Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: So we're here with Sarah Pearse to talk about her debut novel, The Sanatorium, which is a locked room thriller set in an abandoned tuberculosis sanatorium that has been renovated into a five star luxury resort. So why don't you just start off by telling us a little bit about the book?
Sarah: The Sanatorium is A is a kind of creepy thriller, and it's set in a luxury hotel called Le Sommet that used to be a sanatorium, and it's really high in the Swiss Alps in a very isolated location. And the book follows Elin Warner, who's a British detective, as she travels to the hotel for her brother's engagement. But things take a really kind of dark and eerie turn when her brother's fiancee, Laure goes missing, and Elin finds she has to step up to the plate to investigate amidst the snowstorm and all kinds of things going on.
Mindy: It takes place, of course, in a sanatorium, which is fascinating but also the locked room concept, of course, is a wonderful setting and time honored, often used plot device. My audience is mostly writers. So why don't you talk a little bit about, first of all, that concept, the locked room thriller, the element that you use to create that environment in The Sanatorium?
Sarah: I love reading locked room thrillers. I kind of grew up on a diet of kind of watching and reading Agatha Christie, who is very much local to my area, and I think there's a real magic in having a group of characters where there's no real kind of room for escape. So not only for a reader is it quite fun because you have a very sort of fixed pool of suspects. But I think it really tests the characters because there is no police that are able to come in. There's no one charging in on a white horse to sort of save the day, so you really get to see what the characters are made of. So I think in The Sanatorium by having the avalanche, and I mean the hotel is already in a very isolated setting, which is because, obviously it was a sanatorium, and that's how they tended to be. You immediately put the characters up against one of the biggest tests of their lives, and I think as a reader, it's fascinating to to put the characters under that pressure and you're reading along with them and feeling their fear.
Mindy: One of the things that I often talk with thriller writers about one of the first elements that you absolutely must get rid of in order to create any kind of tension is that you have to get rid of your characters phones.
Sarah: Absolutely. It's a tricky thing when you have a phone. Obviously there's so many aspects where you could lose the tension in a way. So I think you have to be quite clever, where and when that phone can be used. And if the signal is there, I think if you were writing a long time ago, before the advent of mobile phones, it made those cases much easier to write, I think.
Mindy: Especially when you're working with not only just, like a call for help, just even if someone needs a piece of information, they need to know a critical thing in a moment. You know, if they can just google it, they have a computer in their hands at all times. It's very hard to create a situation where your character is ignorant of just about anything unless they're being Hoodwinked by the other characters.
Sarah: Absolutely. And I think that's probably where the lock door setting, I think if you have things that are set on an island or there's an extreme of weather and the character can be without their phone, I think it opens up a whole world of possibilities. But I think there's elements within the book where Elin does have her phone and she is able to look up certain things which are helpful. Particularly she's a detective there on her own. So it's kind of knowing where and when to have that technology, the key of where and when. It makes a big difference about how your plot plays out.
Mindy: The next thing I really want to talk to you about is the setting itself, the sanatorium having been renovated into a very luxurious setting in the Alps, but it was formerly a tuberculosis sanitarium, So how did you decide that this was the setting number one, and what kind of research did you do on this type of setting?
Sarah: The whole idea from the book came from the idea of the sanatorium in the hotel aspect of it came after. So we go a lot to Switzerland for our holidays. We lived there, my husband and I in our twenties. So we go a lot of holidays now. And a few years ago I read an article in a local magazine about the history of a Sanatorium in the town and the local area. And there was some great photography of the old building. Um, and it really set my imagination firing. And then, yeah, in the article and the subsequent research I did, I found out some of the old sanatoriums have been converted into a hotel, and even the other way around. At the very beginning, there was a hotel which was then repurposed by a doctor as a sanatorium. And I just thought, Gosh, what a creepy idea this would be to stay in a hotel that had once been a place where there have been a lot of illness, where people have died. How would you feel as a guest? And I know for me repurposed buildings in general are fascinating. I love the idea that there's a history bubbling beneath the surface, even when you've got, like, a very sort of modern building, even if it's been converted beautifully. And, yeah, the idea came from there.
Mindy: I set a book of mine in an insane asylum that's fairly famous here in Ohio. It's still operating. It has been converted. It's not operating as an insane asylum. Obviously, it has converted into buildings that are incorporated into a university campus.
Sarah: Oh my, gosh, how interesting.
Mindy: Yes, it’s so interesting. And so the building is still standing. Parts of it are no longer in use and will more than likely be demolished. But they still have the center of the building and the wing, the men's dormitory is now part of the art department and their offices and things like that. And of course, the building is gorgeous, and I'm so happy that it could be at least partially saved. But of course it's in a college campus, and there are parts of the building in parts of the area that are still you're not allowed to go in them for safety reasons because there's asbestos, and also it's just not entirely safe, especially the female wings. Those haven't seen any work for a very long time. And of course it's a college. So that's what people do. That's what the kids do. They go up and they break into the insane asylum and they go into the sections they are not allowed to.
Architecture itself, It is fascinating to me. I love old buildings. I love old houses. I love all of that kind of stuff. Of course you are from Britain. I am from the U. S. The house that I live in is really old. It was built in, I think 1857. A Civil War soldier Built it after he got out of the war and I’m always like, Yeah, my house is old, my house is old. Well, I was in London on a trip with some friends, and I was in London, and it's so funny to me how my concept of old just changed so fast when you know, I, like, visited the tower and things like that.
Sarah: It's amazing. I I don't know if you've heard about some of the mud larking that people do along the Thames where they found old arrowheads really to like the Norman times and it’s crazy thinking of the history. We have some caves. Not very far. Only five minutes from our house. That kind of have lots of the Stone Age remains in pottery in. Yeah, just just amazing. But yeah, that is very old for you guys, isn't it - something in the 1800’s.
Mindy: And I remember I visited the Tower and we were taking our tour with the Beefeaters, and he was talking to us and we were right there, like on the river and these steps that are going down into the river. And he was like, and these are the steps that Anne Boelyn walked up, walked to her death where they chopped her head off over there on that block. And I was like, Wait, like those steps? Like these steps right here? Those steps? And he's like, Yeah, those steps. She walked on those steps. And I was just... like my mind was blown.
Sarah: I know. That's what I think is so wonderful when you have something historical, isn't it where your imagination just sort of fires? I just love the idea that kind of all of that energy might still be lingering from the past. Oh, it's just amazing.
Mindy: Absolutely. And like I said, as an American when I was in London, I was just like, Wow, I don't even know what old means.
Sarah: Everywhere you turn, you see a landmark.
Mindy: Yeah, that's the truth.
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Mindy: Let's talk a little bit about female characters because your main character, Elin, is a female detective and, of course, has to operate in a really sticky situation and, of course, also a dangerous one. So how did her her gender, her sex, did this come into your choice of using a female detective? And does it connect to any of the themes in the book?
Sarah: Yeah, very much does so. Primarily, I wanted to have a female detective because I think I've read a few books where the female detectives tend to take on quite sort of almost masculine traits or attributes as a character. So kind of quite suppressed emotion. And I wanted to have a detective, I kind of wanted to break free of that. And I think it makes it quite a challenging character to the reader at times, and to the people around her, but someone who's kind of suffered with anxiety. She's obviously got a complex past going on and she finds out in the book. But I wanted to show someone who I think people would be in real life. I don't think as a detective, you necessarily would have it all together. And I wanted to show that kind of internal thought process of her fears, her anxieties and, yeah, everything about her past that's made her who she is.
And it kind of very much links in with the theme of the book, which is kind of women's voices. Historically, they've been suppressed or women themselves have felt the need to suppress them in order to kind of fit in in society and in the workplace. Where again, I still think even now there is a very specific way of communicating in large organizations, for example, which tends to be more masculine and I think, feelings have shown that can be a little bit sort of looked down on or people feel like they can't be themselves. So, yeah, I really wanted Elin to be a woman to reflect the themes that I sort of bring up within the novel.
Mindy: Yeah, definitely. As women. If you're operating in a male space, there is a lot of pressure to not be emotional.
Sarah: Yeah, and I find that It's a really fascinating concept because I think we've been told that being emotional is almost a bad thing, and that means you can't be taken seriously. But I think women and their emotions and how they relate to the people around them is a real strength. And yeah, I wanted to show that in the book that Elin journeys to a point of strength. But just because she's gone through that journey doesn't make her a weak person. Yeah, I think even now it is still the case that we have to sort of stiff upper lip and button up our emotions. And I think it can be weaponized against us if we are emotional, which is a shame.
Mindy: Oh, yeah, absolutely it can. I think it's interesting talking about the idea of being a female, and she's operating in a male space, being a detective. I don't know what it's like in Britain, but I can say that as a writer in the US, we hear that phrase “strong female character” so much we roll our eyes. At this point, we're like, yes, strong female character. It's ridiculous to me that you even have to put the word strong in front of it to be like Oh, no, she's not like other women. She's strong.
Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. You come on a really good point there. I think women are being judged all the time for their behavior and they are put under scrutiny all the time by everyone around them. And I think even sometimes other women - are they being emotional enough? Are they not being too emotional? I don't think women can just BE. And I think you're so right. I think there's like a label that is put on women constantly and that yeah, that idea of being strong automatically implies that women are inherently weak, which is very odd. And what is strong? I think strong is a word again that's often used to define against a male set of values, isn't it?
Mindy: Yes, absolutely. That's something that came up in an interview I was doing with someone else earlier this month. We were talking about that concept, the strong female character and how, for the longest time strength, you know, it meant that she could physically, best someone at something. She was Katniss in the Hunger games. You know, we really, many of us 0 because I write for teens. I'm a YA author - we really pushed back at that because female strength, and male strength too, I mean strength in general, there's different avenues and uses for that word.
I tell this story. So apologies to my listeners if you've heard it more than once. But I do a lot of genealogy. I have a very heavy German line in my family, and I do a lot of genealogy. And the Germans, of course, have like these excellent records, and my family tree had more or less already been done all the way back to the 1500s. On the German side. The Irish one is a huge mess. So that's what I work on. But the German one. It was pretty much done, but I went and, like, you know, Dug around with what other people have found anyway, and I found a woman. It was in the 1500s, you know, lived in just this little village, and I got to looking at some of the dates surrounding her and her Children and her husband's and her marriages. And I got really curious after I started seeing some of these dates pop up because a lot of the information was pulled from church records.
I put together a calendar. I believe she had 13 Children. She outlived all but one of them. Two husbands. She lost two children… they both died and in the space of a single week, and I think it was a fall 1500s. She had two Children. I believe it was like an eight year old, and, uh, maybe a little one that was younger, die and then a teenage daughter died the week after, so there was more than likely an illness in the household, and she was pregnant. The mother was pregnant while these Children are sick, so she's probably trying to take care of them. All three of them die. She gives birth to the baby and the baby dies the next week.
Sarah: Oh, my gosh.
Mindy: She outlived most of her family except for one child. And it's ridiculous. I know. And like some of her grandchildren as well, she outlived. And I always tell people - like this woman more than likely probably could not read or write. She was a German housewife. She was not a liberated woman. She was raising Children and and being a housewife, Yeah, you would never say that this woman isn't strong.
Sarah: No, absolutely. When you touched on there about that whole idea of strength being and we spoke about the being held up against that sort of male set of values, I think I don't know how you pull away from that. Because I think as you said before, that idea of physical strength is held up. And if you're writing about a strong woman, they have to be strong, like in a male way, as you were saying about the Hunger Games, they have to be, you know, a tall muscular, strong woman and that is showing strength. But I agree with you. I think historically and throughout time, women have shown strength in numerous ways that we can't even probably in modern society begin to understand or articulate. But I think that they would have to be such a huge mind shift to go away from what is seen traditionally as strong.
Mindy: So tying into that. One of the themes in your book Is women not being believed. Women being questioned or their word not being taken as seriously as a man's. So tying into that strength and just reliability. How does that play out in the novel?
Sarah: When I was researching I tied two ideas together here. So you have the idea of the Tuberculosis Sanatorium. But there are also sanatoriums in Switzerland and elsewhere all over Europe, which were more mental institutions, so they weren't called asylums. They were called Sanatoriums and I read a terrifying article in a book about how women were taken essentially to these institutions which were called Sanatorium on the guise that they were ill or unwell. It was basically because often they just had independent thoughts and they spoke up and as women, that kind of wasn't allowed in a way. So yeah, they were taken to these institutions, and quite often some of them lived and died there. So they were taken there in their twenties, thirties, and forties. They were committed on behalf of a family doctor who took the guardian, the father or the husband at their word. And these women were committed.
And it got kind of the idea in my mind, the kind of similar things with the Me Too movement. So how people, women were questioned and their accounts of things were questioned. And I think, to be honest, I think you see it in everyday life, don't you? Going back to that strength. I think if a woman accounts something and she shows some emotion they’re often historically they've tended not to be believed, which is shocking, and it's still shocking to me now. So it's something I wanted to play upon in the novel, and I think women, particularly when it comes to sexual assault and varying things, I think there's very much the sense of sort of, if it makes someone feel uncomfortable, it's often easier either for the woman not to speak up or the person listening to turn the cheek and not really hear, as we see in the novel, which can have quite devastating consequences.
Mindy: Tying that into that in the modern world, of course, the Me Too movement being a huge part of that. I just finished reading a book about gender disparities and data, which I know it doesn't sound interesting. However, it was fascinating because it was talking about how, especially in the medical world, women's pain is discounted often and they’re misdiagnosed or their complaints are ignored because they're a physician isn't believing their account of their own pain.
Sarah: Oh my gosh, how interesting. I can see that because I think if women express pain, I can imagine often you might cry, or you might be quite open about that. And I think men still have that, sometimes if it's a male position or even perhaps female, you have that idea of Oh, you know, they're being over the top or too sensitive all of those things.
Mindy: Or even going back to using the word hysterical.
Sarah: Absolutely. And I think that's such a weaponized word and that kind of idea of keep calm, dear or be quiet. It's a very, in a way, clever word of making a woman feel inadequate for showing what is quite a normal emotion. And I don't think it's healthy for men either. I think being told that as a man, you can't express those feelings, probably because it makes you seem more feminine, is a terrible way to approach the world.
Mindy: Really, it is. I'm gonna see if I can pull up the name of that book because it was interesting. Another thing that they talked about in the book that was pretty fascinating. It's called Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. It is fascinating. I will. I'll send you a link. I'll send a link to your publicist. They even talk about how, in clinical trials they only use men in medical clinical trials. At least they used to because they couldn't account for a woman's menstrual cycle and how it might affect the medication.
Sarah: Oh, my gosh.
Mindy: I know. We're back to - It's a full moon. Don't cross the river at night.
Sarah: Yeah.
Mindy: Even in medical trials for FDA approval, they would only use male subjects as that was part of the control that they only use males. As time has progressed, they've discovered that certain medications interact differently with the female body, and I forget the name. But there was a specific medication for blood pressure and blood pressure problems, and it's supposed to bring your blood pressure down, but in women, it actually brings it up. And they didn't know this. They got FDA approval without ever trying it on women and people died.
Sarah: Oh, my gosh, that's horrific, isn't it? Mm, Yeah, it's again. It's that sort of invisible woman. As you say. Isn't it terrible?
Mindy: I work in a high school. I substitute very often. Most of the time, these days. Anyway, you know most of the young women today. They feel like sexism has been either mostly taken care of or they feel it, or they see it mostly in representation, as far as like, an expectation for them to look or outward presence in a certain way. And they're aware of that. But some of the more heinous and insidious things... I'll tell them things like that. Like, for example, for the longest time crash test dummies were only made in a male form.
Sarah: Gosh, I didn't know that, actually. Yeah.
Mindy: Yeah. So hips and breasts weren't accounted for. And if you look at the data for women's deaths in a car crash, it's much, much higher than men's because the seats and the seat belts are made for a male body.
I will send along the link for you, but bringing it back to The Sanatorium and last thing I know, I've got to let you go. Why don't you tell us where listeners can find you online and where they can find The Sanatorium?
Sarah: I think you can pretty much find it in all formats everywhere now, so online. Or be in your local bookstore, independent bookstore and, yeah, I'm online. I'm on Instagram at SarahPearseAuthor. I'm on Twitter at SarahVPearse, and then you can find me on Facebook. Just I think it's Sarah Pearse, Author again. I also have a website at www dot sarah pearse dot co dot UK
Mindy:
