Join Kathleen Basi as she sits down with award-winning author Sarahlyn Bruck in this captivating episode of Author Express. Discover the fascinating details about Sarahlyn's background growing up in Northern California, her experience as an actor doing improv, and her journey as a writer. Gain insights into her upcoming book "Light of the Fire," set in a small town in New Jersey, and learn about the deep connections and themes woven into its storyline. Listen in as Sarahlyn shares her perspective on the writing journey and offers a valuable piece of advice for aspiring writers. If you're curious about finding inspiration, getting through editing challenges, and connecting with others through literature, this episode is a must-listen!

A little about today's author -

Sarahlyn Bruck writes contemporary, book club fiction and is the award-winning author of three novels: Light of the Fire (2024), Daytime Drama (2021), and Designer You (2018). When she’s not writing, Sarahlyn moonlights as a full-time writing and literature professor at a local community college. She’s also a co-host of the pop culture podcast, Pretty Much Pop. From Northern California, she now lives in Philadelphia with her family.

For the latest book news, events, and announcements, check out her website and subscribe to her newsletter. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @sarahlynbruck.

Light of the Fire released 1/23/24 and is available for purchase. Use these links to buy *now* with an affiliate link that supports this podcast: https://amzn.to/3OcLowg

A little about today's host-

Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”

Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/. 

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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -

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Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kathleen Basi. I'm an award-winning musical composer, a feature writer, essayist, and, of course, storyteller. Let me tell you a little bit about today's guest.

Sarahlyn Bruck is the award-winning author of 3 contemporary novels, Light of the Fire, Daytime Drama, and Designer You. Book blogger and reviewer Lee Kramer said of Sarahlyn's books, we need more stories like this. When she's not writing, Sarahlyn moonlights as a full time writing and literature professor at a local community college. From Northern California, she now lives in Philadelphia with her family.

Welcome, Sarahlyn.

Hi, Kathleen. Thanks for having me.

It's good to have you. So, tell me to start, what is the most interesting thing about where you're from?

Okay. So, I am from, just like you heard in the intro, I’m from Northern California. I'm from Palo Alto, which more people know about Palo Alto now than they did when I was growing up. It was a pretty boring college town.

I don't know that I would ever put those 2 things together, boring and college town. I mean, I live in a college town, so.

I mean, I think, you know, if I was my parents, you know, I would see a lot of wonderful nonboring things about this town, and it was actually a great place to grow up. But I think probably the most interesting thing about it is the location. I could hop on a train and go to San Francisco. I could go to the beach. I could go to the mountains. And that kind of convenience, there's nothing like that. So, I was really, really grateful to grow up, not just in a really nice, safe community, and there's lots of nice, safe communities. Thank goodness. But it was just a proximity to all of these wonderful things that I could take advantage of.

That sounds wonderful. I know the Bay Area a little bit. We went there on our honeymoon. So, that was very nice.

Oh, where’d you go?

Well, we ended up in Napa Valley, but we flew in and out of San Francisco. And I have family who lives in Palo Alto, and we came back to San Francisco for the end of our trip, but I actually got food poisoning on Fisherman's Wharf, so that's a whole different story.

Oh, that's, that, yeah. Oh my gosh. That's not fun.

That's a fun one because then, you know, you're on your honeymoon and your husband is calling the HR people trying to get you on insurance, so.

Oh my gosh.

Anyway, that's really cool that you live in the Bay Area. It's a lovely, lovely area.

Yeah. It is. And I've lived lots of different places, which I think, I think actually because I've listened to quite a few of these episodes, a lot of us have kind of bounced around a little bit. I think it makes for good storytelling. I've lived, you know, all over in Southern California as well. I've lived in Chicago, and now I live in Philly, and I actually lived for a while in San Francisco proper, and all of those thing’s kind of find their ways into my work, you know?

Well, there's just beauty in every place that you go, and there are things that just make you nostalgic for whatever places you know.

Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.

So, tell me something about you that other people would find hard to believe.

Oh my gosh. This is so embarrassing or not really embarrassing. I used to act. I used to be an actor.

That's not embarrassing.

I'm a little embarrassed, but that's how my husband and I met, actually. We used to do improv at the same theater when we both, we met in Chicago. So, and I moved there to do theater and, no, it's not really embarrassing, but it's definitely something that I'm happy to not be doing that.

That’s funny. So, improv. I actually, you know, I really think acting is super cool, and I did just enough of it to really enjoy it. So, tell me about improv. What are the kinds of things did you do with improv?

We did what's called long form improv. So, we would get a suggestion from the audience and then we would basically create, like, a little mini one at play off of that. That was my favorite kind of format.

Wow.

There's other stuff. There's short form. There's, you know, games and things like that. But my favorite was just taking something, you know, taking a suggestion and then creating an entire story around that. And, actually, the most fun thing about improv is that it is a team activity. You know what I mean? It's not like, you're up there by yourself. You are sharing this and you're giving and taking with other actors, and that actually was really, really fun. I actually don't like the attention of being up on stage, but I love that collaboration of working with a team. I always have.

Oh, that's so cool. And you know what occurs to me about improv as you're sitting there talking about this is that, that is exquisite preparation for book writing, I would think, because you have to be really mentally flexible to make something like that happen.

It really helps. Yeah. I didn't know it at the time, but, yeah, it actually comes in really handy.

Yeah. Well, it seems to have worked for you because you have several books published already.

Yeah.

So, tell us where the book is set and what's important about that setting.

This book is set in kind of a small town in New Jersey. It's about 2 women, they’re 2 estranged friends who made a terrible mistake when they were in high school and both now find themselves back in their hometown in New Jersey. And speaking of teams, actually, they both met each other and became so close because they both played for the same soccer team. And that's actually part of the setting too. So, it's really a friendship story, but there's a backdrop of soccer at the core of this book. So, one of the characters is facing a possible retirement from a professional soccer career and the other actually started a travel team, a travel league in their small hometown because they didn't have that growing up.

Very interesting. So, who do you think will connect with your book or who were you thinking of when you were writing it?

Well, it's women's fiction, book club fiction. I think anyone who enjoys stories about relationships between friends and family, I think that, I mean, I have a kind of a love-hate relationship with the term women's fiction. You know, we don't call it men's fiction for, you know.

Right. Exactly.

But I do think that if anyone who likes those books about, that are character focused and focused about their journey, the women's journey is going to enjoy this book. You don't have to know anything about soccer to enjoy this book, but it is friendship story.

Very cool. So, tell me a piece of advice that you think has been the most helpful in your writing journey, or you could say the least helpful. I'll give you the option.

You know what? I think it's the same answer, honestly. I find that advice a write every day, both helpful and harmful. I think it's helpful, you know, when I'm in a project, I like to try and touch it every day, if possible, but that can also lead to beating yourself up if life gets in the way. And it doesn't really work for everyone, and I find that it works for me sometimes. And then there are other times when things get really busy. You know, there's just things that happen in life that are unavoidable, and you can't always get to your manuscript even though you want to.

Yeah. That's very true.

So, you can't be hard on yourself. So, I find that writing every day is helpful, but also don't take it literally every single day necessarily.

Yeah. I do think that there's a need for rest. That whole idea of a Sabbath is an important kind of thing. I try to take Sundays completely off, and it's really hard sometimes because you have passion and you love it and you want to, I'm like, oh, I can think of this thing I want to do, but, no, I am not doing that today. I'm focused on family.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely. Or just I mean, I'm watching my daughter graduated from high school last year, and I am watching now the kids coming up in our neighborhood who are going through the same process. And I was like, oh my gosh. We were so busy last year.

Oh, it's crazy.

Yeah. No. It wasn't a very balanced time for me. I mean, it was fun. I was not balanced, and I don't think I was touching my manuscript at the time very much.

Well, that makes me feel much better.

Yeah. I know. You are busy. You are very busy right now.

It’s crazy. Well, life just in general is crazy, and sometimes you have to take care of yourself too.

Yeah.

Sometimes we pour ourselves out upon the altar of our art.

Yeah. No. It's true. It's true. But it's also really nice to be able to get back to something that especially if it's a 1st draft, that's still just mine, and I find that also it's nice, you know, in the middle of proms and picking out your outfits and all that stuff for graduation,

mm-hmm.

Or whatever it is, it's nice to be able to get back to even if it's just 20 minutes, you know, to work on something that's just mine.

I think that would be hard actually because you'd be like, no. I don't want to stop.

It was fun. Yeah.

So, you said something that still belongs just to you in that 1st draft. Is that the part of the writing process that brings you the most joy?

It does give me joy, but I find joy in just about every part of the process. I really try to because some of it's really hard. It's both joyful and also really challenging sometimes. And,

as all the best things in life are.

Exactly. Oh, right. Yeah. Exactly. But I was thinking about editing and I find editing really, really challenging, and I've been trying to find the joy in editing, and that's been actually very helpful because I think of it as problem solving and tying knots, you know, and that kind of stuff makes it more fun. But I do love sitting down with, you know, a fresh sheet and putting words to the page, new words is always pretty fun, but I do try and find joy in all parts of the process if possible.

That's absolutely wonderful. I love that. That's the way we should all be. What a good attitude. So, tell me, Sarahlyn, what is the best place for people to find you if they want to go look up your books?

Probably my website. It's just my name, sarahlynbruck.com. So, that's SARAHLYNBRUCK.com.

K. Very good. Alright. And let's close by asking you this. What book or story is inspiring you the most right now?

That's such a hard question. There are so many books that inspire me, but I just been recently, my mom over the past couple of years has become less mobile, but it means that she's been reading a lot more. In fact, she never considered herself a reader. She was always to just, I don't know, impatient zipping around. And so, these days, she's been reading a lot more and we've been really connecting with that, and we just finished or she just finished a book called The Most Fun We Ever Had. I recommended it to her by Claire Lombardo. And I love that book. I just love that book, but it was sort of like an extra icing on the cake to be able to share the experience with my mom who never considered herself much of a reader and be able to talk about it and connect over the same things and see so many of the same things in the characters, and that to me was just, I was like, this is what reading is for.

Yep. That's wonderful. That's very cool. I love the fact that it's not about the book as much as it is about the connection with other people because that's what's so great about the reading community and the writing community is connecting with people. I love it.

Yeah. A 100%.

Well, thank you so much for being with us, Sarahlyn, and we look forward to reading your book.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope you'll take a second to give us some stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. We'll be back next Wednesday and, in the meantime, follow us on Instagram at Author Express Podcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.