1. What inspired you to write this book?
The honest answer
is my own life. For years, I lived out patterns I couldn’t see. I mistook them
for normal life while quietly wondering why I kept arriving at the same place,
no matter how hard I tried to go somewhere different. I wasn’t obviously failing.
I was spending everything I had just to stay functional, which left nothing for
actually moving. Getting out was slow, uncomfortable, and often humiliating. It
was also absolutely worth it.
The timing came
from somewhere I didn’t expect. As AI began doing more of the academic editing
that had been my livelihood, my caseload shrank, and my income followed. I
could have built a careful case for why that was unfair. Instead, I used the
open space on my calendar to write the book I’d dreamed about for years.
Resisting the change looked too much like the chapters I was about to write. I
decided to be curious about what’s coming rather than correct about what I’ve
lost.
2. What exactly is it about and whom is it written
for?
Arriving Nowhere is a self-help book that refuses
to help. Each of its 20 chapters follows a character in a real American city,
from Duluth to Biloxi to San Diego, who has quietly mastered a self-defeating
pattern. Dottie in South Bend keeps an archive of every slight anyone has
handed her, going back to Christmas 1989. Gael in Destin ends friendships by
answering texts a little more slowly each time, until he simply stops. A
cheerful narrator champions every one of these patterns with total conviction.
Meanwhile, the published research sits right there in each chapter, quietly
arguing back. The reader lives in the gap between the two.
It’s written for
anyone who has read the self-help books, knows exactly what to do, and still
hasn’t done it. In other words, it’s written for most of us. It’s also a book
worth sharing. One husband and wife told me they read each chapter together and
then talk about it. That’s exactly how I hope people read it.
3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading
your book?
First, I hope they
laugh, because laughing is where the help starts. For a long time, I had no
idea you could laugh at your own humanness while working on becoming a
healthier, whole person. I want readers to discover that much sooner than I
did.
Second, I hope
they walk away believing that being human is good. That took me years to learn.
Human is messy. Human makes mistakes. Human is frail and unsure. Human is also
joyful, delightful, and real. Once you can hold all of that at once, you can
look at your own patterns without the shame that usually slams the door.
Finally, I hope
they do something with what they see. I don’t want them to act because a book
told them to. This one never will. I want them to act because they finally want
to. My parting advice is the line I’d put on a bumper sticker: Arrive
nowhere. Enjoy the trip.
4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover
design?
The title was
hiding in the last chapter. That chapter is called “The Joy of Arriving Nowhere.” When I wrote it, I
thought, “Hey, this is a great title for the whole book.” It captures the
feeling of staying put, of being stuck, that so many of us experience in
different ways. The subtitle, A Complete
Guide to Staying Exactly Where You Are, finishes the joke.
That chapter
belongs to Victoria, a cartographer in Waterloo, Iowa, who makes extraordinary
maps of places she never goes. In a way, she’s the whole book in one person.
For the cover, I
worked with Ryan Mulford, a design artist I found on Reedsy, and he nailed the
concept right out of the gate. The centerpiece is an infinity loop, and I’ve
gotten so many comments about it. You can’t help but stare at it. It’s a path
that goes on forever and never arrives anywhere, which is exactly what the book
is about.
5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than
run!?
Don’t run. Plan.
When writing this book, I was light on planning and heavy on writing and
rewriting, so the chapters ended up overlapping in ways I didn’t see until late
in the process. Now, I build the whole map before I write a single chapter:
patterns first, then settings, then characters, so every chapter has its own
job before I draft a word. It’s far less glamorous than writing, and it saves
an enormous amount of time.
Second, ask for an
honest cold read before you publish, and then actually want the bad news. Near
the finish line, I asked for a direct critique of the whole manuscript, with no
encouragement and no softening. It flagged problems I had read right past, including
timeline slips between chapters that no amount of rereading had caught.
6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and
where do you think the book publishing industry is heading?
The biggest trend
is obvious: AI. I wrote this book with Anthropic’s Claude as my research
assistant and editorial collaborator, so I’ve seen up close what it can do and
where it still needs a human hand. Writers will have AI for the rest of their
careers, and pretending otherwise won’t change that. What I believe will change
is what readers value. When words are easy to produce, a distinctive human
voice becomes worth more, not less.
The other shift
I’ve lived firsthand is how far an independent author can go. I published Arriving Nowhere under my own imprint,
worked with a professional designer, and was featured in the October 1 issue of
Kirkus Reviews. IngramSpark selected
the book for its Title Discovery Program. Reedsy Discovery gave me the
chance to earn rigorous reviews from industry pros. The gatekeepers haven’t
disappeared, but there are more doors, and the authors who thrive will treat
publishing as both a craft and a business.
7. Were there experiences in your personal life or
career that came in handy when writing this book?
Almost all of
them. Professionally, my editing work put me inside thousands of studies on why
people do the things they do. Every chapter of the book draws on that research,
so that background was essential.
My doctoral work
in transformative learning shaped the book’s design. Transformative learning
theory holds that real change usually starts with a shake-up, a moment when
your experience stops matching what you believed. Researchers call it “a
disorienting dilemma.” I built the book to create one, character by character
and city by city.
However, the most
useful experience was personal. I’ve lived inside many of these chapters. I’ve
promoted my feelings to facts, treated my body’s alarms as background noise,
and needed to be needed to feel complete. I also spent years trying to help
other people see their patterns and learned that lecturing only makes them dig
in. So, I wrote a book that gets out of the way and lets the pattern run.
8. How would you describe your writing style? Which
writers or books is your writing similar to?
I’d call it satire
with a straight face. The narrator never once winks at the reader. The humor
comes from that deadpan sincerity. I wrote the characters with real affection.
They aren’t train wrecks. They’re accomplished, good people who found one room of
the house they love and stopped walking into the rest.
I also play with
the language. After years of academic editing, I know every rule of grammar and
style, and I broke plenty of them on purpose to keep a heavy subject light.
Knowing the rules is what lets you break them without sounding careless.
As for
comparisons, I’d point readers toward Mark Manson and Oliver Burkeman. Both
bring humor and a healthy skepticism to the self-improvement shelf. And if you
finished Atomic Habits and decided
your habits were fine, Arriving Nowhere
was written for you.
9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of
this book?
The hardest
challenge was personal. I didn’t just study these patterns. I practiced them,
and I even refined them. Every character in the book is a composite drawn from
many lives, including mine. Writing honestly meant putting pieces of my own
story on the page and being willing to laugh at them first.
The second
challenge was keeping the narrator in character for all 20 chapters. That voice
has to believe every word, with no hint that the joke is a joke. The moment the
narrator lets you off the hook, the book stops working. I went back through the
manuscript more than once, hunting for any line where the voice slipped.
The third was
keeping my own voice while working with AI. It will sometimes bluff its way
through a request, and it can fuss over small things while missing what matters
most. My career evaluating research and writing helped me catch those moments
and keep the book sounding like me.
10. If people can buy or read one book this week or
month, why should it be yours?
Because it won’t
give you homework. You’ve already read the lists. This book takes a different
route. It makes you laugh at 20 people who are absolutely sure they’re fine,
until you notice that one of them looks a lot like you. Once you see it, you
can’t unsee it.
It’s also backed
by more than jokes. Every chapter brings in published research on what the
pattern actually costs, with endnotes so you can check it yourself. Kirkus Reviews gave it a “Get It”
verdict and called it “a thoughtful and often funny take on self-improvement
ideas that looks at the many tales we tell ourselves.” Reedsy Discovery
named it a “Must Read” and called it “a witty, insightful twist on self-help
that proves sometimes the best way to inspire change is to stop demanding it.”
And it fits real
life. You can read one chapter at a time, and the chapters are even better read
with someone you love and talked about afterward. If you’re going to stay
exactly where you are this month anyway, you might as well have a guide.
About
The Author: Doug Lebsack, EdD, holds a doctorate in
educational leadership and has spent more than a decade inside the research on
adult learning, psychology, and behavioral change, which is a formal way of
saying he has read and edited an alarming number of studies about why people do
the things they do and then keep doing them. His work has spanned six
continents, which leaves Antarctica as unfinished business. As a
first-generation college, master’s, and doctoral graduate, his focus has been
learning to help people notice the patterns they cannot quite see in
themselves, which turned out to be unusually good training for writing a book
that declines, on principle, to help anyone. Arriving Nowhere earned a
“Get It” verdict from Kirkus Reviews and a “Must Read” designation
from Reedsy Discovery. He lives in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, with his
wife, Robin, and two coworkers, Cooper and Lily, who negotiated extra walks in
the woods and a renewable “chew bone” allowance into their contract before
agreeing to lie beside his desk for the duration of the writing. For more info,
please see: www.unchartedpublishing.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
11 million 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
.jfif)
