by: T.A. Cruz
Genre: Thriller/Suspense
Release Date: May 4, 2023
Publisher: Tule Publishing
The search is on, but what exactly are the folks of Fulton County hiding?
For five years, high school English teacher Sarah Baker has helplessly watched her marriage become emptier than the bed she crawls into alone each night. But a divorce would leave her in financial ruin, so she stays shackled to the husband who left his vows at the altar.
Then Sarah discovers an escape and takes the ultimate risk, only to find herself chained again—this time in the basement of a remote cabin.
When a grisly teen murder rocks his quiet northwestern town, rough-around-the-edges Sheriff Jeffrey Mills has his hands full identifying the body while facing the mounting pressure of tracking down the missing high school teacher the community is determined to find. In the blink of an eye, a heart attack sidelines him during the search, and Mills faces an impossible choice: skirt the law and lose his one chance for redemption or leave Sarah Baker to her fate.
But one thing is clear: they’re both running out of time.
Hey there Kim, I am doing fantastic! Thank you for having me!
You’re welcome. Congratulations on the release of Have You Seen Sarah Baker?. I’m really excited about this story.
Thank you so much! I started this book on an iPad in Afghanistan back in 2018, so after years and more revisions than I can count, to finally see it take a life of its own is a dream come true. I am so grateful for Tule Publishing for giving me this opportunity and for all of their support. Not only will Sarah Baker be in ebook and paperback format when it releases, but my little thriller I poured countless hours into has been picked up for an audiobook version as well! Again, dream come true.
That’s awesome and so good to hear. Congratulations again. So here’s the thing…I don’t read thrillers because I like to sleep at night and actually be able to leave my house. I have a very active imagination and my mind runs away with all the possibilities after reading a scene when I’m trying to sleep. But I am so intrigued by this story.
I also have a very active imagination, which I would say definitely helped me pull this one off. There are a lot of scenes in here I believe would make anyone double check their front door is locked before going to bed. But that’s the thrill of it. I wanted to give the reader every opportunity for the hairs on the back of their neck to stand at attention. It was really a fun book to write.
What inspired you to write Have You Seen Sarah Baker?
Sarah Baker started for me with a simple idea and kind of flourished from there. A woman—mid to late twenties—shackled in a cellar, and a man, a stranger, comes down to bring his prisoner food periodically throughout the day. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t harm her. Just silence. And it was the silence that kind of stuck with me. The nagging question of why is he doing this? From there I decided to find out for myself.
The story takes place in Fulton, a small town in the Pacific Northwest. What can you tell me about the town?
Fulton is a fictional town you drive through to get where you’re going. It rests along a highway surrounded by snowcapped mountains and trees as far as the eyes can see. A blue-collar town barely scraping by. Some families have lived there for generations, and those who end up there because of a job or circumstance, don’t tend to leave. A small-town life has its benefits of course, unless you mind people sticking their noses in places it doesn’t belong. There’s a line in the second chapter I’m quite fond of. “Everyone knows everyone was a common phrase, but in Fulton, everyone knew how many shits you had taken that day.”
I find it interesting that you’re from a small town and the story also takes place in a small town, with about the same size population. Was this a coincidence and did you put some of your small town into the story?
The town I grew up in is very similar to Fulton, but less mountainous and more farmlands. Same type of dynamic though. Low population, graduating class of less than a hundred. The phrase “write what you know” comes to mind when thinking of the setting of Have You Seen Sarah Baker?. I knew the crooked streets, the buildings having For Lease signs in the windows coated with dust, and most importantly, the people and how they might react to such a series of events happening in their little slice of paradise. There are a lot of elements I drew inspiration from, especially Fulton County High School. It’s not a brick-for-brick representation but anyone from my hometown would immediately imagine the same school. Go Pirates.
Sarah Baker is a high school teacher who is married in name only, not her choice. What else can you tell me about her?
Sarah Baker is an English Major out of Sacramento State University. Took a job at Fulton County High School after moving there due to her husband’s insistence on being closer to family. His family. She spends her nights alone drinking Pinot Noir with her tabby cat Mr. Biscuit and cleaning up the messes John (husband) leaves behind. Divorce is a word swimming through her head constantly, but financial stability is the life raft. Maybe it’s the shame. How the people in town will look at her like a wounded animal. She’s trapped. And eventually, she’s truly trapped by some stranger who refuses to do much else than leave her alone in the darkness of a cellar. She won’t die without a fight though. No, Sarah Baker will fight tooth and nail to escape even if it means the freedom she’s desperate for takes her back to an empty home.
Jeffrey Mills is the sheriff of Fulton County. He seems a little bitter. He also seems to have his own demons and holds a little animosity toward the town. I gather there’s more to him than what people initially see. Can you tell me a little bit more about him?
Sheriff Mills is a complicated one. He never wanted to be the sheriff of Fulton County. No, he had much bigger aspirations, leaving the town that knew him as Sheriff Jacob Mills’s boy most of all. This role was forced on him. A chip off the old bottle-soaked block if you will. Fast forward twenty years, give or take, and what you’re left with is the shell of a man going through the motions and drinking himself to death to forget what his life might’ve been. When darkness invades the town he swore to protect and serve, it’s up to him and his young protégé Deputy Jenn Holloway to solve the case. He enjoys a full flask of whiskey, a fresh pack of smokes, and classic rock while patrolling the Fulton streets.
I mentioned that I was intrigued by this story. I loved that the story grips you immediately with the first sentence. How much of the story did you plot out?
Ooooof. Hard one to answer. So, I knew how I wanted this book to end. I think I had the ending in my head after I finished the first or second chapter. With most of my writing, I let the characters run their course working toward a climax and eventually the ending. It’s not my story, after all, it’s theirs. And I can only pull the strings so much without it becoming something unnatural or unbelievable. I know that might be blasphemy for most authors. We’re all told there’s two methods. Plotter or pantser. I like to combine the two. Planser. I wait until I have an idea in my head that just won’t get the hell out, and I’m off to the races. Some chapters happen organically, and some are ideas I get along the way. I never sit down and plan out every single chapter and what I intend to happen in that chapter.
I have no doubt that Sarah’s disappearance and the murder of an unidentified teen days earlier are somehow connected. When readers get to that moment what do you want their reaction to be?
Oh, they are absolutely connected, but that’s the only spoiler you’ll get out of me. Sarah Baker alternates through a past and present timeline that leads to a specific point where the story comes to a head. Imagine two trains on different railroads heading to the same destination. Eventually, there is an explosion. That is where everything you thought you knew, maybe guessed, is wrong. The amount of messages I’ve received from betas and ARC readers when those two trains meet is what I live for. The utter shock. The blindside. That’s when I know all the late nights were worth it.
When readers get to the end of Have You Seen Sarah Baker? what do you wish and hope they take away from the story?
My biggest hope is that the readers are left with a satisfying ending. It’s not going to be happy, and you will leave with questions or wanting more. It might be heartbreaking for some but believe me when I say it had to happen this way, and I would rewrite this story a hundred times over and end it the same way every time.
Oh wow. So I need to ask…Are there any trigger warnings readers need to be aware of?
This story contains scenes depicting alcoholism, miscarriage, domestic abuse, graphic violence, murder, kidnapping, predatory relationships, and imprisonment.
T.A. congratulations again on your new release. Thank you so much for answering some of my questions.
Again, thank you so much for having me on Read Your Writes Book Reviews! Now for the biggest question … HAVE YOU SEEN SARAH BAKER?
CHAPTER ONE
Sarah
One month missing
Creak.
The floorboards strained in the room above the cellar, forcing her heavy and swollen eyes open. It was him, and he was coming for her. Again.
Each step screamed as his boots adjusted to the rickety wooden staircase. The nails twisted. The foundation shuddered. He whistled; always the same tune when descending the flight. He scraped his hand along the banister like forty-grit sandpaper. The light bulb dangling from the ceiling swayed, highlighting things better left unseen, strewn across the wall. Screwdrivers for stabbing. Metal files to shave down bones. A hacksaw for the larger chunks of her—her entire torso maybe—which would then fit in a black trash bag tossed to the highway embankment. Every time he arrived …
Fresh vomit invaded her throat.
A numbness in her hands tingled up from the metal shackles over her wrists. They were tighter than yesterday, her penance for fighting harder than she should have. The chains were thick and wove through an iron loop cast inches, if not feet, into the cement wall at her back. She struggled her bare legs over the icy concrete, and gooseflesh trickled up her thigh. Closing her eyes wouldn’t help. Plugging her ears wouldn’t drown out the off-pitch notes. No, she’d still see the large shape of her captor in her head and hear the tune thumping rhythmically with her heart.
“Why?” she muttered, rattling the chains while sitting up. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice was hoarse, the same roughness you could expect after screaming for hours on end. Today she had given a round, if not three, and judging by his seemingly on-the-dot visits, it was only lunchtime.
The man stopped whistling when he neared. He crouched, set the brown tray in his hands to the floor, and slid it toward her. They stared at each other for a moment; through her terror she tried to maintain the same glare she’d given this man for the past thirty, maybe thirty-five days. It could’ve been longer, after all. She lost count between her hysterics and veering in and out of consciousness. Little sunlight breached the window obscured with curtains and junk thrown haphazardly in front of it. The subtle differences between daylight and dusk were as indistinct as his face.
The man before her, however, watched her vacantly. No empathy. No remorse. Only an empty, emotionless gaze. Despite it all, she silently begged for some sort of human interaction, even just to know that what she was dealing with was, in fact, human. He stood upright, turned to the stairs, and started whistling again.
“What do you want with me?” she screamed, yanking her arms until the restraints threatened to fracture her wrists. Tangled auburn hair folded over her face and covered her eyes. Fresh tears flowed freely. “Let me out of here!”
The door atop the staircase slammed shut, dead bolted, and the shrill whistle faded into the house above. His footsteps shuddered about. Dust rained to the cellar floor. It would stop within minutes if her memory served correctly. He hadn’t stirred for longer than that before settling in what she assumed was a room of some sort. She lowered her head between her knees, and a sharp whine emptied her throat. Cries for help to this point were closer to messages left unchecked on an answering machine.
She lifted her head and peered at the food in front of her. The tray itself wasn’t much different than the ones used in the high school cafeteria. It was almost identical. For the smallest of moments, she wasn’t shackled to some stranger’s wall but enjoying the lunch period before the final two classes of the day. It was a dream. An incredibly vivid dream she couldn’t stay in for long. Sarah choked back another cry and swallowed the stone-sized lump in her throat.
The chains clattered as she extended a hand to the tray and ripped it back with hesitation. She did this three times in total. Stomach acid pillaged up her throat, but she managed to force it down. He hadn’t poisoned her food so far, at least to her knowledge. Maybe he was waiting for the right opportunity. A few pellets of rat killer in her bologna sandwich to finish off Sarah Baker once and for all.
No, he was keeping her alive for something. She assumed death by Oscar Mayer wasn’t it.
She pulled the sandwich and crumbs dusted her legs. The first bite required a second and even larger bite. The bread softened over her tongue, and the salty meat ignited each taste bud in sequence. A satisfied sigh, another bite, and Sarah sighed again. She paused for a drink of water, then, she attacked the sandwich once more.
After the main course was reduced to specks, she snatched the small applesauce cup and tore open the tinfoil lid. She rejected the formalities of a spoon and reared back the paste like a shot of alcohol. Some of the goopy mess slid down her mouth and under her chin.
It didn’t matter. None of it did. No captive ever emerged in better shape than when they disappeared. Sarah had watched enough crime shows to know better. They were all feral. Savage. Animalistic beyond repair. How far gone was she? Would everyone back home—John, the high school faculty, the town—still look at her as they did Sarah Baker? Or would they see a shackled woman? A prisoner? Damaged goods? She hadn’t the slightest clue.
She tossed the cup to the tray and focused on two oval-shaped pills in the smallest divider. Both were snowy white with indistinct words etched into the center. She knew what they were, had even meant to buy them herself until the man upstairs had other plans for her. How he knew she needed them was another matter that raised concern. Something she thoughtfully questioned whenever it came time for her daily dose.
He was keeping her alive for something, that much was certain, and Sarah Baker knew she wasn’t sticking around to find out why.
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A lifelong lover of horror and things that go bump in the night, T.A. Cruz decided it was time to take that passion to the page and shock and terrify others for a change. When not diving face first into another project, Cruz enjoys spending time with his wife, daughter, two dogs, and axolotl.
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I am intrigued by this book too and look forward to reading it.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad. Enjoy reading it, if you get a chance.
DeleteThis book sounds like a thrill ride till the end.
ReplyDelete