Such Quiet Girls With Noelle Ihli

The questions start early.

How do I know when he's full?

Do babies hold grudges?

That's why we make one formula that feels right right away.

Backed by Breast Milk Science and built for babies' brains, bellies, and beyond.

Learn more at Buyheart.com.

From wine country weekends to scenic drives through the Sierra foothills, fall is the perfect time to explore California.

And there's no better way to do it than in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

With 17 fuel-efficient options like the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the Adventure-Ready RAV4 hybrid, or the spacious Grand Highlander hybrid, Toyota has the perfect ride for any adventure.

Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complementary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and of course, Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Visit your local Toyota dealer and test drive one today.

So you can be prepared for wherever the road takes you this fall.

Toyota, let's go places.

See See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Welcome to the shit show.

Things are going to get weird.

It's your fae villain, Kale Wower.

And you're listening to Barely Famous.

Today on the podcast, I have Noelle Eiley.

You may recognize her name from the thrillers that she writes, like Ask for Andrea or None Left to Tell.

And today, we'll talk more about her journey in Mormonism and separating herself from the religion and becoming a full-time writer.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Barely Famous.

Thank you.

I'm so glad to be here.

And your newest book came out in April, Such Quiet Girls.

Three of us read it, I think, within the last like two weeks.

So congratulations on your most recent release.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading it.

I found it on Goodreads and book.

Some of the book talkers were talking about it, but right before this one, I read None Left to Tell.

Yes.

And

first of all, we'll talk about it, but I had no idea that even occurred.

So historical fiction or historical suspense, would you say it is?

Yeah, historical suspense.

So you grew up in Boise, Idaho, is that right?

Right.

And how did that shape sort of how you write today?

Does it shape that at all?

It does.

I mean, my family, the motherland is Utah.

Yeah.

Lots of pioneer Mormons in my history.

So the stories like that were always kind of on the periphery of things that I learned about growing up.

It was lots of heroic pioneers and inspiring stories.

And stories like that were always like just out of

earshot.

Like they were there.

We knew not to talk about them.

But I didn't learn about that story until I was an adult.

Oh, wow.

So it

was shocking to me to learn about it too.

I also have never met anyone that's from Idaho.

Really?

I don't think so.

I forgot that was a state.

So

a lot of people do.

It's okay.

And you love to trail ride.

Is that true?

I do.

I love horses.

It sounds like you love horses too.

I do.

I want a horse, but they're a lot of work.

They are a lot of work.

They, and you have to love them.

They're big, stinky, and dangerous, but they're so lovely.

So yes, I love to get out and ride in the hills in Idaho.

Do you still have, do you have horses yourself?

You do.

Okay.

We have goats, pigs, chickens, ducks.

I want to get Highland cows.

Do you have any cows?

No cows, just horses.

And your tagline is murder and horses, but separately, right?

Always separately.

Where did that come from?

I was thinking about the things that I loved and they could be, yeah, never combining those.

No, for sure not.

No.

Unless a horse is saving the day.

Sure.

And maybe.

They can help out.

They can assist, but no, no victims.

When did you develop an interest in true crime and like retelling those stories?

Gosh, since I was little, I've always been fascinated by those stories.

I was always the one trying to convince the babysitter that it was fine with my parents if I watched the scary movie.

So always some part of my brain has kind of loved and been fascinated by the dark things

because they scare me.

Like I will sit awake in my...

bed at night and think about all of these stories that give me nightmares, but

I keep coming back for more.

Did you read Goosebumps as a kid?

Oh, absolutely.

Of course.

Yes.

Did you watch CSI ever?

I was a big, like,

crime junkie, I guess, before that was a thing.

And I always watched CSI when I was a kid.

Yeah, CSI, Outer Limits, Forensic Files, like the ultra-old forensic files that are always on on vacation.

When you go and turn on the channel, it's 24 hours of forensic files.

So I'm a big ID channel person, so completely understand that.

And you went to school for translation and editing at BYU, is that right?

Yeah.

So how did that shape how you write?

Did that have anything to do with your goals to become a writer?

No, I thought I was going to be a stay-at-home mom forever.

I mean, I grew up Mormon.

That was the dream.

That was the goal.

So I think that's what you wanted also, or did you feel pressure to want that?

I remember going through the catalog of majors at BYU and being, what is something that I don't hate that won't require like a master's degree that will burden my husband with debt so that I can can like get an education but also just marry somebody and

so it's it ended up being fine I watch a lot of telenovelas with my Spanish knowledge but that's all I do with it and then editing ended up pushing me into publication and editing other people's books before I wrote my own so it was a good path so the studying translation is you is that like it's language specifically Spanish or is it multiple languages Spanish translation specifically okay so you're fluent I am And then you can, is that, was that your first or second language?

Second.

Okay.

So you go to college and you're like, I'm going to major in this.

I'm going to learn Spanish fluently.

And then, and then trans.

So did you translate your own books?

No.

So you're always supposed to translate into your native language.

So I could translate Spanish into English since I'm a, that's my first language is English.

But yeah, it

really did not make a lot of sense for me as a major living in Idaho.

But again, again, my main goal at BYU was to get married and live happily ever after.

And fair, fair.

Yeah, I didn't think

for a little while.

Yeah, sure.

So do you any of those skills like from translation or editing, have has it transferred to your writing then or not really?

I think it has, especially with editing.

It helped me look at language more critically.

Yeah.

You know, breaking down sentences and seeing, we always have the exercises, like what's the word in this sentence that doesn't need to be there to preserve the meaning of the sentence or okay you know so and just getting the experience of being around um professors who had worked in publishing and that's what most of them did with their degrees

so it was a great exposure to what a what took a book from start to finish, you know, beginning to end.

So it was great exposure, great skills, learning where the comma goes, learning what makes a sentence work.

So you go to school and then you meet your husband.

Yep.

And then you decide to write books.

No.

So I met my husband.

We lived happily ever after in Utah with two kids and a dog.

And

then

we left Mormonism, got divorced.

I

we came back to Idaho.

I was a single mom for a little while working at a candle company in Idaho.

I also worked for the same company, by the way.

Did you really?

All right.

Really, really good times.

And then,

you know, I had that history that I had worked for a little while with editing, with editing other people's books.

And after a while of working, you know, more of a traditional nine to five, I was like, you know, I I can do this for other people.

I wonder if I could do it for myself.

And just started dipping my toes into the water a little bit, writing books for myself.

That's really, I think that's so cool because I think so often I talk to people who like maybe had an idea that they would maybe write, but maybe on the the side or maybe for fun and not necessarily publish their work.

And so you sort of didn't get that idea until after, you know, you had a family and then obviously divorce, move, and then had the idea.

Yeah.

That's kind of cool, though.

Yeah, it is cool.

It's like the thing I was always supposed to do and was right in front of me the whole time, but it was always other people.

Like I'll support other people in that work, but it felt too audacious almost to put my own stories or my own books out there.

So you publish your first book, you write your first book.

Did you publish that that same first book?

Or what did you, because I've talked to authors who have like never put out their first one, two, five books.

You know what I mean?

So was it the first book that you ever wrote that you got published?

I so I put my first book out there to agents to start out with.

And I didn't understand at the time how hard it was to break into the scene as a new author.

And I got all the rejection letters.

And for a while, I just let that book sit there for quite a few years because I assumed rejections meant it wasn't good enough.

And so it sat until I met a couple of people that had had success in putting their books out independently.

And I was like, you know, I already have it written.

I'll give it a try and put it out there.

And I learned a lot, but I was able to then build on that and put more books out there.

And then now I'm working with some of the same publishers and agents that were like, you know, you do your thing.

So it's all circled back around and it worked out really well.

But no, I sat on that book for a long time because it didn't get snapped snapped up and I took that as a sign it wasn't it wasn't good enough.

Is it just because it's more of like a cutthroat industry?

Like you just, it doesn't mean it's not good.

It just maybe they don't have time for it.

Exactly.

It meant, which I didn't understand at the time, it meant that,

which, you know,

the traditional publishing industry is very focused on building brands, you know, authors that have a name out there that people will auto-buy their next book.

And

I didn't have that yet.

Really?

Oh, yeah no we were just my friend and I she runs book club with me and we were talking about how like we could like one book from an author and buy the entire backlist yes yeah so that's sort of what you're talking about is like they want to be able to see a name and a book title and can we turn this into a brand yes where it's a sure thing you know like there's a lot of unknowns with a new author that's breaking into the field doesn't have a social media following doesn't have a proven track record and i didn't understand how hard that was i just

was like well the book's not good enough to get picked up quite yet.

Did you ever think of self-publishing during that time?

I didn't until I met a couple of people who had done it.

And because I had always kind of looked down on self-publishing

when I worked with authors who were doing the traditional route,

I think it's come a long ways.

There's so many more resources to do it well now that there were not before.

So I had in my mind the

shitty cover with the book that hadn't been edited when I thought of self-publishing or independent publishing

but I it blew my mind to learn that that was not the case so well I think today like I didn't even know self-publishing existed so back when I published my first book in 2014 I didn't know that self-publishing was an option yeah and so like you rejection left letter after rejection letter i think i had like six of them and so i just sat on it you know what i mean until that one deal came across and so i was like okay but i mean that makes sense but i think today for self-publishing with the power of social media and book talk, it's so much easier to self-publish where like before you, how are you going to get the word out?

Like, yeah, cool.

You have this book on Amazon or whatever, but like, how are you getting the word out if there's no book talk?

There's no social media.

Yes.

Yeah.

So evens the playing field a little bit because readers want to read a good book.

Like most of them did not know with that first book I put out that I was self-published.

They just either liked the book or they didn't.

And it's, uh, it used to be you would go into Barnes and Noble.

but yeah, like you said, now you can find it on Book Talk, now you can find it on Instagram, yeah, whatever.

So, if it's a good book, the readers will keep coming back.

I just got telling one of my friends about Quince because fall is in full swing, and it's the perfect time to refresh your wardrobe with pieces that feel as good as they look.

And luckily, Quince makes it easy to look polished, stay warm, and save big without compromising on quality.

I have so many pieces from Quince: I have towels, jewelry, sunglasses, clothing.

I'm obsessed.

Quince has all the elevated essentials for fall.

Think 100% Mongolian cashmere from $50, washable silk tops and skirts, and perfectly tailored denim, which I'm obsessed with, all at prices that just feel too good to be true.

I am looking at a wool coat right now.

They look designer level, but cost a fraction of the price, and the quality is just as good, if not better.

By partnering directly with ethical top-tier factories, Quince cuts out the middleman to deliver luxury quality pieces.

at half the price of similar brands.

It's the kind of wardrobe upgrade that feels smart, stylish, and effortless.

I love it.

So you guys can keep it classy and cozy this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to quince.com slash famous for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com slash famous to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash famous.

And before you actually published your own book, were you ghostwriting?

Is that right?

I did some ghostwriting.

Yes.

What was that process like?

Did you ever, because I also talked about this recently, is like,

did you not ever get anxious or maybe resentful that your name wasn't the one on the title?

Once in a while, but so the publisher that I worked for for a little while out of college that kind of, you know, the clients I was working for, it was a, it was a Mormon publishing company.

So it was a lot of like very,

you know, clean fiction, really like faith-centered

books.

And by that time, I was kind of diverging a little bit away from that world.

So it wasn't books I wanted to write myself.

So it felt like it was kind of a safe distance where I could, but it was fascinating to see the reviews come through, or some reviews were like, This is the best book they've written yet.

And I was like, ah,

okay.

Did you ever think of writing under a pen name?

I did, but I

also, by the time I was going to put my my own books out there, it was almost this like

kind of test that I didn't want to feel like an imposter.

I wanted to, if I was going to do it, I was going to put it out there under my own name and see if I could do it that way because I felt so much anxiety and insecurity about putting a book out in the first place that

I just made this deal with myself that I was going to put it out under my own name and let it ride.

So when you were sort of

separating yourself from, is Mormonism the right word?

Yeah.

Mormonism, did you have support from your family in doing that?

No.

Tricky subject, but no, they're all very devout and it's really important to them.

So that was a pretty difficult time

to,

you know, it's, it's their whole world.

Yeah.

And to have a child, especially, there's a lot of,

I think,

stigma in having a child who leaves the church that, you know, it calls into question your parenting sometimes.

And I think that that's hard for them to

to

feel okay about.

So it's, it's still a thing, but we, we do our best.

Yeah, that's all you can do.

But so do they support like writing your books and stuff?

Like that you're writing books and publishing?

Because they're all mostly based on true stories, no?

They are, yeah.

Or loosely based on, you know, events that happen, right?

Yeah.

My mom reads all my books.

And yep, she, she's a voracious reader.

She's one of the people who taught me to love reading.

So that's, I feel like something we still have in common.

Yeah.

That love of reading.

Can you pinpoint a time where you were like, okay, this is it.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to write books for a living.

Like I'm going to make this my career.

I think I was when the first person reached out to me in a message that wasn't a friend or like somebody that was like, way to go, way to put that out there.

Just a stranger that reached out over the internet and said, like, this is my favorite book I've ever read.

And it was like, man, if I can do that once, like, can I do that again?

Like, do more people feel that way?

And it was this, like,

chasing that dragon feeling of,

man, that story meant something to you.

And you spent eight hours reading it.

I want to keep doing that.

Yeah.

And you, like we were just saying, that your, your books are inspired maybe loosely off of

true life events.

So

how do you decide what you're going to build off?

What case or incident or event that you're going to create a story around

it's usually something

that i hear you know i listen to a lot of podcasts true crime podcast podcasts i watch a lot of uh documentaries and it's when something sticks in my head and my husband is not quite as into that world as i am so never are no so i know when i'm telling him about a story and i get like choked up and i'm almost crying just telling him about the story That it's like, oh man, that one, that one means something to me.

It won't leave my head.

And a lot of the stories I choose happen pre-internet, and I didn't know about them beforehand.

So I always start thinking, could this happen now?

Like with cell phones, with the internet, could this story still happen in a reimagined way?

So a lot of times they're stories that I feel like need a little spotlight because they're not as well known as, you know, the Lori Vallo case or the, you know, most of us know Karen Raid or Jean-Mane Ramsey, whatever.

Like it's stories that we don't have in our cultural consciousness as much that I kind of want to nudge out there.

What is your, you said you listen to True Crime Podcasts.

What's your favorite true crime podcast?

I really love my favorite murder.

I love those women.

They inspire me.

And then I just listened to your interview with Ashley Flowers and Crime Junkies.

Have you ever listened to Morbid?

I tried listening to Morbid and and i it was a little it was a little morbid

you're either a morbid girly or crime junkie girly there's no in between it's a divide i i love morbid and i don't know if it's because when i first got into podcasting i talked to the morbid the hosts of morbid first um but it got to a point where i was like so i was consumed by this podcast right so it was like just murder all day long it was like as soon as i listen to this one episode i have to listen to the one before that and before that and so before i knew i was like paranoid like looking over my shoulders.

So it was just like affecting my mental health.

Does that ever happen to you since you're writing like crime?

Sometimes, especially certain stories, they will like my book room for rent is about a frogger, and I

we were just talking about froggers.

It's so scary.

And I think about it every time I see like a crawl space entrance or

an attic, and I

just sit and stare at it while I try to fall asleep.

So they stick with me.

Yeah.

And they definitely live rent-free in my head.

So I have that book, Room for Rent.

I just haven't gotten to it yet.

I actually have two copies of it, and they have two different covers.

Oh, yep.

So crazy.

I was like, I don't know which one's maybe another country's cover.

Yeah, there's a lot of covers out there.

I freaked my son out because there was this show.

I think it was like during COVID or something.

And it was like a show about froggers.

And my son was around.

And now he sort of freaked him out on accident.

But that's like my worst nightmare.

Same.

Same.

Could you imagine?

So scary.

No, just when I was doing the research for that and looking up some of the true stories about froggers and like Danny LaPlant,

who's that?

Oh, look him up.

He lived in the walls of their house for how long?

Like a while.

Yeah.

I would not, I would not be okay.

No.

I would not be okay.

Well, so let's talk about room for rent.

That one is ops about a frogger.

What about run on red?

Run on red is

loosely based on something that happened when I was in high school, a really like scary close call that I had.

We were driving up to a bonfire, meeting friends.

It had already started and we were on a really windy road.

This was like new cell phone era.

So we didn't have service.

There wasn't great coverage.

And there was a truck behind us that it kept flashing its headlights and then it tried to pass us.

And then we came around the corner.

corner it's kind of sped past and they had blocked both lanes of traffic the truck did the truck did so we couldn't pass we had to stop and we looked and it was these two dudes with hoods pulled up over their faces so we couldn't see them and they then like chased us all the way back down we were like we're not going to the bonfire anymore we're leaving these dudes are up to something bad.

So I never knew what they wanted, never knew what their intentions were, but it was like the little seed of something like, what if something worse had happened?

So that's how the book starts.

These two girls get run off the road and then things get worse from there.

And you laugh through it.

Yep.

And then Ask for Andrea was the first book with your name on it that I saw go viral because I'm still pretty new to the book world.

And so that was the first one that I had seen by you that went viral on Book Talk.

And did you expect the success of that?

No, I didn't.

And when that one went viral, it was two years old.

So it had been out for a little while.

And it, you know, a couple of book talkers found it and really liked it.

And that was so cool to see happen.

Have you noticed a change since you started writing to now with Book Talk and the influence of social media?

It's so huge.

It can be such a gigantic amplifier.

And it...

like we were talking about earlier with a traditional publisher, like you, all it takes is a book that really resonates with people to all of a sudden have a viral moment.

It doesn't have to be a book that has all the marketing dollars behind it from some giant publisher.

It's

which is pretty cool.

Like anything can have a moment if it resonates with people.

I just took my Nutrofoll this morning.

It's so easy.

And if you haven't tried it, you need to.

Nutrofoll is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand trusted by over one and a half million people.

You can feel great about what you're putting into your body since Nutrofoll hair growth supplements are backed by peer-reviewed studies and NSF content certified, the gold standard and third-party certification for supplements.

And while so many supplements rely solely on ingredient studies, Nutrofoll clinically tests final formulations to ensure their efficiency using a variety of hair measurement tools like hair counts and pull tests to assess growth, quality, shedding, and texture.

See thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months with Nutrofoll.

For a limited time, Nutrofoll is offering my listeners $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you go to neutrafull.com and enter promo code famous.

Find out why Neutrophil is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at neutraphold.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code famous.

That's neutraphol.com, promo code famous.

Do you ever pull inspiration from other authors?

I mean, I feel like every thriller I've ever

read lives somewhere in my head.

And there's so many thriller authors that just inspire me.

Lisa Jewell, Ruth Ware.

I mean, these are the people that I read while I was in college.

And whenever they had a new book come out, I would grab it.

So yeah, it's just inspiration for finding some new angle on something we all heard about a million times, making it fresh, making it scary, making it feel like it's real.

Yeah.

So absolutely.

It's so funny because we were saying, like, just buy the entire backlog.

And I feel like I need to do that with every thriller author I've ever read.

Yep.

Same.

And Riley Sager doesn't live far from here.

I didn't know he lived in New York for some reason.

He's in New Jersey.

Oh, he's in New Jersey.

Okay.

And he does.

I think I've read two or three of his books.

But I just like to stick behind the women authors for thrillers.

You, Frida, you know,

keep it fresh.

You, before you were writing or while you were writing, you had an Etsy shop.

Is that right?

And what was the name of the shop?

It's called Forthwave.

Okay.

And what did you guys do?

It was pretty successful, right?

Yeah, it was really successful.

We printed t-shirts.

We had a little studio and we printed, they were like, you know,

we took vintage

like suffrage era designs that we started out with.

And, you know, things kind of like some of these stories in the books that people had kind of forgotten about or they were on a postage stamp or something.

And so we, I felt like I needed some kind of like ra-ra support while I was going through that faith transition in my life and needed some, needed some role models, needed some courage.

So put those on some t-shirts and they really took off.

And yeah, we printed them in a little studio for quite a while.

And yeah, you don't have it anymore.

I have it, but it's way pared down.

So I, yes, it's.

much more of a side thing now than it used to be.

What is your writing process for all of your books?

And is it the same every time?

It's pretty much the same every time.

I get an idea that won't leave my head.

I write 20 pages of notes that don't make sense to anybody else but me.

And then I set those aside and I just write.

So I stock my brain full of all of the thoughts and ideas.

And then

some people plot it out chapter by chapter.

I

get it all in my head and then I just go.

Otherwise, it feels like I don't have room to discover all the little things that a pants are.

Pretty much a pantser.

A pancer.

Okay.

When Lucy Score was here right before you, she said she's both.

I admire that person.

I don't know how anyone does anything because I just

speak into a recording device and then transcribe.

I can't, I don't think I could sit down and like fully do any of that.

I've tried that though.

I've tried transcribing and my brain doesn't work that way.

Yeah.

I think it just depends on the person.

It's your brain.

Yeah.

Do you have a favorite book out of all the ones that you've written?

I feel like I have a soft spot for Ask for Andrea because that is the one I get the most like

emails about that make my heart like, oh,

it seems to resonate, especially with people who have lost a loved one or, and they'll send, you know, really.

meaningful emails about it, how that book meant something to them.

Was that the book that was the angel shot with the bathroom?

Yeah, it was inspired by that.

So I had never heard of that.

And for those of you who are listening and have never heard of this, there's, and Emily is a bartender.

So she, what is it?

It's the angel shot where you're like, ask the bartender for an angel shot if you're in danger kind of deal.

Yes.

I didn't know that was a thing.

Yeah, it started in the UK.

It was Ask for Angela is the campaign in the UK where you, that's the code word for if you need help and you're on a date.

And then in the U.S., a lot of people started doing the angel shot for if you're on a date and you, you know, your date's making you uncomfortable or you need help, and that's the code word.

They'll have them in the women's bathrooms a lot of the time.

I was going to say, they have to, they have to make it universal because for people who don't know about it, it should be like on a sign in the bathroom or like whatever the code word is.

Because obviously, if predators know that it's, you know, that's the code word.

So I feel like switching it up a little bit, but having it in the women's bathroom would be super helpful.

And that was cool that your book raised awareness probably unintentionally even.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

How do you name your characters in your book?

Because we always talk about character names.

It's such a good question.

I feel like I first weed out the names of people that I know that will be upset.

That would be upset?

That will be upset if they're the name of a character that dies or is a nice.

I just want to be named after.

I just want a character named after me.

I don't care if she dies.

I just want a character named after me.

I mean, you have a great name.

So I just use it.

Yes.

Please.

You can, if you want to mix up the spelling, that's fine.

Excellent.

Yeah.

So I think the character names that stick out are always really cool.

I do too.

Yeah.

I mean, not every character can be named Mike.

You've got to.

Yeah, for sure not.

Yeah.

It can't be too out there because then the audio narrators struggle.

But, but yeah, it's a fun.

It's like naming babies.

True.

Yeah.

I mean, you could always name your characters baby names that are on the baby name list because I feel like so many women have a list of baby names.

So there's all your characters.

Yeah.

Are your kids old enough to know that you write books?

They are.

They're 16 and 13.

Oh, they're teenagers.

Okay.

Okay.

So we were having kids at the same time.

Yeah.

what had what is their reaction?

Do they read them?

They do, they're like in the cool teenager zone, but also they are proud of it.

They, so they talk about it a lot, like with their camp counselors.

They'll always kind of pull me aside when I pick them up and say, you know, your, your son was talking a lot about your books today.

And it's really sweet.

I, that makes me feel good.

So, my son has read a couple of them, but he told me now he wants to read books with more deep symbolism, like 1984 and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

So there's not quite 1984 levels of vibes in my books.

So

he's moving out a little bit.

Is that like historical fiction?

Yeah, like literary fiction, historical.

I don't know what the genres are.

What is literary fiction?

Literary fiction is like a blend of a lot of different genres.

So it's not just one thing.

Like my books are pretty much thrillers.

They're suspense thrillers.

So literary, it's like a little romance, a little drama, a little history, a little like deeper meaning about what's going on in the world.

Okay.

But

None Left to Tell would be a historical suspense or historical thriller.

Historical thriller, it leans a little more literary because you're pulling in, you know, some drama, some

family saga.

Right.

Yes.

Can we talk about the that story a little bit?

Oh, yeah.

So the mountains, the mountain meadows massacre.

Yes.

I had no idea that even existed, I had no idea it happened.

Could you give our listeners sort of like a synopsis?

Yeah.

Of what the Mountain Meadows Massacre was?

So the Mountain Meadows Massacre happened in 1857.

It was

wagon trains were going through Utah on their way to reach California.

There was a lot of conflict between the Mormons who lived in Utah and the U.S.

government at the time.

So, and the Mormons had been through a lot by that point.

They had been run out of their homes in Illinois, in Missouri, and they were like, hey, we're in Utah.

This is our place.

Nobody's going to mess with us again, especially not the government who turned a blind eye when we got pushed out of our homes.

But then you have these wagon trains coming.

You have the army that's coming to replace Brigham Young as governor of Utah.

And there's just this like intense powder keg of a moment in history.

There

are cattle raids that are happening that are being encouraged by church leaders to show the U.S.

government how bad things will be for the pioneers coming through Utah if Brigham Young is to be replaced as governor.

One of these cattle raids gets out of hand, ends up in a standoff with these

about 134 people from Arkansas.

They are now trapped in this standoff with Mormon settlers.

They decide that they need to

eliminate these travelers from Arkansas.

So it's a wholesale massacre of this group of unarmed.

They draw them out under a false surrender.

They are all killed except for

this very small group of children that is then farmed out to families in Utah, renamed, re-baptized.

They thought that they were too young to remember what had happened.

But they remembered.

But many of them did remember.

And when the U.S.

Army found out what had happened, they covered up the massacre.

When the U.S.

Army found out what had happened, they come back in and they emancipate these children two years later and brought them back to their grandparents and family members that were still in Arkansas.

So that's it in a nutshell.

But

it was just a, because

church leaders, high-ranking church leaders

oversaw, ordered this massacre.

It was a lot of lay members of the church that participated,

including so many of a lot of prominent Mormons ancestors that

they were told to show up and bring a shovel to bury dead bodies.

And then when they got there, they said, actually, we need you to kill all these people.

It was...

it was kind of a bait and switch and you know fulfill your your priesthood duties and this is what God wants.

So we've got to kill these people because they know too much about what we've been doing to orchestrate these cattle raids.

They know it's not, they tried to set up the Indians, the Native people as

to take the fall for this massacre.

But

yeah, it's a complicated story.

I feel like every time I try to sum it up, I'm like, oh man, but there's this whole other aspect of it that's so important,

which is why, part of why I felt like I wanted to write a whole book about it, because most of the people killed were women and children yeah um and it was these yeah these lay members of the church that were mostly good people by all accounts who carried out this like atrocious massacre with

essentially their bare hands with you know clubs and

and knives and yeah it's it's a really harrowing story about I think fundamentalism and fanaticism and what we can be pushed to do in the name of, you know, our gifts.

It's beliefs, faiths, yeah, for sure.

Okay, so I'm going to the airport later today and I need the energy.

I don't want the crash and jitters.

And that's where everyday dose comes in.

Okay, so everyday dose is coffee plus benefits.

It combines 100% Arabica coffee with powerful ingredients like lion's mane and chaga, collagen protein, and nootropics to fuel your brain, boost your focus, and give you clean, sustained energy all day long.

This has no crash, no jitters, just clean sustained energy and there are two products there's coffee plus which is a mild light roast it's smooth low acidity and it's easy on sensitive stomachs like mine and then there's coffee plus bold which is a rich blend of medium roast 100 arabica coffee it's robust and full body yet smooth it's extra it has a little bit of extra boost for energy both of these options are 100 arabica coffee they have functional benefits and are mold free, which is great.

Everyday Dose also does third-party testing.

You guys can get 45% off your first subscription order of 30 servings of Coffee Plus or Bold Plus.

You'll also receive a starter crit with over $100 in free gifts, including a rechargeable frother and gunmetal serving spoon by going to everydaydose.com slash famous or entering famous at checkout.

You'll also get free gifts throughout the year, which is amazing.

Everydaydose.com slash famous for 45% off your first order.

Did you grow up knowing that story already?

Like that it even happened?

You didn't find out until you were an an adult?

I didn't know that it happened.

In my family records,

it's still in the records that it was committed by Indians, that this massacre was committed by Indians, and that the people who were killed, you know, deserved it because they had been part of the, you know, group that had run the Mormons out of Illinois way back when.

And none of that is true, but that's the way it was passed down.

It was a victim victim-blaming thing that I guess justified that in the people's minds.

So, growing up in Mormonism, how did you sort of separate what you grew up around and what your family taught you and the church taught you?

How did you separate?

I guess how did you decide that you were going to still write about this, even though you grew up in Mormonism?

Yeah,

yeah, it's tricky because I worried that it would really

hurt my family to see this story.

But ironically, I felt like it gave me a lot of compassion as I tried because I write from the perspective of my fourth great grandmother in the book.

And

you know, putting myself back into her mindset of what it would be like to be forced out of your home and feel like you're up against the wall and your faith means everything to you.

And

you've got this, you know, impossible, awful thing that you've been asked to hide or asked to do.

It

was a good exercise in empathy and connecting with those people, even though they did something really awful.

So, I don't know how, I mean, learning about things like the Mountain Petros Massacre was one of the reasons that I left.

It was because I didn't know about any of it.

And I felt like I had, when I started asking questions about it, they were shut down very quickly.

And so, I didn't,

I felt betrayed that I didn't know about it and that I was so forcefully shut down when I started asking questions that I felt a lot of anger for a while when I thought about stories like this.

And so I,

it was weird, as weird as it sounds, a little bit of a healing process to write this book and try to find that empathy and that

connection back to those ancestors, even though they were not really on the right side of history.

How did you hear about it?

So you were still within, you were still in the church when you heard about about this and then

i started looking beyond official church sources too

because i had questions you know i heard i heard murmurings about um stories and i didn't know what they were it was like you know the mountain meadows massacre somebody would say is like that this is a test of our faith and i was like well what's a test of our faith yeah like you had no idea

i i had no idea what it was and so i i wanted to know um but there was nothing I could find in official church-sanctioned sources to tell me what it was.

And so I,

you know,

did my research using sources that were very reputable.

And

then those sources were, you know, they're very threatening.

Those stories are threatening to some.

faith.

They can be threatening to faith, I think, for some people.

Do your kids know about the mountains?

They do.

Do you guys talk about it?

Do they ask questions?

Yeah, they do.

I mean, they didn't grow up Mormon.

Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah, I had left by that point.

But yeah, they're fascinated by hearing the different stories of,

you know, things that

I thought back when I was

their age.

And yeah, it's cool to be able to have some of those conversations with them.

For sure.

I had to look it up, though, because when I was reading it, um i was like do i have this detail right and i needed to make sure like i was tracking exactly how it happened and so i looked it up and then i quickly was like i don't i can't like it was

it was hard to read those no but it was so important

like a necessary story to tell and so that was um

what is the juxtaposition

So it was, you know, it's an important story to know about and to, because I don't know anyone, anytime I've brought up that book, nobody has heard of the Mountains, the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

That's the response for the most part.

I

love hearing from readers that had never heard about it.

And that's the same reaction every time.

I'm not usually a woo-woo person.

I feel like I, you know, I swung hard away from spirituality when I left the faith that I had grown up in, but writing that book.

pulled me back to it a little bit.

And I feel like there were so many experiences I had where it felt like somebody was just like nudging right over my shoulder the whole time.

Like the story wanted to be told as, yeah, as woo-woo as that sounds, it did.

I got to go and visit the massacre site after I had written the book and

that was

a really like sobering and cool experience.

It's very unchanged from what it was.

It's out in southern Utah and it's just rolling hills.

There's a little plaque and it's just mass graves everywhere that are still out there because they were women and children running for their lives.

There was, and then, you know, left to be torn apart by animals after they were done.

But

yeah, you can, there was a heaviness with that book that like lifted once it was out there.

Right.

And it was,

I don't know, I've never experienced anything like that before.

Would you write another historical thriller?

No.

No, I, it was a lot,

especially when the rest of my books are like, they're heavy topics too.

But that one I tried to stay the most true that I possibly could.

If anything, I felt like I was trying to tone things down for the sake of believability because what happened was so outrageous and so brutal and so

successfully covered up for so many years.

So it

felt important to me to try to stay as true as possible, which meant wading through a lot of really dense, wonderful historical references to

try to piece together what had happened.

So it was a treasure.

I don't know that treasure hunt is the right word.

A lot of rabbit trails to go down.

For sure.

And then you wrote such quiet girls.

Yes.

And also loosely based on another case, because I was thinking about the container or like the underground part of it.

And I was like, hold on, I've definitely heard this somewhere, but I didn't know where.

I couldn't place it.

Yes.

So it was the Chow Chilla kidnapping that happened in the 70s where they kidnapped an entire school bus full of children and then transferred them into this underground shipping container to try to hold them for ransom.

Right.

And then the shipping container started caving in.

So it was then up to these kids to try to escape and get out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that

just another light, light book.

I think we finished it in a couple of, Alessandra, Emily, and I all read it.

So yeah, no, I was like, I cannot place this story.

Like I was thinking, Elizabeth Smart.

I couldn't remember who was held in the backyard and it was like a blonde girl and they like kept her talking about that's what i thought it was so how do you decide which ones you're gonna like cover do you know what i mean like i i

one episode of morbid podcast that lives rent-free in my head are these two canadian farmers who used to like murder women and feed them to the pigs oh my gosh

and it was like everything but their teeth and their hair or something like that and it was a four-part episode.

So it was like four episodes to tell this story.

Like that has, and I listened to that probably like three years ago.

So is it, you just get an idea from a case and you're like, oh, I could definitely build off this.

Yeah, it's definitely part of that.

Some of it is like, could I reimagine this in a modern setting?

Yeah.

And that's a fun, like, creative exercise.

But also, there's usually some aspect of it, especially since they took place in like the 70s or the 80s that

like someone, one of the survivors or the victims, was done a huge disservice.

Like in The Such Quiet Girls,

the bus driver got the lion's share of the credit for having saved the children.

But it was actually the

14-year-old boy named Mike who

like fought.

He was like, I'm going to find a way out of here.

And like in the story, the bus driver is like, well, let's just do what the kidnappers say.

Let's kind of keep calm.

Let's not rattle, you know, any cages.

Let's

just wait and see what happens and if they had done that they likely would not have survived so but in the aftermath of the story the grown-up got credit for heroism when and these children who had like been pretty big heroes themselves they didn't really get the credit for that part of the story so i wanted to put their story forward a little bit so yeah it felt like there was some piece of the puzzle that didn't get enough

justice done to it in the original

I was just telling Lindsay about going to the doctor for my ADHD, and the doctor looked at me and said, What are we doing about your weight?

And I sort of laughed and I was like, Let me think about this and circle back.

But I'm here to tell you that hers weight loss is a great option.

I'm actually looking into it right now because feeling better in your body should not be a full-time job.

And when you're busy and have so many things going on, it's hard to squeeze in the gym.

Or maybe you have PCS, maybe you have something that's preventing you from losing weight.

And just doing a full body check is great.

That's why hers makes it easier to get started and stick with it.

It's backed by expert guided online care that puts your weight loss goals first.

Everyone's talking about weight loss meds, right?

Like fewer people are talking about how hard they are to access because hers is changing that.

They have transparent pricing, expert care, and a personalized plan that's actually built and priced for where you're at.

And I feel like that is what we should be talking about.

Hers is transforming women's healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans.

They connect you with a medical provider who will work with you to determine the best treatment option for you.

And I love that.

If you're prescribed, you get medication as part of a doctor-developed weight loss program, complete with ongoing care, check-ins, dosage, and medication adjustments.

You'll also have access 24/7 to online support at no additional cost.

There's no hidden fees and no membership fees.

So, whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair, or find relief for anxiety, HERS has you covered.

Visit forHERS.com/slash famous to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.

That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash famous.

Forhers.com slash famous.

Weight loss by HERS is not available everywhere.

Compounded products are not approved or reviewed for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA, prescription required.

See website for full details, important safety information, and restrictions.

Actual price depends on product and plan purchase.

I have way too much free time, said no one ever.

Work, appointments, family and friends, life is non-stop.

And trying to find a new place on top of all that, completely overwhelming.

That's where apartments.com comes in.

If you want to make time for the things you love, but you still need to find your next home, apartments.com has tools to make your home search so much easier, and it's all on one site.

With 3D virtual tours to get a peek at a rental listing, online tour scheduling, plus the ability to see the exact unit you're interested in and apply for a place with one click, renters can handle it all on apartments.com.

Whether you're looking for a three-bedroom condo downtown, a two-bedroom duplex in a quiet neighborhood, a cozy studio in a walkable city, or even a single-family home in a cul-de-sac, you can find a place that checks all the right boxes.

So, whichever stage of life you're in, settle down in your perfect home by using apartments.com.

Make your move from the comfort of anywhere and make more time for you.

Join the millions of happy renters and visit apartments.com, the place to find a place.

And you are a big fan of Google Docs?

Yes.

Also, same, except for when a ton of people are in it and you can't figure out who is typing what.

Do you write your books on Google Docs?

Oh, yeah.

I love Google Docs.

It's a game changer.

Social media, not social media, but like all technology has changed the game for everybody, I feel.

Yeah.

Is there any author that you would love to collab with?

Oh,

that's a good question.

First of all, would you even do a collab?

Well, that's the thing.

I think my brain just says no, because I know it would be so messy and it would be such a like

lot of back and forth that i don't know how it would work logistically i always am so curious about people who do it well you ghost wrote before i ghost wrote so i guess you yeah that was pretty clean though like they the book is in their name they have all the credit i just get paid a flat fee for the ghost writing part of it so clean break but if

Yes, I guess if both of your names were on it and you did it with a publisher, then that would be cool.

I would, i would collaborate with you know

any of my hero authors frida would be just a dream um

faith gardner and steph nelson are a couple of my like bfff authors we read each other's books when they're in the early stages so they would be really fun to collaborate with um we already do to some degree when we're writing our first drafts do you ever like share ideas with another author and you're like here i don't i was going to write about this but i i can't so here you go.

Yeah.

You do.

Oh, we totally do.

Cool.

We also, whenever we hear a unique name,

we call dibs.

So, the first person to dibs it.

So, I will, I will dibs Kale.

Take it.

And then we have Lyssa, not Alyssa.

Lyssa.

And we have Alessandra.

Madison's pretty common.

Sorry.

I don't think that's it.

Emily's pretty common.

So

we got some unique names.

When you hit a wall or get writer's block, what is your strategy or solution to that?

Hmm.

To,

I mean, boring things like I pet my cat or what's your cat's name?

Dolly Parton.

I love that for you.

Thanks.

What is it about falling for a killer that led to Ask for Andrea?

I think that was one of the first documentaries I watched about Ted Bundy where it wasn't all about Ted Bundy as the big bad.

Like, yes, Ted Bundy is horrifying and scary, but that one got me in the emotions because it was about the women that,

whose lives were cut short and who were, you know, this ripple effect of this horrifying cannonball that got

blew up everybody's lives.

But

it.

was just another good reminder, which I feel like we need to come back to all the time in true crime spaces and our consumption.

Like, what are we, what are we doing here?

Like, who are we focusing on?

Like, is...

People always ask that.

I'm like, why are we so obsessed with true crime?

And is it doing any harm to the families that we're like, we're consuming this?

And it's,

is it for them or is it for, you know, the person that committed the crime?

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think it's a question we need to keep asking ourselves.

Yeah.

On one of my other podcasts, my co-host, when she reads articles, she won't talk about the killer's name because she's like, I'm not giving them credit.

I was like, oh, I kind of actually like that.

I love that.

It's like sharing the memory of the victims or the survivors or whatever.

But

okay, for your writing process, how do beta readers shape your final drafts, if at all?

So much.

So I

have that core group of thriller authors.

There's four of us and we

go pretty deep with beta reading for each other.

You know, it's...

No holds barred.

If you hated something, say it straight up.

Don't don't dance around it.

Don't sugarcoat it.

So I laugh out loud reading their comments sometimes because they do not hold back and

I don't either because then you don't have to wonder like, are they saying they don't like it, but they really hate it?

Or, you know, just say it if you hate it.

So we read each other's drafts.

We give really honest feedback.

And then,

you know, then I have those things in the back of my head as I go on to line edits and copy edits to know if I've done a good enough job addressing their concerns because usually those are the things that come up that I just need to like shave off another layer.

Like, is this character too annoying?

Is this character deep enough?

You know, does this make sense when the Volvo is going off the side of the road, which direction we're headed?

Or is that still confusing?

You know, those types of things.

And beta readers.

Sorry, beta readers are different than arc readers.

Yes.

So arc readers are at the end of the process.

Once this book baby is heading out into the world,

then it's book influencers, reviewers that are going to be able to get like the first first look at the finished book.

Well, add us to the list.

Yes.

Have you ever used sensitivity readers?

I have, especially for None Left to Tell.

Like I'm a white woman.

I did my darndest to research what I could about

the native woman that was represented in my book.

I would not leave her out.

Like that voice has been left out of that story intentionally for so many decades.

So that was not an option.

And I would not do that, but I recognize who I am and that I just don't have that cultural background and sensitivity.

So I brought in a number of sensitivity readers just to read the book, you know, through that lens and see what stood out to them and took the common threads of that and revised and did my best.

You know, there's...

There's always going to be missteps, but the best I can do to avoid them, then I feel like that's on me as the author to do it.

Good for you.

I had never heard of a sensitivity reader.

I think Abby Jimenez was the first person to mention sensitivity reader to me and I had no idea what it was.

And then Kennedy Ryan said that she was using sensitivity readers.

And so

new to me.

Has there ever been feedback from either a beta reader or an ARC reader that you, it has just stuck with you?

Maybe it was funny or maybe it changed the entire, you know, way that you shifted a story.

Has anything ever stuck out to you in that way?

That's a really good question.

I wish I could think.

There's just so many.

I think on my last beta read of the book that I'm finishing the draft up of now, she left 497 comments.

So

just on, you know,

every little thing, which is what I want.

So

I don't even know if I can pick one.

There's just,

it's like a fire hydrant of great hard feedback.

Yep.

Okay.

How do you craft such high tension without relying on physical violence, like graphic violence in your books?

I guess I just go back to what I

feel most

scared by and what makes me feel most like tension in an engaging way.

Like I don't like a lot of gore in the movies that I watch.

I don't like reading about a lot of gore because it almost shuts me down instead of keeping me engaging with what's happening.

And it,

it's almost like in horror where like if you show the monster too much, it does something to your brain that you're not like scared of the monster anymore.

I feel like leaving, even if there is some horrific gore or whatever, that's just part of the story, I feel like focusing on that almost flips the switch in our brains where it's just like, we get into like ew or

like hyper focused on the details of what the injury looks like.

and i think it takes away sometimes from what's actually happening in the momentum and what the characters are feeling and what what matters most to me about like the survival story or the or the bravery or whatever so i want to focus on those things and acknowledge but not like get lost in them sure so i guess the difference between thriller and maybe horror yeah for sure i know um most i think all of your books are standalones yep would you ever revisit any of them and create a series out of any of them

so i am doing that with my next release i am writing a prequel to ask for andrea so i i never

talk about or delve into the idea of like who who was andrea like who was the girl that inspired this campaign like the ask for angela campaign in the uk like who was this girl so that's what the the book looks at.

So it's a standalone.

It's that same world.

We've got a living character and a dead character.

It ties into a true story.

But yes, it's that same world that we get into with kind of the ghosts and the living and true crime.

So is that the new, is that your going to be your next release?

Or is there any in between?

It will come out in November of this year.

Yes.

So you had two books in one year?

Yeah.

How many books would you publish

or do you publish in an average, like on average in a year?

So it helped a little bit that I had a backlog of a lot of things brewing when I was like, these books, I don't don't know if they're ever going to see the light of day.

So, I had a head start with those.

And so, honing and getting them out there has been nice, but I will be slowing down a little bit after this into more of a one-bookier cadence that feels doable.

Yeah, because I think how many drafts do you do per book, do you think?

Oh, gosh,

probably

seven or eight by the time I go through all of my beta readers.

They're not like blow the book up and rewrite the book, but you know, they're, they're honing.

They're rereading the entire book probably seven or eight times.

And then for your audiobooks, do you ever pick the cast?

Uh-huh.

You do?

Yeah.

So I work with Simon and Schuster on my audiobooks and they usually send me like four different options that I can listen to samples and find the one I think works best for the book.

Such Quiet Girls had a full cast.

Did you want a full cast for it?

Or is that their idea that they were like, okay, we're going to do this?

I, I mean, they, they proposed it and I was super excited about it.

I definitely don't think you can listen to every book on audio because sometimes the narration is just not great, but having a full cast will make such a difference.

It absolutely does.

Yeah, I was really happy with how that one turned out.

Would you ever narrate your own?

No, I have seen how much work goes into audio production, and I'm just going to let my strength be writing.

Yeah, understood.

Do you ever read your Goodreads reviews?

Yeah.

You do?

I totally do.

Yes.

I think so far every author has said no.

I hear that a lot and I respect it.

But I feel like if I'm going to ask readers to engage with this book and spend their time, their money spending, you know, hours with this, then the least I can do is like respect their feedback to me.

And that seems to mean a lot to my readers.

And it doesn't bother me if somebody hates the book.

Like

it really doesn't.

Like books are per it used to bother me, but I spent a lot of time reading the one-star reviews of my favorite books and my favorite authors, and there's a lot of them.

So it, the one thing that will get to me is if somebody starts going after like the person who wrote the book, like whether it's me or somebody else, there's not very many of them, thankfully.

Those ones will get to me a little bit.

Right.

But

yes, I do read the reviews.

It's not for everybody, but

I like it.

And I I feel like I take away useful things from them about what readers are looking for, what they universally don't like, what they do.

So it's helpful.

I don't do it every day.

Yeah, no, I mean, you're mental

if you did it every day.

I haven't seen bad reviews about your books, though.

I recently started trying to make mine funnier if I don't love it.

I like that.

Because I get to meet a lot of authors on the podcast and I just never want to like shit on someone's work.

You know, I mean, there's been a couple books that I don't love, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to love the next book that they, that same person reads.

So it's not the author.

It's just like that book specifically just wasn't for me.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean?

And my last question is, do audiobooks count as reading?

Yes.

Hell yes.

If you're reading,

you're reading with your ears instead of your eyes.

Consuming the book, yes.

But does it count as reading?

I think it does.

Somebody, I heard somebody talk about it, especially in terms of accessibility, you know, for blind readers or for, so I was like, you know, we're, we're engaging with the story and consuming the story.

And what is reading aside from that?

So in my mind, yes, I know it's a great debate.

It is a great debate, especially on book talks.

So I want, and we should just get a compilation of all the authors that answer the question.

Where can people find you on socials and where can people find your books?

I am on social media most places at Noel Eiley Author.

And you can find my books on Amazon and increasingly in most bookstores.

You're awesome.

Thank you for being on Barely Famous.

Thank you so much.

It was great to be here.

Hi, I'm Adam Ruppon, and this is Intrusive Thoughts, the podcast where I finally say the stuff out loud that's been living rent-free in my head for years.

From dumb decisions to awkward moments, I probably should have kept to myself, nothing's off-limits.

Yes, I'm talking about the time I lost lost my phone mid-flight and still haven't truly emotionally recovered from that there might be too many sound effects i've been told to chill will i unclear but if you've ever laid awake at night cringing at something you said five years ago congratulations you found your people intrusive thoughts with adam rappon is available now wherever you get your podcasts

This September, CBS hits are streaming free on Pluto TV.

I'm coming in on for this month only.

You can watch full seasons of the CBS shows you love.

From the courtroom drama of Madlock to the heroics of Fire Country.

Go back to where it all began in NCIS Origins, or watch the hilarious hauntings of ghosts, all for free.

Full seasons of the CBS shows you love this month only on Pluto TV.

Stream now, paying never.