Bookwild - RJ Jacobs: Somewhere in the Dark

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

On this episode, I talk to RJ Jacobs about his most recent book Somewhere in the Dark.You can also watch the episode on YouTubeAuthor LinksInstagramGoodreadsWebsiteCheck out the book hereSomewhere in the Dark SummaryAfter a childhood marred by neglect, Jessie Duval's finally got it together. With an apartment in Nashville and a job with a catering company, she's thriving.But all that changes when Jessie works an event where celebrities will be in attendance--including the one person from her past she must avoid at all costs: singer Shelly James. Jessie doesn't hate Shelly. Quite the opposite. One summer, she followed Shelly's tour everywhere. Only, Shelly wasn't flattered; she was terrified by Jessie's devotion--especially after Jessie was arrested. But after a year of therapy, Jessie understands what happened. She's not the same person anymore.Jessie keeps her head down, but when Shelly is found dead, Jessie's troubled past comes tumbling out and she quickly becomes a suspect in the high-profile murder. As the police close in on her, ignoring other credible leads, Jessie realizes Shelly's murder will be pinned on her--the perfect scapegoat--unless she finds the real killer. And no one knows Shelly's life and inner circle better than her. But she will have to go deeper into the dark--if ever she wants to find her way out. 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 

Hi, my name is Kate and I love to read. Like, I was carrying books around with me before Kindles were a thing. So I decided to start a podcast where I interview the authors of some of my favorite books, ask them all of my questions so that I can read between the lines of the books. Hey guys, welcome to the first episode between the lines. Due to a little bit of scheduling miscommunication, we ended up recording this while books and books. Roos and Zinesville was actually open. I do want to thank them for letting us record there, but you might actually hear some noise in the background because there were actually people there. And it probably sounds a couple times like I might be yelling my questions at my guest,

but it's just because I was trying to talk over everybody. So for this first episode, RJ Jacobs was willing to come up to Indiana and talk to me about his most recent book somewhere in the dark. I read it this year. It was one of my favorites that I read this year. It's amazing. If you haven't read it, go read it and then come back and listen to this. Or at the point where I announce that we're going to start talking about spoilers, you can stop at that point and go read it if you've gotten interested. So with that being said, let's get into the first episode. We are here at Books and Bruce in Seinesville. And it's a pretty hop in Friday night. So you might hear people in the background a little bit, but I'm here with RJ Jacobs, who wrote somewhere in

the dark that I read this year, reached out and asked if you wanted to talk about the book. And here we are. Here we are. Here we are. So. Good to be here. Thank you. He actually drove all the way up here.

So thank you for that. So I'll just get started. When did you know you wanted to write a book or when did you know you wanted to be an author? Yeah. So I've been writing kind of in some form or another. I was trying to think about, like, actually, when I got started doing it. And it's pretty much been since, like, I was in high school. Wow.

But you can imagine kind of what the early stuff was like. Right. Not terribly great. Yeah. A friend of mine taught script writing for a while. Nice. And he said that, like, his students, a lot of them really wrote a lot of scripts about just their friends. It's kind of, like, not a great story.

Yeah. You know, some of it is kind of like, you need someone to teach you how to construct a story. Right. Develop characters, increase tension, have a plot that drives towards something. Kind of without that, like some of the early stuff sort of suffers. So, you know, I think just about everybody who's been a writer has to get some of those out. Yeah. You know, to kind of learn a little bit how to do it.

But I think it's really helpful to have some instruction. Yeah. I mean, anytime you start anything, that's like the kind of unfortunate part. So you're not going to be good at it. So it's like the hardest thing to get over anytime you want to do something. Yeah, yeah. But that being said, so your friends kind of helped you with structure. Did that influence your writing process kind of early on or what is your writing process like now?

So actually, my writing process as I've gone along has gotten more and more structure. Nice. So I actually, we were talking a little while ago about the projects that I'm working on now. I just turned in like a full synopsis of the next book that I'm about to start working on. And I've never actually done anything quite that detailed before. In the beginning, you know, you just kind of feel like writing what you want to write. But it's almost like I was listening to, I'm listening to Dave Grohl's book right now. And he talks about his early days of being a drummer.

And like when he sits down, when he's like a kid, he just starts hitting the drums like all kind of all over the place. The teacher realized how much work they're going to have to do. It's a discipline. Right. And I think writing is a little bit like that

where in the beginning you just kind of want to go. Or like another metaphor is like track. I used to run track run out of high school. And a lot of people don't know that sprinting is very technical. And you know,

some people like who get drawn into it. They just have a ton of energy and they want to run it out. And I think that writing is kind of like that too. Like there's a lot of like technical, conscientious detail stuff that you have to pay attention to. Yeah. And, you know, but that's not necessarily like what drives you to want to write in the beginning. So like I've gotten more detail oriented because I wanted to hit the mark with the editor that I'm working on or working with.

It's working with me. But, you know, I think in the early days you just kind of want to go. Yeah. I want to write stuff. That makes a lot of sense. Kind of what I said earlier with everything. Like it is kind of like when you first want to do something. You're like, I just want to do it.

Like I don't want to turn it into anything necessarily. It's all about fun at that stage. Yeah. Yeah. So if it wasn't a super destruction for you at first and you would just kind of, would you just kind of have feelings about characters you wanted to write? Or would you have ideas about the plot that you wanted to. Yeah. You'd have like a sketch.

Yeah. I don't know how everybody else does it, but I'd have like a sketch in my mind or like a scene. and kind of going off of that and like you don't even quite know where it's going to take you. But the problem is that those don't end up being amazing. Like it's, I think sometimes it's better to kind of know like how it's going to end as you get going. There are other writers out there who I'm telling you, they have no idea and they start on chapter one, line one, and they end up with a great novel. That's what blows my mind. I had heard that when I heard Leanne Moore Yard.

talking about, oh, the one that was, the one that was turned into an HBO series. Basically, she said that, like, she knew about the characters and who they were, but she didn't know how I was going to end. And that, like, blew my mind because I can't imagine approaching it completely like that. Like, it seems like some people are like, yeah, all of it comes to me as I'm writing. I always felt like if I were to write, which I've thought about. about it would have to be so like I would need to kind of know what my ending was but some people say it just like comes in intuitively I'm like I'll tell you some of it I think is that like it changes

a little bit as you go along I think a lot of writers probably relate to that as you get to know the characters they have experiences and like get into a situation and think no it would be much better if they did this or that's not really the way that you originally conceived of it I think it's not going to be like that. True to them if they did it like. Yeah. So it sort of shifts, I think, as you go. Yeah.

So someone I was talking to last week, she was talking about how she would go through and like write her characters, like, write like 10 pages in that character's mind, even like for stuff that wasn't for the book. Oh, yeah. Is that something you've ever done then? Is that like how you get to knowing what a character would do? Yeah. Yeah.

A little bit. There's like character sketches that you can kind of do. I think it's kind of that idea. I, yeah, it's almost like people you know, you spend so much time with them. Right. That then you do kind of get to know what they would do, what they would think. Yeah. That makes sense.

Yeah. So you are a psychologist? I'm a psychologist. I was just making sure. I know there's different versions of it. So how does that inform how you're writing your characters and writing your books? So I was thinking about this. And I would love to be able to say some really deep answer.

Right. But probably the most honest answer is that it's kind of an escape from that. That I tend to be kind of introverted and I have a job that has a lot of face time. Yeah. And I think to be a good psychologist, you really have to have a lot of boundaries and not a lot of involvement with the people that you're working on. Right. And in some ways, like when I'm done with the day, I really want to kind of leave all that behind

and do something that is completely unrelated, almost like we were talking about before, but just like a totally different life. Yes. And so in some ways that it is a really nice refuge. And when I talked to other writers who were writing during the pandemic, they said similar things about, like, creativity and writing being a refuge that they would go to. Yeah.

Just to kind of escape the stress of all the other stuff that they were doing. I don't know how much I know about character from being a psychologist. I will say one thing is that I think I have a deeper sense of the pressures of a situation. Yes. There's like sort of a social psychology element to it where it's like people kind of respond to their circumstances more than the circumstances are much more predictive of behavior than character. And I think a lot of people don't realize them. That makes a lot. That's a really good point, actually.

Yeah. So what do you like to do when you're not running? Man, well, I spend a lot of time with my kids. And I run a lot, kind of an avid runner. I was in a soccer league a couple weeks ago. Nice. Me and a buddy in mine, also as a therapist. We were the oldest two guys there by probably like a decade.

So it was sort of humbling, but it was kind of fun to do. Yeah, you know, a lot of times there's just not enough hours in the day. So I like to take a little trip here and there, but I'm pretty busy. Yeah, it sounds like it. So where do the idea come for somewhere in the dark? Like what was like the first thought you had that got you writing? So I really like character where their liability kind of becomes their advantage. language. I love that.

And it's sort of something that's hiding in plain sight that people almost kind of feel sorry for them about. But it becomes the thing that it makes them the only one who can solve the mystery. That was what it felt like. I have a lot more questions related to that, but that's exactly that we were talking about that a little bit beforehand. That was one of the coolest parts for me about reading it was in the kind of psychological thriller or mystery thriller genre. There's a lot of the ending not even being happy. Like there's just a lot of strife in those stories. And there's part of me that's very attracted to it.

Like it creates so much tension and excitement. But reading your book, there was like, I was telling Tyler on our way here, part of it felt like experiencing good therapy because it was seeing someone like have their trauma kind of being healed while it was still. something that was useful for them. That was like, that was why I ended up loving the book so much. Well, thank you for saying that.

Yeah. It's, it's interesting the feedback that you get about what you write. When you're the author, because, you know, it's like any, any art that you do, I imagine, I know a buddy of mine is a visual artist and he faces this all the time. Yeah. That he'll have like an abstract piece. And he said, people will come up to him and say, I get it. This is about Trump.

He's leading us into the woods. Yes. You know, and he'll think, like, it has nothing to do with what I was thinking. It's fine. Like, it means something different to everybody. And so I've heard people say that somewhere in the dark was very sad for them. I've heard people say it was really uplifting. I heard him say, they figured it out right away, and that bummed him out.

I've heard him say the total opposite. Really? How can you figure that on totally? I don't know. I don't know. I will say in the first draft, the killer was something. someone completely different. Okay.

So yeah, you didn't totally know who was going to be by the end. Yeah, yeah. Getting back to earlier. Yeah.

Yeah. So you weren't totally good. I changed it like in the second draft because it made more sense. Yeah. And it, I mean, honestly,

it wasn't the most important part of the book, which I think was another reason I liked a lie. Like who the killer was doesn't end up being what like resonates with you at the end of it is how I felt about it.

What's funny when you said people take different stuff away from it, while I was writing out all of the questions, I know I've heard that before, and I've heard musicians talk about that, like, songs can mean something totally different to someone, or like some authors will get questions, and they'll be like, I mean, I wasn't intentionally doing that, but I guess that's a good point. So when I was writing out the questions, I was like, what are the questions going to say about me? Like the whole time, I was like, what does it mean that I took this away from it?

There's this great test in psychology called the thematic, perception test. Yeah. Are you familiar with it? I feel like I remember, we took a lot of tests when we were in therapy. So it is, it's just like sketches. Okay. And it'll be like a picture.

Yeah. And it'll be like, pretty abstract scene, people doing certain things. Right. And what you're supposed to do is tell a story. As, like, what do you see? And it's fascinating is like, when you get stuck with someone in therapy, Sometimes you pull it out and say, what do you see here?

And, like, it'll be very revealing. Because the same themes come up over and over again. Like disappointment, sadness. This person feels alone. Stuff like that. And really, you could make up whatever story you wanted about this situation portrayed in the picture. And that's typically probably why, like, the stuff they can't access about themselves is coming up.

They create a narrative about it. something. Yeah. That's fascinating. It's pretty interesting. We were saying that all the way over. I was telling Tyler, you got to practice too, and he was like, she's going to be analyzing all of your questions.

I was like, I've already thought about that yet. Reached a part in the episode where we are about to discuss spoilers for the book. So if the beginning of this episode has made you want to read the book and you haven't already, pause, go read it, come back, and enjoy listening to the spoilers. So you kind of said already that your idea was you wanted to write a character who's kind of liability ended up being their saving grace. Was that like the complete like sounding word part for you? Or was there some like other idea that gave you the really specific idea of like somebody who's been in confinement? Well, so you were asking before about how being a psychologist kind of informs them.

Yeah. That is one thing that, I guess, probably there. Yeah. In cases like that, in cases like Jesse's actually are, it's really sad and terrible, they're actually like horrifically common. Every year, like the TBI or the FBI will find someone who's living under the circumstances. Or multiple people sometimes. I mean, it's too horrific.

It's true to a map. Yes. But it's not completely uncommon. Yeah. And a convention of the genre is unreliability. Yes. And like too often that I, often. Yeah.

It's like someone has an alcohol problem. Yes. They're on some kind of medication or authors seem like they're like picking their brains. Yeah. try to find some way to make the reader have questions about, you know, is this, can you trust this narrator or not? And what I liked about this story was that Jesse is actually very reliable. It's everyone else who doesn't think that she's reliable.

And so I kind of wanted to play with that a little bit because she does have this sort of imaginary world that she lived in. But her, like, recollection of events, she's way sharper than everyone realizes. she's just very quiet and so you know I like that she was an unusual person

and yeah that was one of the that's leading into one of my other questions was about how a lot of the story

was about her learning it's not like there's a lot about trust in in regards to not trusting not wanting to trust anyone and then not even trusting herself, but it felt like the transformation for her

was when she actually started believing herself and believing that she was reliable even to herself. Yeah. That part was reminding. It's not that she had been gaslit wouldn't be the right term, but it was reminding me of that being something that made her doubt herself so much because everyone else doubted her too.

Yeah. She could be taken advantage of. Yeah. And there's a point in which you get the sense that she feels like no more. So the other thing that was cool was the relationship she had with her. Oh, yeah. Was like, that was like, I was one of the people who definitely did not think the book was sad. And it was like very comforting to me, even just reading that relationship again.

It was that, I know you can't talk about like confidentiality, like your patient specifically. But was that the therapy? Okay. Relay. Therapy scenes can feel played out, whether it's like TV or books, and it felt very, like, authentic and, like, true to even what my therapy was like when I was in therapy. Yeah. So were you kind of informed in those scenes by, like, the relationships you've had with your clients? Yeah, I'd say so. One thing I'll tell you is that this is kind of a weird segue in answering the question, but I'm kind of terrible about naming characters. So usually I just pick like the name of someone I know or a friend of mine or someone I knew way back when.

If I try to make up a name, it sounds really made up. So I just usually just borrow a bunch of people's names. That makes sense. In this case, the therapist is someone who I know. Oh, that's cool. It's one of my favorite people, Amanda Parsons. Oh, that's cool. Like, she would have been just like that.

So it kind of helped me imagine like that particular sequence of events. because I just kind of thought, I mean, I know how Amanda was. That is fascinating. Because she felt so flushed out. So it makes sense that she was actually a real personal. Yeah. So the other thing that pops up a lot is Jesse mentioning going dim. So the idea is it reminded me of dissociation and also like just hiding in general.

It felt like kind of a blend of both of those. And then it kind of gets. brought up in multiple situations. So, like, when she's in the closet, literally because she's trapped there, she's in the dark. And then later she likes being in the dark in general as a cocaine mechanism. And then later she puts the case together in the dark. There's all the through lines of the darkness. And was that part of what made you kind of call it going dim? And did it also informed the title. Great questions.

Okay. Yeah. Like, that may be a level of sophistication that I don't have. Okay. To be completely candid. I like the idea of her kind of blending in. Yeah. And I think that sometimes people who are,

feel awkward or kind of unusual, like try to get into the background. In the very beginning when I was writing this story, I don't know that I quite had that concept completely figured out but I knew that I wanted her to be able to background herself somehow because she has to do some stuff where she's not noticed in order for the story to work because it ends up being what ends up saving her

when Ms. Parsons, her therapist, offers her food when specifically the Pop-Tart. She says, kindness can break your heart. I bite my lip because I want to cry so bad. And then later, at the very end, with Detective Marion, when they're at the dentist,

she's kind of like realizing how nice it is to be supported and to have some people that she can trust. So where I'm headed with this was kind of like amidst the thrill of the story. There's so much like an arc of learning that some people can be trusted and that it's worth it and that it's really beneficial. Was that part of what you were kind of thinking, like, in writing someone who came from a trauma like that?

Yeah. I mean, in a trauma like that, you would almost like have to reconstruct an entire world to operate. And knowing even how to think of other people. Yeah. After spending that amount of time, so disruptive. One thing that developmental psychologists have had to do in cases like that is figure out what wasn't acquired during like a critical time. And like for some kids, it kind of depends on when they were in isolation.

You know, it's almost like if you skip third grade, you miss out on long division, something like that. Right. And if you transfer schools at the wrong time, you realize like, oh, I never learned how to do A, B, and C. Yeah. It's kind of like that. but they just took like 13 months like just sliced out and some of that is like was in her adolescence when it would have been like a time when you were developing yeah yeah i i keep mentioning i've been in therapy that reminded me so much that especially you're like kind of

their end of my therapy my therapist was talking about how my the trauma and the wounds to heal were about what did happen and it was also about what didn't happen and so then it We were like focusing on like all the things that I didn't even realize I wasn't getting. That similarly made me a little bit distrustful. So that's why I connected with the book so much. Probably why I enjoyed everything like coming full circle and like also working to her advantage too. Because it's like that's uplifting to come from that stuff and still kind of wind up. I had hoped it would be.

Yeah. And in some ways it's a coming of age story. Right. Someone, like, told me, like, as it was coming out, like, you know, technically, this could be Y.A. Because she's 19. That's right. I know. I was noticed now when I just read it again. Yeah. She's very young. Yeah. In some ways, she's older than that age. In some ways, she's younger than that age.

That's a really good point. I see. I actually answered. I guess we've done well. I mean, we have done well. Some of your answers actually answered some of my other questions. I'm just seeing other ones. I mean, the last one I've hacked

was how much, and I've said it over and over again, how much I loved that she was able to solve the murder because of, like, her highly attuned senses that were in captivity. And it sounds like that was,

like, your beginning point since you were wanting to write about someone whose liability ended up saving them. Did you know that you wanted it to be, like, that her senses overdeveloped or did that just kind of come to you

as like a separate idea. Yeah. I've worked for a long time of the patient who's completely visually impaired and it is really true that like the other senses become very highly sensitive. And so I

did think like that would be kind of a cool element to it. And you know, I think especially with her attachment to those musicians, you know, a lot of people kind of find like attachment to a certain musician or certain artist, certain

songs, it's very emotional and like evocative about it's like a certain time in your life. If you hear a certain song and really transports you and people have an affection for musicians that they don't have for like other artists.

They like they hear a certain song and it is the song that was playing when something happens and it really brings out their heart. And so I kind of wanted, I feel like that. I certainly felt like that when I was young, very, very strong. So I wanted to, like, use that element of it too.

Yeah, that still happens for me. It was like, I was just hearing someone else talking about that on a podcast. That's how much, like, music is so tied to the time that it came out in your life. Yeah, for sure. Or like, this guy was talking about, like, there's a really happy song. I can't remember what it was. But it's like a really upbeat, poppy song. But it happened while he was going through his divorce.

And so, like, if he hears it, he's like, that just makes me sad. And everyone's like, but it's the best song ever. And he's like, but it came up for the worst time of my life. Yeah. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One question I didn't have one here. If it was going to be a TV show or a movie, do you know who you would cast either as just Jesse or a couple of, whatever? I have any characters.

Well, I would definitely cast my friend as Amanda Bards. Yes, that one. have to happen. I pictured Detective Marion being Mark Ruffalo. That works. I, for some reason, I don't know if you know the show Bones, but he reminded me of David Boreanas, but it's probably

because that guy's like an FBI agent, so I was just like mixing detectives together, but I didn't think that about him. Jesse's a little bit trickier since she does have to be short. I was thinking about that earlier, but maybe it could be like

anyone and then they do that stuff where they make people look shorter and taller based on standing. Finch would have to be someone who kind of looked perfect. Yeah. You know, like there was an actress.

The actress who was in, she's been in other things, but she was in Super 8. Okay. She's like the cool, like slightly older adolescent. Okay. Like, she looks pretty put together. Yeah.

It'd have to be somebody looked pretty polished. Yeah. That would make sense. Hopefully it does get turned to do this. Which would you, I'm assuming you would want that. Yeah.

I know, I know some random people are like, no. No, it would be great. That would be cool. What would you prefer? TV, show, or movie? Do you have a preference face off the movie?

A movie? Yeah. Yeah. I can't tell. Some books you really can't, like, it's like, the eight episode thing really works for it. But when I was rereading it this week,

I was realizing, how much happens in one day. I'd kind of forgotten that. Yeah. We read it. So it would probably be better as a, as a movie. Do you have anything else you want to talk about from the book? Gosh.

No, I, you know, it's funny, like, I feel we were talking before about, like, the timeframe of when things get going. Yes. And I feel like I'm at almost kind of jog my memory to talk about this book. Yes. Because I wrote it, like, pre-pandemic. That's why I was going to ask how long ago. It was probably a while ago then. It came out probably in the worst time in history to release a novel.

Did it really? Yeah. I feel like I got it around the time that it came out. Was it in January? It was in August of 20. Oh, so no, I didn't. So it was like the pandemic had shut everything down. Yep.

The presidential election was like ramping up. Yeah. And like it just felt like, Yeah. Chaos. It was tough. It was very chaotic at that point. It was tough.

Yeah. Well, where can people find you? Yeah. So Instagram is the best, like, probably the place around the most like present. Yeah. It's RJ Jacobs 75. And then I'm working with a different publisher now. I'm working with Source Books Landmark.

And pretty soon we're going to start to see like cover stuff from my new book. Nice. And it's called Always the First to Dot. That's exciting. So that'll be next year. Yeah, it'll be September. So maybe you'll have to come back and talk about that one. Yeah, I will.

Cool. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you.