Sarah Stewart Taylor's Strangest Job Ever

**Late breaking news! Jay Roberts is the winner of Jeri Westerson's The Isolated Seance! Lucy D is the winner of Alicia Bessett's Murder on Mustang Beach! The winner of Barbara Ross's Hidden Beneath is Deborah Ortega!

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DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am such a huge fan of Sarah Stewart Taylor's books, and as I was fortunate enough to read an advanced copy of her latest Maggie D'arcy novel, A STOLEN CHILD, I can personally vouch for it being a terrific read and I'm thrilled to have her as our guest today.

What a great topic, too. This came up recently at a writers' conference and hearing about everyone's weird jobs was fascinating.

Here's Sarah to share some of hers!

In my new Maggie D’arcy mystery, A Stolen Child, Maggie has just started a new job as a patrol officer in Dublin, Ireland when she and her partner are first on the scene of the murder of a young model and reality TV star. As Maggie realizes that the woman’s toddler daughter is missing and starts to unravel the threads of the investigation, she feels an extra level of pressure to do well in her new job, and to prove herself so that she can make it onto a homicide team. Focusing on Maggie’s mindset while I was writing got me thinking about jobs, the ones we hate, the ones we love, the great ones and the weird ones.

If you don’t count getting paid a nickel each to pluck slugs and snails off of the plants in my grandparent’s garden, I got my first job when I was ten years old and was hired by a Mary Kay saleswoman in my suburban neighborhood. I would walk over to her house after school and she would pay me to put shiny gold stickers on the pink boxes of Mary Kay products stacked against the wall in her guestroom. She had a very pink and pristinely clean house and I loved sitting on the bed in her floral-scented guestroom, peeling off the labels and placing them carefully on the boxes. She didn’t yet have a pink Cadillac, but she was working toward that goal, something she talked about all the time, and I remember feeling proud that I was somehow part of it.

Between the ages of eleven and fifteen, I was a babysitter. I babysat often, for all different kinds of kids and families, and managed to save quite a lot of money by watching movies in other people’s houses and eating their snacks after the kids went to bed. I loved seeing different houses and getting a window into all those different family dynamics.

And then, I got a job in a bookstore. That was my high school job, and in many ways it was the best job I ever had. The bookstore was a beloved, independent fixture in my Long Island town and enjoyed enthusiastic support from the community. I stocked the shelves, recommended books, and learned a lot about literature and about the world. I met a lot of real-life authors too and I think that my bookstore job made writing books seem possible. And since it came with a discount, it also served as the gateway to my lifelong book-buying addiction . . .

During high school and college, I had a whole variety of jobs. I worked as a receptionist and constituent services assistant in my congressman’s district office and as a sandwich delivery person in my college town. I waited tables at an extremely fancy French restaurant, where I had to speak in a soft voice, and clear the tables in one graceful, confident take, balancing all of the heavy china plates on one arm so that the guests wouldn’t have to look at dirty dishes for a moment longer than necessary.

After college, I moved to Ireland and worked in pubs, and then eventually as a nanny. I went to graduate school there, and when I returned to the States, it felt like it was time to get a “real job.” 

I worked in publishing for a while — an invaluable experience for someone who wanted to write books. I am grateful every day for the experience of seeing how the sausage gets made — but what I really wanted to do was to write and while I was getting my journalism career going, I got a part-time job teaching writing and literature at a men’s prison. It was another one of my favorite jobs, illuminating in so many different ways. It provided me with a look at our imperfect and inequitable justice system and at the terrible things humans do to one another, as well as at the transcendent humanity that can be found in even dismal places. 

I loved being a daily news reporter and spent the next few years writing new stories during the workday, and fictional ones at night and early in the morning. When my husband and I moved to Washington, DC for a few years, I felt like I was close to finishing my first novel and got a job as a dog walker to allow myself more time to write and revise.

Every day, between eleven and two, I would walk all over the city with my furry charges, picking up dog poop, greeting the regulars at the dog park, breaking up scuffles, and giving out treats. My husband had a prestigious job with the Clinton administration and I secretly loved going to his fancy work events and to cocktail parties and seeing people’s faces when they asked what I did and I told them I was a dog walker. The job offered me time to plot and think about my writing while I wandered all over the city and it gave me lots of ideas for future novels. Every day, I got to go into my clients’ houses when they weren’t home. I saw their photographs and personal belongings. I could tell when a spouse had moved out, or when someone was sick. Those glimpses of strangers’ houses gave me endless fodder for novel writing. 

For the last twenty years, since my first book was published, I have described my profession as “writer” or “novelist” wherever it needed to be described, but like most fiction writers I have had to do other things to make money as well: teaching, journalism, P.R. writing, farming, and the most wonderful and demanding — and unpaid and undervalued — work of parenting.

What is the strangest work you’ve ever done? What’s the best job you ever had? 

 

Sarah Stewart Taylor is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D'arcy series. The first Maggie D'arcy mystery, The Mountains Wild, was on numerous Best of the Year lists and was a Library Journal Pick of the Month. The fourth Maggie D'arcy mystery, A Stolen Child, is out now.

Sarah grew up on Long Island, and was educated at Middlebury College in Vermont and Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied Irish Literature. She has worked as a journalist and writing teacher and now lives with her family on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries. Sarah spends as much time in Ireland as she can. 

DEBS: Dog walkers are like real estate agents and house cleaners, they get to see everything--so perfect for the perpetually nosy writer!

I highly recommend following Sarah on Instagram to see fun updates on her farming life. The lambs!

REDs and readers, share your strangest job!