Interview with Sarah Flocken, author of “Be Well”
Sarah Flocken is many things, including the author of a new book, Be Well (Helioptrope Books, 2026). This novel takes us back to 2009 and maybe some things you’ve repressed if you lived through the Great Recession. She was kind enough to chat with us about her book, puns, and a few other things.
How would you describe your new book to people who haven’t read it (yet)?
Here’s the very first thing I say when anyone asks “what’s your book about?”
“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.”
But if I don’t even have that much time or breath in my body, I say: “Cults, televangelists, and all the late 2000s shibboleths your little heart desires.”
My sister recently called it “millennial jump scares” and “oh God no!-stalgia,” and I think those are absolutely brilliant descriptors.
What are you hoping this book will achieve out in the world? How do you want it to affect readers, etc?
I obviously hope people will buy it, read it, and recommend it to their friends. But while they’re reading it, I want them to feel an affinity for a type of person who, in our current social media landscape, might otherwise appear as a cartoon character. I want them to better understand themselves and how they move through the world by looking at it through the eyes of a character who is just like them, or better—who is more like them than they want to admit.
The biggest, most central “theme” in Be Well, if we’re going to get AP English about it, is just how easy it is for anyone, even someone smart and educated, to fall into unquestioning belief when they believe that their circumstances are desperate.
I also maybe want people reading Be Well to remember what a truly batshit time the late 2000s were, especially for people newly emerging into adulthood (I think the term for us is now “elder millennials”). Now, we’re all barreling into middle age, raising or starting families, trying to make good lives and just living through one damn “unprecedented” thing after another.
Be Well is out June 23, 2026, but if you pre-order it, you can show the algorithms that you want more goofy-yet-sharp fiction for smiley, silently enraged people whose lives are a series of unprecedented events.
What inspired you to write this book?
Be Well 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 (i.e. instead of “magic” 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. Ann, the awkward young college graduate who hurtles straight into the Great Recession-ravaged economy of 2009 is based in part on my worst impulses when I was 22, under-employed, and living in L.A.
Was this something you’ve been wanting to write for a while, or was there something about this book, right now?
I had wanted to write a novel for as long as I could write, but perfectionism held me back. I didn’t seriously embark on it until I was in my 30s. That’s the short answer.
The long answer is that the “this book, right now” feeling wasn’t there from the beginning, but instead grew stronger and took root as I dove in, wrote the terrible first draft, revised, and just stubbornly stuck with it. As time went on, and we went through the pandemic and just so many world events during my revision process, the idea of exploring cultish belief really began to take shape.
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.”
Ok, if someone goes to sign up for your Substack, they will read: “I write unhinged fiction for smiley people who are silently enraged (all of us).” Can you say a little more about that? First, what is unhinged fiction?
I describe my writing as “goofy/unhinged fiction for smiley people who are silently enraged” because I write to bring real human emotion to observing the truly absurd nature of the world we live in. No, I’m not a serious person. Yes, I really do want people to laugh when they read Be Well. But I also want to acknowledge how ridiculous so much of our world is, and allow people the space to laugh but also kind of rage about it, and maybe spark connections with other people over those things.
Unhinged fiction, I think, is just my particular brand of bonkers plot. A lot of early readers said they were taken for an absolute ride by the plot of Be Well, but were surprised by the ending.
How do you define smiley people who are silently enraged?
It’s all of us who are trying to make a good life and be a functioning member of society, but are also, you know, conscious of how terrible things are in the world. We see the absurdity we live in, sometimes speak up, sometimes feel powerless, and a lot of times are really existentially pissed off as we do things like pay bills, schedule doctors’ appointments, and go to work.
What makes that crowd and that type of fiction your niche? Why that and not another Cormac McCarthy imitation?
Because it’s me! I am that goofy, unhinged, silently enraged smiley person. Cormac McCarthy is great, but I’m not him. I’m me. I have my own perspectives, my own experiences, and my own background in improv comedy and competitive punning which makes my brain work in a very specific way.
Can you share a little bit about the process of writing the book? What did that look like?
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, writing myself into several unplanned corners along the way, 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.
Anyway, before publication, Be Well went through 13 rounds of revisions, including multiple “back-down-to-the-studs” rewrites. Two of those revision rounds were with my agent, and I just did one light one after my book got picked up by Heliotrope.
When I tell that whole story to aspiring writers, some of them look at me with fear in their eyes, but far more breathe a huge sigh of relief. The point is, writing a book often takes longer than you think. You’re not behind.
Where do your ideas come from?
My brain? God knows it’s definitely not generative AI.
I think a lot of my best ideas occur to me during times where I’m doing something else mundane and physical, and my mind is wandering for a bit. My top three “brilliant idea” locations seem to be 1.) the shower, 2.) walking the dog, and 3.) the gym.
Your Substack also mentions your love of puns. Have puns always been your thing? What makes you think they deserve special love as a category of humor?
Puns are definitely something I’m an AUTHORity on (lol get it?). Punning is basically playing with language, which is why I love it and why I think puns deserve special love. To pun well, a person has to be quick, have a broad vocabulary, and make connections that aren’t obvious to everyone else.
I host San Diego’s monthly pun contest Pundemonium, and it’s one of my favorite things to do in the world. It’s my supremely silly hobby and also apparently the most interesting thing about me. When I first meet a person and tell them that I run a PR business, and that I’ve written a book, a lot of the time they’ll make politely interested noises. But when I tell them that I do competitive punning, their eyes just light up and they have to know everything.
By the way, competitive punning is a thing nationwide (see: Punderdome in New York, It’s Always Punny in Philadelphia, Full Groan Comedy in Dallas, TX, Bay Area Pun-Off, The Punderground in Spokane, WA). I think it started in earnest with the O. Henry Pun-Off national championships in Austin, TX, which turns 50 next year. I’ve been traveling to compete in O. Henry whenever I can since 2023, but I got my start in competitive punning with the now-defunct Beltway Pundits show in Washington, D.C. back in 2017. I can thank my boss at the time for introducing me to Beltway Pundits–he told me about it one day I think as a way to gently let me know I needed an outlet and to stop making bad puns in meetings.
Have you already started your next project? If so, can you share a little bit about it?
Yes! And I can’t wait to really dive into it again. It’s a horror comedy, which is a bit of a genre change about me. All I can say is that writing a zombie book has really forced me to find creative synonyms for “decay.”
People have been posting on social media quite a bit about their top five favorite authors or top five favorite American authors, what are your picks for either of those?
My taste changes all the time, so please know that this only reflects my answer at this very moment! But OK, the top five authors for me right now are Claire-Louise Bennett, Anna Dorn, Leigh Stein, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Mona Awad. This means I own multiple books by them and will basically read whatever they write.
However, I also really, really want to shout out the amazing authors I love who were wonderful enough to blurb me. Everyone should drop what they’re doing and go read books by Charlee Dyroff, Nic DiDomizio, Jessie Gaynor, Deborah Hemming, Holly James, and Candice Wuehle.
On this note, writers Melanie Jennings and Elizabeth Kaye Cook are working on a project on Substack called The Everyday Canon. It’s fascinating, and I’m convinced it’s going to inform the syllabi of future AP English classes.
See that? That was a callback!
Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice
