Author Interview: Janet Ruth Young, The Babysitter Murders

Okay, this is probably one of the most fascinating interviews I've ever had here on my blog. Please welcome Janet Ruth Young, author of the forthcoming The Babysitter Murders (July 26, 2011), which I just reviewed. I am just pleased as punch to have her here today. :)

1. Was any of this story true or based on anything true?

Yes. I had to leave a babysitting job because, like my character Dani Solomon, I had persistent thoughts of harming the children I was responsible for.

2. What interests you in mental illness? Did you do a lot of research on OCD?

I have up-close experience with several mental illnesses---enough to write five or six books, in fact. Which is sort of a curse from the suffering angle, but a blessing because I get to be the person to bring certain kinds of information to the world. I like shedding light on mental illness from a new and different angle, and I like examining the place of mental illness in society and the culture, in seeing how a culture identifies ill people as scary or dangerous and therefore isolates or stigmatizes them.

For The Babysitter Murders, I had my own experience to draw on, but I also located an OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) expert, Kimberly Glazier of Yeshiva University, who discussed my ideas with me, reviewed several drafts, and made sure that both Dani’s internal experience and the treatments Dani received were accurate. Kim’s input shaped the story to a significant degree. It was great to work with Kim, too, because more than once we marveled at the fact that although we work in different fields we had the same goal. We’re both frustrated that the illness Dani has, which is actually not uncommon, goes undiagnosed or misdiagnosed and therefore untreated, and we’d like to make sure that more people can recognize it as OCD.
In addition to working with Kim, I consulted two of the leading nonfiction books on OCD, The Imp of the Mind and Getting Control, both by Lee Baer. And I always, always, always, when writing about mental illness, use the book Your Mental Health by Allen Frances and Michael B. First, which is the layperson’s version of the DSM-IV, the manual psychiatrists and psychologists use to diagnose their patients.

3. Do you think Dani was a "bad" person? How would you have reacted if you were the little boy's mom?

Whether Dani is bad or not is one of the key questions the books tries to raise. It really depends on whether you judge thoughts the same way as you judge behavior. If you judge them as equivalent, she’s definitely bad, but if you judge her only by behavior, by the way she treats people around her, she’s pretty wonderful. Several reviewers have pointed out how considerate she is. Despite the ordeal she goes through figuring out how to cope with the crazy thoughts she’s having and people’s reactions to these thoughts, she barely even becomes irritable. She’s always protecting others from hurt. When the police semi-arrest her, she thanks them for driving her home.

In terms of the second part of this question, if I were me now, obviously I would know enough about OCD to suggest to Dani that she and her mom look into the possibility that OCD is causing the thoughts. If I were ignorant of the illness, as Cynthia Draper is, I hope that out of respect for all that Dani has done for me and my family I would not overreact in a way that would damage Dani. For instance, I might give Alex to a neighbor for safekeeping, then call Dani’s mom and ask her to take Dani to the emergency room.

4. What do you think of the people who were after Dani? Good people seeking justice, or monstrous?

Again, one of the key questions of the book. (These are great questions.) I’m playing around with the idea represented in the phrase “protect our kids.” Just about everyone in the book has the goal of protecting kids, but they act out that motivation in different ways. Dani’s mom, Beth Solomon, wants to protect her own child. Others who don’t understand Dani’s illness want to protect kids from Dani, even if that means having to hurt Dani. I tried to make all these characters’ motivations legitimate enough that readers have to keep re-evaluating which side of the question they’re on.

5. How should people have reacted to Dani?

Someone along the way---perhaps not Dani herself or her mother or her best friend or her boyfriend or the woman who hired her as a babysitter---should have realized much earlier what was wrong with Dani. I have to lay some blame at the door of Dani’s first therapist, Dr. Kumar, who, since she’s unfamiliar with Dani’s illness, assumes that Dani’s violent thoughts are the product of unresolved anger.

6. Who would you envision in a movie of The Babysitter Murders?

A natural redhead such as Julianne Moore to play Dani’s mother, Beth. Tom Hanks and Nicolas Cage to play the good cop and the bad cop. And someone really exciting and newsworthy, like Lady Gaga, to play Dr. Mandel. I don’t know the current crop of teen actors well enough to cast the teen roles. Perhaps those roles would be filled by unknowns.