On today’s show we get to know Sarah Branson, a former nurse-midwife who now writes cross-genre speculative and women’s fiction that involves air-borne pirates three hundred years in the future. Her stories are set against the backdrop of an Earth changed by fires, floods, and pandemics, but are firmly rooted in the strength and resiliency of the human spirit.

Sarah first started conjuring stories of pirates when her family hopped a freighter to Australia when she was seven. She has since grown up, traveling extensively across the US and the globe. She raised her family in Michigan and still longs to swim in the bays of Northern Michigan. She worked as a receptionist, retail clerk, writing tutor, business owner, and certified nurse midwife. She also taught science and history to middle school and high school students in the U.S., Brazil, and Japan. Through these myriad experiences, she developed a deep appreciation for people’s strength and endurance and fully believes that badass women will inherit the earth and the Earth will be better for it.

An indie author, she draws on all of her experiences when creating stories about strong women and men finding adventure, love and their paths in worlds that are constantly changing.

Pirates of New Earth is her first series and Book 1: A Merry Life, Book 2: Navigating the Storm, and Book 3: Burn the Ship are available now with the final book of the series, Book 4: Blow the Man Down planned for January 2023. Sarah lives with her husband in Connecticut.

You can learn more about her at www.sarahbranson.com

A little about today's host-

Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.

She offers a free 7 Steps to Perfect Your Podcast Title to anyone interested in launching a podcast. You can also follow her on Instagram-@ShawnaPodcasts, and learn more about the network and community at https://linktr.ee/37by27.

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[00:00:11] Sarah Branson has been a midwife for close to 30 years. She's helped families welcome their little ones into their arms in the hospital, at a birth center and at home.

[00:00:26] a post-apocalyptic tale of action, adventure, revenge, and romance featuring everyone, pirates.

[00:00:57] Book One- A Merry Life and Book two- [00:01:00] Navigating the Storm are available now with Book three- Burn the Ship Launching in November. We'll talk with Sarah today about Kat, why Pirates and her writing process; that typically starts with a large sheet of paper on the wall and multicolored sharpies. Welcome Sarah. I'm so glad you're here today.

[00:01:20] Shawna: I am so excited to learn more about Kat. Before we get to that, tell me more about you. Tell me the most interesting thing about where you are living right now.

[00:01:41] Shawna: I've actually been there cuz the Mystic Pizza, we had to go there.

[00:01:56] During Covid, all the kids and grandkids could come and stay [00:02:00] there, and it was perfect. But now that's done and they have moved to different places, so we're gonna go downsize and do something fun..

[00:02:14] Sarah: Yes.

[00:02:16] Sarah: Well, let's see. We're gonna stay in Connecticut cuz my husband's got a job there, so.

[00:02:21] Sarah: And one of us has to have one .

[00:02:24] Sarah: Details anywhere in the world. I'm, I love the Pacific Northwest. Uh, you know, that is kind of where, even though we raised the kids in northern Michigan and we were there for close to 20 years, we still consider ourselves displaced Oregonians.

[00:02:57] Shawna: Who knows?

[00:03:01] Shawna: You like to leave that option open?

[00:03:03] That is always true for me. Always leave the options open.

[00:03:12] Sarah: Correct. Burn the Ship.

[00:03:20] Where do you wanna start?

[00:03:37] Shawna: Oh, nice.

[00:03:41] So, in looking at it, , I have to not just look at how Merry Life, and Navigating the Storm, and Burn the Ship and Blow the Man Down, but I have to kind of look at the whole arc there. Um.

[00:03:54] Sarah: That is why there's so many sharpies. And you know what I, because I am new to [00:04:00] the writing process, as you know, as far as writing fiction goes

[00:04:05] Sarah: My zero draft was a beautiful piece of work, as far as I was concerned, it had all these great words and all this great adventure. It didn't have a plot though, which was apparently Is clutch.

[00:04:18] Sarah: Yeah. In, in marketing a book, people tend to like plots.

[00:04:23] Sarah: So I, I have been over the last two years kind of on a fire hose of learning, um, about the writing process and craft

[00:04:33] Sarah: and have, you know, gotten to a place now where I have a very. Overall narrative arc for the, for the series and nice little narrative arcs for each book as well,

[00:04:43] Sarah: Yeah, so it has been working out very well.

[00:04:48] Sarah: You know, Kat kind of showed up in my car as I was commuting. I was working at the birth center in Danbury, Connecticut, which is about an hour and a half away from where I live. And I would go there and I would stay there when [00:05:00] I was on call.

[00:05:21] Yeah. And. at some point in, kind of that make believe world that we sometimes get into. Kat showed up and had this story.

[00:05:32] Sarah: and that was always the sticking point for me for writing was I didn't feel like I had a story to tell.

[00:05:38] Um, and suddenly there was a story, there was a character who had a rich background and a rich story, and I basically just kind of followed her.

[00:06:01] Shawna: Nice. She was a leader. She's ready to take you places.

[00:06:07] Shawna: That's wonderful. And so the arc of this series- you mentioned there's a fourth book, like there, a fourth title.

[00:06:18] Um, and it will, it lets Kat have an opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting with her. Her past enslaver. Oh, and, uh, she's been working, working towards this goal for a while, and so she will have an opportunity to see if she can make the balance. Fall into, fall into the right balancing place.

[00:06:47] Sarah: Yes.

[00:06:58] Sarah: It definitely is. [00:07:00] It definitely is. Sometimes I really feel like either I have one foot in each camp of sci-fi and women's fiction or. Standing outside the camps , people are going like, no, no, no. In sci-fi it's, you know, you can't possibly have a woman who's going to be this strong, leader. And, you know, in women's fiction, it's like there's not a lot of sci-fi aspects genre crossover with it, But,

[00:07:26] Sarah: Yeah. And this, and the story really is, yes, it's action and yes, it's adventure and there's some really fun action and adventure, but it really is about Kat and about her moving from being this traumatized young woman to being powerful.

[00:07:41] Sarah: and not just powerful in her professional life, but powerful in her personal life.

[00:07:47] Shawna: And discovering herself.

[00:07:49] Shawna: And it sounds like, so your timeline, you sound like during the pandemic you've been able to, cuz I'm, I'm looking at two books, you guys and there's a third one coming out. So you've been moving very quickly with this.

[00:08:12] Shawna: Uhhuh.

[00:08:25] Yeah. Um, Yeah, I did go ahead and quit my job as a midwife so I could finish it up.

[00:08:33] And, you know, just jump in with both feet. And I have the good fortune of having a second income in my house, so that works out. So that's been wonderful. First book was really written while I was working as a midwife, and then the second and the third and the fourth will be now as a professional author.

[00:08:56] Sarah: It is.

[00:08:58] Sarah: It and it was, completely [00:09:00] worth it to jump in with both feet like that.

[00:09:09] Sarah: And it is. And I think it's about following your passion as long as you possibly can.

[00:09:14] Sarah: And yes, you do have to pay the mortgage, but

[00:09:19] So what surprised you the most about diving into the writing?

[00:09:38] Shawna: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:58] Oh. Um, [00:10:00] and she said, those are great hybrid publishers you're talking about. They're very reputable. She said, but honestly, the way you're talking, you could do this yourself for half the cost and really just keep control of everything.

[00:10:12] Sarah: and you know, that kinda hit my button there. Of keep control of everything... You know, I mean as a, as someone who had a, you know, their own business as a home birth midwife.

[00:10:23] yeah.

[00:10:36] Shawna: I knew my publisher. I make sure my publisher makes the right decisions.

[00:10:41] Shawna: Yes. And that's such an important thing with the way publishing is there's a lot of books that probably don't make it to the light of day because they're waiting for an agent, or they're waiting for this opportunity and, sometimes publishers and publishing houses and agents are like trying to follow trends, and you don't always get to find your way.

[00:11:17] Sarah: That's exactly right.

[00:11:35] Figure out that path. Yep. Yep. That is so wonderful. I love it. I'm getting goosebumps.

[00:11:42] Shawna: That's wonderful. Where is the best place for folks to find you and find your books?

[00:12:01] Shawna: Wonderful. We'll have that in the show notes, but go ahead and spell it cuz I do believe, I think I know where the, the letters are, but we wanna make sure all the letters are in the right place.

[00:12:14] Shawna: Perfect.

[00:12:16] Shawna: And what book or story inspires you the most?

[00:12:26] Shawna: mm-hmm.

[00:12:34] Shawna: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:58] Shawna: That works.

[00:13:05] Sarah: If you want to follow your dream, follow your dream. Find a way to make it happen. And this has been a wonderful experience for me to be able to, step into this. This time last year when I was at the Women's Fiction Conference, I felt strongly like an imposter. And now I have a third book coming out soon. So I feel very, very happy about that whole thing. Very happy.

[00:13:37] Thank you. Thank you very quickly. That's perfect. Thanks so much for joining us. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram @AuthorExpressPodcast so you can be up to date with what's coming out next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.