Finding Wonderland and Believing in the Unseen with YA author Sara Ella

Episode Transcript:

CJ Milacci:

Welcome, my friend. You are listening to Read Clean YA with CJ, the podcast for teens and young adults who want to explore exciting worlds, deep themes, and epic stories without the objectionable content. I’m your host, award-winning young adult author CJ Milacci, and in this episode we are going to have an author interview with my friend and fellow young adult author Sara Ella.

Once upon a time, Sara Ella dreamed she would marry a Disney prince and live in a castle. Now she spends her days homeschooling her three Jedi in training, braving the Arizona summers and reminding her superhero husband that it’s almost Christmas, even if it’s only January. When she’s not writing, Sara might be found behind her camera lens or planning her next adventure to California, a lover of fairy tales she believes happily ever after is never far away. Sara, welcome to the show.

Sara Ella:

Thank you so much for having me, CJ.

CJ Milacci:

I’m so glad to have you here. I love your books and your stories. You just create these fabulous, fantastical worlds, and I am so excited because today we’re going to get to talk about your newest book, The Looking-Glass Illusion in the Curious Realities duology. And book one, if for anyone who doesn’t know, is The Wonderland Trials, which is also a fabulous story. So I’m currently reading book two and loving it, and I so enjoyed The Wonderland Trials. So if you could just tell us a little bit about the stories, that would be great.

Diving Deeper into the YA Curious Realities Duology

Sara Ella:

Absolutely. So the Wonderland Trials is what it sounds like. It’s a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. It’s a YA dystopian fantasy with a pinch of sci-fi. And it follows a girl named Alice who lives in a future version of Oxford. In Alice’s world you have Normals and then you have Wonders, Wonders who were born with the Wonder Gene, but it’s illegal to have the Wonder Gene. And so Alice believes she is Normal. Soon her sister gets arrested and she goes on a topsy-turvy adventure of being invited to play in the annual Wonderland Trials, but she has to find her way into Wonderland, which is in sort of like a virtual reality type world in order to be able to play. And so that launches Alice off into her adventure.

She finds out that the games or the trials are not what they seem, that players go missing every year, and she has to work with her team, Team Heart. in order to discover what is happening to the missing players and where the real Wonderland has gone off to. And that launches her into Book 2, which is the Looking Glass Illusion, which follows Alice and her team as they go through the final trial of the Wonderland Trials, which is the Heart Trial.

CJ Milacci:

Yes. Oh, so good. I can’t say enough how much I’ve enjoyed this series. It’s so much fun. And like I said, I haven’t finished the second book yet, but I’m into it already. And I love how you’ve woven all these different things together because you have the fun of fairy tale retellings and then this fantasy world, but then some sci fi elements and the dystopian kind of feel as well. And all of those things are things I love, and you just wove them together in a beautiful way. It’s such a fun, fun story, as everyone can hear just hearing you talk about it now. So yeah, it’s fantastic.

How did the idea for the duology come about?

Sara Ella:

So I wanted to do a duology because I feel like I guess I never do the same thing twice and so I tackled a trilogy, then I tackled a standalone, and now I decided, hey, let’s try a duology. But it fit really well with Alice in Wonderland because of Lewis Carroll’s two original stories, which is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there. And so I knew a duology is perfect if I’m going to retell these two stories. And that’s really why I wanted to tackle the two book series. And I thought, hey, this will be easier than a trilogy. And of course, it presented its own challenges.

But I love Alice. I’ve always loved Alice. I grew up loving Alice in Wonderland. I played Alice at Disney in my college years. So that was something where it felt like coming full circle to write a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. And thankfully, Enclave Publishing, my publisher, agreed.

CJ Milacci:

Yeah, that’s so neat. So it is fun because you actually pretended to be Alice for a while and then you wrote her story, which is a neat thing that I don’t think a lot of authors can say about their books. So that’s very cool.

Do you feel like your Alice is similar or different to the original Alice in Alice in Wonderland?

Sara Ella:

I would say that she is both. So she has a similar elements. I always say that there’s always a sprinkle of Disney in my books. I grew up watching Disney classics, the original Disney animated films, going to Disney parks. So there’s always going to be a little bit of that inspiration in my books, but I always like to make my characters my own. And so Alice in my books definitely has that curious, no-nonsense type attitude in a similar way that Disney’s and even Lewis Carroll’s Alice has. But she also has some different things that she’s dealing with.

She’s dealing with the fears of being alone and so she tends to push people away because she really doesn’t have any close friends. She was raised by her older sister and she doesn’t know what happened to her parents. So she’s kind of a loner, she’s kind of doing things on her own, and what I really love about my Alice is that she wears glasses, so in that way she’s very different. She has a stigmatism, which is something I’ve dealt with my whole life, and she also loves to play games. She’s a card player, she’s a pickpocket, so in that way I would say she’s definitely very different from the little girl Disney version.

CJ Milacci:

Yes, definitely. But I love the card playing pick pocket version so much. It kind of makes her feel more modern in some ways because the Disney version can feel like the childhood version and this feels like the teen version, the young adult version, which is where this book fits. So of course it would. But it makes Alice kind of a cool new character in some ways. And yet you do hold to so many of the things that would be the reason somebody loves Alice from Alice in Wonderland.

When a fairy tale retelling can do that, when it can hold true to some of the heart of the fairy tale that we love, but yet bring its own twist, I think that’s what makes fairy tale retellings so much fun and really come to life on their own. Because we want something new, but also the same as what we love. And I think you did that really well.

I love games and puzzles and card tricks and all of that stuff. And you have that, especially in the Wonderland trials, they’re all throughout that book from the beginning and then through the story. And you have so many different types of games and puzzles in there. How did you come up with all of that? I know there’s some of that is maybe in the original book, but you’ve gone above and beyond in what you’ve added into your story.

Sara Ella:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I love games. I love games. I love competition. And I felt like a lot of the Alice in Wonderland retellings that were out there were really focusing on the madness aspect or the darker aspects of Lewis Carroll’s world. And while I don’t see anything wrong with definitely exploring those themes, it wasn’t the kind of theme I wanted to explore. I loved that so much of Alice is centered around games where you have the soldiers of the queen are cards, and you have croquet. Everything just felt like there were games. Even the riddles that the Cheshire cat gives Alice are games in my mind.

CJ Milacci:

Yeah.

Sara Ella:

And because we love games in my family, and actually if you read the Looking Glass Illusion for those who are listening, I think by the time this comes out it will have released.

CJ Milacci:

Yes.

Sara Ella:

You can see in the dedication that the second book is actually dedicated to my daughter Whom Maddie Hatter is named after and it says to Maddie who loves games. Because she is my she is a girl after her mama’s heart. She is competitive She’s always the one saying let’s play a family game tonight. And then the second part of the dedication says to Janelle also who taught me how to play this one because my friend Janelle taught me how to play chess

So I love the game aspect and I just wanted to make Alice’s world something, especially with the Wonderland trials that she’s in, to be something that readers could feel almost like they were living it out with her, that they were trying to solve the puzzles with her, that they were doing the escape room with her. And I really was inspired by, obviously, books like The Hunger Games. Of course my book does not have children dying, but children do go missing. And then I love Marie Lu’s Warcross, which really dives into that virtual reality idea. And then the movie Ready Player One. I haven’t read the book, but I love the movie.

And all of those, just the games, my kids love games from board games to video games. So it just felt like a natural progression of something that our family loves and turning it into something. in a book and it was definitely something where as I’m writing it because I’m a discovery writer, I had no idea what the answers to the riddles were or how to solve the clues and I was kind of figuring it out with Alice as she was trying to figure out the clues. So that was an interesting journey.

CJ Milacci:

Yes, I can imagine that would have been a little bit of a wild ride for you to write down the riddle and then have to figure out exactly what you were thinking, what they were going to have to discover. That’s great.

And I really appreciate that you gave some other books and movies that are similar because I think that’s really helpful for listeners to be able to know, oh, I did love that aspect of this book or this movie. And it can be helpful to see what they enjoyed before and how they might enjoy your books as well. And I think those are all fantastic comp titles, so to speak, to go with the Wonderland Trials and the Looking Glass illusion.

We talked about the puzzles and the games and everything, but do you have a character in your story that is maybe, I don’t know, favorite is such a dangerous word because really it’s like picking a favorite child, right? It’s hard to do that. But, um, or maybe a character or a scene you really enjoyed writing or somebody you like to kind of get in their head.

Sara Ella:

I feel like everybody expects me to say Chess Shire, who is the love interest. And I do love Chess. And I love Alice because Alice is very much like me. She’s very serious and kind of no-nonsense, whereas Chess is very much like my husband. And he is very sarcastic and he likes to tease Alice. So that was really something fun to write. I loved writing Chess in that way. And so…

Of course I love all my characters, like you said, it’s like picking a favorite child, but I will say, especially since we’re talking about the Looking Glass Illusion, that Knave Hart grew on me in ways that I did not expect him to, and I won’t spoil anything, but in the Wonderland trials, he’s kind of more in the background. We get a little bit a little taste of his backstory and why he acts the way that he does and why he kind of keeps himself separate from his team. But in the Looking Glass Illusion, I got to explore a lot more about who his character is. And it was just really fun and there’s a little nod and again, I can’t, I don’t want to spoil things, but there is a little nod to who Nave ends up being to Alice and his team, and particularly to Alice, who he ends up being to her is a nod to something about my daughters. And so I can’t give that away, but if anybody listens to this and they read it and they wanna message me on Instagram or something and say, hey, I read it now, can you give me that little spoiler, I can tell them. But Nave and Alice’s relationship is… was something I put in there for my daughters. And so once you discover what that is, it’s really fun and I enjoyed writing him.

CJ Milacci:

Oh, neat. And now everyone can go get the book because by the time this airs, the Looking Glass Illusion will be available. So you can go read it and discover it and then message Sara and find out that inside scoop there.

What does it look like to have writing as your calling?

CJ Milacci:

So neat. All right. So I love to talk about deeper themes in stories because I think stories can demonstrate truth in ways that maybe we wouldn’t understand or hear it if someone just said it to us. And your stories really just have so much depth to them. And every book I’ve read of yours, I find that there’s something deeper that I get out of the book than just a fun read. And I also always get a fun read. So there is that as well. But I just love to ask, why do you write stories and what themes do you find that you discover in your books by the time they’re done? Especially in this series.

Sara Ella:

Well, thank you so much for that. I really appreciate the compliment. I love to write. I’ve always loved to write. I’ve always loved storytelling, particularly visual storytelling. As much as I’m a reader, and I’m a writer, and I love books, I love film. I love film so much. And I feel like that’s something that I don’t talk about very much with kind of my… writer and reader circles because we’re readers. We’re supposed to have bookshelves. I think I own more movies than books, honestly, if I’m being truly honest. I love film and so that visual storytelling, there’s just something about that. And so I love being able to hopefully create a very visual world with my stories.

And with that, I’m always exploring different themes that mean something very personal to me, but I don’t really discover what the true theme of my story is until God decides to give it to me. And so he always likes to wait till the last minute. My stories really are an outpouring of love for the Lord and obedience to him, to the calling that I believe that he’s placed on my life to write.

And so when writers ask me like, how do you find time to write? How do you make time and balance it with your busy schedule? And I just say you have to see writing as, Is it a calling that God has put on your life? And if you’re not writing, at least for me, I feel like if I’m not writing, I am not obeying the call on my life that God has placed on me. And so I like to look at it that way rather than just, oh, I’ll write when I feel like it because I don’t always feel like it. And I do feel like it grows my relationship with the Lord and it draws me closer to him because he helps me discover truths that he wants to teach me.

Through my own writing, each book was written in a different season of my life. And for example, with Unblemished, which is my first book and my debut novel, if I’m looking at it from a craft perspective, I could say, well, as a better writer, now that I have six books under my belt, I could go back and maybe edit Unblemished and tweak some things and make it sound better. But at the same time, I have to remember, I was a totally different person in a totally different season when I wrote that book and God had me write that book at that time for a reason.

And so each time I’m tackling a new story I lay it before the Lord and I say, Lord this is for your glory. Give me the words to write and the story to tell. And it’s a refining process of me as a writer but also me as a child of God and I think God has a sense of humor because He does not let me truly understand the true deeper theme and meaning of my stories until the last minute. And I truly think it’s so that I cannot take credit for it. The glory goes to him.

And so I write because the Lord has called me to, and I write to hopefully reach readers on a very real and personal level so that they can see themselves in my stories and my characters, but also that they can see the heart behind it and that they can see that hope, that hope and light that I always try to put into my stories that reflects the love of Christ.

CJ Milacci:

Mm-hmm. My heart resonates so deeply with everything you just said because that’s the reason I write too. It’s not just because I love stories— because I do love stories— but because on a deeper level I believe it’s something God has called me to.

And Isn’t that how God works when he calls us to something?

It’s not just because he can’t do it and he needs us to step forward and do this thing it’s because he wants to invite us into something he’s already doing and then oftentimes, at least for me, I find that it’s about refining me and making me more like Jesus, more than me accomplishing something great for Him. And through the process, I see more of my brokenness and inability and then watch Him in His grace work through that so that I come to that same place like what you just said, get to that point where it’s like, well, I couldn’t have done that on my own. Like for you, the themes in your books. Okay, that came out at the very end of this, it’s not something you did, it’s something God did through you in your story, and then he gets the glory.

But it is incredible when we can enter into that process with him and then watch him work. And I do love how he does that for you with the themes and how he doesn’t really show you it until at the very last second. For this particular duology do you mind sharing some of the themes or some of your heart behind the stories that maybe you discovered at the very end.

Diving Deeper: What are some of the themes in The Looking-Glass Illusion?

Sara Ella:

Absolutely. So with the Wonderland Trials, there is a thread in there that has to do with the Ivory King. And I won’t tell anybody who hasn’t read them who the Ivory King is, or what it is, or what it has to do with. And that’s okay, because I didn’t know either.

When I wrote the Ivory King in there, it was actually for the Wonderland Trials a week before my deadline. I still didn’t know what the theme was supposed to be. We were traveling because there was a death in the family and so I was like writing from the passenger seat of our car while my husband drove, trying to figure out what was going on. And it came to me because my dad had gotten really sick in 2020 and I remember driving to the hospital and at that time I wasn’t allowed to go into the hospital to see him, I just had to drop off stuff basically at the door during that time and the worship song King of My Heart came on, and I just remember crying in the car and just thinking, okay, God, you are in control of the situation, like, comfort me during this. But it wasn’t that I didn’t really realize that song connected to the Wonderland Trials until that week before deadline, so like six months later.

And that really became a lot, a big part of what the theme of the Wonderland Trials is, is the king. Who is the king? Who is the real ruler of Wonderland? And where is the real, what is the real Wonderland for that matter? I love the verse that talks about unseen things and how we see as in a mirror, but we don’t truly know. We’re not fully seeing the entirety of what God has for us. And so that’s really what I wanted to explore with the Wonderland Trials.

There’s also themes of found family, which is very important to me and very personal to my life.

And overcoming fear. I tend to be somebody who likes to be comfortable. I don’t like to take risks. And sometimes fear can be very crippling and keep us in a place that God doesn’t want us to be. And so I wanted to discover that with Alice and discover what does it look like to overcome fear, and step out of your comfort zone, and how does that kind of reflect when God is calling us to something that maybe we’re afraid of, or we doubt Him, even though He continually shows His provision and shows Himself. And that theme of fear really gets explored more in the Looking-Glass Illusion, and not just fear. But the theme of surrendering, surrendering everything. This team is trying to find the real Wonderland. And just like I had to rely on the Lord to help me finish these books, even when I didn’t know what was going on until the very end, that is something Alice and her team really have to learn is that… they have to rely on something greater than themselves in order to accomplish what they’re trying to accomplish.

And that’s all I can really say about that without spoiling things. But I really particularly just love that idea of believing in the unseen, believing in the impossible, because that’s really what we do as Christians. We believe in something we cannot see. We believe in something incredibly impossible. If you think about, you know, the virgin birth and Jesus coming to earth, God becoming man, if you are talking, that sounds like a fairy tale, it sounds like a fantasy and yet it really happened. And so I loved exploring the idea of that kind of impossible truth in the Wonderland trials and the Looking Glass illusion.

CJ Milacci:

Yes, so many fantastic things in all of that.

First of all, I’m sorry for all you went through as you discovered that theme. And that must have been a painful season for you just dealing with your dad being so sick and everything. So I’m sorry for that, but I love how God brought beauty out of the ashes of what was a difficult time, I’m sure, and gave you something to like show you that he’s the king of your heart. And to even incorporate the ivory king into your stories, even though I haven’t finished it yet so I don’t even know exactly who he is. But I love that part of it and how God did that for you.

Every one of those themes are ones that I love. Found Family in particular is one that I find pops up a lot in my stories. And I find that to be such an important theme. And for me as well, it’s a personal one. Because I think family is so much bigger than the people that we were born into, the blood relatives or whatever. It’s so much beyond that. And especially as the body of Christ, I think found family is supposed to be something that we all understand in a deeper way because we have been brought together through Jesus to be a family. So I’ve noticed that in your books. I think that’s one of the things that draws me to them because I think I’ve seen that found family thread in a lot of your stories,  and especially in the Wonderland Trials.

I love the richness and all of those themes and how they layer together really to provide a beautiful picture. And like I said earlier, stories can show us these things. And whether it’s a story through a movie or a story in a book, we get to watch it play out in a way that just telling somebody this truth, it might impact them, but if they’re not ready to hear it, it can fall flat. But a story, it does sneak behind our defenses and show us these things. And I think when we let God show us the theme specifically, whether it’s even as we’re reading it or whether… as we’re writing it in both of our cases, it can become even more powerful because he’s the author of truth and he’s the one who delights to show that to us in deeper ways. And  thank you for sharing all of that.

Now to kind of wrap up the part about theme. What is something that you would say to a reader that you would hope that they would take away from these stories? You may have touched on it a little, but if there’s just like one thing you would say, you would hope and pray that reader took away.

How to Trust Others After You’ve Been Hurt

Sara Ella:

I would hope that they would take away a sense of hope, which is something I always want my readers to take away, that even when I explore dark themes and sadness and grief, I want my readers to come away feeling a sense of being understood, but also feeling a sense of hope if they’re in a really dark place. And so Alice goes through some hard things. She deals with finding out some truths about her family members, and she deals with finding out where she comes from, and discovering some other things about some of her friends and who they are and some of the past things that they’ve done. And overall, it’s about her learning to trust others despite when she is hurt.

And that is something that’s very personal to me because of some things I’ve been through in my life. And it’s very difficult, I find, sometimes when you’ve been hurt to continue to open yourself up to others, to trust others because when you’re closing yourself off, it’s understandable, right? You’ve been hurt, you don’t wanna be hurt again. You don’t want to be left again. You don’t want to be abandoned or whatever it is that you’re, whatever fear you’re facing.

But that doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to do that. That doesn’t mean that every single person that you come across is going to do that. And yes, people are gonna hurt us. We’re all human. But relationships with others and deep relationships and long lasting relationships are so important, whether it be with your spouse, with a family member, a best friend, a parent.

I hurt people, people hurt me, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t trust others and show forgiveness and grace and continue to build upon that friendship or that relationship. And I’ve found that those tough times where trust is broken or hurt does happen between me and myself, somebody else in a relationship, coming through that together and being able to overcome that hurt and forgive one another, it draws you closer. You feel closer to that person afterwards because you’ve been able to walk through that tough season together.

And so that’s really what I would want readers to come away with is if you’re feeling afraid to trust others because you’ve been hurt in the past, don’t be afraid to open yourself up to love. Because we all need to be loved and if you’re able to walk through those hard times, it’s going to draw you closer to those people and those people are going to be more important than ever the next time something hard happens.

CJ Milacci:

So good. Thank you for sharing that. I needed to hear it too. So that was fantastic.

All right. Now to wrap things up, can you tell us a little bit about you as an author? So what started you on your writing journey?

How Sara Ella Got Started on Her Writing Journey

Sara Ella:

That would be my mom. My first ever book on Blemished was dedicated to my mom. My mom loved to read. She was always reading something. And she always told me that I should be a writer. So she’s the one who really fostered my passion for reading and writing. I was always writing little poems to go in our Christmas cards every year.

And then when I was in high school, my literature teacher, she really fostered and continued to foster that. And I won writer of the year award two times in a row from that literature teacher. And I think that was really just really encouraging to me to pursue something because I’m not good at math. I don’t like science. But to be able to be good at writing was really important to me.

As I continued on in my life and continued to grow in that, I came across a librarian when I just had one little baby on my lap and there was nothing to do in the small town that I lived in aside from go to the library. And so I started going to the library and asking my librarian, what books do you recommend? And she always said that children’s literature and young adult books are better to read than adult books because they always just have the better characters and explore deeper themes. And so she directed me to the middle grade and young adult section. And that’s when I started discovering books like The Hunger Games and Divergent and the Fable Haven series. And I could go on and on and on, the Selection series. And that was when I was like, this is what I wanna do. I wanna write stories like these. I wanna write them for teens. I’m gonna have teenagers someday. Now I do have teenagers. I didn’t at the time. I have teenagers now. And that was really what made me want to tell stories for teenagers was just from my mom starting it at a young early age and then my librarian directing me to these books that I was just devouring because they are so good.

And I do love adult fiction too, but what I loved about YA at least… at that time when YA first launched into being super popular was that YA was clean. And I know it’s clean reads are so important to you. And that’s why you have this podcast. At that time you knew if you went to the YA section, you were getting that really awesome epic story without the adult content. And so I think that’s why it’s so important now for writers like you and me to be able to continue to put out those kinds of stories that we fell in love with. but without that questionable content like you said.

CJ Milacci:

Yes, I agree. That’s where I fell in love with young adult fiction as well. And it was because you could pick up these stories and get lost in the world and not really worry about what was going to happen on the next page because it didn’t have the adult content in there. And now that’s not the case, sadly.

But I also think besides the cleanness of those epic stories like the Hunger Games and Divergent, the Selection Series, all of those kind of early young adult starters, so to speak. I think they also have characters that are really raw, and teens tend to feel emotions really deeply and express them a little bit more than we do sometimes as we get older. But yet we all still have those really deep emotions and those times where we want to just kind of express them. And we don’t always do it, but in our young adult stories, those teens are expressing them and yet overcoming some of those hardships and difficulties and becoming stronger and better and being shaped through their stories. And I think that’s part of why I love young adult literature as well, because it tackles the depth of emotion we can experience and doesn’t gloss over it as quickly as we might as adults later in life.

I’m a big fan of young adult books as well, obviously, as evidenced by my own writing and this podcast.

When you’re not crafting all of your stories and living in fantastical worlds, what do you like to do with your time?

Sara Ella:

I think anybody who follows me on Instagram probably knows the answer to this, but I’ll say it anyway and I’ll give everybody one, two, three seconds to guess so that they feel like they knew the answer wherever they’re listening and that is go to Disneyland.

I love going to Disneyland. I’ve been a million times. I love to do that. But I also love to go hiking. We love to explore national parks, our family does. I love going to the movies. Surprise, surprise. That’s one of my favorite things to do. I do love reading. I actually, one thing that I love to do that maybe not many people know about me is I like to flip furniture.

I do post about this sometimes, but it’s something that I’ve been learning to do. My dad was a house painter, and so I do love to paint things. I’m not like an intricate paint artist, but I like to paint things and that is something that I found I love to do. I love to flip furniture and have fun with kind of like with writing, discovering what the piece could be. I never really know and so it takes me a long time to flip a piece because sometimes I try multiple techniques with a piece of furniture and I’m like yeah that doesn’t work I’m gonna paint over that now. And it takes a few different tries, but it’s a unique piece and I really love to do that.

And I wanted to add too, like I do live in Arizona and my family lives not too far off and thank you for what you said about my dad. Happy ending is my dad is okay.

CJ Milacci:

Oh good.

Sara Ella:

And so I wanted to share that for anybody who felt like they were left on a cliffhanger. My dad is okay and he’s doing well and he lives about 45 minutes away from me and so we like to get together with him and the rest of my extended family as well for holidays.

I love Christmas as mentioned in my bio. Already counting down the days. I love pumpkin spice season because it’s the anticipation of Christmas. So I’m counting down the days until holiday drinks release in November. And other than that, I love to go to coffee shops. I like to try different coffee shops and I always will ask the barista, do you have any specialty drinks that are unique to your coffee shop? And they get bonus points if the drink has a themed name. So if it’s like there’s a coffee shop in California where I go with my friend Ashley, they have a latte called the Dirty Harry Latte, which is a butter beer latte.

CJ Milacci:

Oh, that’s perfect. Gotta love a good butter beer.

Sara Ella:

Yes, so that’s one of my other favorite pastimes is going to different coffee shops and trying their different drinks.

CJ Milacci:

So those are a lot of different things, but I love it. And I always think authors who have all these different kinds of avenues they explore in creating, like you do with flipping furniture, or just in enjoying different types of things in life, I think that makes our story worlds richer because we take those experiences in our life and they end up, whether we mean to or not, bleeding into our stories and being a part of them as well. So having all these different outlets, I think helps us become better writers at the end of the day.

And I think you see that so much in your books because your worlds are so rich, your characters are so deep and your story worlds are fantastic. So thank you, Sara Ella, so much for being with us. We are running out of time for today. Unfortunately. I feel like I could keep chatting with you all day long, but thank you for being on Read Clean YA with CJ. It was so wonderful to have you.

Sara Ella:

Thank you, C.J. I feel the same way. I love chatting with you and thank you so much for this opportunity and for having me on your podcast.

Where can you find the Curious Realities Duology and connect with Sara Ella?

CJ Milacci:

As we wrap things up for today, can you tell readers where they can find you and your books?

Sara Ella:

Yes, absolutely. Well, they can go to my website, SaraElla.com, and all my books are listed there with links to be able to purchase from your favorite bookstores. And you can order from your favorite retailer. Of course, you can order them on Amazon, but I always like to just say, support your local bookstore. So you can walk into your local bookstore and request my books.

If you would like to, my local bookstore is Changing Hands Bookstore, and you can order signed copies of any of my books from Changing Hands Bookstore, just be sure that you include the request in your order comments that it be signed and or personalized because I do then go into my local bookstore and then I sign those special orders.

So just be sure to include that request. I’ve had people say, oh well, I ordered from Changing Hands and it wasn’t signed and I always just try to send the reminder, you have to request it in the order comments. And I’m happy to sign those copies so that my readers can have a chance to have a signed copy if they want one.

CJ Milacci:

Yes, because signed copies are so much fun to have on the bookshelf, so highly recommend that option for sure. Well, thank you so much.

Wrapping things Up

I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Sara Ella. I loved getting to talk with her and hear her heart behind her stories. The Curious Realities duology is an adventure, with puzzles and twists and turns and found family, like we talked about. And I throughly enjoyed this duology. I know you will too. Sara has a way of drawing you into her stories and making you route for the characters while desperately turning the pages to see what will happen next.

Book two in the duology, The Looking-Glass Illusion it just released yesterday at the time this episode airs, so now both books are available wherever books are sold. So be sure to check it out — I’ll have links in the show notes as well as links to the other things we discussed today.

Don’t Forget The September Goodies Giveaway!

Sara Ella has also graciously agreed to include a copy of The Looking-Glass Illusion in this month’s giveaway, so don’t forget to check out the September Giveaway for Read Clean YA with CJ and find her book along with some other great Young Adult books.

Coming Next Week

Next week I’ll be talking with YA author Bradley Caffee, author of Sides, and I can’t wait to share that interview with you, so don’t forget to tune in.

Thank you so much for listening to Read Clean YA with CJ. I’m excited to be on this journey with you.