You’ll find video of my conversation with Sara Rosett here; subscribe to the From Expertise to Authority podcast on your favorite podcast app. Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries — but she didn't stop at writing them. In this conversation, Sara talks about the second jump in her career: from writing cozy mysteries to writing nonfiction books and hosting podcasts that help other authors do the same. We explore what it took to trust herself as a teacher after years as a practitioner, how she thinks about building a nonfiction side of her business without letting it overshadow her fiction, and the moment she realized she had genuinely achieved authority in the author-education space. Sara also shares what she wishes she'd known about the indie publishing revolution — and why she now takes comfort in knowing that whatever comes next, she's navigated change before. If you’d like support developing a personalized pathway from expertise to authority for yourself, please check out my consulting service at https://www.theindyauthor.com/authority. And if you’re an event organizer, I’d love to share with your community a framework they can use to develop their own path. If you’d like to get in touch, just drop me a note at matty@mattydalrymple.com. Sara’s Links http://www.SaraRosett.com http://www.SaraRosettBooks.com https://www.instagram.com/sararosett ]https://www.x.com/sararosett https://www.pinterest.com/srosett/ https://www.bookbub.com/authors/sara-rosett Transcript This transcript was created by Descript and cleaned up by Claude; I don’t review these transcripts in detail, so consider the actual interview to be the authoritative source for this information. Matty: Hello, I’m Matty 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. You can find out more about my perspective on moving from expertise to authority at TheIndyAuthor.com—and that’s Indy with a Y—where you’ll also find links to all the episodes of the From Expertise to Authority podcast, my Substack, my YouTube channel, and a downloadable worksheet you can use to track your own journey. MEET SARA ROSETT Matty: Today my guest is Sara Rosett. Hey Sara, how are you doing? Sara: Good. Good to see you. Thank you for having me on. Matty: It’s a pleasure. We’ve been seeing a lot of each other lately—we’ve been on each other’s podcasts. So, just to give a little background: Sara Rosett is the USA Today bestselling author of over 30 mysteries for readers who enjoy atmospheric settings and puzzling whodunits. 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. Sara also hosts two podcasts—the Mystery Books podcast for readers, and the Wish I’d Known Then podcast for writers with Jamie Albright. I am enjoying so much talking to all these people who have made this jump from expertise to authority. And I guess it’s not that unusual, but it’s the first time it’s struck me quite this clearly that you’ve made two jumps—because I’m assuming you started out doing something other than writing cozy mysteries. So you made the jump to being an author, and then you made a further jump to being someone who offers that expertise to other authors. I’m curious: what did you do before that eventually led to you becoming an author? FROM ENGLISH DEGREE TO WRITING JOBS Sara: I had always loved reading and loved mysteries in particular, and my dream was to become an author—but that wasn’t seen as very stable, and it wasn’t what you were supposed to go into. I was good at English in school and that was my major in college. I graduated with a degree in English language and literature—not a teaching degree. To my parents’ chagrin. They were like, well, okay, you’re going to do English language and literature—how are you going to use that? So I did a bunch of different jobs that involved writing, though they were all very nonfiction oriented. To get started and get some credits, I did some volunteer work at a base newspaper—my husband was in the military and we were stationed at a new base—and I worked there for free to get bylines. I found that very interesting because most of the time, even if I wasn’t interested in the story when it started, by the time I finished it and turned it in I had found something pretty interesting about it. I also contributed to some nonfiction anthologies. Then I went to work at a company that coordinated travel exchanges between professionals—a group of dentists in the US would go visit a group of dentists in China, or professors from Canada would go to Europe. I was researching both the travel and the professional development aspects of those trips. I loved it. It fed my desire to see the world, and I had my mental list of places I wanted to travel. But in the back of my mind was always the goal of writing a book. I knew it was such a long shot, especially back then, because indie publishing wasn’t really a thing. So I put that on the back burner. STARTING THE FIRST NOVEL Sara: Then I had kids and decided to stay home with them when they were young. That was when I started working on my first novel, because I thought: my life is not going to get less busy—it’s just going to get busier. So I’m going to snatch this little time during nap time, 20 or 30 minutes, and see what I can do. That was how I transitioned. I felt like if I never tried it, I could always have the dream of doing it. But if I tried and didn’t achieve it, I’d have to face that. I decided I wanted to try and just see if I could do it. Matty: That’s interesting—the idea that when you make the commitment to pursuing something like that, you’re really putting it on the line. There is a certain attraction to always having something be a dream and thinking casually about it. But it’s the person who’s willing to put it on the line who is the only person who’s going to make progress on something like that. Sara: Yeah. And it was a hurdle for me to get over—thinking, okay, if I actually do this, I could succeed, but I might not. And then what would my dream be if I couldn’t achieve this? That was a big hurdle. Matty: It’s interesting too that a number of the people I’ve spoken to have talked about a particular life event—like having children—being a kind of marker that made them finally make the decision to give it a try. Did you feel like there were other things pushing you in that direction in addition to that major change of circumstances? Sara: Well, I knew it was going to be difficult to coordinate going back to work. My husband’s job required us to move a lot, and I just knew it was going to be hard to make progress in a traditional career while moving frequently. I thought: if I can get the writing thing to work, that’s a perfect thing to do while we move around. That was part of it. Writing is not known for being reliably profitable, so income was actually part of the dream too—that I would be able to contribute to the household income. TURNING EXPERTISE INTO TEACHING Matty: I don’t want to gloss over the fact that you’ve written many very successful books. But I’m also interested in this transition of going from writing novels to making the jump to saying, I know enough to instruct other authors in how to write novels, how to create series, and the other things you’ve written books about. What was that process like? When you had achieved this goal that you had—which could very validly be your arrival point, where you just keep doing that and it’s great—what prompted you to take this further step and become a mentor, instructor, or advisor? IMPOSTER SYNDROME AND AUDIENCE FIT Sara: I think there’s a point where most people, before they decide to tell somebody how to do something, think: do I know enough to teach this? I feel like I’m a lifelong learner and there are so many things I still don’t know. But if you’re familiar with Clifton Strengths, some of my top strengths are learner and input—I love gathering data, finding things out, categorizing it. Part of the desire to write these books and get it all down on paper is that it helps clarify things in my own head and organize them in a way that makes them easier for me to use. I like to help people, so I always thought: if I can write this book and it helps somebody through the difficult parts I had, then I’m helping them and it won’t be as hard for someone else. But I did struggle a lot with: can I actually teach? Can I be an authority in this area? When the cozy outlining book came out, I think I had 13 or 15 books out and I still thought I might not be authorized to do this—even though I did have experience and a process. I remember someone saying: you just have to be a little further down the road than the people who are starting, and you can help them. That helped me get over that hurdle. There’s no one who is going to tell you that yes, you are ready, you have enough experience, you can write a book. You have to find that yourself somehow, or just push past those feelings and move forward. Matty: I think a lot of people frame this idea of presenting themselves as an authority as: am I qualified to present myself as an authority to my peers? And what you’re saying is very important—it depends on the audience. If you got together with other award-winning bestselling mystery authors and tried to explain to them how to outline a novel, that would probably… Sara: I’d be taking notes. I’d be saying, how do you do it? You tell me. Matty: Right. There’s a difference between exchanging approaches as peers and a dynamic where the expectation is that the sharing of expertise is more one-directional—not that you don’t l
