The book that started as scattered notes about alien tourism is finally real. Noé hits shelves today.
Love this cover – my alien tourist with his camera, looking slightly bewildered against a London skyline. Perfectly captures his vibe. He came here to study emotions and ended up drowning in them.
Writing this whilst juggling first-year coursework was mental. Autumn and winter spent switching between alien blog posts and marketing assignments. Weirdly, the business modules helped more than expected.
Learning about consumer behaviour and market research gave me better insight into how Zoe, the human blogger, would actually build her audience. Made her feel more authentic than just “girl with camera who blogs about life.”
The finance lectures helped too. Understanding how people make economic decisions fed into Zoe’s character development. She’s not just creative – she’s trying to monetise that creativity whilst staying genuine.
Balancing the humour with genuine emotion was the hardest part. Noé starts off as this detached observer making snarky comments about human weirdness. But watching him slowly fall for our chaotic, beautiful species… that’s where the real story lives.
His final blog entry always makes me tear up, even after countless revisions. When the observer becomes the observed, when curiosity becomes love.
Think this book surprised me more than any reader could be surprised by it. Started writing about an alien studying us and ended up exploring what makes us human in the first place.
Hope Noé finds his people out there. We’re all tourists in each other’s lives anyway.
Daria Ryzhikova Writer