Interview With Author Bob Rich On Grief & Bereavemen

 

1. What inspired you to write this book?

Six of my 20 books are designed to reduce suffering. Based on my decades-long counseling psychology practice, they are user guides on how to deal with monsters like depression, anxiety, anger issues, the impact of cancer. By the way, two other books are practical self-help: how to build your house with your own hot little hands, and how to proceed from fumbler to fixer in woodcraft. My 18th book was From Depression to Contentment: A self-therapy guide, followed by its companion volume of stories and essays, Lifting the Gloom: Antidepressant writings. Dealing with grief was the next logical step but I struck a difficulty and put it away in favor of writing fiction, which is the chocolate icing on the cake of life. Then my darling daughter came down with cancer. You can read my tribute to her here: http://grief.lhpress.com. I know several marvelous people who had beaten cancer, so hoped for the best, but also started advance grieving. To remind myself of how I had been of service to hundreds of clients who had suffered major losses, I got my part-completed book out and rewrote it. Doing so was in fact part of the work. Nothing like the fun of writing while grieving.

 

2. What exactly is it about?

The focus is on dealing with major losses in your life, but all the ways of behaving and thinking (“techniques”) are research-validated tools of psychotherapy and positive psychology. Their combined impact provides what you need to cope with interpersonal problems, moods you’d rather do without such as depression, the psychological impacts of ill health or disability. This is why one major set of recommendations is the “seven magic bullets,” which are measures to boost and maintain resilience. I described them in detail in From Depression to Contentment and have made this chapter publicly available at http://bobswriting.com/psych/firstaid.html

 

3. Who is it written for?

I think the best answer is by listing those people who will NOT benefit from it.

First, some people are empathy-blind. For them, other people are either tools or obstacles. Since they cannot feel the joy of love, they are spared the pain of grief. When they experience major losses, they will react with disappointment. This will result in anger, blaming everyone but themselves, vengeance, sulking—but not grief. I am not mentioning any names, but I’m sure you know several public figures just like that. Second are people on the opposite end, who fall into a deep hole of grief and pull it after themselves. They cannot think, cannot do anything, and are in serious risk of suicide, accidents and disease. No way can they read a book about anything much, particularly grief. Typically, they climb out thanks to loving help. That helper needs to read my book. Finally, some amazing people already practice all the tools I recommend. They do so intuitively, automatically, and in all circumstances. This includes several of my teachers. But for most of us, bereavement is a given when someone we love dies. The moneybags of our world avoid taxes, but no one avoids death—anything with a start will have an end. Our universe will die eventually, although you and I will be very old by then. As I said, the way to handle other major losses is basically the same. And our everyday world is a horror show. I need to use my techniques every day in response to the news.

 

4. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

First, I do my best to make anything I write entertaining. This applies even to an email, and, believe it or not, occasionally even to a shopping list. Yesterday’s included cow juice and chicken fruit. This book is full of interesting real-life stories, with my clients’ identities hidden. My story is in there, too, but I have been unable to hide my identity, sorry.

 

Second, although it is a small book, only 102 pages, it is chock-full of ways you can fill your life with inner peace whether you are currently grieving or not. This is not my wisdom, but my application of the wisdom of many years of research into psychotherapy and positive psychology, and the wisdom of ages as expressed in all the great philosophies and religions.

 

Third, many reviewers have already told me they found it inspiring and motivating.

 

Fourth, the entire concept is based on one of those positive psychology tools. My words for it are, “The more you give, the more you get, and the more you give, the more you grow.”

A recent Guardian article berated self-help books in general as being about “me me me.” https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/09/look-out-for-number-one-selfish-self-help-books-are-booming-but-will-they-improve-your-life

 

In contrast, my book will guide you to healing through generosity. I give several examples in the book, and I am also a case study. Part of my healing from my daughter’s death is to reduce the suffering of as many people as possible. So, we have a win-win situation. You can reduce my suffering by accepting my help in reducing your suffering.

 

5. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

The working title was “If you have lost a loved one,” but as I trawled through my case notes, I realized two things. First, you can be grieving while cheering. The title of one of my chapters is “I Hated Him but Now I Miss Him,” built around a client with only the name changed. The guy had died in the ambulance after a drunken fight—and months later the lady was still struggling with the very real hole in her life this left. Hey, there was the title!

 

Second, grief is a far wider concept than bereavement. It is the emotional response to any loss. The function of a subtitle is to hook search terms, so putting both in hopefully pulls more interest. The cover was a collaboration between my brilliant publisher, Victor Volkman, and me. I wanted a cool color suggesting peace, and progress from darkness to light. We got the full moon above still night sea after extended email ping-pong.

 

6. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

Brian, you were kind enough to interview me a few years ago, after the republication of my science fiction novel, Sleeper, Awake. I can’t do better than to slightly adapt what I had there:

I have already mentioned the seven magic bullets. One of them is creativity. So, go on, writing in our crazy world can keep you sane.

 

The other side is the Buddhist tool of nonattachment. While striving, doing our best, we can calmly accept any outcome. So, when you have received the fifty-second rejection, or you have sold a total of fifteen copies of a self-published book, or the reviewers are unkind, you have the choice of calm acceptance. (One of my chapters is “Mindfulness-based grief relief,” and sets out how.) My analogy is: A potato grows deep in the forest. It sets flower, but the flower bears no seed. All summer the flower is there, but no one sees it, not even a bird. Comes the autumn, and the flower dies. It was still beautiful. It still existed, and had a right to that existence. So, your book could be that potato flower.

 

7. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading?

Way back in 1999, I attended a book industry conference. A speaker from Penguin explained that they received 1000 submissions for every book they had the budget to publish. Since then, self-publishing has become acceptable, and the number of books is wearing a mushroom-shaped cloud. At the same time, people are more likely to want to listen to a book than to read it. I don’t know why. In the distant past when I was an academic, I had to learn speed-reading to keep up with all the work. So, I can read four times at the rate you can talk. But looking at trends, audiobooks are the go. And AI, AI, AI! Those computer programs should be called regurgitation devices, at least for the time being. They need to steal everything written by everybody in order to do so.

My answer is to write in a way no stupid machine is able to copy.

 

8. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book?

Approximately everything, give or take a little. Every experience is a flower, and we gather nectar from each. Yes, even when misfortune squashes you under its bum, you are still experiencing a potential growing event. For example, while my mother was squeezing me out, a shot-down airplane smashed into the hospital and wrecked the top stories. She got a nurse to sew her up—anesthetics and analgesics were for the wounded—then walked through two-ft-deep snow for three hours to carry me home. This start to life was somewhat traumatizing. In 2007, I got a colleague to lead me though “age regression hypnosis.” That is, adult-you goes back in imagination and takes the pain out of the memories, even those you hadn’t remembered until then. But then, while I was in trance, she said, “Go back to where you need to go,” and I was in a female body, in the terrible heat of the Australian Outback, and... We recovered fragments of five of my past lives, and I wrote it up as if it was fiction. This is Ascending Spiral.

And what I recovered has made perfect sense of my life, including why, before birth, I requested to be a war baby. And I am a humanitarian activist precisely because I was a war baby. Looking at my adult life, all my various careers have provided nectar for making this book to bloom.

 

9. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?

Different. There are eight billion humans out of step with me. I can’t help it, I do everything differently, particularly following directions and instructions. I write about serious topics with humor. One of my beta readers has said about my writing, “Bob’s novels are full of hidden instructions on how to heal from psychological problems, and his self-help books are full of stories.” ChatGPT may steal my ideas, but I am confident my twists of humor will flummox it. And you know what? Everything I write, even silly little poems and stories, express my value system, which is to transform an insane global culture based on greed and hate into a sane one ruled by compassion and cooperation. So, I’ll cheer if my writing influences AI.

 

10. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

I probably would not have excavated it from a dusty folder within my computer if my daughter had not developed inoperable cancer. The book is all very nice—but I’d much rather have my daughter. But before that, the book went into its hiding place because I’d struck a difficulty, which struck me back, right in the nose. I always look for a win-win situation. While I was still providing therapy, I had three copies of a particular book on grief and lent one to a client who needed it. When I wanted to reference it for my book, all three copies had run away. I tracked down one of those ex-clients. She’d lent it to someone else and never got it back...So, I bought an e-copy and wrote a large chunk of my book and sent it off to the author of the other one. I expected friendly cooperation and an endorsement of my brilliant writing. What I got was threat of legal action. When I was rewriting to include my personal journey through bereavement, I replaced every one of this person’s words, with stories of my clients illustrating her points.

 

11. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

It is either a lifesaver or an insurance policy. Even if your current life is heaven, all things pass. You might as well spend a pleasant hour or two learning how to cope with difficulties when they arise. They will. What’s more, the techniques for handling grief also work for the difficulties of everyday life. And if you don’t have any, I suspect you live on another planet.

Reviewers, including other therapists, have said this book is a keeper, one you will want to re-read from time to time.

 

 

About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over 5,250,000 page views. With 5,400+ posts over the past 14 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 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, 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