Sara is the author of For the Love of Friends, one of my favorite debut novels this year! She is a high school English and journalism teacher, a wife, and a mom of two adorable little boys-you will find some of the most precious pics on her IG. I was so excited when she agreed to be a part of my feature this month on my blog! Check out the fun Q & A below!

XoXo,

Kristyn

1. For the Love of Friends was one of my favorite books this year! How did the book come about?

The story was brewing for a long time before I actually sat down and wrote it. I had another one that I was shopping around (a comedy about teaching) and I kept going back and revising it, and we just weren’t getting hits. But because I was so in limbo with that book, I wasn’t writing anything new despite knowing that For the Love of Friends was my next project. So when my agent and I decided to shelve the other for a while, I wrote the whole book in a summer.

Which actually leads to a funny story because I sent it to my agent, who LOVED it and came back with a few suggestions. Then I dropped off the face of the earth for a while and she followed up and asked when she’d see the edits, and I was like, “I’m so sorry, I’m ten weeks pregnant and throwing up constantly, but as soon as I get past the first trimester, I’m all over it.” And she started to laugh and said, “I’m eleven weeks pregnant! Wouldn’t it be funny if we had the babies on the same day?”

Fast forward a few months and the pandemic hit, but we started shopping the novel, and my agent said her goal was to sell it before we had the babies. Well, she did just that and then we DID have our babies on the same day about a week later!

2. This story was hilarious in so many ways. I could definitely relate to Lily in that weddings aren’t really my jam, but to have to be in 5?! Is any of this book based on your real- life experiences with weddings?

I would say more inspired by than based on. I was in two weddings that had some elements that got out of hand (my best friend’s ringtone in my phone during hers was the Darth Vader theme music. It took us both a few months to get back to a good place after her wedding) between bridezillas and bridesmaidzillas. But then my own wedding was SUCH a different experience because I’m so not a wedding person (Sharon’s idea to elope to Vegas with Rabbi Elvis was my plan). And I told my two best friends to just pick out dresses they liked and not to bother matching—those weirdos went out and got matching dresses in one of my wedding colors because they couldn’t handle the lack of direction, which is hilarious.

But a lot of the emotion was real. I was so happy for my friends and really wanted to be a good bridesmaid, but I was also the lone single girl of my friend group and I made a lot of mistakes. (Although my best friend was listening to the audiobook after it came out—she had read an early draft—and kept texting me and being like, oh god, I did do that to you, didn’t I?)

3. I’m in love with illustrated covers now! How did you come up with the cover design?

I knew I wanted something illustrated, but I had no idea what I actually wanted until the cover designer came back with a few designs. And I’m picky, so I sent them all back for edits. In the first draft, the girl had her eyes closed and wasn’t smiling, then they came back with one with teeth that was pretty much the stuff nightmares are made of. (My friends still joke about the creepy teeth…) Then we got this one and I was like that’s it! And my four year old (who thinks the girl is me), always looks at it and goes, “I love that,” which is so cute.

4. I know you have little ones at home, so how did you manage home life and writing a book?

Oof. Honestly, this is HARD. I only had one kid when I wrote For the Love of Friends and thankfully he still napped. And my husband was wonderful and would take him out of the house for a few hours a day so I could work once I really got going. But then I got pregnant with our second, and I kind of viewed For the Love of Friends as my last hurrah for a while if it didn’t get published. I knew it was going to be much harder with two and if I wasn’t making progress, I was probably going to need to take a break until the kids were big enough to go to camp in the summer. Then I signed a two book deal, which was the best thing ever, but I was also panicked because how was I going to write a second book with a baby and a three year old (who no longer napped—seriously, he stopped the week the baby came home) in a pandemic with no childcare?

So the second book, which is called She’s Up to No Good and comes out this summer, was the REALLY hard one. I submitted two proposals to my editor and she liked this one, so I wrote the entire thing in fourteen weeks in the hour and a half after my kids went to bed at night after teaching all day from home with the baby. Which was INSANE and I was half convinced it was going to say “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” for 400 pages. But it’s actually kind of amazing.

We’re back to teaching in person now, which is better in so many ways, but I’m much more exhausted at the end of the day, so writing the next one is going to be all kinds of interesting in new ways.

5. What was the most difficult part of the writing process?

I was always a pantser as opposed to a plotter. I always knew my ending before I started, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to get there. But with She’s Up to No Good, I had to plot it out because I had to submit a proposal before I wrote it. And that was kind of revelatory. The book that didn’t sell kept getting feedback that it felt episodic and choppy and I think that’s because I didn’t plot it out well enough before I sat down to write (and then all the rewrites didn’t help). So that’s very much new to me.

Otherwise, the editing process has been… interesting. I saw a meme saying, “Write the book you want to read…because you’re going to have to read it 50 times.” AND THAT IS NOT WRONG. I love every part of drafting, when I get to just crawl into the characters’ world and live there. But editing is so much less fun for me.

6. What’s a piece of advice you would give someone who is starting their writing journey?

I teach creative writing, so I do this part for a living! The two biggest pieces of advice that I have are to read as much as you can and to actually sit down and start writing. I’ve had so many people say to me, “Oh, I’d love to write a book if I had the time.” And I want to scream when I hear that because I’m teaching full time with two kids under five. I have no leisure time! If it’s important to you, you figure out how to make the time.

Stephen King said in his book On Writing that you need to treat writing like a job. If you needed the money, you’d get a part time job and you’d go do it. Writing needs to be the same or it’ll never happen. (Easier to say that now that I’m actually making money, but it’s still true.) So every Friday in my creative writing class is “Free Write Friday,” where they can work on their own projects. There are so few times in life when someone will actually hand you time to write, so I like being able to do that for my students and I’m hopefully creating a lifelong habit there.

7. What did you do to celebrate finishing your first book?

Finishing writing a book has always been anticlimactic for me. I self-published two in the early 2010s, and I remember when I finished the first draft of the first one, I called my mom and said, “I think I just finished my book.” And she thought I meant one I was reading and it was so not exciting.

For me, the more exciting part was publication and actually holding a physical copy of For the Love of Friends. But we kept the celebration small for publication because Delta was just starting to surge and my kids are too young to be vaccinated. My husband got a cake with the book cover on it, and one of my best friends got cookies made of the cover (and my four year old kept insisting he get to be the one to “eat mommy’s face” on them, which had minor Hannibal Lecter vibes…). And we kept it simple. I’m hoping to do a launch this summer for book two, however, assuming the pandemic is looking better by then!

8. I hear rumors of your next book coming! Can you tell us more about it?!

Yes! It’s called She’s Up to No Good and I’m completely obsessed with it! It’s due out June 7 (although I was warned that’s subject to change) and it’s Lily’s grandmother (who was a fan favorite) and cousin on a road trip with a dual timeline, so we see young Grandma as well. She’s wild and it’s fantastic. We also get a Lily update even though it’s not a sequel.

Now for some of the more personal & random get to know you questions!

What’s your favorite candle scent?

Anything with cinnamon! Which is ironic because I’m mildly allergic to cinnamon, but it’s my favorite anyway. (My tongue swells up, so if I eat a churro, I’m talking funny for a few hours—which is a small price to pay for a churro!)

What was your favorite tv show as a child?

I’ve been an insomniac for as long as I can remember (there’s even a home movie of me at two with my parents asking why I was running around in the middle of the night), so I got into Nick at Nite young and wound up watching a lot of the older shows. But I’m also a Simpsons fanatic and taught a class one summer on the show and its social commentary. But it’s bizarre to think that I was younger than Bart when the show started and I’m now older than Homer and Marge!

What’s your favorite restaurant?

As a Marylander, it’s literally any restaurant that’ll put a crabcake on a salad instead of chicken (which shows up in the book as well).

Can you whistle?

Not even close!

What’s your biggest pet peeve?!

People who take forever backing into spaces at the grocery store. A) if you can’t back in well, don’t do it, and B) YOU ARE GOING TO NEED TO ACCESS YOUR TRUNK! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Omg I’m so annoyed even thinking about that!

What’s a show/movie you will never get tired of?

Dirty Dancing. I will stop what I’m doing and watch that any time it’s on. My dog used to hide when she heard any part of the song from it because I used to make her do the lift. So literally she’d hear, “I’ve had the time—” and go hide under the bed.

And finally, If you could sit down and pick another author’s brain, who would it be?

I’m guessing Bruce Springsteen doesn’t count as he’s only published lyrics and his autobiography! So my runners up would be Stephen King and Beatriz Williams. I’m a voracious reader and span a lot of genres, and I know they seem like totally disparate choices, but the two things that they have in common is that they’re incredibly prolific writers and they throw in a lot of easter eggs if you’ve read their other works. Characters and places pop back up frequently, and I absolutely adore that, which is a big part of why Lily’s grandmother is the star of my second novel.

You guys, this interview was SO MUCH fun! Sara is hilarious and just an all around fun person to get to know. I love having a bookstagram platform and how responsive a lot of authors are (some, not so much-but most). If you’re looking for a funny, heartfelt read about women and friendship then you MUST pick up For the Love of Friends! You can check out my review here. Bonus * Today is the last day that the kindle version is on sale for $1.99- Also, be on the lookout for She’s Up to No Good coming summer 2022! Thank you Sara for joining me on this blog post and Q&A!