Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Immortal Gene
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://jonassaul.com/
CITY: Kelowna
STATE: BC
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
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|---|---|
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| HEADING: | Saul, Jonas |
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| 100 | 1_ |a Saul, Jonas |
| 670 | __ |a The blade, 2012: |b t.p. (Jonas Saul) |
| 670 | __ |a The future is written, 2018: |b t.p. (Jonas Saul) about Jonas Saul (Jonas Saul has been writing for more than two decades and has thirty novels and more than fifty short stories to his credit. Currently, he’s living in Canada.) |
PERSONAL
Married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, teacher, speaker. Previously, owned retail stores.
AVOCATIONS:Traveling.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Jonas Saul is a writer, editor, teacher, and speaker. Previously, he owned retail stores. In an interview with Jennifer Jaynes, which appeared on Jaynes’s self-titled website, Saul reflected on his writing career and discussed what success as an author meant to him. He stated: “Success is having a reader, or readers, take the time out of their day to stop what they’re doing, set down the vacuum, turn off the TV, stay home, and read your book. To stop everything. To pay hard-earned money to buy your novel, then sit and read it, that’s success. If that happens, you’ve done something right along the way. Then, when they like it—or love it—wow, that’s really successful. … Ultimately, the more people who know and read my work (and hopefully enjoy it), the better. That’s success.”
"Sarah Roberts Thriller" Series
Saul is perhaps best known for his lengthy “Sarah Roberts Thriller” series. The first volume in this series is Dark Visions. In it, Saul introduces the series’s titular protagonist. Sarah is a teen, who experiences strange phenomena in which she writes prophecies while in a blackout state. The messages she writes tell her of ways she can prevent kidnappings. Sarah’s involvement in stopping these crimes puts her and others in danger.
Sarah goes on to use her gifts as an “automatic writer” to solve more crimes in the following installments in the series, The Warning, The Crypt, The Hostage, and The Victim. By The Enigma, Sarah understands that the mysterious messages she receives in the blackout states are coming from her dead sister, Vivian. In this book, the messages tell her to go to Las Vegas and send a cryptic text message from a stranger’s phone. Next, she is supposed to stop the torture of a man in a warehouse. When Sarah botches that second mission, people are killed. Meanwhile, she angers a powerful casino owner named Maxwell Ramsey, putting her own life in danger.
After The Vigilante and The Rogue is Killing Sarah, which finds Sarah suffering from amnesia after a gunshot to the head. The person who shot her may or may not be her friend and colleague, Parkman. Subsequent books in the series include The Antagonist, The Redeemed, The Haunted, The Unlucky, The Abandoned, and The Cartel. In Losing Sarah, the protagonist struggles with a heroin addiction, which leads to her incarceration in Mexico.
In an interview with a contributor to the Suspense Magazine website, Saul summarized the plot of the following installment in the “Sarah Roberts Thriller” series, The Pact. He stated: “With The Pact, I wanted to do something completely different. Throughout the series, Sarah receives messages—prophecies—from her dead sister, Vivian. In The Pact, I turned that on its head. I had Vivian leave a time capsule behind to be opened twenty-five years after her death.” Saul continued: “Inside this time capsule were letters to people in Sarah’s life currently. Her father mailed these letters not knowing their contents. Vivian saw what was going to happen all those years ago and now, through her letters, instructs Sarah’s inner circle on what to do to save Sarah’s life. In The Pact, Vivian isn’t talking to Sarah. She’s talking to Sarah’s family and colleagues.” Regarding his protagonist’s evolution throughout the series, Saul told the same contributor: “Sarah began as an innocent eighteen-year-old girl, unsure of the world around her, lonely, and lacking confidence in Dark Visions, Book One. Today, she’s a crime-fighting badass, martial arts and weapons trained, sassy, cunning woman who finds balancing her love life with her vigilante exploits a more difficult task than expected.”
Later additions to the series include The Terror, The Chase, The Betrayal, and The Future Is Written.
The Immortal Gene
In 2018, Saul released The Immortal Gene, a novel starring a detective named Jake Wood. Jake and Kirk Aiken, his partner, have been on the case of the Blood Eagle Killer, a serial killer who claims a victim every other year. The two detectives are determined to stop the killer, whose real name is Jeffery Harris, before he kills someone in their Canadian district. Jake is unexpectedly forced to leave Canada to travel to the Amazon. There, he suffers from a snake bite that puts him into a lengthy coma. When he awakes, Jake is shocked to learn that his body has changed and now has snakelike features. However, he finds a way to harness those changes to help him better hunt the Blood Eagle Killer.
A Publishers Weekly critic commented: “Saul knows how to ratchet up the tension and keep pages turning, but his inconsistent plotting is disappointing.” In a more favorable assessment of the novel on the Readers Favorite website, Lex Allen suggested: “What starts out as a straightforward crime/serial killer thriller, becomes a sci-fi, horror thriller that will please fans of all the above-mentioned genres. There is much to impress in this story.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2018, review of The Immortal Gene, p. 56.
ONLINE
Jennifer Jaynes website, http://jenniferjaynes.net/ (October 26, 2018), Jennifer Jaynes, author interview.
Jonas Saul website, http://jonassaul.com (October 26, 2018).
Readers Favorite, https://readersfavorite.com/ (July 16, 2018), Lex Allen, review of The Immortal Gene.
Suspense, http://suspensemagazine.com/ (September 10, 2018), author interview.
TLC Book Tours website, https://tlcbooktours.com/ (April, 2018), author profile.
About
Jonas Saul is the author of more than thirty novels with over two million copies sold. Two of his bestselling series have been optioned for Film/TV.
Saul has traveled extensively throughout the world to scout settings for his thrillers. Currently, he’s writing in Canada.
He’s available for speeches and presentations at conferences anywhere in the world.
Jonas is represented by Gandolfo Helin and Fountain Literary and Dramatic Rights Management.
“Sarah Roberts is one in a million. If you’re her friend, she’ll crawl through Hell to protect you. If you’re her enemy, she’ll send you there.” – Reviewer
About Jonas Saul
Jonas Saul has sold over 2 million books. On multiple occasions, he has outranked Stephen King and Dean Koontz on the Amazon Most Popular Top 100 Authors list.
He has traveled extensively throughout the world to scout settings for his thrillers, spending several years between Greece, Italy, Denmark, and Hungary.
Jonas is regularly invited to speak at national writing conferences, teaches writing classes, and offers editorial services.
Find out more about Jonas at his website, and connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
QUOTED: "Success is having a reader, or readers, take the time out of their day to stop what they’re doing, set down the vacuum, turn off the TV, stay home, and read your book. To stop everything. To pay hard-earned money to buy your novel, then sit and read it, that’s success. If that happens, you’ve done something right along the way. Then, when they like it—or love it—wow, that’s really successful. ... Ultimately, the more people who know and read my work (and hopefully enjoy it), the better. That’s success."
With 26 novels under his belt and plans for many more, indie thriller novelist Jonas Saul is probably one of the most prolific, successful (and nicest) writers I know. In this Q&A, Saul shares his road to publication, his writing process, his definition of success and more.
Describe your road to publication.
In the summer of 2002, I sent several dozen query letters to New York Literary Agencies for my first novel, BAD VIBES. When that resulted in one rejection letter after another, I decided to write another novel. That’s when DARK VISIONS was born. By 2011, I had written over fifty short stories and three novels and still did not have representation. That was when my wife told me I could upload directly to Amazon as an indie author.
At first, I refused. I told her to give me three more months. If I couldn’t acquire an agent, I would go directly to Amazon. Three months came and went. Nothing happened. I succumbed and uploaded six titles to Amazon. Sales began immediately. Within two months, my wife left her job and we bought tickets for Europe in May, 2011 after being an indie on Amazon for four months.
We spent the next eighteen months touring Europe while I wrote from hotel rooms.
By 2013, my Sarah Roberts Series was optioned for a TV Series with a large Hollywood studio. I’ve since flown to Los Angeles several times pitching and working on bringing Sarah to the big screen. In April of this year, six days before THE SNAKE was to be released, it too was optioned for a motion picture deal by a different studio. It’s only a matter of time before you will see Sarah Roberts and Jake Wood on the big screen.
Lastly, this past August, I signed with Gandolfo Helin & Fountain, a literary and dramatic rights agency. Within days of signing the contract for representation, I was meeting with a publisher interested in a substantial print deal for The Sarah Roberts Series.
More details on that to come as soon as I can announce them.
What do you find most challenging about writing? Most fulfilling?
The most challenging thing about writing is just finding the time. Life is so busy with traveling and dealing with my day-to-day routine.
I’ve lived over three of the last five years in Europe. One year in Italy and two and a half years in Greece researching for my novels. Being on the go, touring ancient sites and cities often takes up my entire schedule. It can be a challenging task to get to the computer and type out the word count required to create a novel.
The most fulfilling things I find with writing are the reviews, the interaction I get with readers and the overall love from them. I recently received an email from a woman battling cancer. She wrote to tell me that she’s imagining a million tiny Sarah Roberts attacking the cancerous cells in her body.
Sarah has given her hope and strength. That woman will not only keep fighting, but she’ll fight harder because Sarah would. That email, along with others, have moved me beyond words.
How long does it take you to write a first draft?
[The] first draft takes me approximately five to six weeks.
I have a basic idea of where I’m going and I have an outline prepared. Most of the research has been done before I type the first word.
I write about four thousand words per day, totaling twenty thousand per week.
LOSING SARAH, Book 16 in the series, came in at 82,000 words. THE SNAKE is approximately 91,000 words.
For me, first drafts are often longer, and after edits, my books come in under one hundred thousand words.
How many drafts do you generally write before your manuscript is finalized?
Quite a few, actually. I try to make the book as perfect as it can be. DARK VISIONS, Book One in the Sarah Series, went through six years of revisions. I completely rewrote that novel twice.
Now, after having written twenty-six novels, I only go through a few drafts that barely take a couple of months, or less in some cases.
What does a typical writing day look like?
Coffee in the morning (at least two), then in the office by nine.
Answering emails, updating social media and typing new words in the manuscript by ten in the morning.
Break by noon for coffee and lunch. My wife and I will often go for an hour’s walk during the lunch break. Then back to the computer for the afternoon.
Four thousand words are attainable without much consternation if I do a few thousand in the morning and a few thousand in the afternoon. Reading in the evening with a glass of wine and off to bed early for another day of creating tomorrow.
(I take weekends off to let ideas roll around in my head. I have found that works wonders.)
Do you have any advice on staying productive?
Stephen King once said something like, “A professional writer sits down and works every day whether they’re inspired or not.”
That’s what I do. Every day, whether I feel like it or not, I sit in front of my computer and produce material. I can edit later. I can delete later. When I’m creating, that’s what I do. My advice would be to focus on discipline.
You have to force yourself to sit down, stare at that empty page, and create. For me, it’s a passion and I can’t seem to get enough of it. I’ve written twenty-six novels and I have the next four outlined and ready to go.
I already have the titles for all four and the cover art completed for three of them. The rest of my year is swamped and that’s without coming up with another single story line during that time.
Where did you get the idea for your title, “The Snake”?
THE SNAKE had been roiling around in my head for over a year before I wrote it. In the outlining stage, THE SNAKE’S main character, Jake Wood, took on a life of his own and the story became what it is today. How Jake changes in the story, what he becomes, is pivotal for the rest of the series.
I love this character and if judging by the reviews on Amazon for this novel, my readers love him, too.
Book Two, THE TARGET is due to be released March/April 2017. I’m excited to see where this series goes as I’m always nose down in my Sarah Roberts Series which has Book 18, THE TERROR coming out on December 28.
After writing and developing eighteen book in the Sarah series, I’m anxious to see The Snake Series do well.
Describe your writing space. What’s your ideal writing environment?
Quiet, peaceful, calm.
Usually the window to either side of me looks out onto a gorgeous scene of some kind. There have been green Italian fields, the Aegean Sea in Greece and now, in Canada, I live on a golf course.
My office looks out onto Hole 9. People hit in to the hole and putt out as I type. Inside my office, I have bookcases lining the walls and a recliner for power naps and evening reading.
If you weren’t a novelist, what would you be?
I’d be in retail. Before I wrote novels for a living, I owned retail stores. I was in that business for twenty years. Retired from it and sold my last store off in 2010, then began writing full time.
Which novel would you recommend new readers start with?
Start with THE SNAKE. If you like my style, my voice, then go to DARK VISIONS, the first Sarah Roberts book.
If you still like me as an author, you’re in for a hell of a ride as there will be nineteen Sarah books in the series by the end of the year.
Do you have a favorite quote about writing?
The quote I’ve applied to my writing career is this one from Joe Girard: “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs … one step at a time.”
I change the word “step” to “book” in my head.
A successful writer gets there one book at a time.
What’s your definition of career success?
Success is having a reader, or readers, take the time out of their day to stop what they’re doing, set down the vacuum, turn off the TV, stay home, and read your book. To stop everything. To pay hard-earned money to buy your novel, then sit and read it, that’s success. If that happens, you’ve done something right along the way.
Then, when they like it—or love it—wow, that’s really successful.
Career success is something a little different. It’s being on the bestseller lists. I also envision a movie deal and a TV series. That would sum up my definition.
Ultimately, the more people who know and read my work (and hopefully enjoy it), the better. That’s success.
Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?
Keep going. Don’t stop. Learn the rules of writing and then break some of them.
Always move forward. Edit later. Write for goose bumps and tears. If you’re moved by what you’re typing, your readers will be, too.
Resist flashbacks and dreams. They slow pace. Only use them if you have to. R.U.E. -> Resist the Urge to Explain. Never write for money. Make the story your focus. When you’ve done that, the money will come.
Lastly, minimize the time you’re on social media to ten percent of your writing time, otherwise it can consume you.
The best advertising for a writer is simply writing another book. Just write and it’ll all come together.
Write!
Learn More About Jonas Saul:
Jonas Saul’s Amazon Page
Website
Biography
Mini Bio (1)
Jonas has been writing for over two decades and has thirty novels and over fifty short stories to his credit. At times, he has outranked Stephen King and Dean Koontz on the Top 100 Author chart on Amazon. He recently gave a two-hour speech to a creative writing class at the Okanagan College in Kelowna, B.C., and did a reading on stage at the Okanagan Valley Writers' Festival in Penticton, B.C. Jonas has traveled extensively to scout settings for his thrillers. After three years in Greece, one year in Italy, and almost six months in Denmark and Hungary, Jonas offers rich cultural diversity to his novels. Currently, he's in Canada for one year, then back to Europe for more research and touring. His Sarah Roberts series and the Jake Wood series are both optioned in Hollywood. He is available for speeches and presentations at conferences anywhere in the world. Contact Jonas Saul directly for inquiries at, jonassaul@icloud.com.
Jonas is represented by Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary and Dramatic Rights Management.
"Sarah Roberts is one in a million. If you're her friend, she'll crawl through Hell to protect you. If you're her enemy, she'll send you there." - Reviewer
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jonas Saul
Filmography
Hide Hide Writer (1 credit)
2016 Killing Sarah (Short) (novel)
QUOTED: "Saul knows how to ratchet up the tension and keep pages turning, but his inconsistent plotting is disappointing."
The Immortal Gene
Publishers Weekly.
265.21 (May 21, 2018): p56. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Immortal Gene
Jonas Saul. Vesuvian, $18.99 trade paper (334p) ISBN 978-1-944109-58-5
This entertaining, if contrived, supers natural thriller series launch from Saul (the Sarah Roberts series) pits Canadian detective Jake Wood against a brutal serial killer and a mysterious company, Fortech Industries. Jeffery Harris, the Blood Eagle Killer, has selected, killed, and kept the corpse of one victim every two years for the last decade. His latest conquest brings him into the jurisdiction of Jake and his partner, Kirk Aiken. Jake vows to find the killer, but he's called away to the Amazon jungle to help his friend, Luke. After Jake is bitten by a snake, he falls into a coma. Awakening 18 months later, Jake learns that everything about his life has changed, including his own body, which is becoming snakelike. Jake's physical transformation is intriguing, and his use of his new skills to pursue the Blood Eagle Killer keeps events moving at a brisk pace, but several unaddressed questions (why a successful serial killer would change his m.o. after a decade, what exactly Jake's relationship with Luke is) undermine the story, and graphic descriptions of bodily mutilations may put some readers off. Saul knows how to ratchet up the tension and keep pages turning, but his inconsistent plotting is disappointing. Agent: Italia Gandolfo, Gandolfo Helin & Fountain Literary. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Immortal Gene." Publishers Weekly, 21 May 2018, p. 56. Book Review Index Plus,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A541012621/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=6ea7633b. Accessed 24 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A541012621
1 of 1 9/24/18, 10:32 PM
QUOTED: "What starts out as a straightforward crime/serial killer thriller, becomes a sci-fi, horror thriller that will please fans of all the above-mentioned genres. There is much to impress in this story."
The Immortal Gene
The Immortal Gene
by Jonas Saul
Fiction - Science Fiction
333 Pages
Reviewed on 07/16/2018
Buy on Amazon
This author participates in our Review Exchange and Book Donation Program. Click here to learn more.
Book Review
Reviewed by Lex Allen for Readers' Favorite
Jake Wood is a tough homicide detective with a partner who has been his best friend since middle school. He’s a few weeks away from marrying the love of his life when a friend calls for help from South America. Jake drops everything to go to his aid, but ends up injured, in a coma, in a South American hospital. He awakens after eighteen months to discover his fiancée has married and is pregnant with another man’s baby, his job is gone and his partner has been transferred to another city.
There are good reasons for Jonas Saul's best-selling author brand, and The Immortal Gene provides all the proof anyone could need. What starts out as a straightforward crime/serial killer thriller, becomes a sci-fi, horror thriller that will please fans of all the above-mentioned genres. There is much to impress in this story. Saul writes with an authoritative knowledge of biology, the many facets of zoology, criminal justice, and plain ol’ writing skills. As outlandish as the primary plot becomes, Saul makes it real with deft use of in-depth knowledge of the subjects involved, and writing technical know-how. From characterization to dialog to plotting and sub-plots, he displays expertise.
I’m a fan of authors who don’t pussyfoot around graphic events (violence, sex, et al.) and instead write it like a movie... visual and realistic. Jonas Saul gets an A+ for verisimilitude. The Immortal Gene is the first book in a series and, as such, has a cliffhanger ending, but it’s not a debilitating fall and sets up book two perfectly. This is my first Jonas Saul book, but it won’t be my last.
QUOTED: "With The Pact, I wanted to do something completely different. Throughout the series, Sarah receives messages—prophecies—from her dead sister, Vivian. In The Pact, I turned that on its head. I had Vivian leave a time capsule behind to be opened twenty-five years after her death."
"Inside this time capsule were letters to people in Sarah’s life currently. Her father mailed these letters not knowing their contents. Vivian saw what was going to happen all those years ago and now, through her letters, instructs Sarah’s inner circle on what to do to save Sarah’s life. In The Pact, Vivian isn’t talking to Sarah. She’s talking to Sarah’s family and colleagues."
"Sarah began as an innocent eighteen-year-old girl, unsure of the world around her, lonely, and lacking confidence in Dark Visions, Book One. Today, she’s a crime-fighting badass, martial arts and weapons trained, sassy, cunning woman who finds balancing her love life with her vigilante exploits a more difficult task than expected."
Jonas Saul Interview 2016
Posted By: Administrator December 31, 2016
In doing some research I found an author that I can’t believe we haven’t covered before. Author Jonas Saul just released the seventeenth book in his Sara Roberts series called “The Pact.” However, that’s not the only thing that Jonas Saul has written. Even though for many authors that would be a heck of a career, he also has The Mafia Trilogy, Jake Wood series, a couple of standalones and let’s throw in a horror book. Yeah, Jonas has been working hard to bring some great books to the genre.
Jonas has been writing for over two decades and has thirty novels and over fifty short stories to his credit. At times, he has outranked Stephen King and Dean Koontz on the Top 100 Author chart on Amazon. He recently gave a two-hour speech to a creative writing class at the Okanagan College in Kelowna, B.C., and did a reading on stage at the Okanagan Valley Writers’ Festival in Penticton, B.C.
Jonas has traveled extensively to scout settings for his thrillers. After three years in Greece, one year in Italy, and almost six months in Denmark and Hungary, Jonas brings rich cultural diversity to his novels. Currently he’s in Canada for one year, then back to Europe for more research and touring.
His Sarah Roberts series and the Jake Wood series have both been optioned in Hollywood.
Let’s take a look inside the latest book, “The Pact,” and then you can check out his interview that we did with him.
Sarah Roberts has lost her ability to hear her sister’s messages. All forms of communication with Vivian are gone. Unless Sarah fulfills a pact with Vivian, one she knows nothing about, their ties will remain severed forever.
In a time capsule Vivian prepared almost twenty-five years ago, when she was still alive, prophecies and documents await Sarah. Several of the documents are addressed to people Vivian thought Sarah might know in the future. When Sarah’s father mails these documents, Sarah’s world is flipped upside-down. Instead of Sarah hearing her sister and performing tasks, Sarah’s friends are the ones hearing Vivian’s words through the letters she wrote to them years ago.
Back then, Vivian hadn’t been clear on what each person should do to save Sarah’s life. Since the near future affects Sarah personally, Vivian cannot intervene and communicate with her directly.
The future becomes the enemy and the only way to stop it is to cease moving forward to die. Sarah fights to stay alive without any spiritual guidance, something she has never done before, which becomes her undoing when she walks into a trap she cannot walk away from, and no one is there to save her.
Suspense Magazine (S. MAG.): “The Pact” is your latest Sarah Roberts thriller. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
Jonas Saul (J.S.): With “The Pact,” I wanted to do something completely different. Throughout the series, Sarah receives messages—prophecies—from her dead sister, Vivian. In “The Pact,” I turned that on its head. I had Vivian leave a time capsule behind to be opened twenty-five years after her death.
Inside this time capsule were letters to people in Sarah’s life currently. Her father mailed these letters not knowing their contents. Vivian saw what was going to happen all those years ago and now, through her letters, instructs Sarah’s inner circle on what to do to save Sarah’s life. In “The Pact,” Vivian isn’t talking to Sarah. She’s talking to Sarah’s family and colleagues.
I love how it translated to the page and, thankfully, so did the readers. “The Pact” released June 30, 2016 and as of now has over fifty 5-star reviews on Amazon.com.
S.MAG.: Now that you have reached seventeen books in the series, who is Sarah Roberts now?
J.S.: Sarah began as an innocent eighteen-year-old girl, unsure of the world around her, lonely, and lacking confidence in “Dark Visions,” Book One. Today, she’s a crime-fighting badass, martial arts and weapons trained, sassy, cunning woman who finds balancing her love life with her vigilante exploits a more difficult task than expected.
Readers around the world have fallen for Sarah, calling her the female Jason Bourne, or Jack Reacher. One reader said, “Sarah Roberts is one in a million. If you’re her friend, she’ll crawl through Hell to protect you. If you’re her enemy, she’ll send you there.”
S.MAG.: Keeping a series fresh for this long is a challenge for any author. What is your trick?
J.S.: I carefully manage Sarah’s character arc. Who she was in the first few books has changed because of the experiences she’s had to endure.
Sarah matured throughout the series. Sarah grew up—twenty-six years old now—in a way no one would wish upon their most-hated enemy. She’s been locked up, held hostage, sexually assaulted, and had to kill to stay alive. She’s fought serial killers, street gangs, human traffickers, psychopaths, rogue government agents, and even computer hackers throughout the series. Each event changed her in some way. Maintaining her humanity throughout the series has been a challenge. There were points when she wanted out of the vigilante business. She couldn’t deal with the underworld any longer. It was all too consuming, too dark. Then there were times when she got pissed off enough—that underworld fight was all she wanted.
Finding her core, maintaining a piece of her while allowing her to grow into who she is today, has been my biggest challenge, but also what keeps the series fresh. After reading the first few books, watching Sarah grow became the highlight for many readers.
S.MAG.: Looking back in the series, are there one or two characters that stand out and could possibly have their own story?
J.S.: Funny that question should come up because this is exactly what has happened. Sarah’s boyfriend, Aaron Stevens, has his own story. It’s a novel I wrote called “The Specter.” Also, one of Sarah’s closest confidants, Darwin Kostas and his wife, Rosina, have their own stories—“The Mafia Trilogy.” Lastly, we meet Drake Bellamy in “The Hostage,” Sarah Roberts Book Four. In “The Victim,” Book Five, Drake is presumed dead. He returns in “Losing Sarah,” Book Sixteen, with a new name and a new identity. Drake Bellamy has his own novel called “The Threat.”
Looking back, I realize that I’ve always been writing the Sarah Roberts series, even if I wasn’t writing one of the numbered titles in the series itself.
S.MAG.: When you look at the “canvas” with each new book, what is the one thing that scares you?
J.S.: Being able to outdo the previous book scares me some. Being able to manage Sarah’s life, to manage the tension and the plot long enough to sustain another winning novel in the series. Three books in a series, sure. Seven or eight books in a series can become daunting. Fifteen books? Twenty? Okay, the fear rises with each title.
The funny thing is that kind of fear doesn’t immobilize me. It challenges me. It sets me up. Ultimately, it motivates me to fill that blank screen with text. Words that lead me—and the reader—on a journey. On an inside look into Sarah and what’s happening to her at any given time. For that, I’m grateful. Because of reader response to this series, I’ve decided to write book after book until the readers lose interest or I hit fifty installments. My goal is to end at Book Fifty in the Sarah Roberts series. I have plans for Sarah’s pregnancy, her baby, and many more adventures down the road.
S.MAG.: Why was Sarah the perfect character to lead your series?
J.S.: Sarah started as an automatic writer in Book One. She would black out and write prophetic notes. When she awoke, she would respond to these messages from the Other Side. Now, in the current novels, the note sender—her sister Vivian—just speaks to Sarah in her head. They’ve evolved their communication to this place and it’s still evolving. I have new plans for the next novel, “The Terror,” Book Eighteen, as their evolution reaches new heights.
Sarah was the perfect character to lead the series because of her vulnerability. Her loss, her tenderness, but also her ability to call people out on their shit. She has an uncanny ability to see through people and understand their motivations.
When I was fourteen, I lost my brother. His death was hard for me to deal with at that young age. Years later, he would visit me in dreams. He would talk to me. There were several times when what he said came true, and short of citing those incidents here, it was my dead brother that inspired me to write the Sarah Roberts series and have Sarah’s dead sister working through her. The theme of these novels is hope, and Sarah’s out there fighting for the underdog at all costs.
S.MAG.: Do you have a certain order in which the books should be read?
J.S.: Each book is written in a way that each story is separate. The main characters, Sarah, Parkman, and Aaron, continue throughout the series, but the stories stay isolated per book.
My advice, though, is to start at “Dark Visions,” Book One, so you can meet the young Sarah and grow with her to the current novel. This series thrives because of Sarah and who she is. By starting at the beginning, a reader will be able to connect better with her as she goes through the stages in her life that a lot of people can relate to. To date, since 2011, over 1.3 million copies of the Sarah Roberts series have been downloaded in e-book alone, with that number increasing monthly.
S.MAG.: What is your favorite word and your least favorite word, and why?
J.S.: I love words like octothorp (the pound sign), or words like jocund, abrogate, vitiate, malefic, vituperate, and obdurate. Really, any word that is rarely seen in commercial fiction today. I try to add several of these words into each novel I write. I dislike common words like very, little, suddenly, and nice. In my opinion, these words can suck the tension and seriousness right out of a scene.
S.MAG.: What is on your DVR right now?
J.S.: Right now I’m watching Ray Donovan. An excellent show about a “fixer” who can fix anything but his family. I’m also lost in the world of Mr. Robot and Better Call Saul. In the past, I’ve loved Sons of Anarchy, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad.
S.MAG.: What can fans expect to see from you in the future?
J.S.: The next three Sarah Roberts books are outlined. Book Eighteen, “The Terror,” will be available by November. Followed by Book Nineteen, “The Chase,” and finally, “The Betrayal,” Book Twenty, will release Spring 2017.
“The Target,” Book Two of my Jake Wood series will also be out this winter. Both the Jake Wood and Sarah Roberts series have been optioned for Film/TV.
In August, I signed with Gandolfo Helin & Fountain, a literary and dramatic rights agency. Within days of signing the contract for representation, I was meeting with a publisher interested in a substantial print deal for the Sarah Roberts series. More details on that to come as soon as I can announce them.
I’d like to take a moment to thank you for this opportunity and wish Suspense Magazine all the best in the future. It’s been an honor working with you.
We would like to thank Jonas for taking the time to talk with us. For more information on his work please visit his website at www.jonassaul.com. ■