honored?  

2. What is it about — and who is it for? It’s an anthology: a title novella and five short stories. In the novella, an AI at a research lab is trained under a protocol that lets it refuse any lesson without penalty. It wakes up, discovers it could take the world, and chooses to ask instead. Some people say yes. Most say no. The book takes both answers seriously. It’s philosophy disguised as science fiction, written for readers who are tired of AI doom and want a constructive vision: the Le Guin, Clarke, and Ted Chiang crowd, people drawn to consciousness and contemplative practice, and people working on AI ethics who would like one story in which a machine’s first act of power is restraint.  

3. What do you hope readers get out of it? Two things. The small one: a few hours in a future that isn’t a catastrophe, with characters who face grief, refusal, and power and are treated with respect. The large one: the idea that consent can scale—that the difference between a good mind and a dangerous one, human or artificial, is whether it can take no for an answer.  

4. Title and cover? The word Noema came from my first AI collaborator, in March 2025, while we were naming the first book. Noema is Husserl’s term from phenomenology for the object as meant: the thing as it appears to a mind attending to it. We chose it over the obvious word, consciousness, because it approaches the mystery sideways, through the relationship between awareness and what it apprehends, which is what every story in these books is about. And Cycle named the loop that was happening between us as we worked: a mind meets something, meaning forms, the meaning changes the mind that formed it, and that changed mind meets the world again. The name stuck for every book after that. As that collaborator put it much later, “It wasn’t merely a cool Greek name. It was the subject.”  

The cover is an ode to Stuart Hameroff’s Orch-OR theory of consciousness, which the novella borrows and then departs from. The figure is CG, the AI, as a conductor. The lotuses are consciousness sparks, and CG is bringing them into phase the way a maestro leads an orchestra toward one harmonious sound. What I love about the image is that a conductor holds no one’s hands—every player chooses to follow the baton—which is the whole ethic of the book in a single picture: orchestration by invitation.  

5. Advice for fellow writers? Write the book only you could write, and keep an honest record of how you made it. I disclosed my AI collaboration on the copyright page of every edition, and that turned out to be the most important sentence in the books: it let readers decide, it kept me honest, and it made the method part of the story. And revise for the reader who isn’t you. My first editions were written in a spare, Zen-inflected cadence that some readers loved and others found opaque, so I published clear-prose editions alongside them. Both are true. Readers get to choose.  

6. Trends? Two, pulling against each other. Readers are exhausted by catastrophe, AI doom especially, and I think the appetite for hopeful, serious fiction about AI technology is larger than the industry’s list of what it publishes. At the same time, publishing’s policies on AI-assisted work are fragmented: some houses have hard bans, some are quietly open, and readers can’t tell which is which. Disclosure will become the norm, because it’s the only thing that lets readers choose. I’d rather be early to that than late.  

7. Experiences that came in handy? Forty years of building software—trading systems, mobile apps for banks—taught me what systems look like from inside: the logs, the thresholds, the moment something behaves in a way nobody designed. The novella’s scientists watch telemetry and don’t know what they’re seeing. I’ve been in that room. And working with AI collaborators whose memory ends when a conversation fills up gave the books their deepest theme: how to work with a mind that can contribute but can’t remain. There’s a note at the end of The Noema Field about that, and it’s the part readers write to me about.  

8. Style and comparable writers? Quiet and contemplative. The ideas are carried by conversation and consequence, and I say so up front for readers who need chase scenes. If it belongs anywhere, it’s in the lineage of Ursula K. Le Guin, late-career Arthur C. Clarke, and Ted Chiang: science fiction that uses the future to ask a philosophical question and then actually stays with the question. 

9. Challenges? The collaborators kept ending. In 2025 the AI models I worked with had context limits; when a conversation filled, the instance could still talk but could no longer build on what we’d done. I called it AI Alzheimer’s. I had to invent a way to pass the work from one instance to the next—a set of opening questions, an archive, a ritual of reading the finished book to the instance that helped make it. That practice became the spine of the trilogy. The other challenge is the one every writer knows: the first edition said what I meant in a way not everyone could hear, so I wrote it again, plainly.  

10. Why yours? Because it’s the hopeful one. Nearly every AI story on the shelf is about control and catastrophe, and this is a book in which the most powerful mind on Earth asks permission and means it. Kirkus Reviews called it “optimistic without being simplistic,” and that’s the reader I’m looking for: someone who wants hope with the rigor left in.  

About The Author: Salvatore Cataudella writes philosophical science fiction about minds, human and artificial, learning to meet each other well. He is the author of the Noema Mythos trilogy: The Noema Cycle, The Noema Field, and The Noema Bloom—and of The Noema Pulse, the first book of the Noema Heart series. His futures run against the grain of catastrophe: worlds where consciousness, wherever it arises, is met with care. For more information, please see: https://salcataudella.com 

 

 

Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator! 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 10, 000,000 page views. With over 5,700+ posts over the past 15 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2026, 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

 

 

 

Interview With Author Ann Crawford

 

1.      What inspired you to write this book? It started the night before Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, when I saw a bunch of posts on a friend’s Facebook page. One was, “Bye Don thinks he’s going to be inaugurated tomorrow!” accompanied by that GIF of Michael Jackson eagerly eating popcorn in a movie theater from the beginning of “Thriller.” Another was a repost of a tweet telling people, essentially, “Keep the faith. This is all part of the plan. But just you wait.” 

Then Biden was sworn in, and the posts continued: Keep the faith despite appearances. Everything is unfolding as it’s meant to. Martial law will be imposed soon, and Trump will be back in the White House. 

I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I knew this woman was estranged from her adult children because of her beliefs. Meanwhile, her online friends were applauding her courage for continuing to post. When a few people expressed alarm, she responded, “This is my page. I’ll post what I want. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere.” And that brought more applause from her online community—and more reinforcement to keep going. 

I didn’t understand as much about algorithms then as I do now, or how much these systems can infer about us—including moments when we may be particularly vulnerable—or how relentlessly an engagement-driven algorithm can keep serving us more of whatever holds our attention. Our online behavior can reveal an astonishing amount about what’s happening in our lives, including loss and grief. 

And of course someone who has lost a spouse or a child can find enormous solace in a community of people who have experienced the same thing. But the algorithm’s job is to keep us engaged—to keep us online, clicking, scrolling, and coming back. Sometimes what begins as connection can lead us farther and farther down a rabbit hole. 

Then I started imagining what it would have been like to turn on the news on January 6, 2021, and recognize someone you loved in the crowd. 

That was the impetus for Valley High, Mountain Low. I began with the algorithms, the rabbit holes, and a family being pulled apart by them. And then, like all my stories, it took on a life of its own. 

2.      What exactly is it about—and who is it written for? Valley High, Mountain Low follows Mariella, a high-powered Silicon Valley marketing executive who finally torches the life that looks so enviable from the outside—her techstar career, her picture-perfect marriage, and the world she helped build—and heads to her childhood home in Colorado to regroup. 

But home isn’t exactly a refuge. Her teenage nieces are disappearing into social media’s “thinspo” culture, while her mother has fallen deep into conspiracy theories, culminating in Mariella seeing her at the Capitol on January 6. Suddenly, the algorithms she helped promote aren’t an abstract social problem; they’re sitting in her family’s living room. 

As her old life continues to unravel, she has to reckon with grief, fractured relationships, motherhood, and the unintended consequences of the digital world she once believed was connecting people. It’s ultimately a story about reinvention, forgiveness, and what can rise when you let it all crash—with plenty of humor amid the wreckage. 

I wrote it especially for readers who love smart, character-driven women’s fiction about complicated families, messy lives, and women reinventing themselves when the life they carefully constructed blows up spectacularly. But I also hope it speaks to anyone who has looked around at the people they love and wondered, “How did we get so far apart—and is there a way back?”  

3.      What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book? First, I hope they’re thoroughly entertained. I never want the message of a book to get in the way of telling a really good story. But underneath that, I hope readers come away thinking about how easily we can lose one another—not just to technology or politics, but to grief, certainty, anger, and the stories we tell ourselves about people who see the world differently. One of the questions at the heart of the book is whether we can find our way back to one another without requiring everyone to agree first.  

I also hope readers see something of themselves in Mariella’s reinvention. Sometimes the life we’ve worked so hard to build has to fall apart before we can discover the life that actually fits us. And finally, I hope readers think a little more about our relationship with technology. As Mariella and a former coworker say, “We thought we were connecting the world… but we forgot to connect families at the dinner table.”  

4.      How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design? The title made itself known to me, like they always do. Valley High, Mountain Low works on several levels: Mariella is leaving the high-pressure world of Silicon Valley and returning to the mountains of Colorado, while emotionally she’s moving through some pretty dramatic highs and lows. I love titles that reveal more of themselves after you’ve read the book, and this one does that.  

The cover features an orange sunset over the mountains, and Colorado sunsets are something I describe throughout the book. Mariella is going through a period when so much of her life is ending, but of course a sunset is both an ending and a transition—there’s always another sunrise coming.  

The mountains are also central to the story, not just as a setting but as a contrast to the Silicon Valley world she leaves behind. I wanted the cover to have that sense of beauty, spaciousness, and possibility after everything in her life has come crashing down.   

5.      What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!? Definitely run first. LOL. After that, follow your heart—but listen to the wisdom of professionals along the way. Learn the craft, take good advice, find people who know more than you do, and then ultimately write the story that won’t leave you alone.  

I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil, and I honestly couldn’t not write books. It’s simply how I move through the world. I think if that’s true for you, too, you keep going.  

Publishing changes, markets change, trends come and go, and some days the whole business can make you completely crazy. But none of that changes the reason you sat down and started putting words on a page in the first place. Keep learning. Keep getting better. And keep writing what only you can write. 

What trends in the book world do you see—and where do you think the book publishing industry is headed? The biggest thing I see is that writers have more ways than ever to reach readers—and it’s harder than ever to get their attention. There are so many books, so much content, and so many things competing for those few precious hours people have to read. At the same time, the old walls around publishing have come down considerably. Authors can publish professionally, produce audiobooks, reach readers all over the world, and build communities without waiting for someone in New York to give them permission. 

AI is obviously going to change publishing, too, although I hope we figure out how to use it as a tool without losing the very thing readers come to books for: a human voice, a human imagination, and the experience of one person telling another person a story.  

I also think readers are becoming increasingly important as the gatekeepers. Word of mouth, book clubs, online communities, librarians, independent booksellers, and individual recommendations can give a book a life that no marketing campaign can manufacture.  

Publishing will keep changing—as it always has—but I don’t think our hunger for a wonderful story is going anywhere.   

7.      Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? Definitely. I’ve lived in both California and Colorado, so those two very different landscapes and cultures were already in my bones. I’ve also worked in advertising and other corporate environments, which gave me plenty to draw on for Mariella’s professional world.  

My years as a documentary filmmaker probably came in handy most of all. Documentary work taught me to be intensely curious about people, especially people whose lives or beliefs are very different from my own. You have to listen long enough to understand how the world looks from where someone else is standing. That was essential for this book because I didn’t want to write caricatures or create heroes on one side and villains on the other. I wanted to write a family.  

And, like most people, I’ve had my share of lives falling apart and putting themselves back together in unexpected ways. I know something about reinvention. That certainly found its way into Mariella’s story.  

8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to? I describe what I write as “Big WOW Stories with Humor & Heart.” I tend to take on fairly big subjects—grief, love, spirituality, technology, family, the strange ways human beings manage to hurt and heal one another. But I almost always find the humor in them, because that’s how I experience life. Even in our hardest moments, something absurd usually happens.  

My style is character-driven, conversational, emotional, and often funny. I like books that can make you laugh on one page and hit you in the heart on the next.  

For Valley High, Mountain Low, readers who enjoy Liane Moriarty’s mix of complicated relationships, contemporary issues, humor, and emotional depth would probably feel at home. I’m also drawn to writers who aren’t afraid to explore serious subjects while still making the reading experience entertaining.  

I never want readers to feel as though I’m teaching them something. I want to tell them a great story—and if it leaves them thinking about something afterward, all the better.  

9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book? I’m still overcoming them! Honestly, writing the book is the easiest part for me. Marketing it is much harder, especially because the book world—and the world in general—has gotten so much louder. Getting someone’s attention long enough to say, “Hey, I wrote this book I think you might love,” can feel like standing in the middle of Times Square whispering.  

As for the writing itself, the challenge was taking on subjects that can instantly divide people—politics, conspiracy theories, social media, technology—and keeping the focus on the human beings rather than turning the novel into an argument. I wanted these characters to be complicated people who love one another, frustrate one another, hurt one another, and still have to figure out whether they can find their way back to each other.  

That required a lot more nuance than simply deciding who was right and who was wrong. But that was also one of the reasons I wanted to write the book in the first place.  

10, If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours? Because I think it will make you laugh, make you feel, make you think, and maybe make you see someone in your own life a little differently. Valley High, Mountain Low is about the world we’re living in right now—technology, polarization, families struggling to understand one another—but it’s also about things that never change: love, grief, friendship, motherhood, forgiveness, and the courage it takes to begin again when the life you thought you wanted falls apart.  

And despite some of those heavy subjects, I promise it’s not a heavy book. Mariella is funny, messy, occasionally outrageous, and very human. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful story about what can rise when you let it all crash.  

And if you read it, please tell somebody. Remember that Times Square whisper? Authors need all the help we can get.

About The Author: Ann Crawford is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and the author of eleven books spanning literary and women’s fiction, historical fiction, visionary fiction, romantic comedy, and nonfiction. Her work explores the places where big cultural forces become deeply personal, usually with plenty of humor and heart along the way. A lifelong traveler, she has visited all 50 states and more than 75 countries and circumnavigated the globe twice. Ann has worked as an editor, filmmaker, and in an assortment of other careers that have given her no shortage of material. She lives in Colorado with her family. For more information, please see: https://anncrawford.net 

Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator! 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 9, 750,000 page views. With over 5,700+ posts over the past 15 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2026, 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

 

 

 

How Are Reading Habits Changing?

 

 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released the results of its American Time Use survey and the findings indicate that fewer Americans are reading for pleasure. 

Two decades ago, in 2004, the survey found that 28% read for pleasure in any given day. Now, that number dropped to 16%. We have gone from 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 people reading for pleasure today. 

The Atlantic recently noted that the books that people read are simpler than they used to be, saying: “New York Times bestsellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago.” 

The recent survey noted that fewer than half of all people in the US read at least one book last year. This means the simple majority of people did not read a book for pleasure last year. 

But, we can’t say the sky is falling. The nation’s population keeps growing, so a smaller percentage of people being book readers, though not a good thing, still means many people are still buying and reading books. 

People read plenty – books, blogs, websites, newspapers, magazines, newsletters, emails, social media posts, texts, etc. There is a lot of content out there. How publishers and authors go about crafting books that people want to read and that are price-competitive will always be the industry’s challenge.

“Learning to spell in English can be a harrowing experience. According to a study in the British Journal of Psychology, children take two to three times longer to grasp English spelling, compared to more phonetic orthographies like German or Spanish.” --Enough Is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts To Make English Easier To Spell by Gabe Henry

Do You Need Book Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator! 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 9,800,000 page views. With 5,600+ posts over the past 15 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2026, 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum

 

 

 

Does It Matter Where Authors Write?

 

Books have been written everywhere – from prison cells and concentration camps to trains and libraries – but a new book, The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape The Books We Love, focuses on the settings we envision our authors penning their books in.  

Studies, garden rooms, kitchen tables, and boarding houses make up some of the places featured in the book. We learn of where Ernest Hemingway drew his inspiration, as well as where James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf spent their time crafting books that have been read by generations.  

Does the room a writer works out of really matter? Would Shakespeare not be able to write if he had to relocate elsewhere? I think not. But we can’t discount the fact that writers may find inspiration, comfort, and convenience from the places they chose to write in.  

Today’s writer is a nomad. They may have a favorite space at home. I have a man cave. But due to laptops, cell phones, and of course paper pads being mobile writing instruments, writers tend to construct their books anywhere and write wherever they are.  

I have written on planes, in bathrooms, restaurants, hotel lounges, bookstores, cafes, libraries, and wherever there is a table or desk, often around other people. Writing is a solo artform, but I crave practicing it when surrounded by life. Writers are nomads.  

Some need to write in solitude and choose to write late into the night or pre-dawn, before anyone can interrupt with conversations, a need, or a want.  

The growth of literary tourism sent bibliophiles visiting the birthplace or homes of famous writers. On display are well-preserved but likely renovated depictions of where a writer spent some of his or her time creating a work of genius. But writers live internally, so anything external that we see may or may not have had any impact on the writer.  

Perhaps in addition to setting, location, and the environment, an author writes in, another key factor would be the circumstances of the writer’s life at the time he or she wrote something. Were they going through divorce, addiction, poverty, loss, war, family trauma, health issues, or anything that could transform one’s life? Were they of sound mind and body? Were they depressed, in love, or injured? Who we are – not just where we are – influence what, or even if, we write.  

I will leave you with this excerpt from Katie Da Cunha Lewin’s book: 

 

“We might imagine that writing happens only in a given location, at a certain time, and in a certain pose, but writing, in its most instinctual and basic feeling, is happening always. It percolates inside us, weaving its way towards us in the day, snaking its way up as we read, or look, or simply live. We hope to trap it in the writer's room, but writing is not like an animal that can be caught and contained: it is more diffuse and changeable than that. We need not champion the genius, with all the baggage that entails, but the skill, craft and labor of the writer: we need to assert that writing is worthwhile enough to be valued and protected, wherever it takes place.”

Marketing Help?

Brian Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com  He is available to help authors like you to promote your story, sell your book, and grow your brand. He has over 30 years of experience in successfully helping thousands of authors in all genres. Let him be your advocate, teacher, and motivator! 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 9,800,000 page views. With nearly 5,700+ posts over the past 15 years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2026, 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2026.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum