Sarah Gate is the passionate force behind the TikTok page "Feminism4everyone." As an emerging author with her debut novel Before You Say Goodbye set to be released on the 26th of September, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking to Sarah about her advocacy for social issues, her strong feminist values and how they inspire her writing.
Sarah has a gift for crafting a story that will resonate with her readers on a deeply emotional level, Before You Say Goodbye blends love and loss in a way that feels both authentic and heartfelt. Her characters are relatable and feel real while navigating new relationships, family bonds and loss with a depth and natural dialogue that draws readers in. Sarah’s ability to explore the complexities of relationships with hope and warmth, makes Before You Say Goodbye engaging and memorable. I enjoyed talking about the book so much that I almost forgot to ask Sarah about her writing process!
“Autumn has found the love of her life. Now she has to say goodbye, instead of hello to their forever.” Before You Say Goodbye is a touching love story set against the vibrant backdrop of New York City and the English countryside. It follows Autumn, an ambitious and independent author, who unexpectedly meets Bowie, a charming musician, and finds herself swept into a profound, life-changing romance. As they navigate their whirlwind connection, they are surrounded by an unconventional and deeply supportive family of characters. The novel beautifully captures themes of love, loss, and the ways in which human connection helps us find strength in the face of heartbreak.
If you’re a fan of romance novels that will tug on your heart strings like One Day by David Nicholls or the heartfelt exploration of loss in Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You, Before You Say Goodbye will captivate you.
Lucy (L): How are you Sarah? Are you feeling prepared for release day?
Sarah (S): It’s a bit nerve-wracking—much more than I expected!
L: Before we dive into speaking about Before You Say Goodbye, which I’m excited to do, I wondered if I could ask you about your Tiktok page Feminism4everyone. What lead you to start the page and how your strong feminist values might affect how you write romance.
S: I started Feminism4everyone about two years ago. I had been speaking with other feminists I met at protests in my local area following the murder of Sarah Everard. One woman I spoke with was already making videos on TikTok and recommended it to me. Although I had never created video content before, I had experience writing articles and blogs. TikTok turned out to be the perfect platform to engage in these conversations with the public. I wanted to do something meaningful, and it became a great place to discuss feminist issues in the news. It also provides a sense of community for women who might be the only openly feminist person they know, which can feel quite isolating. When you hear other voices discussing women’s issues online, it reassures you that you’re not alone.
Writing is part of my activism. I have no doubt that some people will read Before You Say Goodbye and think, ‘This book is too feminist,’ and it is a feminist book. I’m very opinionated, and my feelings on these subjects are clear in my writing, so if people feel that way, they’re not my audience. There are themes in the book that could spark real conversations and bring up ideas people haven’t considered before. When reading a book, you connect with characters who face challenging situations, and it forces you to reflect on what you would do in those circumstances.
L: People either love or hate an opinionated woman!
S: Exactly. The main character in my story is a feminist and a vegan. She’s learned that there are people in her life she can’t talk to about these things because they either won’t engage with her or, if they do, they respond in a closed-minded or negative way. That’s based on my own experiences. I think everyone involved in these kinds of conversations has people in their life they can or can’t talk to about them. It’s like discussing politics—sometimes you have polar opposite opinions, and neither side will convince the other, so it’s not always worth pushing the conversation. I think that could be the case with this book. Some people will love it, others might hate it—just like some people love opinionated women, and some hate them! If you hate opinionated women, this book probably isn’t for you.
I’ve always described myself as a feminist, but probably even more so over the last few years. A large part of this self-discovery came through writing Before You Say Goodbye. I didn’t set out to write a feminist book, but my characters naturally embodied feminist ideals, and their interactions revealed those.
L: I’ve spoken to several authors who say they don’t read reviews for those reasons.
S: I think that’s a lesson I’m about to learn. You could go to Amazon and look at the best-selling books of all time, and they’d all have some one-star reviews. It’s to be expected—you’re not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. On the flip side, I’ve seen books with plenty of five-star reviews that haven’t been for me. I think Feminism4everyone has helped me to prepare for that, it used to upset me when I faced backlash for talking about feminist issues on Tiktok but over time you get used to it.
L: How else do your strong feminist values affect how you write romance?
S: Two of my main characters, Autumn and Bluebell, are feminists, but given that we live in a patriarchy, they make mistakes and are not perfect feminists. During the editing process, someone pointed out that Autumn does something she had previously criticised someone else for earlier in the book. My response was that she’s a hypocrite; she isn’t perfect and makes many mistakes throughout the book, as we all do. Early in the book, she talks about her feminist values while flirting with a barista for a free coffee—she’s a real person with flaws. I believe that having feminist characters makes them more open about topics like sex, which sets them apart from traditional romance novels, and they challenge male characters on issues that might otherwise be overlooked.
L: How important was it to you that your characters felt realistic and relatable?
S: So important. It’s very relatable that at the beginning of the book, Autumn compares herself to other women and struggles with this internal conflict, telling herself to stop but finding it hard to do so because that’s how society influences us. Many of the characters and their interactions are drawn from conversations I’ve had with friends and from people I know in real life—though not to an identifiable level. I try to make them as relatable as possible based on my experiences. I was particularly attached to some events in the book because they reflect personal experiences of mine, though Autumn isn’t based on me. I see bits of myself throughout the book, and sometimes characters take on a life of their own and go off in directions I hadn’t planned! For that reason, the ending of the book changed significantly. Now, I have both versions of the story in my mind.
L: I love all of the characters names, were they inspired by anything special?
S: In the very early versions of the manuscript, Autumn and Bluebell meet in a coffee shop where a barista is writing their names on their coffee cups. They strike up a conversation because they both have unusual names. Although this initial interaction has evolved and that is no longer the catalyst for them meeting, it’s still referenced later on. I also love that Bowie and Marley have musical names, I guess I chose all of their names because I like them.
L: As a romance author, how was your experience of writing sex scenes in your debut novel?
S: I love writing sex scenes. When I’m writing, I feel like one of those readers who rush through a book to get to the sex scenes—because that’s almost what I’m doing while writing! I really enjoy creating that connection between my characters. Now that it’s being published, the thought of my mum and work colleagues reading those scenes makes me cringe! It was important to me to give my characters realistic sex lives. Sometimes when I read romance books, the portrayal doesn’t feel real, so I wanted my characters to feel like real couples, having authentic conversations about sex. There’s an awkward scene between my two main characters, Autumn and Bowie, when they have a moment in the bedroom where they don’t know how to handle something. I think it’s important to explore that in books because it happens to real couples, and how we deal with those moments can change our relationships.
I’m interested to see what readers think about the characters and their relationships. I think people will probably have a lot to say about Autumn and Bluebell’s promiscuity, and yet Marley, Bowie’s brother, is arguably worse and I think people might have less to say about that.
L: What are your favourite books?
S: My all-time favourite book is Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks, set during World War 1, it may not be the type of book you’d expect me to read. The book really made me think differently about the World Wars and the contributions of people in my life, like my great-grandfathers. It inspired me to ask my grandparents about my great-grandparents and any stories they might have. It hit me deeply and made me rethink things I’d learned a lot about but never truly contemplated.
From a women’s fiction perspective, I was very much part of the early 20s generation reading books like P.S. I Love You and Sushi for Beginners. I have a real soft spot for those kinds of books, which my friends and I shared and read on holidays. I recently loved Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang—sometimes you pick up a book and need to know what happens, I read it all in one day.
L: Do you write full time alongside Feminism4everyone?
S: I work in digital marketing for charities. Previously, I was a humanitarian aid worker and have always been involved in PR and digital marketing. I studied journalism at university because I loved writing and always wanted to be a writer. Early in my career, I worked as a journalist for a newspaper. I’ve written articles about veganism for vegan websites and The Guardian. Writing is a profession that demands a great deal of effort and skill, and people often don’t realise how much time goes into writing and editing.
I have written other books but this is the first one I’ve submitted to publishers, breaking into the industry is incredibly challenging. There’s an element of luck involved, as you need to land on someone’s desk at precisely the right time, they receive thousands of queries daily. Privilege also plays a role—not everyone has the time to sit and write a book. You improve your chances if you can carve out time to write and send out numerous queries, which takes time and dedication.
I’ve been writing books for years, but I didn’t start taking it seriously until I was around 30, thanks to a comment from my mum. We were joking about buying a yacht, and I said that when I become a millionaire author, I’ll buy her one. She replied, ‘You’ve been saying this for years but have never finished a manuscript. Perhaps you should take it a bit more seriously if you want to be an author.’ She was right. Though I’d always wanted to be an author since my teenage years and had been writing for a long time, I never had a plan to finish a book and start querying it. It took six years to write this book, but finally, here we are.
L: Has your marketing background helped you to promote Before You Say Goodbye?
S: The fact that I work in digital marketing is one of the reasons I’ve never tried to self publish a book, because I know how difficult marketing is. I have so much respect for people who independently publish their books. Knowing your target market and having a strong online presence definitely helps when you’re looking for an agent or publisher for your book too. They like to know that you have an audience who will read your book.
L: Tell me a bit about your writing process.
S: I love writing. Holding a physical copy of Before You Say Goodbye was such a strong motivator—it made me want to do this all over again. It took six years in total to write it. I’m currently working on a sequel. I’m not sure if it has legs yet, but hopefully it will. I also have another project in progress, there are definitely things in the works.
In the very early stages of a project, when I have a new idea, I get obsessive. I’ll wake up early and write before and after work—whenever I have the opportunity. I’ve learned enough about myself as a writer to know that I have to do this; otherwise, the novelty wears off before I finish the first draft. For the first draft, I’m definitely flying by the seat of my pants. I might write 15,000 words in a day, just getting the story down, whatever comes to mind.
During the editing stages, I have to be very protective of my writing time. I carve out a few hours to write on Saturdays and Sundays. If I’m invited to do other things, I have to say no, because I need that time to focus. Otherwise, I get distracted.
When you ask friends and family for feedback, they’re always going to tell you it’s great. The nerve-wracking part is when people you don’t know start reading it. My publisher read it and loved it, they wanted to publish it, but I still have imposter syndrome. Now the public is going to read it.
L: How did the experience of getting published differ from what you expected?
S: In the early days of sending out my manuscript, I received a couple of full manuscript requests fairly quickly. However, the publishers I sent them to either had something similar in the pipeline or thought it was too similar to something else they had published, so it wasn’t for them. I knew it would be challenging to find a publisher, but I didn’t realise it would be as difficult as it turned out to be. After trying for so many years, I began to think maybe this wasn’t going to happen. I had to have a few serious conversations with myself over the years because I recognised that there was something wrong with the first couple of chapters, which publishers weren’t interested in reading past. I knew I needed to re-edit them. It was a tough conversation to have with myself, facing the reality that my work still wasn’t good enough when I had previously thought it was ready for submission. I had initially thought it was finished, but after sending it to 40 or 50 publishers, I had to rewrite it and send it out again. I had to do that several times. I sought honest feedback from writer friends about why they might stop reading.
It teaches you a lot about yourself and forces you to ask how much you really want this. How many times are you willing to re-edit and try again? I had already sent the book to publishers in the early years and tried again when they finally accepted it. The process will undoubtedly take longer than you expect. This book was rejected 122 times. I would definitely recommend that writers who are about to go on submission keep a list of agents or publishers they have already queried. You might think you’ll remember them all, but you might not. It helps to keep a spreadsheet. I’d also advise being very selective about who you reach out to. Are the agents or publishers looking for your type of book? You should respect their guidelines. If they’re seeking women’s fiction and romance and that’s what you’re writing, then go for it. But if you’re writing horror with romantic elements, they might not be interested. It’s a better use of your time to target ten agents or publishers at a time in your genre rather than sending your manuscript to everyone and hoping for the best. Pay attention to submission guidelines too; they all have different requirements and may not read your manuscript if it’s not in the requested format.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, looking back at how many thousands of hours I’ve invested, but it is worth it. I also asked myself, what if I never get published? Would I still continue writing? The honest answer was yes because I love writing. I took the task of getting my book published very seriously because I believed in it, but if someone had told me it would never happen, I would have continued writing new stories. I think this is an important question for writers to consider.
L: I think that’s some of the best writing advice I’ve heard. You’re right, if I knew I was never going to get my book published, I would still be writing. I think asking yourself that question could help you to appreciate your creative time a bit more.
S: If you’d still keep going then you know that you’re writing for the love of it and that’s a great place to be because you know you’ll never feel like you wasted your time investing all of those hours into writing.
Follow Feminism4everyone and Sarah Gate on Tiktok to keep up with Sarah. Before You Say Goodbye is available to pre-order from Waterstones and Amazon.
In light of some of the events discussed in this interview I’d like to include links where you can donate to and find more information about Refuge, Women’s Aid and Sisters Uncut.
I loved this interview. Sarah is a sweetheart and her work on TikTok is so important.