Interview With Author Sarah Flocken

What do crystals, televangelist, Los Angeles, and cults have in common? You’ll have to read Sarah Flocken’s upcoming debut, Be Well. As an elder millennial, this book really hits home. I got to chat with Sarah about what inspired her book, what it means to write a book that is funny ha-ha and a funny oh no, her path to publication, and more.

Author Sarah Flocken

What is Be Well about?

There are a couple of ways to answer that question, and I’ve had plenty of practice over the past few months leading up to my launch!

The shortest answer possible: “Crystal, televangelists, L.A. in the late 2000s, and how easy it is to fall into cultish thinking when you feel desperate.”

When people ask me in conversation what my book is about, here’s what I say:

“Awkward young woman graduates straight into the absolute economic hellscape that is Los Angeles in 2009. Peak Recession vibes. She does increasingly desperate and stupid things to avoid moving back in with her mother in her desert hometown, where she’d live in the shadow of her televangelist dad, and gets involved in a maybe-cult along the way.”

What inspired you to write this story?

Be Well actually originated in the fall of 2019, during an online class through UC San Diego Extension called “How to Start a Novel.” We were given an exercise one day in which we had to write down as many things as we could think of in two minutes that inspired us, interested us, or generally held our attention.

We had to be as specific as possible. To use an example I know you’ll love: instead of “magic” we were encouraged to write “Magic: The Gathering” or “an opening act magician at Magic Castle in Los Angeles” or “a vengeful wizard practicing dark magic.” This was actually fairly easy and extremely fun for me, because I have a deep background in improv comedy, where you are encouraged to be as specific as possible in your made-up scenework.

Then, we were told to circle the top three list items that jumped out at us. The items I circled were “the Gem & Mineral Hall at the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History,” “heat ripples on asphalt during summertime in old Los Angeles,” and “the feeling of showering after a long, sweaty run.” I sketched out the initial premise, the main character Ann, and a rough outline for Be Well from there.

By the way, you’ll have to read the book to see which of those three list items made it into the final published version of Be Well.

While Be Well is set in the Great Recession of 2009, did you find situations and themes resonating with today’s financial struggles?

Absolutely. While it’s an incredibly goofy and unhinged book in many ways, Be Well is about exploring how easy it is to fall into unquestioning belief in something when you perceive your circumstances as desperate.

In fact, I’ve spent a lot of the past 5-6 years thinking about how uniquely cultish many aspects of American life are, and maybe how culty the world is becoming as things feel more unstable. In America, I think a lot of the truly disturbing social movements we’re seeing now (the rise of anti-vaxxers, MAGA, etc.) have roots in the wildly destabilizing time that was 2008-2009.

Furthermore, I think college graduates now have it even worse than my cohort did back in 2008-2010. They’re coming of age in an even more destabilizing time. AI is changing everything, America has a completely unfit president actively trashing the economy/the world we live in, and a lot of them had to spend part of their formative years doing school online. It’s rough. You’ve probably seen the charts.

Elder millennials like you and me have a lot more in common with brand-new adults than we realize. As I said in a Substack post I recently wrote dedicated to the class of 2026: “Back in the late 2000s, a bunch of rich guys gave too many people mortgages they couldn’t afford and tanked everything. Now, a bunch of rich guys became obsessed with AI and decided fascism might be fun.”

Your book is described as both a "funny ha-ha-" and a "funny oh no”. What does that mean?

My sister recently described Be Well as “millennial jump scares” and “oh God no!-stalgia,” and I think those are absolutely brilliant descriptors.

It’s “funny ha-ha” because there are some straight up funny scenes, and I write from the perspective of someone who has done comedy since she was a teenager. There’s a fart in the opening pages. By many measures, I am not a serious person.

But at the same time, the “funny oh no” comes from the cringey realizations readers may have when they watch Ann’s bad decisions unfold. Even the smartest, most educated people can get drawn in by cultish thinking and make terrible choices when they perceive their circumstances as desperate. I love what how the wonderful Nic DiDmomizio put it in his review of Be Well:

"Sarah Flocken's debut novel brilliantly captures the chaos of what it's like to be an unprepared college graduate desperate for a slice of solid ground in a ruthlessly shaky world. As someone who also came of age in the late aughts — and who may or may not have gone through a deeply misguided crystal phase of my own circa 2009 — Ann's character arc made me laugh, cry, and shriek in recognition.”

You have extensive experience in comedy improv. Does your comedy background influence your writing?

Yes, yes, and yes. I’m a member of two indie improv groups, and the host of Pundemonium! San Diego’s Only Pun Competition. I definitely believe doing those things has helped me be a better writer and storyteller.

I’m a big believer in using my “improv brain” to write. I think this is best summed up in a phrase I carry with me both onstage and when I’m writing: “If this, then what?” That’s short for, “If this is true, then what else is true?”

A longer way of explaining it could be: “If this one thing in this scene is true, what else in the universe of this scene is true?”

When I’m writing, I make a point to think “if this, then what?” when it comes to every single action, reaction, or moment of interiority. That’s how I manage to write what I call “bonkers plots with real human emotion.”

What was your path to publication?

I mentioned earlier that the idea came to me during a class called “How to Start a Novel” in late 2019. By October 2019, I had sketched out an initial premise, the main character, and a very rough outline.

Then, of course, I had to actually write the book. I began the first draft during the final months of 2019, assuming that I wouldn’t have to work on it for a while until after my wedding, which was planned for April 2020.

Welp, we all know how that ended.

Throughout the pandemic, after I rage-pantsed my way through the first draft, I printed out a physical copy and made some edits. Then I took it down to the studs and did a total rewrite for the third draft. Then, when I thought it was done, I hired a developmental editor to look at my 5th draft…and she made some suggestions that were brilliant and cut to the bone. I rewrote it again.

I wrote 10 drafts before I started querying in earnest in July 2024 (sending 55 queries total), and signed with my agent in October 2024. You can read more about that whole journey in this interview I did for QueryTracker, and in this Substack post where I announced I had signed with an agent–that one includes the query letter that did its job.

I was on submission for six months after more edits with Nick, my agent. In July 2025, I signed a book deal with Heliotrope Books, and Be Well will officially debut on June 23, 2026!

Where can readers order Be Well?

Go to sarahflocken.com/books for all the order links. You can get it from Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, directly from your favorite indie bookseller’s website, or the Jeff Bezos platform. Choose your own ordering adventure!

Where can readers find you?

If you’d like to keep up with what else I’m writing, you can subscribe to my Substack, “What the Flock,” and follow me on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at @sarahflockenwrites. Give @sandiegopundemonium a follow, too, while you’re at it. I’ll try to make it worth your while.