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With over 70 novels to her name and more than a million copies sold worldwide, Sarah M. Eden has mastered the art of weaving witty, heartfelt love stories set against rich historical backdrops. Her work has been recognized with multiple prestigious awards, including the Forward Review’s Indie Gold for Romance and multiple Whitney Awards. Her latest, The Tides of Time, is an enchanting blend of history, romance, and suspense. I began our conversation by asking what inspired this unique combination.
Sarah: Interestingly enough, a trip to Paris. I was in Paris first and only time I’ve been, this has been a few years ago and was at Le Conciergerie, which is an old palace that had served as a prison during the French revolution that has since been turned into a museum. And they have a room there that’s filled with the names of people who had been imprisoned. There during the French Revolution, the walls are covered with their names and alongside their name. It’s, what their job was or their title or whatever, and what their ultimate fate was. And it was both interesting and depressing and intriguing. And like every writer, I looked at that and thought, there are so many stories here. What are the stories of the people who got caught up in this, part of history? We know the French revolution, but do we think about what it was like to actually be a person who lived through it? And as I pondered the possibility of writing about someone from this era, I had this kind of flash of thought. The only way to escape this would be to escape that, time altogether. And then I thought, Ooh, what if. Someone time traveled out of that. How would that impact how they interacted with life moving forward? Would they ever actually feel safe even having traveled through time? Because living through something that destructive would really, sit heavy on your heart. So, I thought that would be amazing. But I also wanted to try jumping. Rather than from modern times and historical times to jump between two historical times, because I find it so fascinating how much the world changed during essentially the Victorian era. So we only go forward 80 years, but the woman who leaves the 1790s and arrives in the 1870s. Is as lost as we would be if we, traveled that far back in time. So it was fun to highlight how different things were throughout history. We tend to lump them together as just all being history. It’s so much changed so quickly in about a century. And that was neat to explore.
Terry: And Lili is such a fascinating character. How did you build her?
Sarah: A lot of it was just again, trying to figure out what it’d be like to live through that. Era. And I wanted to acknowledge the fact that people who did horrific things were at least originally motivated by what we could understand them being motivated by. They lived in such an unequal society and so marked by violence against those who are considered unimportant and the inability to get past that and such an inequality amongst people and. You can understand wanting to correct that, wanting to address that, wanting to fix that. This is not very long after the American Revolution, which was intending to do much the same thing. So what led some people with that motivation to go all in on the tribunals and the guillotine and the just mass executions and what led people to take a different path when they started in the same place. So, I wanted to try and sort out why that would be. So, we have two characters between Lili and Gerard who both start in the same place but choose very different paths. And she really grew out of that. What kind of person, what kind of life experiences would lead her to approach the same situation the way she did? And then how would that impact her arrival in such an unfamiliar time and place?
Terry: And one of the other characters I loved so much was Armitage Pierce, the lighthouse guy. Tell me more about how he came to be.
Sarah: I wanted someone who in many ways was both a foil and a compliment to Lili, just someone who was very much calm and grounded. But also, brave, had integrity, stuck to, his understanding of right and wrong and wanting to do the right thing so they would complement but also be very different from each other. And he’s so tied to the lighthouse, which is, the calm in the storm, it’s the light in the darkness that I wanted him to very much reflect the peacefulness of that, but also the isolation, whereas Lili very much reflects the tumultuousness of the time she came from. So, she is in many ways the storm and he is the calm and the two of them together create this beautiful coexistence that is, I think, actually really neat.
Terry: The lighthouse is truly a key a character in this story. How did you research that?
Sarah: I actually came across a book that was offered through a Lighthouse on the coast of the United Kingdom that has been converted into a museum and it was for generations run by the same family and they have this book that compiles basically the history of this family and history of the lighthouse and how is the lighthouse changed the family changed and vice versa and reading that really got into my, my, my mind and my kind of writer’s brain, how cool it. A family so deeply tied to a lighthouse would be impacted by it and vice versa, but also how they lived their lives, what it was like being there, what the rules were for lighthouse keepers and who they reported to and what life was like there. So, it was just, it was lots and lots of research, but I love research. So that part was really fun for me, but yeah, lots and lots of reading about life in lighthouses at this time.
Terry: Did you face any challenges balancing historical accuracy with your fantasy elements of the story?
Sarah: I tend to be a stickler about historical accuracy, but I also feel as writers are our absolute first obligation is to write a story that is readable. So sometimes you have to be willing to not include every single detail or fudge things the tiniest bit so that while they’re not necessarily. inaccurate. There may be just nudged the tiniest bit. So, I had to do some of that just to make sure it was understandable. It was interesting. The stuff I included added to the story and not detract from it and that can be a challenge and I think any historical fiction, but I think as long as your goal is to present something that is authentic then you’re likely to make the right balance call on that.
Terry: You are one of the most prolific authors writing today. What does it take to create over 70 novels?
Sarah: I like to say I don’t sleep and then I laugh, and my doctors go, no, she really does it. We’ve been talking to her about this for years, but yeah, no, I do. I write a lot of very long hours, but. I also just love it. I think you have to love it to stay with this industry, this career path, even this as a hobby, you have to love it because it’s hard work. A lot of work that’s not ever seen by anyone but you. So you have to love what you’re doing. And I do. At least still right knock on wood at this point, still enjoying it.
Terry: How do you keep getting good ideas over such a long series of books?
Sarah: I think what I’ve mostly gotten good at is discarding the ideas that aren’t good. I think the longer you’re at it, the better you get at recognizing when an idea is intriguing, but there’s not enough to it, or an idea is interesting, but it’s been done a million times. You have a good seed, but you’re really gonna have to find a way to build it into something bigger. So I think that for me is what has changed over the years. I’ve always had a ton of ideas. I’m just better at figuring out which ones are going to work and what I have to do to make them work.
Terry: How would you say writing process has evolved over time?
Sarah: I’ve always been you always talk about planners versus pantsers or, planners versus not planners. I’m very much a planner. I always have been, but I think over the years, the amount of planning I do before I write has grown and increased. In part because I’ve learned to recognize where my weaknesses are as an author. I’ve learned to recognize where a book tends to fall apart for me, which is those sagging middles, that’s where I struggle. So I know I need to plan well enough to get myself over that hump. I need to make sure I know my characters deeply so that I’m not guessing about what they’re going to be doing. So I do a lot more pre planning than I used to. Which is not true for a lot of authors, but it is for me. That’s something that’s changed.
Terry: Was there anything in that research for tides of time that surprised you?
Sarah: The things that I knew a lot had changed between the 1790s and the 1870s, but I didn’t realize how much and things that I assumed were ancient. Lili is trying to learn how to bake in the 1870s. And I didn’t realize until I started doing research that baking soda hadn’t been invented in the 1790s. Yes. Baking soda feels so ancient to us. It feels almost quaint, but she didn’t even know what it was because it didn’t exist. Like those kinds of things were a little bit shocking to me. Stuff that I take for granted as having always existed that would have been unfathomably new. to someone from her era.
Terry: Is there a historical era that you still haven’t explored that interests you?
Sarah: So many, so many. I’m just, I’m fascinated not just by history, but the way history impacted people and the way people impacted history. There are countless stories to be told. And yeah, I would love to dive into so many different time periods. One wonderful thing about kind of tiptoeing into the world of time travel is it really does open up. The opportunity to jump into a lot of different historical eras.
Terry: Where would you go if you could go back in time?
Sarah: A great question. I often say, is it someplace I can go visit very briefly or do I have to stay? Because I have a lot of modern conveniences. I would deeply miss if I had to go back. In time, a few years ago, we had a plumbing issue at our house, and we didn’t have running water for, brace yourself, we didn’t have running water for nine months. So, I know what it’s like to live without just that modern convenience and I never want to do it again. So, if I could go back just for a couple of days. There are so many areas I’d love to go to, to watch, the first steam engines roll out, to go back and witness some of the big revolutions of the world, provided I didn’t have to actually participate, because I would be terrible at any of it, to go back and just see these moments I’ve read about in these places that I’ve been curious about, to go back and temporarily visit would be fantastic, and then come right back to all of the modern conveniences that I probably can’t live without.
Terry: The dream that all of us authors have these days is having our novels adapted into a Netflix series. If it was a film or a TV, who would be your stars? Who would you pick to star in those roles?
Sarah: I don’t even know. How’s that for a terrible answer? I legitimately don’t have one. Our Lili would have to be bilingual because she is throughout this book. It’d be fantastic to grab an actor actually from the area of England that that Armitage is from. I pulled the syntax of speech that was very common in that area in the early 1800s. We don’t hear it as much anymore, but it’d be fun to pull that in with the actual accent of the location. Like I’d love for it to be that authentic, but I don’t know who that would be. But it would be neat.
Terry: What has been the feedback so far? About tides of time
Sarah: I think people are loving it, which I’m super excited about. I had so much fun writing it. It’s a shift in genres for me, but one I’ve always been intrigued by. So the fact that people are embracing it and enjoying it and excited about this universe and this magic system is opening up the chance to come back to it and write more stories of more people being pulled through time and to see what that looks like. I’m excited.
Terry: What do your five-star fans say they like best about your writing?
Sarah: I think the thing I get the most compliments are on are humor and banter, but also just a deep emotional connection to characters, which I love because that, that to me is where the heart of the story is in the heart of the characters. The fact that people feel connection to them means a lot to me as an author.
Terry: Writing humor is dangerous because everybody’s sense of humor is different. How do you navigate that?
Sarah: I think a big key to that is establishing early on what’s funny to your characters and then letting them rest in that humor, because then we’re enjoying it on behalf of the character, even if it’s not our humor, that makes a really big difference.
Terry: Your dialogue is also so great. Are you one of those people that sits in a restaurant and your husband all of a sudden loses your complete attention because somebody sitting in the date booth next to you was talking?
Sarah: Absolutely. I feel like I should come with a warning label. I am listening to your conversation and taking mental notes. Yeah, absolutely.
Terry: So, what’s next?
Sarah: I have another book in this universe. that comes out toward the end of 2025, which I’m super excited about. It’s a modern-day actor gets pulled over the tides of time to the early 1800s, which is an era in which he has played a character in the past. So, he’s trying to rely on his not great or accurate education from film to try and survive this new time period. And that one’s actually, I think, pretty funny, which was a fun kind of shift to take.
Terry: Do you have some favorite time travel authors or films that inspire you?
Sarah: Oh gosh. Golly will enjoy just about any that, like I get tossed into just the whole concept of time travel and the acknowledgement that we don’t know how. Traveling through time might change things. Some television programs or movies or books will insist that time is written in stone and nothing may do change it. You just have to try and, ride the wave. And others who will say we can absolutely impact time and this is how it happens. I don’t know. I just love that there’s such a breadth of it and so many different theories. Because then that becomes an extra thing to explore. Can we change time or can we only find a way to navigate it? What are the options there? And that’s been a fun theme to weave into the tides of time and then the books moving forward.
Terry: Why do you write?
Sarah: There’s a quote from Lord Byron that says if I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. And I feel like that is. Absolutely true. If I didn’t, the stories and the ideas and the thoughts that are just constantly rushing around in my mind would probably drive me absolutely mad. So I write to get it out. I write to put things down on paper. I write to explore questions that hover in my mind to answer those what ifs that I think every author is plagued by. We write, because we want to know what if someone did this? What if someone lived in this era? What if someone made this decision? Like we are driven to answer that question and the way we do it is through words and stories.
Terry: If you couldn’t do this, what else would you do?
Sarah: My degree is in statistical data analysis.
Terry: You’re a left brain in a right brain world. Talk about being a fish out of water.
Sarah: Exactly. Which is probably why I’m such a planner. But I did really enjoy that. I probably would go back to data analysis of scientific studies because I loved it. Very different from writing historical romance and yet the same brain loves them both.
Sarah M. Eden’s new book, The Tides of Time is available wherever cool books are sold. This interview was slightly edited for format.
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