Bookwild - Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody: Grief, The Dark Side of The Internet, and True Crime Obsession

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

This week, I talk with Kate Brody about her emotionally and character driven debut thriller Rabbit Hole!Rabbit Hole SynopsisTen years ago, Theodora “Teddy” Angstrom’s older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy’s father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark’s family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie, and Teddy can’t help but fall down the same rabbit hole.Teddy’s investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun-nut boyfriend, her long-lost half brother, and her colleagues at the prestigious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy’s growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case.Bewitched by Mickey, Teddy begins to lose her moral compass. As she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, her erratic behavior reaches a fever pitch, but she won’t stop until she finds Angie—or destroys herself in the process.A biting critique of the internet’s voyeurism, Rabbit Hole is an outrageous and heart-wrenching character study of a mind twisted by grief—and a page-turning mystery that’s as addictive as a late-night Reddit binge.Follow Kate on InstagramAnd check out her website here Get Bookwild MerchCheck Out My Stories Are My Religion SubstackCheck Out Author Social Media PackagesCheck out the Bookwild Community on PatreonCheck out the Imposter Hour Podcast with Liz and GregFollow @imbookwild on InstagramOther Co-hosts On Instagram:Gare Billings @gareindeedreadsSteph Lauer @books.in.badgerlandHalley Sutton @halleysutton25Brian Watson @readingwithbrian 

This week I got to talk with Kate Brody, whose debut novel is Rabbit Hole, which is a really emotionally poignant, very character-driven thriller that's about Teddy. And 10 years ago, Teddy's older sister, Angie, went missing. Her case remains unsolved. Now Teddy's father, Mark, has killed himself. Unbeknownst to Mark's family, he had been active in a Reddit community fixated on Angie. and Teddy can't help but fall down the same rabbit hole. Teddy's investigation quickly gets her in hot water with her gun nut boyfriend,

her long-lost half-brother, and her colleagues at the pretentious high school where she teaches English. Further complicating matters is Teddy's growing obsession with Mickey, a charming amateur sleuth who is eerily keen on helping her solve the case. Bewitched by Mickey, Teddy begins to lose her moral compass. As she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, her erratic behavior reaches a fever pitch, but she won't stop until she finds Angie or destroys herself in the process. This is, it's a very heavy book, very much explores the very dark sign of the internet, especially the way you can get with true crime fandom. And I talked to Kate Brody about where her inspiration came for that and how she handled writing something that covered how toxic

things can get in certain parts of the internet. So let's get into it. We're matching Cates today. Before we talk a little bit about the book, though, I did want to get to know a little bit about you. So when did you know that you wanted to be an author or like, when were you like, I'm going to write a book? So I think when I was very, very young, I wanted to be a writer. my second grade teacher had this incredible writers workshop that she ran and and it was just like the best time. You know, I was a big reader and an early reader.

And then once a week she would have parents come in and help us not just like write our stories, but edit them. And then kind of like publish them in these little bound books. And then we'd have like a reading series at the end of the year. We'd get all dressed up. So that, I loved that and I knew I loved writing. But then I think it just didn't see, I didn't know anyone who did anything creative for a living. So it just didn't seem like a possibility.

And then the older I got, the more I was like, well, maybe I'll be a lawyer or a doctor. And then in college, I took a creative writing class kind of as like a for fun thing. Yeah. Because I was just... I think I was pre-med at the time. So I was taking all these science classes. And I just thought like this will be just like something for me.

Yeah. And yeah, then from there I just got completely derailed because I fell back in love with it so much. And all of a sudden it's impossible again. My professor was this writer who was like, you got to do it. You got to get an MFA. And that was really permission giving. That's like when I started thinking about it as a possible career. That's awesome. So when, like, this is your debut book. When did you like kind of start

working on that? Was that, has it been recently? Was it like during that experience? No, yeah. I guess I started working on it five years ago. So I went straight into the MFA after college, which I don't really recommend. And I wrote a book during the MFA that was just this really long family saga and a little bit plotless. I had a really hard time trying to find an agent for it. Everybody was like, we like the writing, but what's happening in this book? So after I couldn't find an agent for that book, I just started over. Like I didn't want to, I knew it wasn't working at the level I wanted it to work at. So I didn't want to kind of keep going down the list and see if I could just find any home for it.

Yeah. And instead, I was like, let's, what's a way to fix that problem that I'm having? And the answer was using a genre framework. I had always been a big crime reader in addition to literary fiction. So using that as like a container for the story and forcing myself to get out of my comfort zone a little bit with a, with a genre that really requires plotting. That was the way in. So yeah, I started that like five years ago.

And yeah, and then it just takes a long time to get from conception to publication. Yeah, totally. So how did your writing process develop? So do you plot or are you a pancer? Like how do you approach it? I am definitely more of a pancer than I would like to be. Every time I start a new project, I think I'm going to do it right this time. And that makes such a mess of it.

but I don't really think I know another way because I just wrote another draft of a novel that I'm hoping will be the follow up to Rabbit Hole. Nice. And I was so rigorous about it this time. I was like, I'm going to write for four hours in the morning. I'm going to have an outline. And then I finished the

draft and it was so inert that I ended up rewriting it completely. And now it's this big sprawling mess, but I feel like some life in it. So now I have to edit it. I think I don't have an in me to like do it the really organized way. That's okay. I wish I did.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like less people plot. I feel like the answers tend to skew towards pantsing anyway. So I think it kind of makes sense. When you said, so you said follow up to rabbit hole, does that mean like in a series or just like your next novel? Just the next one. Yeah. It's not connected.

Okay. Cool. What about your characters? So do you kind of get to know them as well as you're writing that way? Or do you typically kind of like feel the character at the beginning? How does that work? I think it does start with the character for me, at least the main character. Teddy was right there at the start.

The book is really close to her perspective. And I knew it was going to be first person present tense for that reason. Because she's kind of in this state of arrested development where she can't look forward. and she can't really grapple with the past either. So it needed to have that sense of closeness and her voice came first. And she has a lot of, like when I was writing the book, I was also in my mid, late 20s, I was also like working as a high school English teacher. Like there were enough similarities.

And then she was kind of the like dark alter ego. I kind of like spun that spun her off from me, I guess. Like what if things in a different universe went completely off the rails? Right. Yes. Very off the rails. And speaking of kind of in that same vein, what was like what was the inspiration for the story that hit you for this one? Like what was the starting point for you that kind of got you there?

I think all my work tends to have like these sister relationships in it. I just find them really rich and interesting because they're not like anything else. They're not friendships. They're more intense than that. They're longer lasting. They're the only people who really share like both nature and nurture with you. So I just find them really like a fertile ground for fiction. I have two sisters of my own.

So I knew it was going to be something to do with sisterhood and family life. and grief because that was something I was really interested in talking about the part that I think came with the genre element was the disappearance and the Reddit history element and that was just like sort of a parallel interest of mine at the time was Reddit and true crime

and the way true crime was exploding and becoming this like cultural phenomenon what did it say about us as people and as people who consume stories that this this cultural thing was happening. So those were kind of, I think if you, with a book, with a noveling thing, at least, if you can find two tracks that kind of intersect, like the contemporary and the evergreen, the grief and the true crime, there's something, there's an interesting kind of friction there. Yeah. Yeah.

So kind of this interesting. So you're the like Teddy Angie relationship was kind of like the thing for you. but then you just applied kind of the thriller genre to like get the plot in that's so fascinating because when you were saying earlier um that like your first book didn't have as much plot I was like how is that possible like this was like so like plotted and like things were moving forward but that's like a cool perspective that you kind of like apply a genre to like get the plot and then it makes sense that that it felt so character-driven as well yeah I don't think I'm like a dyed in the wool thriller right of

Like I admire that. And I feel that a writer is very, very in control of the reader's experience in terms of like the thrills of it and the plot twists. A lot of that was editing for me. That was like really the work of editing was making sure that it had those beats that it would be satisfying in that way. But I still think a lot of the feedback that we're getting, you know, people recognize it as like literary fiction. and sometimes recognize it as a thriller, but it is sort of straveling those two worlds in a way that I think, you know, if you're somebody who's like mainlining Stephen King,

like I don't know that the book works as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it does feel more like a literary thriller, which is kind of interesting since we were talking right before this about Dony Kukovka's book Notes on an Execution, which actually has similar reviews or like a lot of people felt like it was kind of closer to literary fiction, still kind of a literary thriller,

but has both of the aspects. But I do, I love, obviously, a really quickly plotted, plot-driven thriller is fun. But I always love when there's, like, character development in the thriller as well. Those are the ones that I always end up remembering for a longer time, too. And I feel like the characters just, like, make you think about more things, which is definitely the case with this book in the plot as well. So kind of with that in mind, you said you were a little bit into, you were kind of into true crime at the time. So was it just kind of like what you were listening to or what made you kind of want

to dive into the darker side of like true crime fandom with this book? I think it was my own feelings of discomfort around it. Like I liked it. And then I think. this is common to everybody who is a fiction writer or maybe any kind of writer that you're sort of outside yourself a lot of the time examining your own reaction to things. And I had started, I think, with a lot of reading, like all the kind of true crime classics and cold blood and health or Skelter and and then podcasts like serial when it was huge all these things that felt um like a lot of

them were crimes of the distant past they all felt really well researched and thoughtful. Yeah. And then it became like a kind of slide into Dateline territory for me where all of a sudden I was watching like increasingly slick um over. overproduced, abridged tellings of these really complicated stories. And I also noticed that the crimes kept getting more and more recent. Like, I'd be watching something where it was,

somebody was killed in some sort of, like, grisly titillating way within the last year. And all of a sudden, I'm consuming it as entertainment. And I guess I started to take a step back from it and just think, like, I don't think this is good for me. Like I felt like it was corrosive to my being that, um, to just treat of like real human people as characters or something. I watch a lot of horror too.

I don't think there's anything. Right. Like funny about being into horror. But, um, but it was like, okay, well, these are real people and real stories that are now mass entertainment. Um, and again, that just is. It was interesting to me from like a fictional perspective too, that there has to be some kind of fallout to now this cottage industry that has sprung up around these crimes. Like what would it feel like not just to experience this kind of act of violence, but then to experience the almost like tabloid frenzy around it on top of that.

Yeah. And yeah, those questions were kind of the way into the true crime part. Yeah. And it really specifically focuses on subreddits and the way that they kind of interact and research stuff and the way they talk about stuff. And it's like the darker sides of Reddit, as you can imagine. Basically, did you read subreddits that were like that intense? Were you reading that at the time? Or is this kind of like once you started writing, you knew you kind of wanted to lean that direction with Reddit?

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not like a super research-heavy writer. So I had been on Reddit a little bit. I was teaching high schoolers and they were really into Reddit and they seemed to use it for a lot of different things. But then the sort of mainstream narrative around Reddit was that it was this cesspool where like in cells were finding community. And those two things seem kind of at odds. Like these kids I knew who were really great were all about Reddit. And then all the adults in the room were kind of like, it's this hellhole. So I was curious about it and ended up spending a lot of time on it.

And I think it, for better or worse, like Reddit gives you what you want. So if you're really into like dog communities or like when I was pregnant, I was on like pregnancy subredits and like all those. things are very wholesome. And then, of course, like, if you're into something darker, you can find those people, too. It's very anonymous. It's not, like other social media sites, it's not driven by popularity. You're not searching for likes most of the time. You don't really have a profile that you're selling anybody. Yeah. So it felt almost retro to me, like old internet, like chat rooms. Yeah. And the dominant mode of Reddit is writing based and it's voice based. So it really lends itself so well to a novel because

because of those elements. So yeah, I just, I became kind of fascinated by I don't think I spent as much time in true crime subreddits as I did in just the ones that were interesting to me until after when I was editing. And I was like, let me just make sure that I got this, right? But thinking a lot about how in all, like in all those communities, the way people talk on it is a little different than the way they talk in other parts of the internet. And everyone's voice is so distinct that that was kind of like a fun task to make sure they would have sort of distinct syntax and punctuation and even like frequency of response and things like that. Yeah. Yeah, totally. It also, what you were kind of touching on with how

the internet in a lot of cases, no matter like what app you're using or just the internet in general, is almost just like programs reflect back to you what you are the most interested in. And so it's almost sometimes you can kind of have confirmation bias a little bit with that. I feel like that was somewhat a part of your book as well. Were you kind of trying to talk about like the internet at large as well? I guess is actually what I'm asking. Yeah, I think those two things are kind of tied to me. Like the way that we consume true crime and the way that we operate on the internet,

I think it's born of this sense that we all have now that no one can hear us talking. Like if I'm talking about somebody or if I'm doing something on the internet, commenting on something, like that person can't hear me because I'm in my own corner of the internet and they're not really a real person. Like for my purposes. And I think a lot of true crime operates that way too where they're not real people to you. You can depersonalize them so much that they're just characters. you're the only real person and everything else is just being filtered through screens. And I do think that's bad for, not just like for society, but bad for you to like think of

yourself as the only real person. And I think when Teddy comes up, like stumbles upon those subreddits where people have been talking about her, sometimes, you know, they were talking about her years ago. The idea that she was not aware of these. conversations doesn't make them better it makes it worse you know that yeah who knows what people are saying out there the internet's so vast you couldn't possibly have a sense and and she feels like really exposed and and exploited yeah yeah it is it's creepy to like imagine yourself in that situation because i agree it doesn't it doesn't feel better that it was like happening before it's like oh

when i was like this young people were just like talking about me and theorize about me and like saying terrible stuff sometimes too and she was just like living her life unaware of it um definitely very creepy and be very creepy to experience in real life as well but a lot of the story also focuses on all of the grief that teddy's experiencing on just so many levels from when her sister went missing to her dad now killing himself at the beginning of the book. And a lot of a lot of the plot is even kind of related to how she is reacting to that grief and like working through it. So how did you approach writing someone who was in like such a grief stricken place? Yeah. So I think the two different kinds of grief,

that was the challenge. She, you know, they lost Angie 10 years ago with sort of no closure. she's just gone and I think my interest in that came from like I truly can't imagine how you would process that kind of loss it seems devastating to me to just like slowly

lose hope over years and years with no real sense of okay I'm going to start living my life and move on now and I think like her whole family being stuck in that place where they're kind of actively grieving and sort of just paralyzed, starting the book there and having this other event intersect with it,

which is, you know, her father dying by suicide right at the start of the book, which is this different kind of thing. It's this really fresh wound. And that I had some experience with and was interested in writing about, for a long time. And at least my experience of grief was that you have a really hard time processing it in the early weeks and months. So the fact that Teddy is like not really grappling with the loss of her dad head on made sense to me. And that instead it would manifest in this obsession to almost like stay connected to him via his investigation and Angie's disappearance.

or like, you know, well, what is the thing that that I can do to kind of tether myself to him? And then, you know, the book doesn't span that much time, like a few months. But by the end of it, like, you know, her, the grief is becoming real, I think, around her father's loss as well. And yeah, I think the thing that was really interesting to me was this question of me. memory. So like her sister disappears and gets her whole legacy gets kind of subsumed by this true crime interest, which almost functions like hagiography, right? Like it's like, oh, Angie the saint, Angie, this like beautiful teenager, which is at odds with Teddy's memory of her. Like Teddy's memory of her is that she's really difficult and prickly and kind of a black sheep and

kind of like a burnout. And then with her father, the opposite thing happens, right? He died. and all of this new information comes up that is largely negative and very overwhelming and feels like it's a threat to her memory of him. And I have felt like in my personal life that both of those things are really hard to grapple with because you want to believe you're holding on to the real person even though it's not really possible. And every piece of hagiography, every piece of like new back. had information that you didn't know, chips away at your understanding until you are left in a

place of like, did I even know these people at all? Right. And that is its own kind of brief to feel like, well, you know, maybe I just didn't, I didn't know them. So that was, I think, those were kind of the big questions that I was trying to work through in the book. Yeah, it is. It's really overwhelming. kind of because when you were saying that it was even reminding me when sometimes when people are alive and you find out such jarring information about them, then it does make you like question everything. And then you're, I've had that same experience where even with someone who is alive, you're like, did I even know you? Like was any of that real? And it is really unsettling, especially for, in Teddy's case, it's like two people in her family. So it's like people that are that close to her feel like mystery.

to her kind of through a lot of the book. But I also hadn't thought about until you just mentioned that. That it is like Angie was the contrast between her dad and Angie's deaths. And so then like retroactively, Angie does look like to a lot of other people. They kind of like deify her. And she's perfect because she's a victim of true crime. Whereas dad, it's like you thought he was there and then he's just gone. So that's cool.

I hadn't thought of the contrast between those as well. And then even how like when she's holding on to her dad's investigation of Angie, she's kind of holding on to Angie as well at the same time. So it's kind of like, of course, she would kind of go that direction after all of that. Yeah. Like the minute she lets go of that investigation, she loses both of them. Right? Like the minute she's kind of like, well, let's pack it up.

Let's throw all his crap in the dumpster and move on. she will have to move on with her life and that life will involve neither of them. And it is this like last ditch effort, I think, to just like, you know, sink your cause. Because her mom's kind of just like, I'm kind of aware of things. I'm kind of not aware of the things. Yeah. She's not going to be helpful in that situation either. Yeah. Well, I have been asking people at the end what they've been reading, just or what you've read recently that you've loved, not like, super recently can be whenever. But, um, or I know some people don't read when they're writing. So if that's your answer, that's what they find too. No, that's not fine. Yeah. Um, yeah, uh, I just read the new Dennis Lehane book, Small Mercies. I mean, new. I think it came out like a year ago, but I just got to it.

I'm still newish. Yeah. It's so good. I mean, he doesn't need my plan because he's doing fine, but, um, it is great. And I think just, it's so propulsive in such a like true real crime novel but it also is grappling with all of these social issues and the protagonist

is this because it's set in the early 70s during the integration of the public school system in Boston and the protagonist is this really prickly racist character and he is just in her perspective in a way that felt really refreshing and authentic to me.

Wow. That he has so much sympathy for everybody in the novel, but also isn't like creating these kind of fake character. Like he was basically like if there's going to be a lower class, like working class, middle-aged white woman living in Southie, she is going to be opposing the busing. and the integration of schools. And he didn't, like, write some fantasy character that was actually, like, super open-minded or something.

So I really like that. And then I just started Gabriel Korn's new book, which is excellent. I'm not all the way down with that yet. And I've been screaming from the rooftops about Jennifer Bell's new book because I feel like everyone's sleeping on this book. It comes out in January. And it's called Swanah in Love. And it's pitched as like an inverse Lolita. And it's so good.

It's so funny and heartbreaking and just like original and follows this teenage girl who takes up with this older man while she's on this like really bizarre family trip. And I think it just it's just so nuanced and also just really, really hilarious. like the language is just like crackling. Yeah. And then Madeline Gray's green dot comes out this year too, which I read an early copy of, which is so great and deals with the internet in a really smart way. It's kind of like Bridget Jonesy, like really fun. Oh, that's fun.

Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's anything else I read recently that was so good. I feel like those ones are my big recommendations lately. Yeah, those sound good. That sounds really good. And some to add to people's lists for 2024 as well. Yeah. Where can people follow you so they can stay updated on any news?

So I am on Instagram pretty regularly. That's at Kate Brody Author, occasionally on Twitter at the same handle, Kate Brody Author, and Kate Brodyauthor.com, which has all our tour dates and everything. Rabbit Hole comes out on January 2nd. So we'll be doing some events on kind of all over. Yeah. Yeah.

Hopefully some of the listeners are near some of the locations and they can get there. That would be awesome. I love that. Yeah. So I will put those notes in the, or those links in the show notes so people can find that. And otherwise, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you. This was really fun.

And can we need to see who you guys have on next. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Between the Lines. And if you did, the biggest thing you can do to support the podcast is to go rate and review it on whatever platform you listen on. You can also follow me on Instagram at The Girl with the Book on the couch. And if you still need more thrillers in your life, check out Killing the Tea. My other podcast where I talk to my friend Gare about literally everything we read.