Sarah Gailey has quite a range of published work to date: successful horror and speculative fiction novels, including Hugo and Locus Award finalists; comics set in the beloved universes of Marvel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as original comic series; and a long list of notable short stories and essays.
The USA Today bestselling author is back this May with a captivating new slow-burn horror. Make Me Better follows Celia to Kindred Cove, an isolated island community where she believes she can finally heal from the past and become the person she is meant to be.
Keep reading to learn how Sarah Gailey’s desire to explore community turned into a novel about cults and how this story reflects the world around us today, plus check out the worst writing advice they’ve ever been given.
Hi Sarah and thanks so much for joining The Nerd Daily again to discuss your new book! To start, what have you been up to over the past few years, professionally speaking?
Trying to figure out a remotely sustainable pace of work. I know, not the sexiest answer I could give, but that’s my current project. I realized in mid-2024 that I was in a state of severe burnout, and I took a sort of sabbatical for the first few months of 2025 to try to fix it. I didn’t quite succeed at the part of the sabbatical that was supposed to involve not-working, but I worked quite a bit less than normal, and I learned a lot about myself as a creative person. I’m doing my damndest to apply what I’ve learned to my current practices, so I don’t die with my hands fused to my keyboard.
Tell readers a bit about the premise of your new novel, Make Me Better.
Make Me Better explores the dynamics of a high-control community on an isolated island. It’s a book that invites readers into the feeling of yearning and desperation that makes people seek out answers in dangerous places. If you’ve ever thought ‘I would never join a cult,’ this book is written for you.
You write quite broadly—from fiction to nonfiction and even comics—and each of your works brings something new and interesting to the table. What sparked the idea for writing about high-control groups, or cults as they’re often called in popular culture?
I started out not aiming directly at high-control groups, but at community in general. I was observing a pattern of community dynamics in my own circles, and I wanted to explore it more. As I learned more about how communities function, though, it became clear that the best setting for this story would be a high-control group. What better way to dive into a tight-knit community with limited variables and intense consequences around every corner?
Make Me Better has a sizable cast of characters, and readers may find themselves feeling both sympathy for and an aversion to many of these characters throughout the novel. Do you have a “favorite” character that you found most interesting to write? If so, what intrigued you about developing this character?
I loved writing Easy. She’s spent her whole life being labeled a disaster by her community, trying her best to hold onto who she is in a group that is determined to mold her in their own image. In this kind of system, that tension can really only have two outcomes. One of them is to be destroyed. The other is to become the person Easy is when we meet her.
I know a lot of research on high-control groups went into writing this novel and it pays off in how you portray the dynamics of these groups. What did the research process and your writing process look like? How long did the novel take to complete?
This novel is the most intensely-researched thing I’ve ever written. It took me six years of rewrites to finish, and I’m still not sure I managed to do justice to the research involved. I did a lot of reading up-front, before I even started to outline, about the attachment dynamics of authoritarian groups, the language of manipulation and control, the history of closed communities. And, not to say too much here, but I read a lot of grisly medical research about experiments grafting coral onto bone. I also immersed myself in folk horror media, knowing that this book would be in that conversation. Religious linguistic patterns by day, The Wicker Man by night.
Like any good horror story, Make Me Better has some definite social commentary woven into it. Without giving too much away, can you speak to how the novel reflects what is going on in the world around us today?
Living in this world is hard and getting harder every day. The systems that are meant to support us are being vaporized by people who don’t care if we live or die; sources of simple joy are increasingly hard to afford and access; danger seems to loom ever-closer with each breaking news item. Many of us feel powerless, helpless, and exhausted. And beyond the day-to-day logistics of survival – many of us feel increasingly bewildered by the question of how to be a good person. It feels increasingly difficult to know what the right thing to do is. It would be such a relief if someone could just offer some simple instructions.
That’s the draw of the high-control environment. We are all, especially right this moment, susceptible to that appeal.
Fill in the blank: If you liked (name a comparable book/books), you will definitely want to read Make Me Better.
I recently read Lauren Groff’s Matrix and thought: this book and my book are walking in the same direction. Whether I deserve to be on the same path as that title, though, I couldn’t say. I thought it was really stunning
What are some of your favorite books and/or authors that have inspired you in the horror genre?
Of course Shirley Jackson and Clive Barker are powerfully influential voices to me. Current horror authors I’ve been loving lately include Lee Mandelo, Hailey Piper, Alison Rumfitt, and Hiron Ennes. Those four are changing literature with their work.
Let’s Get Nerdy: Behind the Writer with 5 Quick Questions
(Since this isn’t Sarah’s first rodeo doing a Q&A with me, here are a few new and different questions to give readers a sneak peek behind the writer!)
- A book on your 2026 TBR: Headlights by CJ Leede.
- One of the best movies or TV series you’ve watched in the past year: Strip Law has a joke-to-frame ratio I haven’t seen since Blazing Saddles.
- An album you think everyone should own: TOXICITY by System of a Down is medically necessary for all humans
- An internet/social media rabbit hole you can’t avoid: I’m powerless in the face of niche community drama that doesn’t concern me or anyone I’ve ever met.
- The worst writing advice you’ve ever been given: GRIND OUT WORDS EVERY DAY. Absolutely not. You know what you should do every day? Look at a living thing other than yourself, in real life. Do something to care for your body. Seek art. Find an axis by which you can exercise your free will and disobedience. Sure, sometimes you gotta grind the words out, but even millstones wear down over time. The point of art is not to suffer in the making of it. The point of art is to give language to the human soul and allow it to speak. Making that into toil is a Calvinist scam, don’t fall for it.
(The second worst writing advice I’ve ever been given, by the way, was “don’t use they/them pronouns for romantic leads, it’s unrealistic.” My response to that is less about the voice of the soul and more about that person and the horse they rode in on.)
