The Dollhouse by Sara Ennis
TPP EP 05

TPP Episode 5 with Sara Ennis

[00:00:00]

Mark: Hello and welcome to the Thriller Pitch Podcast, where you come for the pitch and stay for the story behind the story. I’m your host, Mark P.J. Nadon, and you are listening to episode number five. Today’s episode is brought to you by my novel, the Genesis Project, which is like Inception meets Jack Ryan.

A former operator joins a top secret project designed to help soldiers with PTSD. Side effects may include assassination. If you’re an author and wanna sponsor a future episode, just head to markpjnadon.ca/thrillerpitchpodcast. Links will be in the show notes. Today’s guest is Sarah Ennis, an author known for dark, emotionally layered thrillers that dig deep into the human mind.

Her stories are tense, sometimes horrific, always character driven and unafraid to explore trauma, justice, and survival. But one thing, certain, [00:01:00] the dog never dies.

Mark: Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here and to chat about your book, the Dollhouse.

Sara: Thank you for inviting me.

I’m always willing to talk about my book.

Mark: So let’s jump right into it. Let’s start with the pitch for the Dollhouse.

Sara: I’ve been told it sort of like Saw meets Flowers in the Attic with some Silence of the Lambs and a little bit of Room. But it’s about a man who’s trying to recreate his past.

Based on a photo album that he has of his family history. And so he keeps abducting people, young people who look like he did as a child, and then he makes them reenact scenes, but he tells the stories differently than what the photos show. So it’s a little bit dark. There are three teenagers in it, but it’s definitely not YA.

And it’s, it was really fun to write. It was my first book, but, um, so it, it got a lot of love and a lot of time and I researched [00:02:00] everything. It was inspired by Shasta and Dylan Groene, who are in Idaho, were abducted in Idaho. And Elizabeth Smart, who is taken out of Utah, I believe. So it was inspired by them, but it’s not at all.

You know, based on their cases. It’s just the bad guys in those cases were interesting to me.

Mark: Okay. So you started with the idea of just having seen those cases and then you thought, yeah. So how did that work? You thought, I’ll, I should write a story like this, and then where did the idea inspire from there?

Sara: No, I’ve always had a really twisted brain, and so since I was a little kid, I’ve retold stories differently than they were actually written, like fairytales. I would change the endings. And so I just started like, so what’s Elizabeth Smart gonna be like when she gets away from this? You know, or, or I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Dylan and Shasta Groene case, but only one of them.

They were seven and eight when they were taken and their family was killed in the process and only Shasta survived. And I, I kind of just wondered what she would be [00:03:00] like as she got older. So it was more me imagining their futures a little bit. Okay. And. I, you know, as, as you do too, as a writer, we have crazy imaginations.

We can make a walk around the block, turn into all sorts of chaos if we let our brains go.

Mark Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there’s a lot of fun in that.

Sara: Yes, exactly. Although, I don’t know, sometimes our family members might get tired of it, but yeah, it’s fun. It’s nice having that kind of a weird brain that see.

Bodies where there probably aren’t any, but maybe who knows what’s behind closed doors.

Mark: Yeah. Well I have to, I have to commend you on, on the book blurb in that, for this book. I mean, I happen to like dark psychological thrillers as well. I kind of write a little bit of those myself. Yes,

Sara: yes you do. And

Mark: yeah, and when I read this, this back cover blurb, I was like, I have got to read this book.

So it sounded so good. So yeah, I had to jump in and find out what, what’s happening here and Oh, good. And you did a great job just pulling me right in, like right from the, from the first page with, with, [00:04:00] Angel and Bud and, and their, you know, what’s going on with them and

Sara: thank you.

Mark: And it just pulled me right in.

So, yeah, I appreciate it. It’s very good. I haven’t had a chance to finish it yet, but I’m definitely Oh, oh, you have it. Okay. Definitely getting into it.

Sara: You probably have a pretty good twist coming then, so. Okay, good. It’s fun to hear how people respond to that.

Mark: So what was the writing process like for this book?

Was it, was it fast, was it messy? Was it like really structured?

Sara: Um, all of the above. I wrote it during COVID ’cause I was bored. I, my day job at was work from home, which was fine. I’m a big time loner. I’m fine to be by myself, not talking to other humans a lot. But I had extra time because even like the nonprofit boards I was on weren’t getting together, so I thought.

I’ve been writing my whole life, but never ever seriously really, I mean, my career has always involved writing so fiction. It was like, well, now it’s time to write that book. So I did, and for that book I hired two different developmental editors who had [00:05:00] very different views on things. So I kind of realized, okay, they’re, they’re not the be all end all, they’re just opinions.

And then I have to make the final choice. I learned a lot about both the writing process and the publishing process from that book. I’m still learning from that. But I am, um, I like to say I’m not a pantser and I’m not a plotter. I know like, i’m going, I’m driving from Iowa to LA and I wanna stop in Vegas.

You know, I know what’s gonna happen at the end. I know where I’m starting. I know a major point in the middle, and I don’t know how I’m gonna get there. I might decide to go through Colorado, or I might decide to drop down and go south. I’ll find out as I go, as long as I hit my middle and my end. That’s pretty much how I write.

Mark: And what kind of research did you have to do for this book?

Sara: For that one. I did a lot of reading about the cases that inspired me, and then I actually lived in Casper, Wyoming, where it set for a year as a kid. So I didn’t have great memories and I thought [00:06:00] that’d be a good place to put this book. The one thing I had to really research was I had to find out, I don’t know if you’re to the part yet.

Has Angel been to a store to the little shop yet? No. Okay, well, so you don’t, okay. There’s a point in there where basically Netflix video, the original videos that you would get in the mail and ship back mm-hmm. That becomes important. So that part, I got to actually talk to the people at Netflix to find out what the process was about a certain thing.

And that was pretty fun. So that was the only research that was not, you know, just me being a loony bird.

Mark: What about the, what about the looney bird research?

Sara: That’s just me trying to figure out how far I can go with things.

Mark: On, you mean like on the psychological elements? Like what, how far can I take?

Sara: Yeah. In some of the, I don’t know how far you’ve gotten, but there’s some parts, like I said, it’s, some people say it’s like the SAW movies. There are some games. That are played that involve power tools and things like that. And so, one of my good friends is a woodworker, and so we spent a lot of time in his [00:07:00] shop trying to figure out how some things would work.

So things like that, which are fun. So, yeah.

Mark: Yeah. That’s crazy.

Sara: Well, it’s fun. I mean, it’s good have those sources.

Mark: It would, yeah. Yeah. Well, ’cause I can imagine it would be a lot of research into and into the psych psychological too, because Yes. I mean, this is. This is book one. So you’re, you know, you’re kind of setting up mm-hmm.

How this is gonna continue. Yes. But like the, that kind of trauma, like what are the effects of that kind of trauma and how are they gonna come out? That would be a, yeah, that would be a lot to look at.

Sara: I actually did. I sort of forgot about this, but I shouldn’t have. I hired a psychologist who specializes in trauma to review it and make sure I had both his story and the kid’s story correct.

Because the kids, some of the kids maybe, um, continue in other books and that doctor became a character in the series.

Mark: Oh, nice.

Sara: So, she’s inspiration for a character in the series. Yeah. So that was pretty cool. I, it was important to me to honor and [00:08:00] respect people who’ve been through bad stuff. I didn’t wanna make fun of it or make it a joke, so.

Yeah. Yeah. Or make stuff up about mental health. You know, I know sometimes in TV and movies people will do something for the plot and I wanted to make sure, of course I have to do it a little bit, but I didn’t wanna do it absolutely over the top. So I did have her check, she reviewed the book and we talked in deep discussion about how certain characters would react to certain things now and in the past and in the future. And that was a big deal for me.

Mark: So is there anything you got in like the earlier drafts, let’s say from the developmental editor or from your psychologist that you kind of got wrong, that you learned and thought, oh wow, that’s, I didn’t think of that and now I have to like adjust the book a little bit?

Sara: Not really. And this may be TMI, I went through some trauma, you know, my younger life. And so I, some of this stuff is kind of based on me without the extreme reactions to what happened? So no, not [00:09:00] really. The one thing I got from the developmental editor that I thought was funny is he did not though there was a man who was in his sixties, but he’s put out a bunch of books and movies and then there was a younger woman who was like 26 or 27 very different views on things. He did not like that I have the Bud swear. And I would not let go because I’m like a young man held captive with his sister and another girl and he’s not big, and the captor is big. He’s gonna fight back with whatever tools he has. And to a teenage boy, swearing and acting tough is the only thing he would have.

And that was one that, she said yes. That was definitely how a kid that age would act. So that was interesting.

Mark: Yeah.

Sara: But he hated it. He was like, nobody’s gonna buy your book because he’s swearing. And I’m like, wait a minute, we’re talking thrillers in 2020, whatever one, they’ll be okay. They’ll be fine with it.

Mark: Yeah. And I thought it was good ’cause he didn’t have like a normal upbringing. Like they’re, no, they’re [00:10:00] already struggling. So he’s getting, his parenting essentially is coming from, well, whatever kind of media and stuff and friends that, that he’s getting. Right. So,

Sara: Very much.

Mark: Swearing would definitely be part of that. Yeah. Especially when that’s, you know, it’s kind of accepted more so now than ever.

Sara: Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Mark: Was there ever a point where you almost gave up on the book, on the writing, the first book?

Sara: No, I was obsessed with it. I was driving everybody crazy talking about it. It was all I talked about to my poor friends and family.

I have the bad habit in both writing and life of, I keep going with things far beyond where normal people give up. I’ve had two businesses that have both done, I’ve done that. And all of my books, I just keep going. I don’t know. I don’t, I think because I’m usually, ’cause I know the end, I don’t have that problem of, oh, I don’t know where this is going.

I don’t, I think I’m done with it. Yeah, I just, I think having, knowing the end does help avoid that. Yeah. It might get messy in the middle and I might [00:11:00] get frustrated and screaming and wondering what the heck I’m doing and, and there’s always imposter syndrome about you’re a terrible writer. Why are you doing this?

Blah, blah, blah. Which you may know too. Um, yeah. But no, I’ve never thought about quitting a project once I was in. I would say if I’ve got more than 10,000 words, I’m, I’m good. I’m not, I’m not stopping.

Mark: You’re in. Yeah.

Sara: That Dollhouse is the longest in my books though, because the feedback I got from a lot of reviewers and readers was, this is too long. And the funny thing is they all said you needed an editor. And I’m like, I paid for two editors.

Mark: Yeah.

Sara: But that book was a hundred thousand words. And most of my new thrillers are much shorter though, between 60 and 70. Because the other thing is I like dialogue and I like action. I write books that are more like a movie.

There’s not a whole lot of introspection or a whole lot of pondering the wallpaper. I just that I won’t read it when they’re like that. I skip it. Mm-hmm. And so I don’t write it. So, um. For good or bad. If people are looking for a deep [00:12:00] read, I’m probably not their person.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I liked how fast it moved, I mean mm-hmm.

I’m also like, it’s a thriller, right. You’re, you’re right. Looking for it to kind of get going a little bit. Yes. Sure. We have to take a breath at points, but I, yeah.

Sara: Yeah. I,

Mark: I really enjoyed how fast it was and

Sara: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, have you read, uh, any S.A. Cosby Books?

Mark: No, I have not.

Sara: Oh, well I highly recommend them for one, but they’re crime fiction, but they have a little bit of a literary bent to them in that he likes similes a lot. Okay. I’ve heard he is only allowed to have three similes per page or something like that. ’cause he likes them a lot. But he’s the only author that I know of that I will sit still and listen or read his explorations of the wallpaper because he does it in such a way that it’s still moving the story. So you know, some people can get away with that. Just not me. I’m not that talented.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. That was CS Crosby, you said?

Sara: S.A. Cosby.

Mark: S.A. Cosby.

Sara: Yeah, he wrote, um, his newest [00:13:00] book is King of Ashes. He’s also got Razor Blade Tears. All the Sins Bleed. I think he’s got five books out now. But if you read what they’re crime fiction and they’re very, very crime fiction. Okay. Yeah. Blacktop Wasteland, I think made me cry harder than any crime book ever has. So, uh, yeah, if you like that kind of stuff, you, and it’s based in the American South, so it’s, you know, it’s, he, he’s Black and his characters are African American and living that life and Okay. It’s a deep dive, but it’s so good.

Mark: Oh, I’ll have to check that out.

Sara: Yeah. Highly recommend. Are you in Canada?

Mark: Yeah, I’m in Ottawa. Yeah.

Sara: Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Boot is, I, I’m like, oh, I catch a Canadian accent there.

Mark: Yeah.

Sara: Didn’t realize.

Mark: So what would you, your book is, it’s kind of pumped up as, or from what I gather was like a psychological thriller.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Would you say for readers, is that, is it more, is it like a psy, [00:14:00] a horror psychological thriller? Like would you throw horror in there because.

Sara: Yeah, it’s a little bit, yeah, it’s a little bit psychological horror, which I don’t know if we have that as an official genre yet, but we should. Um, yeah.

Yeah. It’s very much psychological horror. Okay. It’s not crime because it’s not, you know, traditional crime thriller. It’s, it’s definitely psychological. Um, and it’s bordering on horror. One thing I don’t tend to write. I figure our brains like the reader’s brains, and especially for writers, we are much worse when it comes to envisioning something if we’re given just enough information that our brains take over.

I know we make it way worse than the author ever could, so I like to do that to readers. I like to let their brain do the deep dive on the gore and the physical stuff. I just give ’em enough to. To get them there.

Mark: Okay.

Sara: Yeah. So there’s not, there’s not a ton of, there’s a lot of intensity, but there’s not a lot of physical description of blood and guts or anything like that.

Mark: Okay. , Yeah. [00:15:00] Okay. Yeah. So with the characters, how did you come up with, with the characters and let’s say, I mean, I guess Angel, Bud, and Olivia. Yeah. Yeah. So who, like, how did you come up with them? What was like, I know you, the inspiration came from…

Sara: yeah, so Elizabeth Smart was Olivia and Angel and Bud were Shasta and Dylan, although the ages were changed on all of them. I. Basically I just, I envisioned who would be good to be in this. So Angel is very shy and very timid and easily made insecure because of her relationship with her mom. And Olivia is very stoic and very, it is what it is so I’m gonna just, you know, exist and do the best I can. And she’s, she’s a little bit like bossy older sister, even though they’re not by birth related ’cause they’re together for quite like six months or something, I don’t remember now. And she is very mothering in a weird way, but not mothering, but more the attitude of, I know it’s better for you kind of thing sometimes. [00:16:00] So, I don’t know. Uh, this is another one of those weird things. I lived in an orphanage for the year I was in Wyoming, and I was thinking about some of the relationships of the girls that were in the dorm that I was in and how, you know, you can be a year older and then you act like you know everything in the person that’s a year younger than you, you know, there’s just a kid. And it was very much that dynamic. So that applied a little bit in this locked up environment. So I think that helped. And then, the bad guys, the bad guy.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So do you, do you build, when you’re building characters, do you just start the story and then the character comes to life for you? Or is there like a, an interview, kind of interview process with the character to get to know them sort of.

Sara: Um, I’m character first, which is interesting, I think to me, that they come to me fully formed. They tell me who they are. I don’t have to, I don’t have to do anything. Even the bad guys, like the bad guy in the Dollhouse, he has a pretty interesting backstory.

And I’d say that’s true of all [00:17:00] my bad guys, except for one in The Hunted. She is just a psychopath. To be a psychopath. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. But, they’re just people in my brain. I just finished and put out the Doll Master, which is the follow up. The, there’s a few books in the series, but The Doll Master is sort of the second half of The Dollhouse, and I thought it was gonna end one way and nope. Nope. It ended a whole different way that surprised the heck outta me, and it was because the character said, this is what happens. You’re not telling me what I’m doing. I don’t care it. Okay. So thanks for that book.

Mark: Yeah. I used to outline a lot and in detail, I think the first book I wrote had like 40. It was like 40,000 words of an outline, which is almost a written book that was, yeah. Just had no detail in it. Wow. But then when I really got into the story of actually writing, the characters came to life. Mm-hmm. And, and then I realized, wait, they’re not gonna do these things. And then I just went with the story in a totally different direction. Yeah.

So by the time the book was done, [00:18:00] I think maybe like 15,000 words were actually useful and…

Sara: wow.

Mark: So now I don’t do these gigantic yeah gigantic outlines anymore. They’re just, just like you. It’s kind of like beginning. I, I usually know the middle and then Yeah, the end. So I have like the three acts sort of Yeah.

Somewhat figured out, but I’m, I’m, I don’t do characters really deep. So I also jump into, allow the story to go wherever it goes. Yeah. Because characters will do what they do and once you get to know them, it’s like, wow, like this person is just so fascinating and this is what they’re gonna do.

Isn’t, and that’s, it’s so fun.

Sara: And they have those little like mannerisms. That they insist on that I don’t, I don’t know. I feel like there’s some part back here in our brains that knows what they’re doing, but like all of a sudden you’ll have a character that does a certain thing or says a certain thing all the time and you’re like, did I consciously do that or did they project that through my fingers onto the screen?

I mean, it’s weird. Yeah, we’re all a little bit nuts, I think, but in a good way. In a nice, safe, good way. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Sara: Better to do this than actually go around killing people. [00:19:00]

Mark: Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. Yeah.

Sara: Yeah.

Mark: And so what character was the most fun to write?

Sara: Oh, Angel is my favorite, I think because I connect the most with her. There is a, a character in Small Gods, which is fifth I think. Yeah fifth, that she, again, all of my characters are like me, even the bad ones, but she is again, very much like me at my worst. And that was fun to write because I got to let out my bad side, and be bad. Mm-hmm. But I’d say Angel is the one I’m most attached to, I have a character named CB who comes up in The Hunted and she’s kinda like a little bit J-Lo, she’s a badass, five foot, nothing who wears pink but drives a semi. And she’s mouthy and she’s actually from kind of a well bred family in Chicago, but she doesn’t live that life. So, she’s, she’s one of my favorite characters to write [00:20:00] because she just is so mouthy and in your face and sassy and she dresses cute and weird. Um, so that’s fun to write. I like the fact,

Mark: I love that.

Sara: Yeah. Yeah. And then on my cozy side, I have some great characters. Like I have a guy named Marv who runs a convenience store called Pump and Circumstance. And he is always inventing things, and so he’s like Henry Winkler when he is 70 in, you know, in, I don’t know. So, I don’t know. I love characters. Characters are my favorite thing on the planet. If I could just write characters all the time, that’d be great.

Yeah. Who’s your favorite character?

Mark: So who’s, oh, so sorry, I just wanna touch on who is, your other books, are they under the same name, Sara Ennis, or is cozy under

Sara: Well, the cozys, no, the cozys are Sarah Isabelle, because I, I, okay.

Figured the thriller people could wander into the cozys and would be okay, but if the cozy people wandered into a thriller, they would not be okay. So I wanted to put some space between them, but my website is just Call Me Sarah, because [00:21:00] either way it’s me. So that’s the best way to do it. But yeah, I’m, I’m careful.

The thriller people know about the cozys and the cozy people can discover the thrillers, but I don’t want them to accidentally find that they would not do well.

Mark: Yeah, I could imagine that crossover would be tough because yeah, if you like cozy and, and then you go to like your Dollhouse, that’s not, yeah, that’s, so it’s not gonna work.

Even if you wanted to try it, I would almost say, I don’t know. No, no. I do. You might like the writer, but…

Sara: Yeah, I do have people who like both, but they started with the thrillers. Okay. It’s fine to go from dark to light, but it’s not good to start with the light and go to dark, I think. Yeah. Um, because the cozys are funny.

They’re, they’re. Like laugh out loud, funny. They’re completely different than this, so, yeah.

Mark: Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah, so my favorite character from your book was Bud so far. Oh, well that makes sense. Early on, but, yeah. Yeah.

Sara: But I meant of yours. Do you have, do your, is your your book series or are they [00:22:00] one off? Are they two?

Mark: Oh, I have both. Yeah. Oh, okay. I kind, I, I jump. There’s sub genres of thrillers, so, oh, okay. Yeah. I have a trilogy that’s in a post-apocalyptic setting, and then I have a military thriller and then I have a psychological, so I kind of jump all over the place.

Sara: That we can’t all stick to one. We’re not good at it.

Mark: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Fa favorite characters? That’s a good question. Um, well, I have a, there’s one character. It’s same thing I like, like the spunky fun, confident character. I, so I in my book two, it hasn’t come out, it comes out on Tuesday, actually.

Sara: Oh. Congrats.

Mark: Called, The Chosen it’s book two in the trilogy, and there’s a character in there called Poppy. And, and she, she is just fun because she has that like I’ll take on anything. I don’t, I’m not afraid, like, you know. Yeah. Despite being in a wheelchair, she has found in this post apocalyptic world how to get by and be an impactful, an impactful, yeah. Part of that, their group.

Sara: So, wow. So what inspired that?

Mark: And she was a lot of fun to write.

Sara: Who inspired her? Anybody? [00:23:00] Or you just made her up?

Mark: I think I just made her up. Yeah. I just, she just kind of, it’s kind of, she just popped into my head during that scene. I was like, yeah, you know, they heard the creaking of wheels and then all of a sudden Poppy came.

Sara: Oh, that sounds awesome. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Okay. So is she in both books or just in the second one?

Mark: She’s not in the first, she’s in the second and the third. Okay.

Sara: Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well now I, I’ve never read, well, you know there’s few, but um, I’ve never really read Postapocalyptic thriller. Is there any humor in it at all or are they very serious humor?

Mark: No, it’s dark. Okay. Well I don’t…

Sara: be dark and funny.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t do it. Dexter like Joe Abercrombie. Yeah. Oh yeah. Dexter too. Yeah, yeah,

Sara: yeah. And I do try to make Alfred funny. I wanted Alfred to think he was funny, even if nobody else thought he was funny. So there’s some bad dad jokes in that book.

Okay, well, I might have to check it out and see if I can do purely dark. I’ve never tried that.

Mark: Oh yeah, for sure. I can send you a copy of that. I’d be happy to.

Sara: Well, sending from Canada to the US is ridiculous. Don’t do that. I’ll go find it, [00:24:00] but thank you.

Mark: So we’re gonna, we’re gonna get into a couple wrap up questions. Okay. And these are for authors that are listening. Oh, okay. What advice would you give someone who just published their first or second book? So they’ve kind of gone through that learning curve a little bit and as you know, or well may or may not know, like it can be very challenging. Mm-hmm. To get your book out there, to get it to an audience.

So what? Yes. And to want to write the next one when the first one maybe doesn’t do as well. ’cause everyone thinks, oh, it’s my first book once it’s out there. Yeah. Like it’s gonna go big and I’ll be able to write full time and Yeah. It’s almost never that way.

Sara: No. I would say, and I am dead serious about this, find author friends.

Because not only are they good for when you’re having, I’m gonna quit and go work at Costco Day but they are also really good at advice. Like I’m redoing all my covers now because I paid a bunch of money for my first three covers, think, and I hired somebody who worked at Random House doing their covers and I didn’t know any better.

And we went for cool covers [00:25:00] instead of market covers. And people have for a long time thought that they were fantasy instead of thrillers because they don’t look at all like thrillers. So I spent, you know, $3,000 on covers that I, that did not do me any service. Um, so I don’t, I. I don’t necessarily have a great eye for covers.

And so I have my, my group of thriller writers, we have a little mastermind and they are, they are helping me help the designer redo my covers because I’ll think something’s great and they’ll point out Nope. Why it’s not great. Yeah. And I would never have got it. So have writer friends because they can give you good advice.

They will be honest. You can do things together. Like, on TikTok, we have a shared TikTok account where we, um, do book reviews. Of books, but we also talk about our own books. It’s kind of like that. I think if you know what 20 books is, it’s the, yeah, the rising, rising tide lifts all boats. It’s very much that philosophy.

Yeah. So try to find some thriller [00:26:00] writer friends if you write thrillers or whatever, right. I also have another group on the cozy side that’s equally fantastic. That would be number one. Number two, listen to any Becca Syme podcast you can find, because she will help you keep your head straight. Um, she really will.

Yeah. She’ll, she will remind you this is not an overnight thing for anybody even like some of the people that we think of as overnight successes have got 13 or 14 books out before we hear about them. Yeah. And think that they suddenly are great. Um. Don’t give up. If you really enjoy it, keep doing it. If you, if you would do it anyway, even if you weren’t making money, then it’s worth keep doing.

If you are only doing it for money and you’re not doing well, it might not work. I mean, you might as well, you know, go find another thing that you like that might make you money. ’cause it’s gonna break your heart. Yeah. It’s so hard. It’s hard emotionally, it’s hard financially, it’s. Time-wise, if you have a day job and you’re trying to do that around it, I’m lucky in that I got laid off, so I ended up being able to write [00:27:00] full-time.

But financially that was scary as hell. Yeah. Um, and still is, I’m not, you know, I do have to have side gigs to help, but you have to love it enough. Mm-hmm. That you would do it even if you don’t get great success. Otherwise, you know, you’re just torturing yourself.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Anyone who thinks that this is, yeah.

A way to make money is, uh, yeah. There’s way easier ways to make your fortune than writing.

Sara: we can get into a whole conversation about Amazon and authors and all the ways that Yeah. I mean, they, people think we get rich ’cause our books are 1499 on Amazon and we get $2 out of that, you know? Yeah. They, yeah. They, the big world doesn’t understand how it works, but No, we do.

Yeah,

Mark: yeah, yeah, yeah,

Sara: yeah. So

Mark: if you could pick one thing that you felt led to your success so far, what would it be like, what worked best for you?

Sara: I lucked out. I had no idea what I was doing when I published the Dollhouse. I went on Instagram and found some people that talked [00:28:00] about thriller books, and I very naively, I didn’t realize this was something that all sorts of people did.

I messaged a few of them and said, Hey, can I send you my book? And I went and made this fancy little package that turned out wasn’t fancy at all compared to what they actually get, but to me it was fancy. I sent it to a couple of people and I just lucked out. They talked about it to their friends and they got their friends to talk about it, and it got past the hump of the cover, not matching, because if people just looked at the cover, they never would’ve picked it up.

And I didn’t know that at that point. So just lucky and trying, you know, being too dumb not to know, to, to know, you know, not to do this or that. You’re not the only one doing this to think I was it, um, just kind of going out and trying stuff, whether you know it’s gonna work or hope it’s gonna work. 20 things that you’d hope are gonna work, aren’t gonna work and maybe one will.

Mark: [00:29:00] Yeah.

Sara: But, um, the other thing I would say is. I’m on TikTok. That’s probably where I spend my most time. But I have noticed that Instagram is great for building awareness. You’re not gonna sell books there, but people will get to know who you are. The times I’ve noticed big spikes in my sales is when somebody unrelated to me goes and talks about my book in one of the reader groups on Facebook.

That’s gold. Mm-hmm. So if you can get somebody there to like your books, um, and talk about it, that’s fantastic. The other thing is there’s a bunch of Stuff Your Kindle days now, have you done any of those? Where you participate and it’s like, the last one I did was 500 authors give away their book for free for a day.

And they have, uh, emails and websites and all the stuff that goes out. And it started in romance. Now it’s in all sorts of genres. I was thinking those aren’t great anymore because on the Stuff Your Kindle Day, me, Sarah Reader goes [00:30:00] and looks at every book in this list and downloads it onto my Kindle for free.

I now have a hundred books on there that I’m probably gonna, you know, and then somebody I know is gonna put a book out. I’m never gonna get to that. Yeah. Maybe, maybe. I’m trying an experiment where I, I’m in a cozy one this next week. So the first book is gonna be free, and I put the other six on a countdown deal.

So because people, that’s the goal, the hope is that if you get one for free, they’ll go read your other books and they’ll pay for them.

Mark: Yeah.

Sara: So people like things on sale. So hopefully when they click on my first book and then see the others in the series are on sale, they’ll buy those. And then if they have more than one of my books on their phone, they might prioritize it.

Oh, okay. I have four books by the Yeah, exactly. Read it. So I’m gonna give that a shot. I have no idea if it’ll work, but it did work for another friend of mine, so we’ll see. We’ll see what happens. Yeah. So again, it’s try whatever you can.

Mark: Yeah, for sure.

Sara: Look for stuff that’s free or at least not money outta your pocket, like a Kindle count [00:31:00] down deal doesn’t cost you anything in cash. ’cause that’s the other thing is everything’s expensive. I don’t think BookBub feature deals work as well as they used to. Have you ever done one of those?

Mark: Yeah, I tried it. It didn’t work very well. Yeah. Oh

Sara: yeah. Yeah. They just don’t pay. They used to, but now they’ve got so many books in every email. You just get lost and they’re too expensive for that. So I think they’re gonna have to change their model. Yeah.

Mark: And they don’t have post apocalyptic, so they’re still Oh, they don’t like, they don’t. Get deep into the genres. So, oh, for me, I think they put my, my first book in in like an action and Oh yeah, I think it was Action Adventure or something and yeah. Yeah, it missed because it didn’t work. It’s not like that audience was not, was not the right audience. So, yeah.

Sara: It’s so hard. That’s the thing, people don’t realize that you’re gonna spend at least as much time trying to get people to know about your book as you do writing your books.

Mark: Yeah. And that’s a lot.

Sara: You really are. You really are. And it’s exhausting. Yeah. ’cause at least the writing is fun. The marketing can be not that fun. Yeah. Especially ’cause you, like I had a book pop off and I have no idea why. I don’t know why. [00:32:00] So I can’t go and go, okay, that worked because I did this and go do that again. No, I have no clue why I did it.

So I’m just like, okay, well thank you. Now what do I do? Yeah. It’s really frustrating. It’s, it’s not the most happy business to be in, but it’s satisfying if you like your stories.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, congratulations on the success you’ve had because you’ve, well, thank you. You’ve done well. Thank you.

Thank you. I have so far really enjoyed the Dollhouse, and I will be, well thanks. Getting more into that and I will leave a review. Okay. Those, well, I wanna know what you

Sara: think about the, I can’t wait to hear that part.

Mark: Okay. Uh, so as we wrap up here, what, where can people find your book? And find you on social.

Sara: Um, I’m on Amazon because Amazon owns us under Sarah Ennis. And then I have a website called justcallmesara.com. And then I have instagram, TikTok and Facebook accounts. I have a private reader group on Facebook, but mostly there, I just share inappropriate memes. So it’s not, it’s not okay, you know, [00:33:00] but the people there appreciate it.

Um, so for my, just if you look for Sara Ennis Writes, ’cause there’s also a stripper named Sarah Enni on TikTok. Anyway, um, so Sarah Ennis writes is me. I keep my call. Okay. Which everybody appreciates.

Mark: Okay. Um,

Sara: but yeah, if you just look for Sarah and US Rights anywhere, you’ll find me.

Mark: Okay. That’s great.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been a, have a wonderful conversation. Really enjoyed learning more. It was

Sara: fun

Mark: and yeah, it was great. So if you don’t mind sticking around for a couple minutes. Yeah. Uh, for some bonus questions. My newsletter subscribers get some, some bonus questions that others don’t get, so, oh, that’s cool.

Sara: You have to

Mark: join the newsletter to jump in on, on those bonus questions. Very

Sara: smart. Very smart. Okay. Yeah.

Mark: So thank you.

Sara: You are welcome. I wanna hear about that once we’re off.

Mark: Thanks for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, you can support the podcast and get early access to future episodes on Patreon. Some guests are also sharing bonus content, like short stories and novellas that are hard to find [00:34:00] elsewhere. And even if you just joined Patreon now, you can still get all those novellas that were posted. And if you’re into mind manipulation and assassination in a military setting, check out the Genesis project.

If you like the show, please follow, rate and share it with another Thriller fan. It really helps make a difference in growing the podcast. I’ll see you in the next episode when I sit down with Lizzie Qnert, author of the Psychological vigilante thriller Power Surge.