Interview With Author Rachel Callaghan

 

1. What really inspired you to write your book, to force you from taking an idea or experience and conveying it into a book? The tale began banally enough with personal seething at a difficult situation, buying a pre-Revolutionary house over the web during the pandemic and finding myself cheated. But I realized that would only have gotten me a sardonic start and would have petered out. Over a year, the increasingly difficult and fragmented state of our country caused the story to grow into a tale of love and family from many different aspects, and of people working together to build community. 

2. What is it about and whom do you believe us your targeted reader? Under Water is a dual time-period novel that takes place in an antique house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, during the recent covid pandemic and during the time of the Civil War. The stories of the two periods mirror each other. The couple in the present time have a faltering marriage full of unshared grief and untold secrets. When they move to a house across the country from their home in California, the body of a mixed-race baby is found on their property. The characters in the past are an Irish immigrant wife left to keep a farm running when her husband leaves to fight for the Union. She has only a Black fieldhand as help, a hardworking, honorable man who brings a disturbed but brilliant wife with him. It’s a tale of the timelessness of love, trauma and mental illness, and of mutual dependence. The readers would be those who love literary fiction, historical fiction, unusual love stories, tales exploring struggles with mental illness, true depictions of life in the past, rehabbing antique houses, and, most of all, stories of decency. Love, and morality winning the day.

 

3. What do you hope will be the everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book? What should remain with them long after putting it down? I hope that readers will learn a lot of history, including the anti-immigrant and race riots in the North—even in the Quaker city of Philadelphia before the Civil War—and what life was like for our ancestors as they built and improved our nation. But most of all, I’d like them to think of the characters as real people who struggled, with both honor and intelligence, to love and build good lives despite often horrendous circumstances, and so learn to have hope for their own times. Readers have reported this has been the case even after they’ve put the book down—and even stirred them to read it again.

4. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers? Find a story that matters to you and that you feel has meaning. And then don’t stop writing. Revise and revise and revise. Find great beta readers who aren’t afraid to tell you something sucks.

5. What trends in the book world do you see and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? I believe book publishing is in flux, in a very complex time. It’s said the reading public is shrinking and education is faltering many places, especially when it comes to teaching literature. Classics that have stood the judgment of time, great books that explore timeless issues between people, are discarded for current trends in culture. At the same time, publishing has never been easier and many books are coming out quickly and with little review or professional editing.

6. What great challenges did you have in writing your book? Challenges were certainly present in being older, being on medication that sapped my endurance, worrying about having the time left to finish and sell the book. But the biggest challenge was my perfectionist desire to write a great book.

7. If people can only buy one book this month, why should it be yours? It should be Under Water because, along with history, it illuminates the commonness of the human condition: wanting love, needing interdependency, suffering difficulties and trauma, learning to be open… but most of all, to find hope for getting through it all.  

About The Author: Rachel Callaghan, novelist, award-winning essayist, physician, author of Under Water and Grab the Groom, former editor of In Posse on WebDelSol, and recovered cancer patient, learned a thing or two about trauma and the damage it causes. Please see: rachelsfiction.com  

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About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over four million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen 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 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

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).

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, 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