 I am making a difference in the world by helping women become empowered in their careers and lead with SOUL POWER to have the best lives for Self, Family, Finances and their Future, now through my book, SOUL CODE, and everything that’s grown from it. What is a “soul value,” and what happens when the life we’ve built conflicts with one? A soul value is a non-negotiable truth about what your soul requires in order to feel alive. Not what you were taught to value. Not what looks good on a vision board. What your soul actually needs. Freedom. Creative expression. Deep connection. Contribution that matters. When the life you have built - the job, the relationship, the daily schedule - conflicts with a soul value, your body knows it before your mind admits it. It shows up as chronic exhaustion that sleep does not fix. As the Sunday night dread that no promotion has ever cured. As the hollow feeling of hitting a goal you worked years for and feeling nothing. The conflict between your soul values and your constructed life is not a character flaw. It is a compass. It is your soul telling you that the architecture of your life needs to change. You ask readers to write a Soul Truth Letter. What might someone finally be able to say on that page? She might finally say that she is tired. Not just physically tired but tired of pretending that she is fine with less than she deserves. She might say that she knew, even at 28, that she was meant for something bigger and she spent the next twenty years talking herself out of it. She might say that she resents the version of herself that kept quiet in the room, that kept saying yes when every cell in her body was screaming no. She might say that she loves her family and she has also disappeared inside the role of caretaker and she does not know where she went. She might say that the thing she is most afraid of is not failure but being seen - truly seen - and still not being chosen. That letter is sacred ground. Whatever comes out of it is the truth that has been waiting for permission. Why is nervous system regulation part of discovering who we are? Because you cannot hear a whisper in a thunderstorm. When the nervous system is dysregulated - flooded with cortisol, locked in fight-or-flight, operating from chronic stress - the soul's signal cannot get through. The primitive brain takes over and it has one job, which is to keep you safe, which means it will always choose the familiar over the true. Nervous system regulation is not a wellness trend. It is a prerequisite for self-knowledge. When you calm the storm, when you reduce the excitability of the nervous system through breathwork, meditation, movement, or stillness, you create the internal conditions in which your soul can actually speak and you can actually hear it. Every practice in Soul Code is designed to do exactly that - to quiet the noise long enough for the truth to surface. What does “Living with LOVErage” mean in everyday life? Could you give us an example? LOVErage is what happens when love becomes your strategic advantage. Most women have been taught that love and power are opposites - that to be taken seriously you must be harder, more guarded, more strategic. LOVErage says the opposite is true. When you operate from a place of genuine care, for yourself, for the people you lead, for the work you do, you become magnetic in a way that no performance could ever manufacture. A real-life example - a client of mine was in a meeting where her ideas were being talked over and dismissed. The old version of her would have gone quiet or gone home and fumed. The soul-powered version paused and said, genuinely and warmly, "I want to make sure we are not missing something important here. Can I have two minutes?" The room shifted. Not because she performed power. Because she led from love, and love has a frequency that people feel before they can explain it. If a reader works through the five milestones, what might change in the way they make a difficult decision? She will stop asking "what is the right answer" and start asking "what is the next true step." The five milestones progressively dismantle the noise - the conditioning, the fear, the performed identity - until what remains is a woman who trusts herself. A difficult decision at the beginning of this journey feels like standing in a dark hallway with no flashlight. After the milestones, she understands something profound - the clarity does not come before the decision. It comes through it. She learns to walk through the door even when she cannot see the other side, because she has developed enough internal authority to trust that her soul knows the corridor even when her mind does not. She stops polling everyone around her and starts listening to the one voice that has never lied to her. For someone opening Soul Code tonight, what’s one question you’d invite them to write in their journal first? Write this - "What have I been pretending not to know?" Not what am I afraid of. Not what do I want. Those questions live on the surface. This one goes all the way down. Because every woman who opens this book already knows something she has been carefully, skillfully avoiding. She knows the job is slowly taking something from her that she may not get back. She knows the relationship or the role or the pace is not sustainable. She knows there is a version of herself she has never fully let out. The Soul Code begins the moment she stops pretending she does not know and starts getting honest with herself on the page. That first journal entry is the door. Everything in this book is what happens after she walks through it.
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 ICONIC Leadership is a book, leadership framework and global initiative focused on developing trusted leaders for the AI economy. Through the ICONIC Leadership Arc, Five Governing Laws, 20 leadership journeys, assessments, learning experiences and global partnerships, the initiative aims to equip 10,000 leaders to navigate disruption, build trust, create opportunity and generate lasting impact. You argue that AI makes human leadership more important, not less. What is the one leadership skill you believe will become dramatically more valuable as AI becomes dramatically more capable? I do not think that argument is a hopeful guess. I think it is the entire plot of this decade, and I believe I already know which skill decides how the story ends. I think about a GPS a lot. It is extraordinary. It can find me the fastest route through a city it has never seen, recalculate in real time, and never once get tired or lost. But hand it a blank map and ask it to invent a destination that has never existed, and it just sits there, blinking, waiting for me to type in an address. That blank map is where I believe leadership now lives. AI can simulate ten thousand futures before my coffee gets cold. What it cannot do is stand at the edge of all those possibilities and decide which one is worth walking toward. It cannot ask who gains power and who quietly loses their voice. It cannot feel the weight of a future it did not choose to protect. Only I can do that. Only you can do that. I call this moral imagination, and I believe it is about to become the single most valuable skill on earth. Not because it is rare in some mystical sense, but because for the first time in my career, everything I used to get paid for, speed, recall, pattern matching, is being done by software at a small cost. Here is why I need you to hear this personally. Somewhere in your career, someone told you to be more decisive, more data driven, more certain. I am telling you that advice just expired. The machine will out-data you every time, and it will do it without flinching. Your job now, like mine, is to dream a better future out loud, then make it believable enough that other people help you build it. AI predicts. I believe you and I still get to author, and that is exactly why leadership becomes more important the smarter these systems get, not less. If AI can increasingly analyze information, recommend decisions, write strategies, and even execute tasks, where should a leader draw the line and say, "this decision must remain human"? I will grant you all of it. AI can analyze the information, recommend the decision, write the strategy, and execute the task, often better and faster than the team that used to do it. I am not interested in arguing that point. I am interested in what happens the moment a real life sits on the other side of that recommendation. I want you to imagine your mother is turned down for a medical treatment. Not by a doctor who looks her in the eye and explains the reasoning. By a system. It returns an answer in eleven milliseconds. When you ask why, nobody in the building can tell you, and nobody will take responsibility for it either. I do not call that intelligence. I call it abandonment wearing a lab coat. My test is simple, and I use it myself before every difficult call: if no human being is willing to look the affected person in the eye and explain the decision, that decision does not belong to a machine. Full stop. A job offer, a loan, a diagnosis, a prison sentence, a child's access to education, these are not optimization problems to me. They are moments where a human life bends, and I believe a human being must be standing there, accountable, when it bends. I want you to ask yourself honestly where your own organization has already crossed that line without anyone voting on it. That quiet outsourcing of responsibility is not efficiency in my book. It is the most dangerous trend in leadership today, and I do not hear enough people naming it out loud. I do not believe the real risk was ever AI becoming too powerful. I believe the real risk is you and me becoming too relieved to hand off the hard part. You've set a goal of developing 10,000 ICONIC Leaders across 100 cities. Why 10,000? What changes when you create a network of leaders rather than simply selling 10,000 copies of a leadership book? Because 10,000 books sitting on shelves cannot change the future. Ten thousand leaders acting together can. Imagine a leadership network across 100 cities. One leader inside a company redesign how AI affects employees. Another opens a pathway for overlooked founders. Another brings changes in public policy. Another protects a community from an algorithm no one questioned. Then they connect. Their knowledge begins to travel. Their relationships become infrastructure. Their individual influence becomes collective power. If every ICONIC Leader opens ten consequential doors, 10,000 leaders can activate opportunity for 100,000 people. If those people lift others, the ripple becomes exponential. We are not trying to build an audience around a book. We are building a human leadership network powerful enough to influence how the intelligent age is designed. There are thousands of leadership books. What did you and Dee Dee Walsh believe was missing from the conversation that made you say, "we need to create this now"? You are right, there are thousands of them, and I have read more of them than I probably should admit. Almost everyone was written for a world where humans still controlled the speed of change. I believe that world is gone, and most leadership advice has not noticed yet, like a GPS still routing you through a bridge that collapsed last spring. Dee Dee and I saw the collision coming from a mile away: exponential technology racing toward exhausted leaders, collapsing trust, and institutions that move at the speed of a committee meeting. We knew somebody was going to get hit, and we decided it would not be the leaders we could still reach in time. What I felt was missing was not another framework about quarterly goals. Every other book on that shelf assumes stability. I needed one built for a world that no longer waits for permission to change, one that combines values with velocity, imagination with accountability, and personal ambition with collective action. I am going to ask you the question underneath every AI headline you have scrolled past this year, the one I built this entire book to answer: as machines become more capable, what must you become? Not someday. Now, before the next headline makes this question urgent instead of interesting. One of the most interesting ideas in the book is "Open Access." Most leadership systems teach people how to accumulate influence. You are also asking leaders to use their influence to open doors for other people. Why is that a leadership responsibility? I named Open Access one of the six pillars of the ICONIC Arc on purpose, because I think you are right that almost every other leadership system quietly teaches accumulation. Get more authority. Build more relationships. Collect more access. Nobody says it out loud, but the scoreboard is always the same: how much do you personally hold by the end. I believe every leader eventually becomes one of two things instead: a gatekeeper or a gateway. I do not think there is a third option, and I have watched plenty of good people choose gatekeeper without ever noticing they made the choice. For most of my career, I watched influence get treated like something you hoard, the way people hoard square footage in a mansion nobody else gets invited into. But I do not believe a room that only you can enter is power. I think it is a very well decorated prison. So, I want you to picture the leader I try to be, remembered not for the rooms she was let into, but for the ones she propped open behind her. Who gets the introduction. Who receives the capital. Who gets trusted with the assignment that actually matters. Whose voice helps shape an algorithm before that algorithm shapes a million lives without ever asking permission. I believe talent is everywhere. It always has been. Opportunity is the thing that has been rationed, locked behind gates nobody built on purpose, but everybody still benefits from anyway. That is why Open Access is not a nice value to me. It is a responsibility, because accumulation without redistribution is just a slower, quieter form of the gatekeeping I am asking leaders to stop doing. AI may democratize access to information and technology, but it can also amplify existing inequities. What responsibility does a leader have to think about who benefits from the systems they are building and who may inadvertently be left behind? I think of AI as a locksmith standing at the biggest door in human history, and right now nobody has decided which keys it gets to cut. It could become the greatest democratizing force I have ever seen. A kid in a town with no gifted program gets a world class tutor. A five person company suddenly competes with capabilities only a multinational could once afford. A patient gets the benefit of a million other cases quietly learned before hers. Or it becomes the fastest inequality engine I believe humanity has ever assembled, quietly locking people out of jobs, credit, healthcare, and a fair shot, at a scale no human bureaucracy could ever manage on its own, and doing it so smoothly that nobody notices until the door has already been welded shut. Both futures run on the exact same technology. To me, the only variable is who is in the room when the keys get cut, and the word inadvertently is the part I want to challenge you on. Nothing about who gets left behind is really an accident. Every system reflects the assumptions of whoever built it, whether they meant it to or not. So if you are building the system, not just adopting one, I want you to ask more than what it can do. Ask who is in the room while it is being designed, who it was tested on, who benefits when it works, and who has any way to challenge it when it doesn't. If a system creates extraordinary wealth for a few while making everyone else weaker, I do not call that progress. I call that dependency, and I believe someday somebody will ask what you knew and when. The word "iconic" can suggest fame, power or status. Your definition seems very different. Can someone be an iconic leader without ever becoming well-known, wealthy or powerful? What actually makes a leader iconic? I hear that assumption constantly, and I understand why. The word has been borrowed by celebrity culture for so long that people forget it used to just mean something worth remembering. My definition has nothing to do with fame, wealth, or power, and I mean that literally. I want you to think about the one teacher, coach, or manager who changed the entire direction of your life. Chances are you cannot even find them on the internet. They never gave a keynote. Nobody is making a documentary about them. And yet, if you trace your own story backward far enough, I would bet you land on a moment they created for you, on purpose, when they did not have to. That is the whole difference to me, in one sentence. Fame is being remembered for what you achieved. ICONIC leadership is being remembered through what other people became because you showed up for them. So here is what actually makes a leader iconic to me: they leave behind more courage, more access, more agency, and more leaders than existed before they arrived. That is the entire definition. It has no line item for net worth, headcount, or follower count. I think about the manager who noticed the person everyone else's system overlooked, and the founder who built a bridge and then had the humility to let other people keep walking across it long after she moved on. People like that often disappear from the center of their own story on purpose, because I don't think the story was ever supposed to be about them. So here is the real test I hold myself to, and it has nothing to do with your title or your net worth. Will your name make it into a history book? Maybe, maybe not, and honestly I do not think it matters. The only question I ask is whether your leadership bent the direction of even one life that would have gone somewhere worse without you in it. You interviewed and studied 20 very different leaders. Was there a pattern among them that surprised you, something you did not expect to find when you began the project? I went in expecting twenty different roads to the same destination, twenty unique strategies for the same kind of success. That is not what I found, and it genuinely surprised me. Not one of these twenty people became remarkable because of their biggest win. Every single one of them became who they are in the exact moment their original plan fell apart. A rejection arrived. A career ended. An institution failed them. A relationship broke. The plan they had trusted no longer existed. That was the portal. They could retreat into fear, or they could imagine again. They chose to rebuild not only for themselves, but for others who would eventually encounter the same closed door. That surprised me. Their setbacks were not interruptions to their leadership stories. They were the source code. We often imagine iconic leaders standing confidently at the summit. The truth is more powerful: many became iconic in the dark, before anyone was watching, when they chose to turn personal pain into collective possibility. If you are in that dark room right now, I do not think this is a detour from your leadership story. Based on everyone I interviewed for this book, I believe it is the beginning of it. What leadership behavior that was rewarded 10 or 20 years ago do you believe could actually become a liability in the AI era? Being the smartest person in the room. For decades, leaders gained power by controlling knowledge and providing answers. But in the AI era, access to answers became nearly universal. The leader who still needs to know the most, speak first and control every decision will become the bottleneck. Worse, that leader may begin competing with the machine on the machine’s terms speed, memory and analysis. That is a contest humans will lose. The future belongs to leaders who orchestrate intelligence rather than perform it. They will bring together human judgment, machine capability and diverse lived experience. They will invite dissent and recognize signals no single expert can see. The leader of the past accumulated knowledge. The ICONIC Leader of the future activates collective intelligence and accountability. Imagine we are having this conversation again in 2036. AI has become exponentially more capable and the first 10,000 ICONIC Leaders are now influencing companies, governments and communities around the world. What would have to be different for you to say, "this worked"? Imagine 2036. AI is embedded in every company, classroom, hospital and government. Machines are extraordinarily capable. But people have not become invisible. Employees have greater agency because routine work no longer consumes their potential. Women and historically excluded founders own meaningful parts of the AI economy. Communities help govern the systems that affect them. Companies measure prosperity created, not simply labor eliminated. Leaders remain accountable for every consequential automated decision. Across 100 cities, the first 10,000 ICONIC Leaders have opened doors for millions more. Their names may not all be known, but their impact is visible in careers, companies, policies and communities that would not otherwise exist. If AI becomes exponentially more powerful and human beings become more imaginative, generous and capable together then we will know this worked.  Patricia Leavy, PhD is a novelist, sociologist, and arts advocate (formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Founding Director of Gender Studies and Chairperson of Sociology & Criminology at Stonehill College). She is widely considered the world's most visible proponent of arts-based research, which merges the arts and sciences. Patricia has published over 50 books, nonfiction and fiction, and her work has been translated into numerous languages. She has received over 100 book awards. She has also received career awards from the New England Sociological Association, the American Creativity Association, the American Educational Research Association, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the National Art Education Association. In 2016 Mogul, a global women’s empowerment network, named her an “Influencer.” In 2018, she was honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the State University of New York at New Paltz established the “Patricia Leavy Award for Art and Social Justice.” In 2024 the London Arts-Based Research Centre established "The Patricia Leavy Award for Arts-Based Research." In recent years, her passion has turned to penning romance novels. Emerson Blue has built a life around being seen, while Renn Walker has been forced into hiding. What drew you to explore a love story between two people on opposite ends of visibility? I’m both a sociologist and a romance novelist and I think that dual perspective shapes the stories I tell. In the age of social media just about everyone has a public image whether your famous or not—a curated image—and I’m fascinated by how that impacts our lives. I’ve always been interested in the gap between appearance and reality. That gap is heightened in a world ruled by Instagram images, TikTok reels, mass media stories, and the whims of “influencers.” But how do you get at the gap between appearance and reality and identity more broadly? I’m obsessed with romance and so a love story was entry point into the topic. By creating a love story between celebrities, I was able to show the reality of their lives and include media stories and public commentary in the form of social media posts. That allowed me to explore the gap between what people think is true and what actually is true. At the end of the day, relationships are always central to my novels, so I very much see this as a romance first and foremost. But it’s also about identity in today’s society. The romance between Emerson and Renn is both sweet and sexy and you can feel the closeness between these two characters despite their different lifestyles. Would you call this an “opposites attract” romance? The romance between Emerson and Renn really is the heart of the book. It’s authentic and deep. On the surface, they look like opposites. Emerson is a reality star, influencer, and basically the most famous person on the planet. She has used social media masterfully to create her persona. The world thinks she’s an open book, but in fact, she’s not. As a counterpoint, Renn is a fallen star who lives in seclusion and is so uninterested in social media he doesn’t even own a computer. The whole world has made assumptions about him despite his silence, but assumptions aren’t always right. On top of which, he’s revealed much of himself through his music; simple, straightforward country songs that resonate. So, on the surface, one is all about curation and the other has no artifice. Yet, they are both artists. Art matters to them. Beyond physical attraction, their love of art is what really connects them. So, while you could call this an “opposites attract” romance, the characters share more in common than what others may think. As a sociologist you’ve written nonfiction books about the power of the arts in research and society, used your platform to advocate for the arts, and this thread continues across your fiction catalog. What does Sugar Sand Land say about the arts? In Sugar Sand Land, Emerson and Renn meet at a party. Emerson is having a conversation about the arts—demonstrating her impressive knowledge—and Renn is instantly enchanted. So from the start, the arts are a part of their romance. Both Emerson and Renn identify as artists, but in very different ways. Renn is a country artist. His songs are straightforward and narrative driven. There is a purity to his art. Emerson envisions her entire life as a work of art. She’s a reality star, social media influencer, and brand partner. She carefully curates her image, and her image is her art. She also constructs public moments that the media and her fans capture in photographs producing iconic images. Again, this is all her art. Fame is her art. There are many scenes throughout the novel that include the arts in explicit ways. For example, there are scenes that occur in art galleries, night clubs, or concerts venues. There are also private scenes of Emerson and Renn creating art. Art is a topic of conversation throughout the book too, including in ways I don’t want to reveal for fear of spoiling something. I think the book celebrates all the ways in which the arts impact our lives. It simultaneously asks questions about what counts as art and who gets to decide. Emerson describes herself as a “living piece of art.” In a world driven by image and curation, where do you think the line exists between self-expression and self-construction? We are all in a constant state of becoming. Identity is not fixed. It’s something we create and recreate. It’s something we embody. It evolves. We are simultaneously expressing ourselves and constructing our identities. It’s symbiotic. The question is: Are we expressing ourselves in an authentic way? Are we constructing an identity that is true to who we are, aspirational for who we want to be, or something else? Maybe it’s a bit of all these things at once. Emerson considers her entire life a work of art. I love that. In some ways I wish everyone thought about their life as a work of art and embraced the endless creative process that helps us become who we are meant to be, but again, as a process, not a destination. For Emerson it’s much more specific because of her public persona, but really, we can all look at our lives as the greatest works of art we will ever create. Renn’s storyline touches on cancellation and exile. What complexities around public judgment and redemption did you most want readers to sit with? I believe the role of artists is to document, chronicle, and re-imagine. We pose questions and reflect aspects of culture back to people, sometimes twisting things from the real world to fit into our story world. How people respond to art is up to them. As a novelist, I create characters and stories. My goal is to prompt reflection and to raise questions, not to tell people how to answer them. I think most people would agree that American society has become deeply divisive. People feel like they are for something or against something. It’s all “either/or” instead of “both/and.” To me, that’s really limited, dangerous, and inherently problematic. Cancel culture is symptomatic of this larger problem. There are so many people against the death penalty because mistakes can happen, and we know that they do. Yet many of those same people are proponents of cancel culture. I don’t believe we should be able to publicly ruin someone’s career or life based on rumors or allegations alone. I believe in due process. I also believe that you can support the “Me Too Movement” and support women sharing their stories and simultaneously disagree with cancel culture. The fact that these things have become polarized is emblematic of the larger divisions we’re seeing and a lack of nuance. The false polarization of spirituality and science as if one can’t believe in both God and science, is another example. Celebrities are not the only people affected by cancel culture mentality. There are incidents of young people in middle school and high school committing suicide because of rumors spread about them, often with the help of the internet. When you’re young, reputation can feel so important. Having your reputation harmed can feel overwhelming. So while in the novel, I’m using Renn to address some of these issues, it’s not just about wealthy famous people. I think what Renn does to himself—essentially punishing himself by living in seclusion—illustrates something that happens to many people. We are often the hardest on ourselves and the only way we know how to withstand bullying and ridicule is to withdraw. Our world becomes smaller. We become smaller. Cancel culture raises interesting questions about the arts too. How much do we tie the art to the artist? How far do we take it? Do we start going back and investigating the private lives of all the artists who have work hanging in museums or authors who have their books in the library or playwrights who have shows on Broadway? And what are we looking for? Crimes? What if someone just wasn’t a good person? What does it mean to not be a good person? Where are the lines? Who decides? This kind of thinking is so dangerous for everyone. It’s like we’re doomed to repeat the Witch Burnings, but we use clicks and comments instead of torches. People burn just the same. We’re all covered in soot and ash. No one escapes. It’s all far more complicated than we often see playing out in public discourse. So those are some of the questions raised in the novel. Both characters are shaped by how the public perceives them. Do you think it’s possible to ever truly separate who we are from who the world believes us to be? The most important relationship we have is the one we have with ourselves. There’s no number of likes or followers that can make you feel good about yourself in any lasting way. That’s all temporary. Like any other high, it fades. You come down. It’s vitally important to have a sense of self that isn’t bound to the opinions of others. This is hard to do when the outside noise is loud. The trick is to develop a strong sense of self based on the things that matter in the long game of life—living with integrity, enacting your values, doing meaningful work, and having intimate relationships. Above all, it’s important to bridge the gap between who we are and who we want to be. The more we create an authentic sense of self that is based on things that matter, the less affected we are by the outside noise. Social media plays a powerful role in this novel. How does constant visibility change the way we experience intimacy and connection? It’s like the famous Shakespeare quote, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” But people forget the rest of it. The full quote is, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” In other words, we all perform our identity for others, whether that’s teachers, classmates, parents, employers, colleagues, or in the case of Emerson and Renn, the media. But we don’t just have one identity or one version of ourselves. We play many different roles. As a sociologist. I think of Erving Goffman who built on Shakespeare to suggest humans have a “front stage” and “backstage.” Basically, he differentiated the public stuff people see and the backstage, private stuff, like brushing your teeth or having an argument with your spouse. Social media is very much a part of “front stage.” It’s a public-facing, curated offering. An image. A narrative. Often a highlight reel. In short, a social media profile is a constructed version of ourselves. Human beings have always had a front and backstage. So in some ways, this isn’t new. Yet social media has taken identity curation to a different level. There’s a different kind of intentionality. And quite literally, we can apply different filters. We can airbrush in ways we can’t do in real life. On top of that, we often think we know people because they’re visible on social media. But we only know their social media profile. In this way, social media can create a false familiarity. I think it’s one of the reasons the relationship between Emerson and Renn is so intimate from the beginning. It’s happening outside of social media. It’s based on a genuine, in-person connection. While the world may be commenting on their relationship, Emerson and Renn don’t care. They know what is real. Emerson Blue is a master at social media. As an author, how do you feel about social media? It has good and bad aspects. At the end of the day, it’s a tool so it depends on how you choose to use it. For me, social media has been vital to my career. It allowed me to grow my author platform, market my books, find readers, and connect with bloggers. I would not have my career the way I do without social media. That said, it can take up a lot of time. Sometimes with one change to an algorithm or if some of your biggest followers drop off, suddenly your posts don’t perform nearly as well. When that happens it feels like work you’ve done for years is suddenly less valuable and that’s hard when you make your living as an author. There’s a bigger dark side to social media too. People can be harsh. Comments can be cruel. Sometimes it’s because people are cloaked in anonymity, other times it’s because of a persona or identity they have created that they want to maintain for their followers, and sometimes it’s just because the internet can be a dumping ground for people’s angst. Add to that, if you scroll around comparing yourself to others it can make you feel bad. It’s ironic too because what you’re comparing yourself to isn’t real. As Emerson would say, a social media profile is highly curated—a work of art. It isn’t an accurate representation, but rather a construction. All this said, as an author, at this point, I need social media and there are aspects of it I enjoy, but it’s a complicated space and requires good boundaries and a strong sense of self. It’s also important to value your work and protect your creativity and mental health so that you can continue to create. The best advice I would give any artist is to have a relationship with your work that isn’t dependent on anything external, positive or negative. It’s a constant challenge, especially in the age of social media, but an absolute must if you want a long career as an artist. I know how much work goes into each of my books and what my intent is as an author. I’m conscious of how I use my voice and I care enormously about the craft of writing. To me, my novels are beautiful. What other people think isn’t really any of my business. I try to remember that and tune out the noise so that I can continue to create. This is a romance, but it’s also a story about identity and reinvention. Where do you see your characters years from now and what can they teach us? I loved writing Emerson and Renn’s romance so much that I didn’t want to stop. Without spoiling anything, I would say that the book ends on a note of reinvention. On top of that, because the book is very much about contemporary society as much as it’s about the characters, I felt there was more to explore. So, I’m elated to share there is a sequel which will be released in September 2027. I don’t want to give too much away but it’s about fame, what’s public and private, and the dangers that emerge when you invite the whole world into your life. I learned a lot about identity, reinvention, and authenticity from the characters, and how important it is to distinguish illusion from reality or things that are ephemeral from those with gravitas. Readers can take whatever they want from it. Mostly, I just think it’s a beautiful love story so if that’s what readers get, that’s fine by me. Honestly, I’ve been an author for over 25 years and published more than 50 books and this set of novels is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. It merges everything I’m interested in more than anything else I’ve done. At its core, Sugar Sand Land explores illusion versus reality. What do you hope readers take away about the stories we tell ourselves—and the ones the world tells about us? We all need to think about what to make public and what to keep private in our lives. We should never compare ourselves to people on social media. It’s a highlight reel. It’s like comparing your insides to someone’s airbrushed outsides. People don’t always share their pain publicly. Many people carry invisible scars. There can be a real disjuncture between public myth and private pain. Many of us struggle privately in ways we don’t share online. Above all, Sugar Sand Land is a love story. Love helps us become more of ourselves not less. Our real selves. No matter what I write, I always champion love. Love and art are the two constants across my catalog,  Bradford E. Billet, OBE, CEM, has spent more than three decades leading when the plan fell apart. Across 22 years in New York City government and three mayoral administrations, he was chief architect of the 1996 FDNY–EMS merger — raised on the 1993 Giuliani transition team and delivered from inside EMS, where he served as Associate Executive Director, “Car 2,” the department’s second-ranking official, as roughly 3,250 personnel transferred into the FDNY. He went on to the FDNY as Assistant Commissioner and to the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management as Deputy Director, where he was an on-scene leader at TWA Flight 800. From 1997 he served seventeen years as Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner of the New York City office responsible for the United Nations, the consular corps, the U.S. Department of State, and international affairs — liaison to 193 permanent missions and 115 consulates. After September 11 he led the city’s international coordination with foreign governments — the largest international victim assistance operation in U.S. history, covering more than 500 foreign national victims — and he conceived the legal theory behind the city’s 7–2 win at the U.S. Supreme Court in Permanent Mission of India v. City of New York. Queen Elizabeth II appointed him an Honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) for that service, and he holds the Certified Emergency Manager (CEM) credential. He is Founder and Chairman of STAT Advisors LLC and Founder, Chairman, and CEO of the East Hampton Village Foundation, and serves on many boards. Dyslexic, he counts it among his greatest leadership assets. He brings all of it to Chaos Reveals It, his first book. Chaos Reveals It draws on more than three decades in emergency management, public service, diplomacy, business, and civic leadership. The experiences differ, but the lesson is consistent: when plans fail and certainty disappears, leadership is revealed in the quality of our preparation, judgment, character, and service. You argue that "chaos does not destroy leadership. It reveals it." What do you believe chaos exposes most clearly about a leader that ordinary circumstances tend to hide? Chaos exposes who a leader truly is. In normal times, leaders are often insulated by structure. They have the authority of a title, time to seek other opinions and gather more information, and established systems and people to support the normal process of decision-making. Those supports are valuable, but they can also insulate the person holding the title from the full weight of a decision and conceal whether that person can truly lead when conditions change. In chaos, much of that is stripped away. Information is incomplete, systems are strained or unavailable, trusted advisers may be unreachable, and the time for critical decisions is compressed. There's no room for performance. A leader has to see reality quickly, decide what matters most, act before certainty arrives, and accept responsibility for the outcome. That's when preparation, judgment, character, and courage become visible. Chaos doesn't create those qualities. It reveals whether they were there all along. Your experiences at TWA Flight 800 and on 9/11 involved making consequential decisions with incomplete and constantly changing information. How can leaders learn to act decisively without confusing confidence with certainty? The first message I received about TWA Flight 800 said only that an aircraft was missing. There was no Mayday, no confirmed crash site, and no complete passenger list. I did know that families and the press would come to JFK and that someone had to be there before the system caught up. I didn't need certainty about every fact to recognize the next responsible action. On September 11, the scale was far greater, communications were failing, and events were moving faster than information. Decisions still couldn't wait. A leader should separate facts from assumptions, decide which outcome must be protected, and ask what delay will cost. Then act when there is enough information to identify a responsible course, not when every desired fact has arrived. Confidence isn't the belief that you can't be wrong. It's the ability to explain the basis for a decision, acknowledge the risk, accept responsibility for the result, and change course when the facts change. Decisiveness without humility becomes recklessness. Humility without action becomes paralysis. The STAT System - Strategic, Tactical, Adaptive, and Timely - is central to your approach. Which of these four principles is most difficult for leaders to practice under extreme pressure, and why? Adaptive is the most difficult because it asks a leader to do something deeply uncomfortable: change course, sometimes after committing people, resources, and reputation to the original decision. It may also require the hardest admission in leadership: 'I was wrong.' Some leaders fear that reversing direction will make them look weak or indecisive. But defending a failing decision to protect your pride isn't resolve. It's ego. When the facts change, the responsible leader changes the response. Being adaptive doesn't mean abandoning the strategy whenever conditions shift. It means protecting the objective while changing the route. Explain what changed, own what you got wrong, tell the team what will change now, and move. Timely is a close second, because a correct change made after the window closes can't improve the outcome. The two principles work together: adapt when the facts require it, and do it while the decision can still make a difference. A good decision made too late may be no decision at all. You spent years working across government agencies, the FDNY, EMS, the United Nations, foreign missions, and consulates. What did those experiences teach you about leading people who do not report to you? They taught me that relationships are the real infrastructure of leadership. During my years in the Mayor's Office, I worked with 193 missions to the United Nations and 115 consulates, along with city, state, and federal agencies. Most of those people didn't report to me, and formal authority would have been a weak instrument even if I had possessed it. The work moved because we had a shared objective, reliable information, clearly defined roles, and enough trust to act together. On September 11, foreign governments needed answers about their citizens, and New York City needed a coherent way to communicate with those governments and their families. I couldn't command that network. I could create structure, reduce friction, respect each participant's mandate, and keep my commitments. People follow competence, consistency, and clarity, especially when they believe you're serving the mission rather than seeking credit. Authority can compel compliance. It can't create commitment. Leadership without authority is the work of building a coalition in which people retain their dignity and ownership while moving toward the same result. You describe yourself as someone who often "stepped into the vacuum" when others froze. How does a person recognize when they should take charge versus when they should step back and let someone else lead? The test isn't whether I can take charge. The test is whether my intervention will improve the outcome. Before acting, I ask three questions from the book. Am I the best person to solve this, or does someone else have better expertise, relationships, or credibility? Is immediate action required, or would a deliberate pause produce a better decision? What happens if I do nothing? Not every problem needs heroic intervention. Some require strategic absence so another person can grow or so the situation can clarify itself. I also examine my motive. Am I taking responsibility, or am I taking territory? If a capable person is already leading, strengthen that person. If a vacuum leaves people exposed, facts unowned, or essential decisions unmade, step in. But step in as a facilitator, not as a conqueror. Create temporary structure, clarify the objective, distribute authority, and step back when the system can function without you. A mature leader knows when presence is necessary and when presence has become an obstruction. But when in doubt, step up and lead. Trust is especially important during crises, when people may have little information and conflicting accounts. What are the fastest and most reliable ways for a leader to establish credibility and trust? Trust can't be demanded, and a crisis rarely gives you enough time to manufacture a history with people. You can establish credibility quickly through behavior: show up, tell the truth early, distinguish facts from estimates and unknowns, and keep even the smallest commitments. People don't expect a leader to be omniscient. They need the leader to be honest and predictable. At the family assistance centers after TWA Flight 800 and September 11, credibility came from refusing to offer false certainty and from treating families as adults entitled to the truth. Telling them that identification could take months or years, and that some victims might never be identified, was painful. Withholding that reality would've denied them dignity. Bad news doesn't improve with age. Trust also grows through quiet authority, consistent standards, and a willingness to own mistakes. If you say what's known, do what you promised, and return when you said you would, provisional trust can become lasting trust. One evasive answer can undo hours of good communication. You identify dyslexia as a leadership asset because it helped you see patterns and reverse-engineer solutions from outcomes. How did that perspective influence the way you analyze complex problems and make decisions? Dyslexia taught me that a problem doesn't have to be processed in a straight line. I think of it as a different operating system. I see patterns, model several paths at once, and connect information that other people may keep in separate categories. I often begin at the end: What does success look like? What must be true for us to arrive there? Then I work backward. That approach has been especially useful in a crisis, because I'm comfortable working with incomplete patterns and changing variables. It also taught me an important communication lesson. I may see the system and the next several moves before the people around me do. If I communicate at the speed at which I'm thinking, I can lose the team. I've learned to downshift, explain the pattern, translate it into the next two or three executable actions, and invite people to challenge what I may have missed. Different thinking becomes a leadership asset only when you can bring others with you. The broader lesson is that what someone was told was a weakness may contain the basis of that person's greatest contribution. Your career included significant accomplishments that were often behind the scenes, including coordinating international responses and building systems for others to use. What have you learned about leadership when the person doing the most important work may not receive the credit? For much of my government career, the press referred to me as an "unnamed city official." I never worried about the credit or sought fame. People in the know – knew my work. But early onin my career, that anonymity stung. We're human, and recognition feels good. Over time, I came to understand that if the institution works, the official often disappears. Some of the most effective leadership leaves no fingerprints. Your job may be to architect the solution, make the principal successful, and build a system that continues long after anyone remembers who designed it. A leader who does hold the title has a reciprocal duty: give credit outward and accept accountability inward. No mayor, commissioner, chief executive, or chairman accomplishes anything alone. Lack of recognition can still be difficult, but applause is a poor measure of leadership. Better questions are: Were people served? Did the system work? Did the team become stronger? Will the result endure? Credit fades quickly. A capable institution remains. I'd rather leave behind a system people can trust than a headline with my name in it. Many organizations prepare extensively for crises, yet real emergencies rarely unfold according to the plan. What should leaders do when the plan fails - and how can organizations prepare people to think rather than simply follow procedures? A plan predicts a sequence. A system teaches people how to decide when the sequence breaks. On September 11, the City's emergency command center was lost, communications failed, and responsibilities changed by the minute. The plan didn't survive intact. Preparation did. Relationships, training, professional judgment, and a shared sense of mission allowed people to build a new operating structure while the crisis was still unfolding. When a plan fails, the leader should restate the objective, triage the immediate risks, establish a decision rhythm, put authority close to the best available information, and create feedback loops so the organization can keep adapting. Organizations should exercise people beyond the script. Break assumptions during drills. Rotate who leads. Require people to explain why they chose an action, not merely which procedure they followed. Give them clear values, decision rights, and escalation thresholds. Plans are useful maps. People also need a compass. Preparation isn't writing a binder for every possible event. It's building people and systems capable of functioning when no plan exists. Your message is that "you don't need a title to lead." What is one practical leadership behavior you would challenge every reader to practice immediately, regardless of their position or circumstances? Take ownership of the next useful action. When something goes wrong, pause and answer four questions: What do I know? What do I not know? What can I control? What is the next responsible step? Then take that step and tell the people affected what they should expect from you. That's what controlling the controllable looks like in practice. It doesn't require a title or permission. The action may be telling an uncomfortable truth in a meeting, making the call everyone is avoiding, checking on someone who has been overlooked, documenting a risk, or admitting a mistake. Leadership rarely begins with a grand gesture. It begins when someone stops asking who's supposed to act and says, 'I will take responsibility for the next step.' Do that consistently, and people will begin to trust your leadership before anyone gives you a title.  A strategist for one of the world’s largest retail organizations, predicting the future of commerce and deeply understanding human behavior. She operates at the intersection of commercial real estate and transportation engineering. In addition, Erika is an advisor to premiere venture capital firms. Erika holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Bucknell University, MEM from Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. I love the premise of this book: What if AI could give us back 1,000 hours a year? That sounds incredible, but here's the bigger question: What are we going to do with all that time? What do you hope people choose to do with it? Depends on how the individual measures the subjective value of time based on achievement, joy and meaningfulness. Everyone is different and everyone has different circumstances. People who value achievement more may work more. People who value joy may spend more time with family, participating in a sport, mastering a hobby, etc. People who value meaningfulness more may seek civic participation, volunteerism, etc. Measuring the Subjective Value of Your Time: New Research From MIT Sloan Management Review Everyone seems to be talking about what AI is going to take away from us, especially our jobs. You're asking us to look at what AI might give us instead. Why did you feel it was important to change that conversation? The current rhetoric from industry leaders, media, and experts is causing fear and anxiety. This is leading to unnecessary stress to the individual. Jobs will transform but not be replaced. Also, most people don't realize the benefits of autonomous mobility. Transportation underpins the economy when transportation is more efficient the cost of the movement of goods goes down. In addition, it frees dead time commuting to time where someone can do something else more constructive and meaningful (e.g. rest, spend time with family, reading, etc.) You talk about something called the “Auto-Robotics Nexus,” where AI and robotics begin taking over both the mental and physical tasks we don't necessarily need to do ourselves. What could that actually look like in our everyday lives? Are we talking about a completely different way of living and working? Yes I believe this will change institutions, industries, and everyday lives. I believe AI and robotics will bring us closer to home where goods are made and circulated densely within communities. There will be a contraction of globalization. Consequently, there will be an explosion of small businesses. For some industries, working will be based on outcomes not attendance hence a shorter workweek.Some institutions will be needed less (e.g. four-year colleges, nursing homes, etc). AI and robotics will provide a form of lived freedom for humans outside of institutions that was not possible before. It'll also be more cost effective. For instance, healthcare and colleges are too expensive so the current systems are no longer viable and need to change. I believe personalized medicine will be a game changer. If diseases can be prevented and cured, my hope is that everyone is living healthy, active lives. Here's something I kept thinking about: So much of our identity is tied to what we do. We meet someone and almost immediately ask, “What do you do?” If AI changes the role work plays in our lives, could it also force us to rethink who we are? Individuals will become masters of their individual artistry not servants to an industry or company. People will reclaim their individual identity and dignity. You also warn about an “Autonomous Divide.” Is there a real danger that we're going to end up with two groups of people: those who know how to use AI and benefit from it, and those who don't? How quickly could that divide happen? Yes. Those who choose to not use AI not only lose benefits but they don't help to shape the AI models that are foundational to society. AI literacy and reskilling is important. Autonomous Divide can be mended with thoughtful actions by individuals, corporations and the government. We must recognize which job positions are going away and which ones are transforming and consciously create policies to make the transition smoother. Developing countries may experience a wider autonomous divide and it could happen quickly causing women's rights to be under threat because of lack of economic empowerment. One of the ideas I found fascinating is that AI might actually bring us back to things that feel very human: craftsmanship, skilled trades, small businesses, creating things with our hands. How does this incredibly advanced technology potentially bring us back to something more personal and local? In a sense we had to become machines to create the machines. It wasn't entirely natural for most people sitting in front of a computer all day long. Once AI is able to do repetitive tasks, we can spend more time being human. The world is always trying to balance itself. The more machines do tasks the more people will gravitate to human-made goods and physical experiences.Some people may frame this as a rebellion to AI but it's not. It's a rebalancing. We're already obsessed with productivity. If AI gives us three extra hours, I'm afraid we're going to find three more hours of work to fill them! How do we stop ourselves from turning this extraordinary gift of time into simply another way to get more done? Again this will be based on how people measure the subjective value of time. It was demonstrated by the five-day work week. When Henry Ford increased pay and reduced working hours, he monitored how employees adjusted to the change. He said they fell into 3 buckets. Some men got second jobs, some men squandered their pay and extra time, and others kept on living as they did and banked the extra pay and spent more time with family, etc. Also, the model T era was the birth of new industries in entertainment, tourism, and consumerism. I believe there will be new industries created. For instance, I spoke to a welding engineering student from The Ohio State and I asked him what he was going to do after college. He said that he was going to work for SpaceX and build hotels in space. Space tourism will be a growing industry. Technology has been promising to save us time forever, and somehow we all seem busier than ever. Why do you believe AI could be different? What has to change, not just technologically, but in us? People have to choose intentionality over productivity. Right now there is fragmentation of attention due to the numerous systems we have to engage with on a daily basis. I had a colleague say just this week that he had to download 8 apps for his child's school! One for lunch money, one for after school care, one for homework, etc. In the future, apps won't exist. We'll just interact with an AI so all the systems are consolidated in one experience. Some have called this ambient AI where AI is ingrained throughout our lived experience. What is ambient intelligence (AmI)? Definition from TechTarget I want to make this personal. Did writing this book change the way you spend your own time? Was there anything you stopped doing, started doing, or simply began looking at differently because of what you discovered? I choose to be an active participant in change instead of a passive observer so I can shape the future. I’m the author of my life, not AI. Many people are saying AI is diminishing their creativity, cognitive skills, work, relationships, etc. Humans do have a say in how they relate to AI. We're not powerless in this technological inflection point. AI cannot take away anyone’s agency unless you allow it to. Let's jump ahead ten years. AI has worked. It has actually made our lives better. What are we doing with our lives that we simply didn't have the time to do before? My dream is that people have recovered intentionality, mastered their individual artistry, and experienced lived freedom that previous generations could scarcely imagine.  I spent more time failing fast in the first ten years of my 20 year career as a trainer and rehabilitation specialist than most people experience in their entire lives. I have founded eight companies, closed four, and left two with only life experience and knowledge to show for it. When I look back on the ten years of struggle, I'm grateful for them because they showed me how hard I am capable of working to achieve the success I desired. I was overworked, and underpaid, but the lessons were coming in fast. I wanted to enjoy a great marriage, and I wanted to be a present father, without compromising on my business ambition, and so a lot had to change. Over the next ten years I made myself undeniable, and the only option for athletes who wanted to get out of pain without going to another doctor, or missing out on their sport. I earned the privilege of helping an olympian medal when their whole games were at risk due to a shoulder injury, I helped more than 40 athletes compete at the CrossFit games including several games champions, and I helped a veteran pitcher in MLB avoid a career ending surgery to land one last seven figure contract. What was most surprising about that whole experience to me is that I found it was great for my ego, but not close to as good for my soul as working with the people no one had ever heard of. The title Live More. Hurt Less. seems to deliberately put “living more” before “hurting less.” Why is that distinction so important, and what happens when people make eliminating pain the prerequisite for getting their life back? The prerequisite of eliminating pain before getting your life back is akin to suggesting you will be confident when you are in a relationship, you will take care of yourself when you have enough time, or that you will invest in yourself when you have money. Each of these is disordered. When we live more, it's hard for the pain to hurt. One of the biggest challenges with chronic pain is fear: fear of making it worse, fear of reinjury, fear that something is seriously wrong. How can someone distinguish between pain that is an important warning signal and pain that doesn’t necessarily mean they are causing damage? We need a framework that blends the subjective with the objective to put people back in the driver's seat of their own lives. In "Live More. Hurt Less." I break down the following four rules for decision making around pain. On a scale of 1-10, a 4 or less is generally safe to move through. The same is true if the pain is staying the same or getting better the more we use the body part. If the pain stops when we discontinue the activity it's very unlikely we did damage, and if the next day pain is not elevated, we know we hit an effective dose of movement. You talk about learning to trust your body again. For someone who has spent years thinking of their body as fragile, damaged, or unreliable, how do you begin rebuilding that trust? I believe the best place to start is with a strong purpose for doing it at all. Sometimes we have to overcome our fears with something more important than the risk we think we're taking. Many people with chronic pain gradually create smaller and smaller lives without even realizing it. They stop exercising, traveling, playing sports, picking up their grandchildren, or saying yes to plans. How do you help someone recognize that pattern and begin expanding their life again without pushing too hard, too quickly? One of the first things I ask people to do is to make two lists: things they would start doing today if they woke up without pain, and things they would stop doing if they woke up without pain. Then we look for the simplest item in each category they feel like they could try today. Typically this becomes the kind of slippery slope people enjoy sliding down. You’ve spent more than 20 years working with people in pain, and you’ve had your own experience with it. What did you once believe about pain that you no longer believe today, and what changed your thinking? I used to think pain was a purely physical problem. It's much more than that. That hit me like a ton of bricks when my five year old daughter asked me to carry her on my shoulders and I couldn't. That's when I realized pain was robbing me of an entire life I wanted to live, and the pain of missing out hurt more than my neck. That's what finally propelled me to find a solution. There’s an enormous industry built around treating pain: doctors, physical therapy, imaging, injections, medications, surgery, alternative treatments. Where do you think the traditional approach gets chronic pain right, and where does it sometimes unintentionally keep people stuck? More than 20% of the developed world suffers from chronic pain, I think the traditional approach gets it wrong more often than it gets it right. Pain is inevitable, suffering is not - that's the paradigm shift we need. The physical resolutions neglect the identity changes that coincide with loss. You emphasize movement and exercise as ways to build a more capable body. But “exercise” can be intimidating to someone who already hurts. What does building capacity actually look like for a person who may be afraid to move? Swimming in the ocean can be intimidating, but walking through the wet sand rarely is. Everyone needs to start with the level of exposure that feels trivially safe, and progress from there. What that looks like is going to be different for each person. The book addresses the mind as well as the body. When someone is constantly monitoring their pain, worrying about the next flare-up, or catastrophizing every sensation, how does that mental cycle affect their experience, and what can they practically do to interrupt it? We find what we are looking for. The simplest way to interrupt a negative thought cycle is to actively look for reasons to be optimistic. There’s a fascinating identity question underneath this book: “Who do I want to be on the other side of pain?” Why is identity part of recovery? Is it possible that after years of chronic pain, people have to learn not only how to move differently, but how to think about themselves differently? Identity is part of recovery because injury changes beliefs in an instant. It robs us of confidence, spontaneity, and joy. When we loved the version of ourselves who we were prior to getting hurt, there is a mourning period we go through, and we experience every phase of grief. There is finality to that. Learning that you can actually get back to an even better version of yourself requires revisiting and unwinding all of that grief. It's a monumental task. If someone has been living with chronic pain for five, ten, or even twenty years and has already tried almost everything, what would you want them to understand after reading Live More. Hurt Less. that might give them a fundamentally different way of looking at their future? They had tried everything, and that's why those approaches failed. Trying isn't enough, we have to become our own solution.  Fran Weinstein is an author, retired television director/producer and recovering celebrity-dirt miner. She’s worked for “Entertainment Tonight, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” and “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.” She lives in upstate New York and St Croix, USVI with her husband and rescued “Bassador.” Currently, she is an aspiring beach bum. Fran, Tortured Soles draws from your years working in television. What made you decide that now was the time to tell this story? Well, first, I wanted to write my stories while I still had the mind to remember them. When I retired in 2013, I started reflecting on what I did and how I survived. And I would tell these stories in normal dinner conversation and people seemed to find them entertaining—funny even. Of course, everyone says, “You should write a book.” But I decided to do it because I see so many young people breaking into the business as “influencers” on social media, and I felt I had something important to impart as a sort of matriarch now. The title Tortured Soles immediately gets your attention. What does the title mean to you, and how does it reflect the world your characters inhabit? It’s a double entendre. Tortured soles were not only the state of my aching feet after decades in 6-inch heels, but also kind of a characterization of most of the people and celebrities I encountered in this crazy business. You had a front-row seat to the television industry. How much of the book was inspired by things you actually witnessed or experienced? The entire book is based on my real-life experiences. All the stories happened, as wild as they seem. I did change a few names and small details, though, to avoid expensive lawsuits. Television can look incredibly glamorous from the outside. What do people misunderstand most about what it is really like to work in the industry? Well, you know, it IS pretty glamorous a lot of the time. But what people don’t realize is that what they see is the shiny end-product of a lot of hard and challenging work. The hours are very long and unpredictable; you’re negotiating a lot of complicated personality styles before the fabulous outfits are put on and the red carpets are rolled out. The competition for these exclusive interviews is fierce and based on relationships that are painstaking to build. It takes years to feel you’re on solid ground and, even then, things change. If a college journalism student told you today, “I want to work in television,” what advice would you give them? Aside from knowing your subject matter inside and out, I’d say: Learn how to read a room—when face to face with a celebrity you have nanoseconds to pick up on their energy and navigate accordingly. Dress the part—I say this a lot and it’s true You don’t have to spend a lot of money to look current and polished. You won’t be taken seriously if you show up looking like you just stepped out of a workout class. Don’t be impatient and do be persistent. Getting a good story takes time and effort. Connecting the dots means sometimes chatting up the most unlikely sources —waiters, gym personnel doormen, dog walkers, etc. The television business has changed dramatically since you first entered it. What skills do you think aspiring journalists need today that perhaps weren’t as important when you were starting out? The most important skill today is mastering social media and the responsible use of AI. Way more than television these days, this is how many people get their news. We didn’t have that added element to contend with and in the race for eyeballs and exposure, what makes people click translates to disseminating information which, ultimately, determines the bottom line. For someone trying to land that very first job in television, what matters most: education, internships, connections, persistence, talent, or simply being in the right place at the right time? This is a tough question, Jane. Because what I’m going to say is not a popular opinion. You don’t need to go to a fancy journalism school to get in the door. They don’t teach the most essential skills, which certainly includes persistence in terms of knocking on every door and getting connected to anyone who is remotely attached to the business. I got my first job through a friend of a friend who knew someone else. And it was shlepping coffee and videotapes. Talent is important. But if no one sees you, it doesn’t mean a thing. What mistakes do you see young journalists making when they’re trying to break into television? And what could they do differently? The biggest mistake I see young journalists making is showing up unprepared. You must research every single celebrity who is currently in the news and be able to make easy banter. Even in an internship, you need to know what the lead story of the day is and how to efficiently support its advancement. Also, there is no time to be starstruck. You need to have the understanding that they are humans and operate with the same emotions you have. They just do it in public. Otherwise, you’ll freeze and then you’re done. You worked in an industry filled with powerful personalities and enormous egos. What did television teach you about dealing with difficult people while still protecting your career and your integrity? You know, ‘keep calm and carry on’ are really words to live by. You mustn’t show impatience, exasperation or frustration. No matter what, you must maintain a warmth and a willingness to play ball. These are BIG personalities—and I don’t mean in name and stature. But, for me, it was paramount to stay grounded and learn to listen. From there and only there, you can problem-solve and iron out wrinkles while standing in your truth. What is one thing you wish someone had told you before you began your television career? Honestly, I wish someone told me how much I’d be sacrificing in my personal life. You can’t make dinner or vacation plans and hope to keep them. It’s so unpredictable, that schedules go out the window. So I wouldn’t have been quite so disappointed or maybe had a plan B in place when it happened—especially as a single mother. For young women entering television and journalism today, is there any advice you would give them specifically about finding their voice and advocating for themselves? Young women need let go of the predisposition to be “nice.” It’s a rough-and -tumble business and you need to stand up to the gaslighting and indelicacy that takes place every day. Don’t be afraid of the consequences of speaking your truth when your instinct tells you something’s not right. But you have to hone your diplomatic skills. It’s important to strike a delicate balance between being strong in your position and being somewhat personable, relational. Remember, in the beginning, it’s a learning curve. Give yourself lots of grace if you stumble but get right back up and keep going. If you were starting your career today, with streaming, podcasts, YouTube, TikTok and traditional television all competing for audiences, where would you begin? To be honest, if I were starting out today, I’d start posting my particular take on entertainment news du jour on my Instagram and TikTok page. Then I’d keep incrementally boosting the posts to get more visibility. Nowadays, it’s pretty formulaic in terms of what the algorithms tell you, which is like a treasure map to success. From there, you might become a known commodity and more attractive to a televison market, if that’s what you want. Is there a particular story or moment in Tortured Soles that captures the television business you knew especially well? There are so many moments in the book that capture the television business as I knew it. But, for me, the story about the day Michael J. Fox announced his diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease on David Letterman stands out as to what the industry had become. I had built a solid, wonderful working relationship with Michael through many years of covering his projects. On this day, I was assigned to ambush him, and therefore scoop Letterman, at the stage door of the Ed Sullivan Studio. I was really opposed to this BECAUSE of my trusted relationship, and I tried to reason with my producers that this would destroy it. But they were adamant. So I went. But in the end, I followed my gut and didn’t go through with it. Instead, I reported that Michael slipped through another door. I never told that story until I wrote Tortured Soles because I would have been fired for sure! What do you hope someone who dreams of working in television takes away from reading Tortured Soles? My hope is that, after reading my story, young people see that no matter your station or upbringing in life the possibilities are endless. In other words, if you see yourself in a particular room, you can BE in that room. You do not have to follow the family fold. And there is no real blueprint. Don’t allow anyone or anything that gets in your way to dim your light. Finally, after everything you’ve experienced, would you still choose a career in television if you had the chance to do it all over again? Why or why not? Oh! One hundred percent—I would choose my television career! Because the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been and the experiences I’ve had have far exceeded my dreams! They’ve all led me to a life I could never imagined as a little girl from The Bronx.  Lee Clark is a North Carolina native, originally from Raleigh, with family in Virginia as well. After working in the software technology industry for over 20 years, Clark decided it was time to pursue a true passion: fictional writing. A self-confessed coffeeholic and chocoholic, Lee Clark still resides in North Carolina with spouse, two mostly grown children who are in and out, and a small petting zoo of dogs and cats. Though the Matthew Paine character is fictional, he was inspired by two very important men in the author’s life, brother Sean and son Will. Both will see characteristics of themselves in the Matthew character and identify with some of his struggles. Your protagonist is a scientist who uses insects to help determine when someone died. What made you build a mystery around forensic entomology? I wanted a female protagonist in this series who is a bit quirky and snarky, but kind at heart when you get past those traits. She needed to be shy with people but otherwise brazen. Giving her a profession many women would shy away from, and one in which she interacts with insects rather than people, easily provided those characteristics . Needless to say, I've had a lot to learn and I can't begin to keep up with brilliant Tegan McFarland! Most of us see bugs and want to get away from them. Your protagonist sees evidence. What can insects actually reveal about a person’s death? Bugs can reveal more than you'd think -- definitely more than I initially thought. Flies determine the time of death because they hover when they're ready to lay eggs and immediately swarm to the chemicals emitted by a corpse within moments of death. Capturing the eggs or larvae and maturing them to flies, determining the exact variety of fly, and then calculating their lifecycle time backward, gives a surprisingly accurate time of death for the victim. Flies are the first insects to find dead bodies. Other insects inhabit bodies later. Insects can also tell where the body has been, if it's been moved, because species are somewhat specific to areas, city versus forest or water versus land, for example. Others are specific to geographical regions. How accurate is the science in A River Remembers, and how much research did you do to get the forensic details right? I hope it's very accurate! That's my intention, but it's been a journey. I bought two books to help. One, I found listed as a reference in some of the Forensic Entomology classes, I think at North Carolina State University, my alma mater. In the first Red River Murders book, A River Remembers, the forensic work is pretty basic. In the next book, I've sought and found experts to consult about what happens to the insects on a body in very specific circumstances — stay tuned for that one! What was the most surprising or fascinating thing you learned about insects and decomposition while researching the book? I had no idea flies found dead bodies so quickly! I didn't know bodies emit specific chemicals at death that flies can sense, almost immediately, as they hover seeking a place to lay their eggs. I didn't know there were so many varieties of blow flies, or that there are water insects that find dead bodies, as well. Honestly, I didn't know much. Without giving away the mystery, how does your protagonist use insects to help establish the time of death? Tegan is called to the scene where a body has been pulled from the river. She finds larvae in the first stage of development, or first instar. From this, she can tell that the woman has been deceased between 23 hours and four days at that point. She's able to guess at how long ago the woman died based on the blowfly cycle. Given that there are larvae, not just eggs, how large the larvae are, and what they look like, she provides the first timeline of the death long before the ME can arrive in the in the small rural North Carolina town. Did you consult forensic scientists, entomologists, medical examiners, or law enforcement professionals while writing the novel? In writing this novel, I primarily consulted the book: Forensic Entomology: The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations. I say "consulted" because it's a beast and I admit to using it for reference, finding the sections I needed, and not reading the whole thing. For the next book in the series, though, I have contacted professors in the Forensic Entomology department at North Carolina State University and offered lunch in exchange for plying them with questions about a specific scenario I'm setting up. We hear constantly about DNA and fingerprints. Why isn’t forensic entomology better known as a crime-solving tool? That's a great question! One of the professors I'll be meeting with to discuss my questions for the next book in the series has worked with the FBI on multiple cases. I'll ask him and let you know. How did you make the science understandable and fascinating for readers without slowing down the suspense? I think it's a matter of Tegan giving her perspective as she's explaining her profession to the people around her about what she's doing. When she meets the new (hot) sheriff, she does babble a bit about her profession, realizes she's doing it, and clamps her mouth shut. I think story telling from her perspective, though third-person narrative instead of first-person, makes the topic relatable because Tegan herself is a character readers care about — at least, I HOPE they do! If A River Remembers were adapted for television, how could forensic entomology become an ongoing part of the series and future investigations? I'd love for Red River Murders to be adapted for a series! Tegan certainly has the depth of character to pull that off. She brings her passion about her profession to pull her audience in to care about what she cares about — bugs and how they help law enforcement and investigators. Forensic Entomology will be used to determine time of death and conditions under several weird conditions for upcoming books that are in the works. What’s the one fact you learned about bugs and death while writing A River Remembers that will make readers say, “I had absolutely no idea”? I've already had ARC reviewers say they had no idea about the lifecycle stages of blowflies from egg to larvae, through the larval instars, to pupa, to fly development and what that means for learning about murder victims' time of death and conditions. Likewise, I don't think it's commonly known that flies hover and find carcasses immediately because, to quote Tegan, "Smell and taste receptors cover a fly’s body." As a beta reader said, "I really loved the larvae detail. That was pretty cool (and slightly gross) at the same time. It really helped give a feel to that character's personality." |
AuthorJane Ubell-Meyer founded Bedside Reading in 2017. Prior to that she was a TV and Film producer. She has spent the last five years promoting, marketing and talking to authors and others who are experts in the field. Archives
September 2026
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Bedside Reading, LLC , 700 Canal Street, Stamford CT 06902
For more information contact: [email protected] 917 848 3353
Media
The Press Circuit
Privacy Policy
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Bedside Reading® is a Registered Trademark
