Mindy: Today’s guest is Stephanie Wrobel, whose debut novel, Darling Rose Gold, is available now. Stephanie joined me today to talk about her research involving Munchausen syndrome by proxy in order to write her novel.
We're here today to talk about your new novel, Darling Rose Gold, which has gotten a lot of buzz already. A lot of people are talking about it, say that it will appeal to fans of Fiona Barton, Lionel Shriver, Riley Segar, anybody that likes true crime stories as well. So to start, why don't you just tell us a little bit about Darling Rose Gold and what it is about?
Stephanie: Sure. So it's the story of a mother and daughter named Patty and Rose Gold Watts. And unbeknownst to Rose Gold, her mother had been poisoning her for her entire childhood for 18 years. And so Patty goes to prison for these abuses, and my book starts with Patty getting out of prison. Ah, at which point the now adult Rose Gold makes this sort of calculated decision to take her in. And then it becomes, ah, battle of wits as we try to figure out what each of these characters want.
Mindy: And it is very much about Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which I know some of my listeners might be familiar with. But if you could talk a little bit about what M. S B. P is?
Stephanie: Sure. So it's a mental health illness where a caregiver fakes or induces illness in the person that they're caring for, which is often a child.
Mindy: In order to gain attention for themselves and sympathy for themselves. Correct?
Stephanie: Yes, exactly. To gain attention or love from the medical community. So usually doctors and nurses.
Mindy: Darling Rose Gold is different from other books that talk about Munchausen's syndrome by proxy because of the fact that you you open with that reveal that this is in fact, what happened, and it's more about the path forward in this case.
Stephanie: What I was really interested in doing is examining the why. Why perpetrators do this. Do they know that they're lying? Do they think that they're doing what's best for their kids? And so in order to do that, I feel like you kind of had to be up front, you know, at the beginning and say, Hey, these are the things that Patty has been accused of have been convicted of. And that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the novel.
Mindy: I'm sure you probably had to do a lot of research in order to write this.
Stephanie: Yeah, I read some memoirs. I read some news articles. I read a medical textbook, and all of that really helped to form these general profiles of both perpetrators and survivors of the abuse. And then, from there I was able to take it and flush them out and make them my own characters.
Mindy: And this is also told in alternating viewpoints. So I think that is particularly, I think, challenging as a writer because as a writer you have to create sympathy for your characters on some level, even if it isn't this complete - yes, I'm on your side. You at least have to create - Okay, I understand why you did this, whether I agree with it or not. And I think that's something that, in my experience as a reader, simply, in reading the Game of Thrones books, which I read back in the nineties, I love to tell everyone I was way ahead of you.
But I thought that George R. R. Martin did such a good job with the character of Cersei, and that we absolutely hate her. We find her despicable until we get her POV chapters and when we get them. And I think that wasn't until the third book might have been the second. But when we get Cersei's POV. As a mother and you see that everything she has done it was for the, you know, the benefit of her Children. You begin to, if not necessarily sympathize with her, at least understand. So is that a challenge for you? As you are writing, Patty?
Stephanie: I think, Yeah, that's a really good parallel example. I am also a huge Game of Thrones fan and yes, you you got there before me. But I agree. You see some relatable sides of her in the show, but certainly not as much as you do in the books. Of course, there's much more room for character development in those giant bricks of books that they are. Getting back to Patty. Yes, it was. It was a bit of a challenge, but I think I just tried to put myself in her shoes and think somebody with this syndrome would be minimizing the terrible things they're doing and really focusing on the image of the perfect mother and caring for your child, and so that that's what I tried to do.
And also just really focus on the parts of Patty that do make her a little more relatable, or human, such as her own terrible childhood or her legitimate concern, when Rose Gold was first born about her well being and you know she was having these breathing problems. And I think that vulnerability, it's probably pretty universal with new parents, where they just are almost frantic, with worry of wanting to make sure that their newborn is okay and so by emphasizing those things, I think, instead of making it into this sort of like one dimensional villain who's just like bad all the time.
Mindy: Motherhood is so complicated, it's complicated on so many levels, and we see, of course, today with everything that's going on with the Corona virus, we see people behaving badly in many cases, and I try not to get caught up in media cycles. But, you know, a lot of people are posting about people that are hoarding or people that are over buying toilet paper, for one thing. But other things as well. The first thing on my mind is I wonder how many of them are mothers, mothers that are panicking and are just doing... they're literally going like, you know, Nature Channel. I'm hoarding for mine and my own and my nest.
Stephanie: It comes out in a different action. But it is a primal urge and just this sort of maternal instinct to protect your young at like whatever costs. I'm not a mother, but I know it from watching my own mother from watching my sister, who has a baby, and it's just it does feel like this sort of biological pull.
Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's what I always tell people. In one of my my first novels, It actually takes place during an apocalyptic situation, and the mother character in that story is very primal and more or less like, shuts down her household and is teaching her daughter how to use a sniper rifle and protect their water source.
And so many people have e mailed me and just been like, Oh my gosh, she's such a terrible character. She teaches her daughter how to kill and not to love. And I'm like, Well, but look at the environment. It's like she's teaching her daughter how to survive. That's what she's doing. She's being an awesome mom. Teaching her love and kindness is going to get her ass killed, Right? So that is one of the things that you know, I think about when I think about motherhood. But Munchausen's syndrome syndrome by proxy, which is... are you... do you practice saying that so that you say it right every time?
Stephanie: I've started abbreviating it to MSBP. Once I say it once, I'm like, Okay, I got it out once.
Mindy: Okay, I'm gonna follow your lead, then. Okay, So when you were researching M S B P, did you come across anything that, like, surprised you because of so many stories that are already out there? What kind of preconceived notions did you have and were any of them corrected or had to be updated by your research?
Stephanie: Yes. So I didn't know a ton going in. But my friend, who's an elementary school psychologist, was the one who introduced me to the syndrome. And I think my biggest surprise was that it's usually women and often mothers who have this illness. I mean, I knew that it was frequently parents, but I definitely didn't realize that it was almost always women. That really intrigued me, not only because of the mother child bond that we've been talking about, but also, you know, when we think of violent abuse like it's, you know, women are not usually typically the ones committing the majority of it. And so that really made me want to dig in and find out what you know, what's happening with these women, that they're doing something that's so outside of normalcy.
Mindy: You mentioned to that Patty in the book has a history of suffering abuse herself. So did you find in your research that that tends to be something that crops up, that the the mothers that are victimizing their children suffered some sort of abuse themselves? Is that typical?
Stephanie: Yes, that's almost universally true from the research that I've done. It's either some sort of abuse or really severe neglect. Almost all of these perpetrators.
Mindy: You said that a friend of yours introduced you to the concept when you were working on this novel? Did you write at the same time that you were researching? Or did you research first and then dive into the fictional aspect?
Stephanie: No, I really did all of the research first, because I just felt like I needed to do a deep dive into who the perpetrators and victims are. Um, I feel like doing the fictional character development was hard enough, so I think like doing the more clinical research aspects of it would have been hard to do at the same time while developing the characters.
Mindy: And did you yourself as a writer, have trouble sympathizing with Patty or is that easier once you had done the research?
Stephanie: I think it was easier once I'd done the research and I think, you know, like I said, just kind of minimizing the bad parts and not really focusing on that. The abuse is not really on the page. It's sort of just summarized what's happened in the past. Yeah, you know, in order to become her, I just kind of I focused on the best parts of her a lot of the time. I mean, the reader knows that she's horrible, and I don't think that that that I mean, I think realistically, somebody with this syndrome would not be sitting there thinking about the atrocities they committed. You know? They would be right thinking about everything else that they want, the things that are motivating them to do it.
Mindy: And the motivations are what is most important with any character and in any fiction, always motivation is what matters. But at the same time, when your motivation is going to result in harming someone else, that is a trick as a writer to create that sympathy and in a reader, connect for someone. So hats off to you. That's a that's a tough one.
Mindy: Coming up, how being a copywriter and having an MFA helped Stephanie Transition into the publishing world.
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Mindy: You're a former advertising copywriter. So I know that is very different from writing fiction. So could you talk a little bit for listeners that don't know what is advertising Copy writing?
Stephanie: Sure. So any time you see a TV spot or hear radio ads, somebody had to write those. And so that's what copywriters and advertising do. There's also print ads and billboards and all the digital stuff you see online. Um, copywriters do all of that stuff. And so it was. It was very different, but it was also really good training for fiction writing because, you know, you are coming up with sort of fictional worlds and writing scripts and those kinds of things, and it really teaches you the art of concession and getting rid of extraneous copy and dialogue and all of that stuff. So I like to think that it actually, like, prepared me well for this.
Mindy: And did it also prepare you just in a marketing sense? You have your marketing chops now, right? It's like you already know how to market in a sense. I know that a lot of fiction writers come into that area of publishing really not knowing what's up and and really stumbling in that arena. So have you found it's helpful to you in that way?
Stephanie: I think so. I mean, I think just having a general understanding of marketing, Certainly there's a lot of nuance that's very specific to the publishing industry that I didn't know. And I think actually, I kind of thought writing an agent query like that won't be so bad like I've done, you know, I've written this kind of stuff before. But it turns out it's still pretty challenging. Even if you do have, ah, marketing background. I mean, I think summarizing you know 90,000 words into a few paragraphs is a challenge, particularly when you came up with the 90,000 words. So I still had my fair share of struggles.
Mindy: Oh, definitely that query letter. And that's what I'm always trying to tell people, because often, and I'm sure that you experience this, too. People ask, you know, how do you go about getting published? How do I get published? And I'm like, Well, it depends, of course, on what route you want to go, but when you want to be published by a traditional publisher, you have to start with a query letter.
And I usually say what you have to do is right a letter that's about 300 words long and make your book sound like the most interesting story that's ever been told and yourself sound like the most fascinating person that ever existed. And you have 300 words, and usually they're just like, Oh, and then they're like, I thought you just, like, mailed the book to the publisher and they printed it and I'm like, no, that's not right.
Stephanie: Wouldn't that be nice, though?
Mindy: Oh, maybe. Maybe not. Because I have some pretty bad books that I had faith in 10, 15 years ago that I might have just ripped right off. And ah, there would be some pretty bad stuff circulating with my name on it. So I don't know. Perhaps I was saved, saved by the walls that were put up to prevent me from printing really bad fiction.
Stephanie: Yeah, that's a good point, I think. You know, with the query letter. It is, ah, daunting exercise to do, but there's so much stuff online now. I like Query Shark a lot. I don't know if you're familiar with it. But this agent, Janet Reid, who does who's been doing this blog for like decades now. And I just found those archives so helpful and just starting to practice and writing your query letter like long before you actually want to send it. Ah, lot of what I discovered as I was going through the Query Shark archives were people saying they read half the blog in one night and the other half the second night and like now they're ready to write the letter and send it off. And it's like I just kind of treated it as another writing project. And I worked, like, slowly shaped it over the course of I don't know, four or five months. And you know, once you know what the premise of your book is, I think you can start practicing your query letter.
Mindy: Yeah, absolutely. And practicing is correct. That's the right word to use there by all means. I was querying for 10 years, and that's because I wasn't doing it right. And I was just, you know, doing like you said. I was just crash coursing and ripping something off because as a student in high school, I could get away with that right? I could get away with cramming and regurgitating and, you know, get straight A's and kind of sailed through. It doesn't work that way when you're, when you're moving into the adult world. There's a real craft in a particular craft to writing a query letter, and I tripped myself up. It's hard enough anyway. And then I tripped myself up by going in guns blazing and, you know, ripping off some really terrible query letters just being overconfident. But, I mean, that's the thing about being a writer. You can't go into it saying and I'm gonna fail.
Stephanie: Yeah, I mean, you have to have some sort of, like, delusional level of hope in order to even try at this thing that... I think you know, when you're talking about writing like a 300 word email, it doesn't seem like it should take that long, given that you've presumably just finished writing again, 80 or 90,000 words. But I do think, but sometimes that can be just as hard as you know, writing the last page of the middle of your book or whatever, so I think it does require a lot of thought and examination, which is the last thing you want to do when you're also writing a book. But it's a really important step.
Mindy: Absolutely. So you have your MFA. So why don't you talk a little bit... and I know that darling Rose Gold was actually your MFA thesis. And it is your first novel. So why don't you talk a little bit about the experience of getting an MFA and ah, developing this novel then as your thesis?
Stephanie: Sure. So I was between jobs, between freelance jobs for quite a period of time in advertising, and I kind of felt like, Well, I don't have anything to lose right now, So I might as well finally give writing a novel, a try. And for me personally, I'm a super structured and organized thinker. I've always done well with a plan. And so I thought an MFA program would be a good way to expedite my learning of the craft.
I hadn't really been seriously working on fiction at that point. I was just kind of plodding along in my advertising jobs and just leaving the writing dream on the back burner. So I went to Emerson College in Boston, and it was basically a crash course in fiction writing. I was very lucky too, really early on, connect with this professor who became my thesis advisor, and she really shepherded me all the way through the process from page one in our workshop to the very end as my thesis at the end of the program. I submitted it as my thesis, and then a few professors thought it looked kind of agent ready and suggested that I take it out. And so I did.
Mindy: And then, at the end of your MFA experience, did anything about what you were doing with the book change. I mean, it's got a great hook, and it's very high concept and marketable. But was there anything about what you turned in as a thesis that changed then, in order to make it a sellable novel?
Stephanie: The one thing I would say that my once I signed with my agent that she encouraged was just, there were a few small plot hole things that we kind of took care of. And then it was just kind of evening out the voice. So there were places where Rose Gold was perhaps like too crude or places where she was like too passive. And so that was always like my biggest struggle with this book was getting Rose Gold's voice just right, and I continued to work on that with my editors. When I you know, once the book had sold.
Mindy: And did you find that it changed much from, Ah, your editors, as opposed to your professor's feedback, then from your MFA program?
Stephanie: The professors had a lot more work to do because they were dealing with a much less polished document. So by the time it got to my editors, it was more kind of finessing vs, getting rid of huge like sections or chapters. But a lot of it was kind of in service to the same thing, which was just pushing the characters, pushing the voices and just tightening up some of this stuff.
Mindy: What was that experience then moving from the academic area than into the publishing? Like you already had this marketing background from being a copywriter, but you're jumping into the query process and finding an agent. What was that transition like going from the academic realm then moving into the publishing world?
Stephanie: I think actually it wasn't too rough of a transition because my background is closer to the publishing world than it is to the academic world in time. I did my FMA program kind of late, so I hadn't been a student, like I hadn't been in college in you know, 10 years or something. And so I was pretty primed by the time I was finished with school. I think it was actually more of an adjustment when I started the MFA versus when I came out of it as a kind of reframe being a student and being in academia. And so the concept of selling and especially like you said with the marketing advertising background, it was just a matter for me of finding the tools of finding out what I needed to do in order to get an agent and to get a publishing deal and then just kind of executing on that.
Mindy: And how long were you querying then?
Stephanie: It actually went really shockingly smoothly. From the time I sent the first query out, it took about a month, to sign with my agent.
Mindy: Who is your agent?
Stephanie: My agent is Maddie Melbourne. Sh's UK based, and so am I. So that's really nice to be able to see her in person all the time. And I actually did query both U S and U K agents, but, you know, in the end, just her track record and just she as a person is lovely. And I just felt like we had the same level of ambition for my career. And so we just got out really well from the beginning.
Mindy: Being based in the UK, I know you had tours set up all across the United States that I am assuming have been canceled now. So that's a bummer. I mean, I'm dealing with the same thing. I was supposed to be on the road this entire month and that all, that all disappeared. It is what it is. So are you, kind of recouping by doing interviews like this by having a social media presence. I know it is very difficult right now to make yourself heard and seen, but the good news is that we're producing content for people that like to be at home. So this could be a golden hour.
Stephanie: Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, it's obviously unprecedented, So who knows what will come of it and how it will turn out? I mean, it would be amazing if all of these cancellations at least resulted in because people are at home, they're reading more books, but that remains to be seen. My team and I are still sort of pivoting and figuring out, you know, do we do more virtual events? You know, do we do with stuff on Instagram or Facebook? Or, you know, what can we do where? And we're kind of like right in the middle of figuring that out.
I mean the book, my book just came out yesterday, and so the tour, I think I found out, you know, early this week or maybe late last week, that the tour was being canceled. Um, so it's a bummer not to be able to celebrate with friends and family, but I think it's also a very interesting challenge to see what we can do. Instead, when people are confined to their homes.
Mindy: In the past, you know, few years audiobooks having exploded, and people, of course, if they're stuck in their homes, they can still download books, so we still have a line on our public. And as long as the Internet stays up!
Stephanie: God. Can you imagine?
Mindy: It would be bad. It would be very bad. Why don't you let my listeners know where they can find you online and where they can buy your book, Darling Rose Gold.
Stephanie: Sure, So my website is Stephanie Wrobel dot com. Spelled the same way as my name and I am the most active on Instagram, which my handle is Stephanie Wrobel. Again, same spelling, and you can buy my book anywhere that books are sold.