1. What inspired you to write this book? The short answer is that I heard Simon and Garfunkel’s
song, The Sound of Silence (for maybe the thousandth time), and for some
reason the opening lines—Hello darkness my old friend/I’ve come to talk with
you again—hit me differently this time. The image of speaking to “darkness”
somehow transformed, for me, into speaking to something dark within ourselves.
2. What exactly is it about — and who is it written for? A Stranger
in Every House is about people
seeking safety and anonymity in a small town, coping with events that force
them to confront their personal traumas in unexpected ways and coming to the
terrifying realization that the past is never as far away as they hoped, and
that the truest trespasser is the one they carry inside.
3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book? First, I’m hoping readers get an entertaining and
thought-provoking read. Second, the story portrays how quick we are to judge
others’ trauma. Finally, I hope it can provide a stimulus for book club readers
to debate the ways in which people come to terms with guilt and how we seek
redemption.
4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design? In The
Stranger, by Albert Camus, a man
is judged and condemned for a murder, not based on the evidence but rather on
his comportment at his mother’s funeral. A Stranger In Every House
has a parallel structure running through the middle third of the story. As
villager after villager is questioned about remains discovered on someone’s
property, their suspected involvement seems to rise in proportion to how they
behaved with respect to their own traumatic past. As such, A Stranger pays homage to The
Stranger, but is also a nod to
the demons people carry within. The cover design is intended to give a gloomy
look at several houses on a street on a cloudy night, a kind of spooky
Halloween look.
5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers –
other than run!? I always tell people
that writing a novel is like running a marathon—take pride in just completing
it. Just as with running, the improvement comes with repeated races and the
accumulated learning that takes place. In running you learn about a race day strategy,
planning, training, preparing, and executing on race day. Each writing project
teaches those same lessons: plot, pacing, dialogue, etc. Also, learn to take
criticism. Reading is subjective; don’t take the feedback personally.
6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think
the book publishing industry is heading?
I worry about what science is finding regarding social media shortening our
attention spans and a declining interest in reading overall. I do think the
broadening of publishing opportunities (self, hybrid, traditional) allows for
the discovery of talent that otherwise might have been missed by overwhelmed
literary agents and publishers.
7. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in
handy when writing this book? I’ve spent
about 35 years as a clinical psychologist. I believe that experience has
influenced my writing, both consciously and unconsciously, helping me to
understand and, hopefully, portray how unpredictable, irrational, illogical and
absurd the human condition is.
8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books
is your writing similar to? My writing
tends toward psychological realism with a restrained, watchful narrative voice,
more interested in what characters don’t say than what they do. I'm drawn to
moral ambiguity over clear villains and victims, and to the idea that judgment
often falls on comportment rather than fact, which is where Camus’s The Stranger left its mark on me directly. Beyond Camus, I'd place my influences
in the broader existentialist and absurdist tradition, Kafka's sense that the
world can turn on us without ever fully explaining itself, and Cortázar's
comfort with ambiguity and the surreal edges of ordinary life. My clinical
background probably shows up most in how I handle interiority: I'm less
interested in plot twists than in the slow psychological logic of how a person
arrives at a devastating choice.
9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book? The challenges for this book continue to be the
challenges in any manuscript I set out to write: how do you keep people
entertained through a full-length story? How to create characters that are
realistic and then track their experiences and habits throughout so they are
consistent. Also, how do I get myself, as author, to disappear in the
storytelling in order for the reader to live the experience rather than
listening to a story. The challenge is less the first draft than the editing
afterwards.
10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should
it be yours? It should be mine because
it’s a story that will resonate with anyone who’s ever been haunted by regret
or self-recrimination, which is nearly everyone, and who understands how much
we need connection to face it.
About
The Author: Richard Carr, Psy.D., is a
clinical psychologist whose fiction draws on decades of listening to and
exploring the inner lives of others. Early in his career he published research
on anxiety and stress-related disorders before turning fully to clinical practice.
He later spent more than a decade with the Department of Veterans Affairs,
working with veterans coping with trauma, depression, and the lingering effects
of combat. In more recent years he has worked in rehabilitation and skilled
nursing settings, supporting patients and families facing serious illness and
end-of-life decisions. These experiences inform his literary fiction, which
often examines moral conflict, identity, and the quiet psychological tensions
that shape ordinary lives. Carr lives with his wife in Huntington, on Long
Island.
Marketing Help?
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Feinblum can be reached at brianfeinblum@gmail.com He is available to help authors like you to promote
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About Brian Feinblum
This award-winning blog has generated over
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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
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