Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
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Mindy: We're here with Caitlin Wahrer, author of The Damage which released on June 15 and Caitlin has written a really edgy, propulsive read. It's all about a small town family dealing with the aftermath of a brutal rape of one of their family members. But one of the things that makes this so interesting is that the victim is male. And as soon as I read the summary, I thought, oh well this is different. So I'm first of all just was so entranced by the description because it tackles something that is important to me, which of course is sexual assault and the aftermath and how it affects so many people, not just the victim. Then to kind of flip the script and have the victim be male, I thought was really pretty ingenious. So if you would like to talk a little bit about the book, The Damage and why you decided to approach it the way you did.
Caitlin: The first idea that I had was about a husband and wife, a problem that they were going to go through in terms of the wife realizing that her husband was going through a pretty negative change and was starting to feel vengeful about something and I thought, okay, so I'm going to give him a younger sibling but I don't want it to be a female. If I'm going to have a victim in the book, I want it to be male because I don't want to write female. And that was really how I started off with the very beginning of Nick's character. From there, I ended up deciding pretty cautiously to be honest, to write about sexual assault and just with each draft of the book, I would have someone else read it and be like, what do you think of this? And kind of talk to them about it. And with each draft, I decided okay, like I'm going to keep going with this version of the story.
But ultimately it really came from a place of almost feeling a little bit tired of reading about female victims and just wanting it to be different. But then once I had done that I realized I had set up this total need to talk about what Nick would be going through and maybe parts of it would be recognizable to victims of any gender. But some of it is kind of specific to male survivors or at least specific to like broad strokes what researchers say male survivors go through. It ended up being this really interesting, possibly important or at least hopefully done in a way that isn't harmful discussion of what a young man might experience after a sexual assault.
Mindy: You mentioned that you have done some research. Many of the things that Nick goes through are very similar to what a female would go through. So for example, just of course the feeling of being violated, but also that concern about, well I went willingly to this man's house, we had drinks together. Does it look bad that I was out cruising? That of course is universal. And as we all know, is the first thing that comes up in female rape case. What were you wearing? Where were you? How much had you had to drink? At what point did you remove consent? And is that even plausible? The similarities are definitely there. If you could talk a little bit about your research and the similarities between a female survivor and then of course the differences between a female and a male survivor of sexual assault.
Caitlin: I completely agree with what you said about some of the big similarities. I think that anyone who engages the criminal justice process, whether they do it voluntarily looking for justice or if it kind of happens without them even really almost consenting to the fact that there is now going to be a criminal procedure. You know, a lot of times people aren't really told what it's going to entail, how long it's going to take, what possible outcomes are. And in the case of this story, it really gets kicked off because Nick's friends call the police on their way to the hospital. And so he feels like he didn't even really decide to involve the police, it happened there. Here and now he feels the need to deal with it. But also, I think that no matter who you are, if you engage the criminal process, a big part of what happens is your story just gets completely picked apart and almost removed from you in the sense that people are interviewing you, they really want to make sure that your statements are consistent.
So you're almost getting cross examined when you're getting interviewed, depending on how the interviewer handles the situation. Some do it differently, but it's kind of common, at least for detectives or police officers, Sheriff's deputies, whoever is doing it in that jurisdiction to kind of really be needling almost the survivor about what happened because they know that a defense attorney is going to do the same thing later on. Criminal procedures tend to kind of be a zero sum game from the defense perspective. Not always, not every defense attorney, but I do think that that's a huge part of what happens. And so that part of the experience can be re-traumatizing and really brutal and unhelpful no matter who you are. So that's another thing that I think is really similar regardless of your gender.
But one thing that I kind of realized as I just read things over the years that I worked on the book and eventually started reading textbooks almost about male survivors, how it impacts their view of themselves as men. And this is not universal at all. But a common thing that this textbook was talking about and that I read in other places is this idea that men in America and probably lots of other places grow up with this really strong message about what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine, you're a winner. You end fights, you are sexually aggressive and sexually available, always. You are kind of supposed to be physically dominant and being sexually victimized by someone is the antithesis of a lot of that messaging that men get. It also really impacts their views of themselves as men and women definitely have their own things that they would struggle with. It's not exactly that because that's not the messaging that they're getting.
And so that was something that I realized was kind of missing in the story that it would be really natural that Nick would probably struggle with that, especially given how his brother was acting in the wake of the crime, trying to fix everything, really micromanaging him and breathing down his neck about what Nick wants and what he thinks Nick wants and not listening to him. And so Nick loses a lot of agency throughout the story. And some of it I think naturally is tied to his view of himself as a man.
Mindy: That's one of the, I think the biggest things that comes into it as far as the differences. I just very recently finished listening to Missoula by Jon Krakauer. The football team was basically sexually assaulting people left and right and they weren't getting reported or it was being brushed under the rug. One of their administrations even just referred to it as thuggery. One of the things that was really interesting to me listening to that book, like it was very, very difficult to listen to because for one thing they examined very carefully, two or three different cases. One of them, the assailant did end up serving hard time and in another got off like scot free. And what you're talking about with the absolute picking apart of the story and everyone being asked for the most extreme details, not only intimate details, but also - did you ask before you changed positions, did you consent to change? Like questions that are highly detailed about things that you may not be making a note of in the moment and they’re you know, intense moments anyway.
And I think for me, one of the things while reading your book that stood out was the fact that Nick, as I said before is dealing with a lot of the same when it comes to similar reactions of how much of this is my fault and was I consenting to a point? Now with Nick, it's a little different because he is assaulted. He's hit on the head before the crime actually commences so he doesn't have to work quite so hard to establish himself as an unwilling participant. However, just the fact that he is male brings it back to - for women if they freeze and they're asked why didn't you scream? Why didn't you fight back? You know, the answer is like I'm paralyzed with fear, but for a man like you were saying you're supposed to fight back, like fighting is your instinct, you know, why didn't that happen?
Caitlin: I kind of made a point because I was using the internet also the way that there would be a newspaper article published online and there's always a comment section and those comments sections are just the worst places on the planet basically. And I kind of felt like that was a really natural place for people to be almost kind of putting some of that toxic masculine ideas out there of like - is it even really believable that he was unconscious from being hit on the head? Do we even believe that part of it? He probably did consent to all of this, and then he made up a story, or maybe he was actually so drunk and embarrassed that he couldn't hold his liquor, like, just kind of all of this trash that people in real life post on these stories. But in this case they're posting in about a man and the different things that they would think about that, and also some comments about the fact that he's a gay man, all of that kind of coming out and being part of what Nick is dealing with the anxiety and additional trauma around the event, knowing that people think that kind of stuff about him and are talking about it and wondering if it's going to impact the outcome of the case, and does it even matter? It's impacting him right now.
Mindy: Right. I thought too, one of the things that really got my attention was the pattern for the assailant is still very similar because they talk about this man who has done this before, who is looking for younger men who may not necessarily be out, and so he knows that if he can attack these people, the possibility of the crime actually being reported is lower. Of course they have the toxic masculinity to deal with, but they're also making that want to even be reporting well, I was in this bar, because we know that’s a gay bar. The similarities between when rapists are on the hunt or kind of picking out someone they might be interested in using as a victim, looking for someone that maybe is younger, a little more insecure, a little more naive. I thought it was interesting the way those elements stay static.
Caitlin: It felt like that was at least somewhat natural to do. Although I think that it's also possible that men who sexually assault other men, maybe there are some different characteristics for them. I think that they're also just not really talked about and researched as much, you know. But I did think that in some cases that I have read about or I've you know read books where a man wrote an account after the fact, it did seem like those kinds of things were just like you said static, similar people who do this are doing it for a reason that doesn't really have anything to do with who you are as the victim. They're just picking you out. Thinking this is gonna work for me to get away with this.
Mindy: Easy prey.
Caitlin: Yeah.
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Mindy: One of the things that I liked so much about the book was showing those ripples throughout a group setting, a family dynamic where everybody is affected by this because I don't think that we as a society, no matter what the gender of the victim is, I don't think that we really give enough weight to how this radiates outwardly from that person, how this one event impacts so many people. And one of the things in particular that was almost in another way, kind of another gender flip that I thought was really interesting - the older brother who is married to Julia is having a hard time thinking about Julia now because she used to be a defense lawyer, and she in her past has defended rapists as a defense lawyer for the state.
And it begins to kind of chip away for him at this trust that had been in this marriage and now he has to think of his wife as someone in the past has been on the side, because the definition of her job, of the assailant. And they have multiple conversations where he's kind of picking at that and and and asking himself, you know, who is this person that is my wife, that if the straw were drawn differently, she would be defending the man who raped my little brother? And that's one of the relationships that is negatively affected by this event. So if you could talk a little bit about how that just radiates out and affects so many aspects of course, of the survivors life, but then those around them.
Caitlin: I love the example that you picked out because I really liked writing that I think because I was a defense attorney. And so I think that maybe even Tony's point of view is somewhat maybe a more critical side of myself looking at myself. But at the same time, I agree with Julia that defense attorneys are completely constitutionally necessary. And so that was a really interesting thing to write. And it definitely, like you said, as Tony becomes more and more angry and dysfunctional about what has happened and what is continuing to happen as the process goes on, he feels like he can't talk to Julia because she's not going to get it because of her history. At the same time, Julia is feeling like Tony's being totally unreasonable and she can't share everything with him because he's in such an unreasonable place.
And so their communication completely breaks down over the course of the book and I think that you definitely see little snippets of how it impacts their kids, but I didn't focus on that too heavily. Also how it impacts the relationship between Nick and the friend he was with at the bar when he went home with the man. He feels like it had nothing to do with her, but she seems to feel guilty about it and that just makes him feel tired, and like it's worse that she's acting like she has anything to do with it. And it really just kind of their relationship falls apart and maybe he does have some anger at her once he starts to really process it.
And then at the same time Nick and Tony have a father in common and they each have mothers and Julia has a mom. And so the extended family all become impacted. I think for me as a former attorney, most of what I did really was an adult criminal law, it was juvenile defense. And so that's just defending kids, mostly teenagers who were charged with crimes. And I also did a lot of child protection work. So that's cases where the state steps in to protect a child in a home. With those kinds of cases, everything that I worked on was impacting a family unit. That's kind of just how I've grown to see a single criminal act impacts so many different people and how that family unit responds to the, either the criminal act or maybe an allegation of child neglect or allegation of child abuse, whatever it is, it's how that family functions or doesn't function that can determine so much of how that case ends.
Because even in juvenile cases, although sometimes we're looking at punishing a juvenile for specifically what they did or did not do during that moment of the alleged criminal act, a lot of it depends on their conduct after the fact. So even if they did something quite damaging, if they go through a whole year of therapy, they might end up not having a criminal record that's going to follow them into adulthood. Whereas if they do something really small, but then they're violating their terms of conditions of release for the next whole year, they might end up with something that's going to follow them because they just weren't doing what the court wanted them to do. And so I'm just really used to seeing things as how is the family handling the situation? How are they supporting each other or how are they falling apart? How are they negatively impacting each other? And what is that doing to what the process is going to look like as we go forward?
Mindy: And it has such a huge impact. I worked in a high school for 14 years. So I know that when you have situations like that, I don't think we give enough credit to Children often about what they do and do not understand what they can process or what they're capable of, but I also think at times it goes the other way where we we forget that you know, a 16, 17 18 year old is still a kid and are like completely overwhelmed by so many things.
Caitlin: Totally, totally. And I think for me at least coming from that background, even though Nick is a 20 year old man, I think of him still as being a kid in certain ways. Like when I think about young men, I always think about not having your frontal lobes and what a difference that makes the part of your brain that helps you say pause - is this really a good idea? I'm having a really impulsive desire to do something. In Nick's case to me what's being impacted by his not being fully developed as an adult is later in the book, he really struggles with self harm and just kind of like impulsive desires to cause harm to himself because of what's happened and he's really not able to pause and stop himself. And I think that that's really realistic and I saw that in young men sadly as in my job.
Mindy: It’s really interesting that you included that aspect, especially of youth because you're right, we aren't fully developed mentally for a while, even though we are legally adults, I don't know that the brain can really align with that moment of turning 18 and suddenly know you're an adult now!
Caitlin: Totally. I agree with you. Yeah. I think it's like 26 or maybe it's 24, I can't remember .but it's well into your twenties for most male brains at least to finalize all of the structures of their brain.
Mindy: Yes, it is. And I know that I personally, I tell people often, I don't feel Like I really knew who I was or what I wanted until I was probably 30. I think it's an interesting kink that you threw there where the victim’s also quite young and maybe in some ways not even fully capable of processing what has actually happened to them. Initially Nick just keeps insisting. No, I'm fine. Like even the morning after when people are in the hospital with him and his face is smashed and he's like, I'm fine.
Caitlin: I think that's really common. I think that happens also for adults, sometimes it's partly, you know, the trauma of very, very slowly being able to understand almost or at least acknowledge what has just happened. But definitely I think a huge part of it too is that throughout the whole book and from that very first interaction, Tony is making his younger brother feel like a kid the whole time they're interacting and it's the last thing that actually wants.
Mindy: You got a blurb from Stephen King. Congratulations!
Caitlin: Oh my gosh, thank you.
Mindy: That's a nice little feather in your cap. How did you go about making that happen?
Caitlin: I feel like I can't even take credit for it. My editor, I don't know if she sent him a letter or just an email or how it happened, but I think it was my editor Pam Dorman who reached out to him and what I kind of have heard through the grapevine after the fact from someone else is that he's really good to debut authors. He knows what it was like to be a total newbie in this really scary book world and he knows how much a review from him means. And so I think that it was probably just an act of kindness and maybe maybe the Maine connection too, because I was born here. I still live here. That might have been it too.
But all I know is that it was just like the most exciting thing. So I actually just had a baby five weeks ago and I think I was like maybe I had her a matter of days after he gave the blurb. And my husband and I were just like, the whole day that it had happened, we were like you're going to just go into labor today out of excitement, that’s what's going to happen! But it happened a few days later, but still, I was just like, I was like over the moon, I couldn't, I genuinely love him so much and I have been reading his stuff and listening to his lectures and I love his books. I used to think he was too scary for me but in the last few years I started reading him and I was like, oh no, actually I love this.
Mindy: I’m not even pregnant and I think if Stephen King blurbed me I'd go into labor.
Caitlin: Right? You would just like have a baby?
Mindy: Yeah, I would just have a baby. Well, congratulations. That's truly amazing. I agree. I've never had the opportunity to meet Stephen King but I have heard that he is extremely kind, very generous to new authors, aware of his own position and status and how he can kind of confer that onto others. So that's super cool. Last thing, why don't you let my listeners know where they can find you online and where they can find the book The Damage.
Caitlin: I think that both my Instagram and Twitter handles are just my name, Caitlin Wahrer, which is C A I T L I N W A H R E R My facebook, I have a Facebook page that I neglect but it does exist and I try to post every now and then. And that is also just my name. I think you can buy The Damage. just about anywhere. A lot of our local bookstores in Maine have it. So definitely if you love supporting your local bookstores, you can check Indie Bound. It's also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Books a Million and probably other places that I'm forgetting.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.
