The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – When I’m Her by Sarah Zachrich Jeng

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

When I'm Her by Sarah Zachrich Jeng https://amzn.to/4a8Ahgw How far would you go to get even with the woman who ruined your life? In this electrifying thriller, a young woman gets everything she’s ever wanted—and everything she doesn’t—when she swaps bodies with her sworn enemy. Though polar opposites, Mary and Elizabeth are as close as can be—until the night Elizabeth makes an irrevocable mistake and leaves Mary to take the blame. Years later, Elizabeth seems to have forgotten Mary exists. Mary hasn’t forgotten her. She follows Elizabeth’s every move online, obsessed with paying her back for the betrayal that cost Mary her dreams. Now Mary has found a way to switch bodies with Elizabeth, and she’s got a plan to steal her charmed life. Her career. Her looks. Her husband. They do say living well is the best revenge. Or is it? The more Mary uncovers about Elizabeth’s life, the more she realizes she may have made a deadly mistake. And she'll need the help of her worst enemy to stay alive. About the author Sarah Zachrich Jeng grew up in Michigan and always had a flair for the morbid and mysterious (for her dad’s thirty-fifth birthday, she wrote a story entitled “The Man Who Died at 35”). She had a brief career as an aspiring rock star before she came to her senses and went back to school to become a web developer. Sarah lives in Florida with her family and an extremely hyper rescue dog. THE OTHER ME is her first novel.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. There, ladies and gentlemen. That makes it official. Welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here.

As always, we have the smartest and coolest people on the show. None of them are me, of course. That's why we have guests. Ha, ha. Well, welcome to the show. Go to Goodreads.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss, for your family, your friends, relatives. Remember, this is a Chris Voss show, downline MLM. So you need to have five people you refer to.

Our LinkedIn.com, 4Chest, Chris Voss. Facebook.com, 4Chesschrisfoss. Facebook.com, 4chesschrisfoss. And I don't know, where are those crazy places we're in on the internet? Just remember, it's in the contract, folks. The show is free, but you have to have five people in your downline. It's not like that. So anyway, guys, we have an amazing young author on the show. She's going to be talking to us about her new book, which has got a heck of a plot from what i'm reading here it's called when i'm her it comes out march 26 2024 sarah zakrich zhang is on the show with us today we'll be talking about her book and man is this plot that she's got here going is a doozy it is a doozy make your

head spin when you hear about it she grew up in in Michigan and always had a flair for the morbid and mysterious. Who her? For her dad's 35th birthday, she wrote a story entitled The Man Who Died at 35. Wow. She had a brief career as an aspiring rock star before she came to her senses and went back to school to become a web developer. Now she lives in Florida with her family and two extremely hyper-rescue dogs terrorizing people with her newest book plot.

Welcome to the show, Sarah. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms, wherever people can find you on the internets.

I have a website at sarahzj.com with an H-S-A-R-A-H-Z-J. I have a newsletter sign up there as well, and I'm sarah-e-A-H-Z-J. I have a newsletter sign up there as well. And I'm Sarah underscore E-Z-J on threads and Instagram. There you go. Now, this is a follow-up to your former book that you'd put out. I had it pulled up here. Can you give me the plug on that?

Yeah, so my book that's coming out in March, When I'm Her, it's kind of a dark, freaky Friday meets the talented Mr. Ripley. It's about two women who become best friends in college. One of them is very beautiful and charismatic. The other one, not so much. So Mary, who's the main character, she steals some

technology from a lab where she works that allows her and her friend to swap bodies with each other. So they do this for fun, for a while, you know, as you do. And until one night something happens while they're switched and Mary gets blamed for it. And her friend does not step up and take responsibility.

So this basically ruins Mary's life. And years later, Mary takes her revenge by swapping into Elizabeth permanently and stealing her life, which, you know, is perfect from the outside, but once she gets into it, it isn't so perfect, and it might actually be dangerous. Ah, the grass isn't always greener on the other side. Yeah, that's right. Be careful what you wish for.

Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it. Yeah. Metallica. So, how did this plot come to you? I mean, like I was joking about earlier, who are you? You've written two books now. The other one was called The Other Me.

It was very popular and got great rave reviews. What inspired this? So, I mean, it was, my editor and I were kind of kicking ideas around for my second novel after The Other Me. And I mean, I was kind of thinking about, you know, how women are kind of set up to envy each other a lot of the time, even when they're friends, they're kind of in competition, and those feelings that can happen with that. And like how you kind of always want what you don't have, and how that's sometimes kind of a trap, because you never know what someone else is going through so i was just thinking about all those kind of ideas and the plot came together

through several different drafts so i you know made sure that put lots of twists and turns in there just reading the description on amazon made my hair stand on my arms i was like oh my god this is you wouldn't want to plow bodies with someone no because you don't you don't know what you know this i've been on facebook i've seen what other people are doing and kind of have a feel for it and and stuff and i'm like i don't know that could turn out bad i i'm i'm doing bad enough on my own i don't need anybody's help so there you go so tell us a little bit about you and your upbringing. People like to hear about the author.

Tell us a little about you and what you took some turns down your roads to some different jobs and different things. What made you finally decide that you're a writer? When did you first start writing, too? Yeah, I mean, I've written since I was pretty young. I mean, I always was a reader and a writer when I was a kid. And I mean, I took some time writer, a reader and a writer when I was a kid. And I mean, I took some time off from it in my 20s. I was playing in bands. And that was kind of my creative

outlet. But then I, you know, got a job where I had to be up in the morning, and I had a kid and, you know, you can't be out in bars till 2am every night. So I kind of shifted in back into writing, and I started writing seriously, like 2015. And that, and I started writing seriously like 2015, and that's when I started writing the novel that would become The Other Me. Ah, there you go. And like you said, it did really well, rave reviews. This also had some strange things happening in it. Do you kind of feel like maybe that's kind of your genre or your mode of operation?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up reading like Stephen King and books like that where just like weird stuff happens all the time. Supernatural or sci-fi kind of influence things. But I've always been really into cross-genre novels. So when I started writing my own novel, that was just kind of a natural lane for me I guess and so I mean I I'm not saying I wouldn't ever write a novel that's just you know set a normal world where nothing crazy happens but right now the ideas that really get me interested most of them have that as kind of a catalyst psychological suspense and there's i mean you play on something that's really good because i've had a lot of girlfriends in my life and what i always refer to their their their group is the committee because they you know

they vote on you and and sit and judge you and so it's always funny. Women's committees, their friend groups as to how much, like you say, they're in competition with each other. I've had to say a couple of my girlfriends, you know, you talk about your friends. Like I talk about my enemies. At the same time,

you know, when it comes down to it, they, they'll, they're all like, I love you. And I'm just like, I'm just like,

you guys will, you guys will steal, uh, will steal someone's boyfriend and marry them just to keep the other one from marrying him or being unhappy. There's some evil stuff that goes on. That's not my friend. It's pretty wild. I mean, I guess it's who you curate. But, you know, I've had the girlfriends that they said they wanted to settle down and then they had the whole committee was the girls who I you know they're stuck in the bar scene forever and so they're always trying to claw her back and so I'm just like wow man the

level of sabotage sometimes between women's competition is is huge and so i think it's i think it's cool you tapped into this this whole genre of women's jealousy of each other and i mean that's definitely an element but i wouldn't say it's all about that because it definitely once we get into the novel it shifts a little bit they they might have to kind of team up at some point. So, well, you have to read the book to find out. You have to read the book to find out. People order it wherever fine books are sold. So on developing characters, what sort of thing did you put it in a certain scenario or scene or city or area that maybe you had to research? How did you develop the characters and the placement?

Well, the setting for this book is interesting because i didn't set it in any particular place i actually kind of well because i was writing it in like the latter part of 2020 and i was like well do i want to write about the pandemic or do i want to set it before the pandemic and i didn't want to do either of those things so i was like like, well, I'll just, you know, pretend that we're in like the next universe over where there was no pandemic. And so, I mean, there's, there's other narrative reasons for that decision too. Like these, these women are both kind of like disconnected from their lives. So I wanted to set it in a place that could have like specific details about it, but it could also be anywhere.

But I did, I did take a lot of inspiration. They live in a major city and I took a lot of inspiration from Chicago because I spent a lot of time there. And also like there's, there's a college town setting. So, you know, I've been in a lot of college towns. So, I mean, i just kind of took inspiration from everywhere the who's your target audience for this is it a lot of do you find that a lot of younger women read your novels older women or i mean yeah varies in age i've had like younger

women and older women show up to my events men even you know men read my books yeah um they're they're welcome to read my book yeah Yeah. I mean, yeah, like when you're when you're publishing books, you don't really know who's going to read them and who's going to latch on to them. But I mean, I've had all kinds of people contact me about them and tell me they love them. There you go. Any future works you're working on where you're you've got another book you're working on? Yeah're you're you've got another book you're working on yeah i mean i'm working on a novel right now it's it's another you know cross genre novel it's it's got you know elements of fantasy tech thriller second chance romance

like just and yeah i'm i'm excited about that right now so we'll see what happens hodgepodge of everything as it goes not a hodgepodge but it definitely brings in a lot there you go lots of different things when you when you develop the characters did you were you thinking of anybody that you knew from college or high school i mean i i don't really like base my characters on any specific people. I, you know, any, any author will, you know, play on their own experiences. But I was, I was thinking of, I mean, I, you know, I've had friendships and I've probably had my heart broken more times by friends than romantic partners. But, you know, it wasn't any particular incident that I was thinking of or anything like that.

I don't know. My imagination came up with a lot of things, so I didn't need to mine my past. I wonder if there's a lot of people who fantasize about switching bodies and switching lives. We live in this Instagram world where everybody seems to be perfect. Yeah. You have people that they'll pay a couple hundred bucks and you can go down in la to take a picture of yourself in a studio where there's a mock private plane and they'll give you champagne you can take these pictures

to make it look like you're you're like a baller yeah you know and there's a lot of this faux life going on and you know it's interesting because you because your your book is on the plot of you know that she thinks the the other woman has a better life and then yeah i mean that's the whole thing this woman has the life that she's oh i could have that life literally and i mean yeah the whole idea is that it's it's not really going to be what you think and and because this is a thriller it kind of takes that to the extreme and makes it you know life-threatening so yeah that's always good to have your life threatened every now and then kind of sure yeah keep keep to keep to saying yeah yeah we do that on fridays around here the

so you know yeah in today's world in instagram everybody has fomo if you're missing out they there's a whole keep up with the Joneses thing going on. Yeah. So I think you really tap into kind of the mentality of a lot of people who, you know, they really believe some of these Instagram people that, you know, they're putting up this life. And then later you see that, you know, the whole thing's a fraud. Right.

I was thinking of some big motivational dude recently who was outed by the Atlantic and they're like, yeah, his origin story, everything's been gone. It's a complete fraud. Yeah. And, you know, the people are like, well, this isn't, this whole thing is BS then. Yeah. And the thing, like, I've heard about social media. It's like you're seeing someone else's highlight reel.

Yeah, the highlight reel. Yeah, and while you're living your, you know your cutting room floor stuff. Yeah, I mean, I've had coaches that I had friended me in and I followed them and I'm like, God, these guys, they seem like they're doing really well. They claim they're talking to seven-figure guys and coaching them and stuff. And two of them that I found were living out of their car.

And one day they have this moment where they just make a post. They're like, hey, I've got to be transparent. I think it's because someone's going to call them out. Like, I've been living on my car for two years next to a gas station in San Diego. This is a real story, by the way. And I'm just like, holy crap. I've been sitting here kicking myself thinking you were successful this whole time. And I'm like, maybe I'm doing things wrong.

Well, there's the whole fake it till you make it thing, too. Yeah, it's the whole fake it till you make it thing. So there you go. Any other teasers out of the book that you can tease out? I mean, I don't want to spoil anything, but I mean, it's a really fun book. It's got twists and turns galore. Hopefully it has something to say about friendship. So, and, you know,

being careful what you wish for, appreciating what you have, maybe. There you go. Appreciating what you have. A great lesson. Known to self, don't switch bodies with anybody anymore. That might be a great thing for twins.

I think twins play that game right now, then. But they kind of can if they look alike. Yeah. So it's been wonderful to have you on, Sarah. Give us your dot coms, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. SarahZJ.com and Sarah underscore EZJ on Instagram. There you go. Word up, folks.

Wherever fine books are sold, this thing sounds like a hell of a thriller. I just read the description and I was just like, oh my God. This is going to be wild. When I'm Her comes out March 26, 2024. You can find it wherever fine books are sold. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfast, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschrisfast, chrisfast1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.