writing self-destruction, exploring grief, and hiring an outside publicist

Kate Brody on her debut, RABBIT HOLE

I interviewed Kate Brody about her debut literary suspense novel RABBIT HOLE, which was published in January 2024 and has been put on oodles of booklists (Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Independent, CrimeReads, Jennette McCurdy’s bookclub, it goes on!).

Kate took the time to answer all of the questions I word-vomited at her the second I finished reading, even the one where I basically asked her if she is self destructive. Kate, I love you, you are awesome!

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Caitlin: Here’s my best attempt at a pitch/set-up for your novel: RABBIT HOLE is a literary suspense that centers on late-twenties Teddy, ten years after her half-sister Angie disappeared one night. On the ten-year anniversary of Angie’s disappearance, Teddy’s father (Angie’s stepfather) kills himself. While cleaning his study, Teddy discovers that her father had been trying to solve Angie’s disappearance, and Teddy finds herself falling down the same rabbit hole, searching for her sister as she grieves everything she’s lost. 

How’d I do? When you’re asked to describe your book, do you focus on the set-up, or more on literary merit and character exploration?

Kate: You did great! Way better than I usually do. I tend to emphasize the literary elements of the story, only because it’s really not a straight-down-the-middle mystery, and I don’t want to mislead anyone. I also tend to highlight that RABBIT HOLE is, at its heart, a book about grief. It’s dark; it’s unsettling. It’s not a popcorn thriller, even though I hope the sexier plot elements (Reddit, the disappearance, etc.) help to propel the story along.

Literary indeed: the character development in your book is very strong. I loved how Teddy did things that were, at turns, totally understandable and totally unthinkable, and yet always seemed realistic for a young person who had suffered so much loss. As you wrote Teddy, did you find yourself trying to understand her, or were you connected to her in a way that you always understood why she was doing what she did?

I am very sympathetic to Teddy. I always understood her. I have a real self-destructive streak, so writing Teddy was a way for me to explore that and take it to an extreme. I’m also not my best self when I’m grieving, and I didn’t want to shy away from the uglier parts of her story. So many terrible things have happened to Teddy, but I couldn’t have her be some perfect, passive victim. It just wouldn’t have been interesting to me. She needed to meet that tragedy with some grit and some coarseness of her own.

You mention your two sisters in your acknowledgments and how they were the reason you’re “so obsessed with writing about sisters.” What was it like for you, putting yourself in the headspace of a woman who had lost her only sister?

I live in fear of something terrible happening to the people I love. I lost my dad pretty young, when I was in high school, and it really shaped my brain. I think about death a lot. Aside from my kids and my husband, my sisters are the most important people in my life. One of them lives about a mile from me, and we’re pretty co-dependent. I would be lost without her. Fictionally, I find sibling relationships to be great fodder, because they’re so unique. It’s not a relationship predicated on promises, like a marriage. It’s not voluntary in that way. It’s not as directional as a parent-child relationship. You’re on much more equal footing. Plus, your siblings are the only people who share your memories. Teddy losing her sister would mean losing the only witness to her childhood. There’s something very odd about the prospect of growing old, while your big sister stays forever 18. There’s so much tragedy in that, especially when Teddy’s left with these complicated memories of adolescent strife. She can’t honestly participate in Angie’s hagiography.

Teddy narrates the story in first person, and through her own word choices she seems cognizant that she is letting herself sink deeper into grief and dysfunction. When she was drinking, being intentionally cruel, or inviting sex that she thinks is unhealthy. What is it about grief, or maybe self-destruction, that interests you? (Can delete if too personal…I feel like it’s a very personal question now that I’m looking at it, but I’m just going to boldly ask it, PLEASE skip if you don’t want to answer!)

Ha! It’s fine. My twenties were a fairly self-destructive time. Not that I was trying to die. If anything, I think those tendencies (to drink too much, to court danger, to ruin things that were good in my life) was somehow the flipside of a very intense will to live. They felt connected to my desire for love and my ambition. I can’t quite explain it. Death drive/Eros type dichotomy, I guess. 

And Teddy has a hard time talking about her feelings or even letting herself feel them, so she needs these outlets. In those moments where she loses control, I think the reader really understands how much she’s hurting and how much she wants someone–anyone, really–to come take care of her. 

There’s also a thing when you’re grieving, I’ve found, where the pain feels good. It feels like love. You can get a little addicted to that.

Author photo by Sally Sum

I absolutely LOVED the part of your acknowledgements where you spoke to your two kids, and how you said that you were “tempted to say that [you] wrote this novel in spite of [them],” but the truth was, you “never wrote with more focus than after [they] were born.” I read this and thought: holy shit, I think that’s true for me, too. Can you talk a little more about how having children changed your writing?

I think there are two ways that my kids changed my writing. The first is just logistical. They are, on their cute little faces, the enemy of work. Children are highly, highly time-intensive, and so is writing. So that’s just a fundamental conflict. I don’t have a ton of advice for how to navigate that other than just do your best and white knuckle your way through. Right now, I’m working on a second book that is only possible because I have three hours a day carved out where my older kid is at school, and my husband is playing man-on-man with the toddler, keeping him out of my hair.

I thought a lot about that change before my kids arrived. But I didn’t realize that I would also feel more motivated to write, and that my increased focus would cancel out the logistical concerns. I found that when my son was born I really needed him to know me as a writer. Not when he was a baby and not necessarily now (he’s five), but one day. I love being these kids’ mom, but I am not happy with “mom” as a full identity. The transition to parenthood made that crystal clear. It could have gone the other way! I was worried I’d find writing very pointless after I had kids, but I don’t.

RABBIT HOLE is set in coastal Maine, in a small town that seems thrashed by the opioid epidemic and dependent on summer tourism. As I read, I thought it was wholly possible you lived in Maine or maybe were raised here. (I was born and raised in central Maine, and now I live in southern Maine.) In the spirit of NOT being an internet creep, I only briefly looked at your website to see if it mentioned where you live: California. Why did you set this story where you did? 

I’m always so pleased when someone thinks I might be from Maine! I’m from New Jersey, originally, which for years seemed too pedestrian to be a setting. I had a fascination with Maine as a kid, and I wanted something that felt Gothic for this book–dark woods, rocky coasts, etc. A lot of the tourism/opioid things that Teddy sees happening in her town are things that I witnessed happening in New Jersey. Now that I live in LA, I can see all the things that are strange about NJ, so that’s the setting for my next book.

Next book?!

I’m working on a book called HEATHENS. I’m feeling good about it right now. I finished a draft before RABBIT HOLE came out, but I’m rewriting it, using Matt Bell’s REFUSE TO BE DONE method. The book follows two sisters, Mac and Casey, across two timelines. In the first, they are growing up in NJ in the 90s, and they are trying to escape from their abusive mother and start a grunge band. In the second timeline, in the late aughts, they are reunited after an act of violence has separated them for many years. Mac, the former prodigy, is now down on her luck (to put it mildly), and Casey, her younger sister, is a successful artist. But Casey is hiding the fact that her success is built on work she stole from her sister. It’s about art and ambition and love and betrayal.

C’MON, that sounds good!!

RABBIT HOLE launched in January, and now it’s May. What was your experience like, seeing your first novel published? 

There was a really long run-up to January 2024 where I was feeling very anxious. But once the book came out, it was great. We were lucky to get some good coverage, and Soho did a really wonderful job with everything on their end. I had a few great events with writers I really admire, and now I’m trying to transition from PR mode back to writing mode. One thing that’s nice about publishing a book–at least for me: it reminded me that writing is really what makes me happy.

Speaking of PR mode, I’m curious: you hired an outside publicist? What has that experience been like? 

It was really helpful! I was trying to do a lot of PR work on my own (searching for outlets, finding contacts, writing pitches), and I found it was a full-time job. So hiring Alisha Gorder was a great move. She really helped me get the book into people’s hands and brainstorm creative ways to talk about different elements of the story.

Last question: This Substack is mainly focused on books that fall under the giant umbrella that is suspense. Any recent or upcoming reads under that umbrella that you’d like to shout out to our readers?

Yes! I recently read and loved BOY PARTS by Eliza Clark. I’ve been recommending it to friends as American Psycho for girls. I love, love, loved Lindsay Hunter’s HOT SPRINGS DRIVE. It really spoke to me as a mom and a pediatric Weight Watchers survivor. And I’m up-to-date on the latest Tana French, who can do no wrong, in my opinion.