Giving Yourself Permission: Sara on the From Expertise to Authority Podcast

323 / Jami and I are on a summer break, so we’re sharing guest episodes we did on other podcasts. This week, it’s my discussion with Matty on the From Expertise to Authority podcast. 

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Transcript

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Jamie and I are on summer break. We're taking June off, but we don't want to leave you with nothing to listen to. So we are re-airing some of our episodes that we have done as guests. This week is an interview I did with Maddie Dalrymple on her new podcast called From Expertise to Authority. There was a really fun interview, and I got it some questions that I don't normally get. So it was interesting. Hope you enjoy it. Hello, I am Maddie Dalrymple, and welcome to From Expertise to Authority, where I talk with people who have succeeded in building their professional presence for a sideline or second act. And you can find more about my perspective on moving from expertise to authority at the indieauthor.com, and that's indie with a why, where you will also find links to all the episodes of the From Expertise to Authority podcast, my Substack, my YouTube channel, and a downloadable worksheet that you can use to track your own journey. And today my guest is Sarah Rosette. Hey Sarah, how are you doing? Good. Good to see you. Yes for having me on. Oh, it's a pleasure. We've been seeing a lot of each other lately. Yes, showing up on each other's podcasts. So just to give a little bit of background on you, Sarah Rosette is the USA Today best-selling author of over 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling hoodonuts. She also writes nonfiction for authors, including How to Write a Series, How to Outline a Cozy Mystery, and Trope Thesaurus Mystery and Thriller with Jennifer Hilt. Sarah also hosts two podcasts: The Mystery Books Podcast for Readers and the Wish I'd Known Then for Writers podcast with Jamie Albright. And I'm enjoying so much talking to all these people who have made this jump from expertise to authority. And I guess this isn't that unusual, but it's the first time it's kind of struck me that you've made two jumps because you I'm assuming you started out in something other than as a serial author of cozies and mysteries. So you made the jump to being an author. And then you sort of made a further jump to being somebody who actually offers that expertise to other authors. So I'm just curious, like, what did you do that eventually led to you or resulted in you being an author? Well, I had always loved reading and loved mysteries in particular. And my dream was to become an author, but you know, that was not very stable and it wasn't what you went into. But I was good at English in school, and that was when I majored in when I went to college. So I got a degree and graduated in English, but not a teaching degree to my parents' chagrin. They were like, well, okay, you're gonna do English language and literature. How are you gonna use that? And so what I did was I did, I was thinking that I would go into PR, but I ended up doing a bunch of different jobs that involved writing, but they were all very nonfiction oriented. I worked to get started to get some credits. I did some volunteer work at a base newspaper. My husband was in the military and we were stationed at this new base, and I worked at the newspaper for free to get bylines. And then I and that I found very interesting because most of the time, by the time I might not have been interested in the story when it started, but by the time I finished it and turned it in, I had found something that was pretty interesting to me about it. And so I did that for a while. I did some nonfiction anthologies, I got essays in. And then I went to work at a company that was a research company. Well, I was a researcher at a company that coordinated travel exchanges between professionals. So we would have like a group of dentists in the US, and they would go visit a group of dentists in China or a group of teachers, professors from Canada. They would go to Europe somewhere. So I was researching both the travel and the professional development that these people would do, the places they could go visit that might be of interest to whatever their profession was. So I loved it. It was perfect because I loved the idea of traveling. I hadn't traveled much, but it said that, oh, I want to see the world and these would be cool places to go. And you had my mental list of the places I wanted to travel. So I did that for a while. And then in the back of my mind was always to write a book, but I knew it was such a long shot, especially back then, because indie publishing was not really a thing. So I put that on the back burner, but then had kids, was decided to stay home and raise them when they were young. And that was when I started working on my novel, my first novel, because I thought my life is not going to get less busy. It's just going to get busier and busier. And so I'm going to take this little snatch this little time during nap time, 20, 30 minutes, and see what I can do. And so that was kind of how I transitioned because I thought if I don't ever try this, I'm going to be. But I thought if I do it, I could succeed. I might not, though. And then then what will my dream be if I couldn't achieve this dream? So that was just a big hurdle for me. It's interesting too that a number of the people I've spoken to have talked about there being a particular life event, like having children, that is sort of a marker for them. Yeah. That makes them finally make the decision to give it a try. Did you did you feel like there were other things that were pushing you in that direction in addition to that sort of major change of life circumstances? Well, I knew that it was going to be difficult to coordinate the going back to work. And my husband, his job was very mobile. We had to move a lot. And I just knew that it was just going to be difficult to coordinate making progress in a traditional career while moving frequently. And I thought if I can get the writing thing to work, that's a perfect thing to do as we move around. So there was that was part of it too. But writing is not known for being real profitable. So it was that was actually part of the dream too, that I would be able to make money and contribute to the household income. Well, I don't want to gloss over the fact that you've written many, many very successful books, but I'm also interested in this transition of going from doing things that were, I think, related to writing novels, but weren't actually writing novels, to then making the jump of saying, I know enough to be able to instruct other authors in how to write novels or how to create series or some of the other things that you've written books about. And I'm wondering if you can describe what that process was like when you had achieved this goal that you had, which could be very validly sort of now you've reached the pinnacle, right? You'll just keep doing that, and that's going to be great. What made you, what prompted you to decide to take this further step to become a mentor or instructor or an advisor? Yeah, that was, I think there's a point where most people, before you decide, hey, I'm going to tell somebody how to do this, where you think, do I know enough to teach this? I feel like I'm a lifelong learner. And there's so many things that I still don't know. But I am a learner. If you're familiar with Clifton strengths and strengths coaching, like Becca Simon is a great person to talk to about this. Some of my top strengths are learner and input. I love all the data. I love to find out things and I like to categorize it. And that helps me keep track of things. So I feel like part of the desire to write these books and get all this stuff down on paper is it helps clarify it in my head. It helps me organize it in a way that makes it easier for me to use in my own life. And I like to help people. So I always thought, well, if I can write this book and it helps somebody through these difficult parts that I had, then I'm helping them out. And it won't be as hard for somebody else. But I did struggle a lot with can I actually teach, can I be an authority in this area? Even though I think the time when the cozy book, how the outline the cozy came out, I think I had like 13 or 15 books out. And I still thought, I don't know if I'm authorized to do this. But there, I did have experience doing it, and I had a process. And I remembered someone saying, you just have to be a little bit further down the road than the people who are starting, and they and you can help them because you're a little bit further down the road than they are. And that helped me kind of get over that hurdle that, well, I don't know if I'm quality, if I'm checked out in this, you know. And there is no, it's just like deciding to write a book. There's nobody that's going to say, yes, you are ready, you have enough life experience, you can write a book. There's nobody that can give that to you. You have to find it yourself somehow, or just ignore those feelings and press forward. Well, I think that point about the idea that I think a lot of people frame up this idea of presenting themselves as an authority as am I qualified to present myself as an authority to my peers? And I think what you're saying is very important that it depends on the audience you're presenting yourself as an authority to. That if you know you got together with other award-winning best-selling mystery authors and then like you tried to explain to them how to outline a novel, that probably would be a good idea. I'd be taking notes. Yeah. You'd be saying, how do you do it? You tell me. Yeah. Well, and the it's the difference between exchanging expert approaches and learning from each other versus when the expectation is the sharing of expertise is more one way, and not that you don't learn things from the earlier authors who are acting on your advice, but that's kind of not the primary dynamic. The primary dynamic is that they want help and you're in a position to provide it to them. Yeah. Because you've been along that road. And I remember not knowing how to plot a mystery and trying to figure it out. And once I figured it out, uh, sort of the structure of it, the bones that were underneath the story, I thought, okay, this makes sense to me. And I can pass this along to other people. Some people it may help, some people it may not, but it will probably resonate with a certain portion of people who are trying to do this. And I can pass that along. I think it's also interesting that there's a difference between developing expertise and sharing that from a position of authority about things where what you're providing is an option people could pursue or consider for themselves, as opposed to like you're an accountant and they're just certain things. And this is the rule, this is the law or something. Yeah, like you're not, you don't want to say, well, you might want to consider doing it this way. They're probably like more black and white answers to that. And I think that could be easier. Like, I think that when people are trying to move into positions of authority where what they're sharing is facts, that's hard for a couple of reasons. One is that it's so easy, I shouldn't say so easy, like tax law is a perfect example. It's not easy to understand the tax law, but it's there for anyone who feels like going and sorting through it. But it's also maybe more intimidating to present yourself as an authority in that kind of factual area because if you get it wrong, like you get it wrong, as opposed to something like authorship, where there are lots of good ideas and your approach for outlining might work great for this cohort of people and not work great for this cohort of people, but that doesn't mean you're it doesn't undermine your authority, it just means that you're offering an option to people and it works for some people and not for others. Right. Yes. And I built that into I did a book and a course originally. The course is no longer around because courses have to be maintained. And the book is always there though. So, but when I did it, I decided, especially because I'm dealing with outlining, there are as many ways to prepare to write a book as there are authors, right? There's an infinite, infinite options there. And so I decided I would say this is what's worked for me, and hopefully it will be helpful to you. And this is a framework. And once you start your, there's some building blocks that you need, but then I do talk about the it's like a house. Everybody can build a house. We all know what a house has, it has walls, it has floor, ceiling, but think about how many different styles and architecture design choices that you have in a house. That's how it is when you write a novel. I can say, okay, you need these three major building blocks, and then you take these things and make them your own. So that was kind of how I felt that I will give you some basics, and then you choose the colors and the textures of your book, you know? Yeah, I love that analogy. When you had decided that you wanted to write a book for other authors, we've already talked about the fact that some of it was just you had the experience you wanted to remember, share the knowledge and save other people the pain that you had experienced. Did you have other kind of maybe more business-related goals of this? Like I'm imagining an additional stream of income, for example, or paving the way to speaking engagements or whatever that might be. Right. Yes. I wanted to diversify. And I had my streams, my writing income, but I'm in the writing world, I'm called being wide. So all my books, my books are on all platforms wherever you can find them. I'm wide, but I thought I might as well go wide in a different way. Yep. Not in format or retailer, but in a different type of audience altogether. So, yes, I did want that to be another stream of income. I didn't want some people like the nonfiction area better than the fiction area, and they really lean into that heavily. I wanted it to be sort of a side hustle, a thing I did along with my fiction. I wanted my fiction to always be the major thing I did. But I thought it's only smart to diversify a little bit in the content I'm producing and have an audience of readers and then an audience of authors. And then that kind of blends into with the podcast that Jamie and I do, I wish I'd known then we're doing the same thing. We're writing, but we're also talking about writing and craft and marketing. And so it's a like another lane. Yeah. Yeah. And you need the credibility that having a large readership provides in order to, you know, if you had written one book and it had never got above a billion on the Amazon rankings, then it would be harder to convince people that you should they should be following your advice about outlining when you have like a whole portfolio of books and you're achieving verifiable great milestones with that work. Has have there been any what has is an unexpected benefit you've gotten from that? It's are there is there anything that stands out and says, oh, I didn't expect I was going to get that, but that was kind of a nice plus. Well, I think just hearing from authors that have used it and it's been helpful. That's great. You know, it makes me happy to hear that it's been helpful. I've made some connections, like Jennifer Hilt. We did the trope book together, and we probably would have met, you know, in the author world isn't that huge, but just being able to work with her and say, look, I've written some nonfiction books and suggest working together on the trope book. That was kind of an outcome of that, I think. Yeah, I think those are the main things. I'm not a big public speaker. I don't love public speaking, so I wasn't really looking for speaking engagements, but I just wanted to diversify a little bit. And that has certainly let me do that and giving me some new things, new challenges, new things to do. Because I'm a learner, so I have to continually be doing something. Was there a moment that you can think of where you realized that you had achieved a level of authority in these areas where you were writing books for writers? Yeah, probably when I went to a conference once and there was an author that told me she came to meet me, and it was an author conference, it wasn't a reader conference. She said, I saw you're gonna be here, and so I had to come. And that was like, oh, that was a little intimidating. That's great. It was it was cool that it was a little intimidating. Yeah, yeah, I could imagine that. Yeah. And especially because you do have a podcast called Wish I'd Know Then. I have to ask you, but you wish you had known then when you started out in either of these efforts, either the step of becoming an author or the step of being someone who advises authors. Oh, well, when I became an author, I wish I had known that the market, that the whole publishing landscape would change. I wish I had been more forward-thinking and looking into the future. And I'm not futuristic at all, but I just thought, you know, I had no idea that any publishing would come along, that there would be any other way besides traditional publishing. And if I had known that, I mean, I had ideas for other books that the publisher was not interested in. And I could have been working on those. I knew I had friends that had books in the in their drawers that had been rejected, or that publisher was like, you know, this may be in the future, we're just not interested in this right now. And they published those in the early days and did great. So I wish that I had seen the changes coming, but you know, sometimes the market changes and you just don't see it coming at all. So I try not to be quite so blindsided down by things. And I know, and I think because I came from that, I know that what it is now is always going to continue to change. There's always going to be, it's never going to be static. So that makes it a little bit easier. Having come from traditional publishing and transition to indie, I know I can transition to whatever, whatever we go to next. And you know, we're in a time of huge disruption. So we'll just have to see how everything shakes out. As far as transitioning into or adding nonfiction, I wish that I had known that small books are okay because the first book I felt like, oh, this when I started thinking about it, I was like, this isn't long enough. I didn't realize that short books were okay. There were other things too, like I didn't realize that people really want the audiobooks in the author's voice. I figured that out eventually, and I did release narrated version of the How to Write a Series book. I still haven't gone back and done the cozy book. But yeah, that's there's just things that are different with the nonfiction landscape than in the fiction landscape. For the shorter book, this is interesting because this is something I'm struggling, not struggling with, but considering myself. And that is that I am being pretty upfront about the series of from expertise to authority articles I'm writing and putting up on Substack. Well, it's some quite chapters in a book. Right. Spoiler alert. And I do feel like I'm getting to the point where there is a reasonable arc through this journey that I want to describe. And I could keep just like beefing it up and beefing it up and beefing it up and never get it out. And I'm wondering for a shorter book like that, do you think of that as just like a shorter book is fine? Do you think that you might go back to one of those books and add some things, some additional things you've learned? Would you consider doing that, but having it be a second edition? How do you think about that? I might go back. I have thought about re-editing the cozy book because as time goes on, you learn more. You do your you ink you have different thoughts about things. So I have thought about that. I would probably go back and do a second edition. I don't have any plans to do that right now at the moment, but I might do that in the future. Yeah, I think I know as a nonfiction reader, I get a little frustrated if people, if there's padding, if there's a lot of padding in the book, if I feel like people say, you know, I'm going to tell you this awesome thing. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you about it here in just a minute. Just hang on. Let me tell you this other story, and then we'll get to it. I'm like, just tell me. So maybe that shorter nonfiction appeals to people like me who don't want all the extra we I just want the information. I just want the, you know, the how-to. So I think shorter is a fine. Yeah, it's interesting in the context of taking the short tack, which is the book I wrote with Mark Wafai, and we put out the first edition of that in 2020. And then I took a look at it again in 2025, and I was like, oh, this really does need some. I mean, there were just some things like stats that needed to be updated. Just a little brush up. Yeah. So we ended up taking a look at it, but I realized that from my point of view, there between 2020 and 2025, there had been like some significant things that had happened in my own career with regard to short fiction. Like I had judged short fiction. Contests, I had written a foreword to a short fiction anthology. I had published a collection of short stories. And so, like you're saying, you go along and you not only have more insights, but you have more experiences that shed light on the ideas that you want to convey in the book. And so, like Mark and I added a whole chapter about, especially because now we both had experience. I mean, Mark had already had experience in judging short fiction contests, but now I did too. So we could jointly write a chapter about like from the other side of the contest kind of thing. Which I think is was very valuable. If I were reading a book on short fiction, I would want that chapter. But yeah, just that idea of once it's out there, it doesn't have to be the end. It could be the end. You could write an entirely different book covering other things you had learned in that area if you wanted to. Yeah. And I mean, it's a process, like learning is a process. I don't think we ever learn every I I know I will never learn everything there is to know about writing mysteries or writing a series, but I think you start with what you have, that knowledge that you have, and then I think like what I've learned about writing a cozy since I wrote that first book, I would go back and probably revise that. I don't think it would be different enough to do a whole nother book. And I think that would be the difference. Like, is this related to can it be another chapter or two in the book like you did? Or does it need a whole is it a launching point for a whole nother type of book? You just have to would have to figure that out. Yeah. Do you see anything put on your futurist hat and look into the crystal ball? Do you see what you might want to venture into in terms of an area that you would want to establish authority in? Well, we've already established I'm not very good at seeing dead future. So no, I think that I do enjoy these sort of nonfiction help things for authors. I really enjoyed doing the trope book with Jennifer, sort of the deep dive on each type of trope. And that was a new way of doing nonfiction for me. So I might do something similar to that in the future, but I can't think of what it might be right now. But maybe someday I'll have something else that will pop into my head and I'll think, oh, I have thought about doing a book that research because I feel like that's something I write historical mysteries now. And there is that's a that's something that trips people up, I think, when they're thinking about writing a historical is how do I find sources that will tell me the details that I need to know? And I have thought about doing that. So maybe that's in the future. I don't know. We'll see. Well, I think that's an interesting, maybe an interesting final thought is that the other theme I see very frequently is people who are combining two seemingly disparate areas into a new area of authority. So writing mysteries and having had the experience of writing nonfiction and doing research. I mean, writing nonfiction articles you had mentioned earlier and doing that research and then combining those things and say, oh, research for mysteries, for historical mysteries. That's cool, I think, when people take things that seem different and bring them together in that way to create almost a new area of authority. And there are things that people I've listened to some of your episodes, and it's things that you don't think about until you hear that person's story and you think, oh, yes, that does that's a perfect match for them because they have this background and there is a gap in the market that most of the time it's like only they can see. You know, that there's something there that the person can see that an outsider might not be able to see because you're in the industry. Yeah. So I think that's very interesting that a lot of times you have to get in and do things, and then you realize where the gaps, the knowledge gaps are where you can help. And you're like, hey, I have all this knowledge. Let me show you how to do this. Well, if anyone feels they might have a knowledge gap that could be filled by one of your offerings. Thank you so much for chatting with me about your own journey from expertise to authority. And please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online. Okay, well, the easiest place to find me is just my website. It's SaraRosette.com. And that has all my books, or you can just search for my name on all the platforms and you will find me there. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me.