Q&A With Sarah Strohmeyer 

Sarah Strohmeyer, whom I’m delighted to be doing this Q&A with today, is the bestselling & award-winning novelist & former newspaper reporter, whose books are The Secrets of Lily Graves, How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True, Smart Girls Get What They Want, The Cinderella Pact (which became a lifetime movie titled Lying To Be Perfect), The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, The Secret Lives Of Fortunate Wives, Sweet Love, The Bubbles Mystery Series & her recent release A Mother Always Knows which came out today on July 1^st and is available to read now, wherever books are sold! 

Q: Sarah, would you like to give a description of each of your books beginning with your recent release A Mother Always Knows?

A: Eeep. That’s a lot of books! Most of my more recent novels have been thrillers or thriller-ish in which I try to mix suspense and compelling characters with a bit of humor. (I’ll let the readers decide if the characters are compelling!) In A Mother Always Knows, a librarian who was a girl when she witnessed her mother’s murder while they were trying to flee a cult in the Vermont woods, uses her abilities as a “dowser of the dead” to find the killer before he/she/they find her. Do I Know You? was about a super recognizer searching for her lost sister and I was honored when a New York Times reviewer noted all her expectations for the ending were, well, upended. Because that’s my goal – to find quirky subcultures and turn them on their heads!

Q: A Mother Always Knows was the first book I read from you, and I sped through the book because I enjoyed it very much! In the Acknowledgement’s Section you wrote that there were many obscure cults in Vermont that you used to create The Diviners Cult in the book.  Can you name which cults you used and how they were similar & different to the fictional one you created for the book? When creating the cult leader Radcliff McBeath did you use someone like Jim Jones from The Peoples Temple or Keith Raniere from Nexium? Would the character of Stella be loosely taken from you? 

A. Vermont has isolated hills and hollers where individuals can do their thing beyond prying eyes. As a result, we have our share of cults, one of which I’d prefer not to name for legal reasons. There was also an infamous raid of The Twelve Tribes in the “Northeast Kingdom” – a remote area of Vermont – back in 1984 that I used for reference. And then there was a group of Druids in my backyard. Not a cult, exactly, but their late leader had the last name of McBeth which I loved. I’ve had run ins with cults in Ohio and New Hampshire when I was working as a newspaper reporter. I’ve found most share core similarities: charismatic leader, searching/wounded followers and, oddly enough, dietary restrictions that set them apart from regular society. What I liked about the cult in A Mother Always Knows was the concentration on spiritual dowsing, especially since Vermont is home to the American Society of Dowsers. It was fun to research.

Q: How long does it take you to write a book?

A: When I was working full time, it took me at least a year. Getting up at 4:30 AM to knock out 1,000 words gets old fast, but that’s what I had to do. I am also insanely inefficient. I outline. Take notes. Write a crappy first draft with lots of scenes I later cut. Rewrite and then rewrite and rewrite again. You’d think after twenty books I would have it streamlined. Nope! Now that I’ve retired from being a town clerk, I’m shooting to pare that process down to nine months. At least, that’s the plan.

Q: What lessons & emotions do you hope readers learn and feel after reading your books? For me, for A Mother Always Knows, it’s a reminder to everyone to be careful of who you listen to. If someone or something seems too good to be true, trust your gut. It’s sad that cults are still around & happening and that anyone can get suckered into them. 

A: That’s a good question. Stella’s mother falls into the cult at a time in her life when her future looked empty and her present was unfulfilling. Yes, she was a new mother, which is exciting, but there are many, many days in a new mother’s schedule when you feel like a machine. Throw in a spell of post-partum depression (been there!), a shaky marriage plus tight finances and it’s easy to see how the promise of instant spiritual fulfillment and a higher calling can become instantly attractive. That’s one lesson. The other is the cautionary tale of doxing, which happens to Stella’s father after she’s “outted” on social media and he’s blamed for her mother’s murder. I don’t know how people keep their sanity in such situations. It’s scary!

Q: If A Mother Always Knows were to get a sequel, what would the characters be doing right now?

A: I would love to see Stella using her newly discovered skills as a death dowser to solve a few murders!

Q: I know The Cinderella Pact became the Lifetime movie, Lying To Be Perfect. Does Hollywood have the rights to the rest of your work? I could see A Mother Always Knows becoming a great limited series or a movie with the cult and the paranormal bits. Who would be the perfect cast to play the characters you created?

A: That would be fun, wouldn’t it? I’ve watched every cult documentary there is, so why not a movie? I’d love America Ferrara to play Stella’s mother and Dakota Johnson to play Stella. Crispin Glover to play the cult leader MacBeath and Uzo Aduba to play Stella’s friend/colleague, Fig. Hey, a girl can dream!

Q: Can you reveal the details of the current book you are writing now? 

A: Just what Publisher’s Weekly wrote, basically woman goes to pastoral community of tradwives to attend the funeral for her friend who met an untimely death and finds that a) her friend’s not the first to meet an untimely death and b) there’s a bunch of sinister stuff underneath the façade of domestic bliss!

Q: You were a newspaper reporter. Is it fair to say that being a newspaper reporter helped with writing your books? What was it like having your writing appear in The Cleveland Plain Dealer & The Boston Globe?

A: Being a reporter has helped and hindered in some ways. Helped because I got to immerse myself in so many murders, from finding a body on a trail to covering the trials of psychopathic killers. Hurt because we were trained back in the day to write pyramid style – most salient details first. I had to fight that tendency when I started writing novels. You want to entice the readers as an author, not hit them over the head with blunt facts at the start. The Plain Dealer was once a great, important newspaper and I loved writing for them and working with such talented journalists. Also, they were unionized so the pay and dental were awesome!

Thank you so much!!