Cathartically scary with Carissa Orlando

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Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a literary podcast. For each week, I’ll interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work. I'm your host, Adam Sockel, and today's guest is Carissa Orlando, author of the new novel, The September House, which I absolutely tore through.

Is a haunted house story where when we meet the protagonist, not only does she already know that the house is haunted, she has made peace with it, and she has come to grips with how to survive in said house and be very kind of copacetic and coexist with the things that are haunting said house.

Eventually, we learn relatively quickly that her husband has basically said he's had enough, and he is moving out. She said, “Okay, that's fine.” And she's just kind of going on with her life until her daughter decides to come and visit and wants to find her dad, understandably.

And so, the mom is like, “Oh, man, what do we? I need to figure this out because she's coming during September the time of the year when the house is at its most haunted,” and she wants to hide all these things from her daughter, who again, just wants to find her father.

It is such a good book. I loved it so, so much. I think you're going to absolutely adore it as well. Carissa and I talked a lot about her life and her experience and her passion for being a mental health professional.

Obviously, if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you know how deeply I believe in therapy and the importance of mental health. And so, I really, really loved this conversation, and I did my best not to make it specifically about all of the things in my brain that I want help with. Just a really great conversation.

And we tie in mental health to the writing of her novel and the writing of horror in general that I think you're really going to love, which is why I want to recommend another book for you as well in addition to The September House, which is, And the Trees Crept In by Dawn Kurtagich, past guest of the show.

Dawn Kurtagich, And the Trees Crept In, came out quite a while ago at this point, I believe it was 2016. It is the story of two sisters. One of them is mute, and they move in with their aunt to escape an abusive father. They're just trying to find peace, and they want a place to call home.

But things are not as they seem, their food is running very, very low. And the trees surrounding the house appear to be getting closer and closer every single day, and they need to figure out what to do.

The reason I'm recommending this particular book is to me, it is a horror novel about a haunted house that feels very much like I feel when I'm having a panic attack. It feels anxious and like the world is falling in on the characters, but it is just written so beautifully and hauntingly, and Dawn just has such an incredible ability to write these stories that feel so realistic.

So, again, it is that time of year, you might be able to tell I'm very stuffy because of the fall allergies, but we are full into spooky season now, which is why I think you're going to love both this conversation, The September House, and also And the Trees Crept In by Dawn Kurtagich.

If you want more book recommendations for me, if you just want to get ahold of me, if you just want to connect, you can find me at [email protected]. Or you can find me on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram at Passions & Prologues, the same name as the podcast.

Really appreciate you all listening in. Appreciate all of the kind feedback that you're always sending me. So nice to see. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Carissa Orlando, author of The September House on Passions & Prologues.

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Okay, Carissa, so what is something you are super passionate about that you want to discuss today?

Carissa Orlando:

Oh, my goodness, I can talk about anything related to mental health for forever. I don't know if you can tell behind me, I'm actually in my office. I try and when I have these interviews, I'm trying to go home for them because otherwise I will talk about mental health stuff.

I'll just get in because I haven't shifted from my — I'm a psychologist. I teach and train graduate students, teach them how to be therapists. It's hard for me to mentally shift from job to writing.

Adam Sockel:

Well, listen, as a person who is a huge mental health advocate and thinks therapy is the best thing I've ever done with my life, we can absolutely live in that space. I will do my best to not make this a therapy session for me. I will ask the questions and do it just for me.

So, I guess the first thing I want to ask is when did you realize you wanted to make this part of your life's work? When did you realize this was something you wanted to study and turn into a profession?

Carissa Orlando:

In terms of psychology, gosh, forever. Actually, it's a little funny. So, when I was a teenager, I would just do writing on the side and I wanted to be an author, but I didn't think that was a viable career. I didn't think it was … I'm like, “No, I'm just going to end up writing stuff, but I don't want to write, so I'm going to pursue something else.” I pursued psychology and then ended up becoming a writer anyway.

But I've always found humans fascinating. We're crazy people. And I mean that non pejorative we're very — humans are just endlessly fascinating.

And so, anything I could learn about even just kind of normal or typical human behavior, like how humans behave in groups and how we make decisions and how we try and fail to predict the future, it's just really cool.

And so, from 18-year-old on, I knew I would want to do this, and I did, and it's awesome and stressful.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, my God, I can't even imagine. Like I said, I love therapy. I think that the thing for me is it's been learning how to properly explain the things I'm feeling or have a discussion with someone in a way that I can explain myself without them feeling like I'm attacking them or I'm getting defensive and things like that.

And so, that's for me, that's what my therapy/mental health journey has been on, is like getting better at explaining and conveying what I'm going through. And also realizing my therapist's biggest thing for me a couple years ago is like, what I do doesn't cause other people's reactions. It's two separate things.

So, I guess this is all to say — I just kept on saying I wasn't going to make this a therapy session for me. And immediately I'm like, “Let's talk about me.”

So, I guess what aspect of mental health did you want to really focus in? Because like you said, it's so many different things. It's how people react in groups, how they try to predict the future, things like that. What path did you want to take and have you taken as a mental health professional?

Carissa Orlando:

It's interesting. So, I started off wanting to work with adults primarily. And in my master's program we weren't a big enough program to where you could specialize in just adult or kids. It was just like; you get the clients that you get. And so, I ended up working with a lot of kid clients and realized that I actually enjoy working with kids.

Little anxious children are my favorite, they're my favorite to work with. That and teenagers, teenagers are the best as it's such a fun part of development.

They're developing their autonomy and kind of becoming budding adults. And that also unfortunately happens to be the time of your life when all of the mental health issues decide to flare up and decide that they want to be a part of the party as well.

So, it's a great time to be able to work with someone and kind of help them build themselves up and start to turn into the adult that they want to be. So, I like working with the kids and the adolescents. I love stuff where our brains are really mean to us, like anxiety and depression. I like working with mean brains. I know what it's like to have a mean brain.

Adam Sockel:

So, there may be parents listening in, who are kind of curious about this. I guess, I have a wonderful family, wonderful parents, but I discovered therapy on my own. It was something I realized I used to do.

And it was since I talked to my siblings and I'm the youngest of four. And I’ve come to realize each one of my siblings we're still really bad at … we communicate, but we're bad at communicating about big things. When I basically, told them I'm going to therapy, each and every one of them was like, “Yeah, us too.” And I was like, “Why have we never talked about this then.”

So, I guess my question is, for parents listening, how do you discuss with parents, like hey, a way to explain why their teenage children could benefit from therapy. Because obviously there's — and you know this way more than anyone I do, but there's this huge stigma of where people saying, “I'm going to therapy, or I need therapy.”

How do you help them express to teenagers that this something that's beneficial and healthy and perfectly normal to do in an everyday life?

Carissa Orlando:

That is a very excellent question. I mean just trying to think about where parents might be coming at it from, of maybe there's this worry of, “Did I do something wrong? Did I do something to cause this? Am I not being a good enough parent? Why isn't the supports that we have at home adequate?”

And those are all valid worries and that makes sense, but it's like it doesn't necessarily care how well everything is going in your life, they kind of show up regardless. And it's something that there's no real cause for it. Or if there is a cause it's so many different things that there might as well just not be a cause.

But there are things that can be done differently to help kids learn how to think in more helpful ways and behave in more helpful ways. And you kind of want that third party objective person because parents are objective, friends definitely aren't objective. It's good to have that third party there to kind of help kind of get the team together really.

Because especially with kids, it helps if parents are involved in therapy to kind of learn, “Alright, what skills are my kids learning and how can I support that at home? And how can I remind them to use their skills and practice outside of session?”

So, I think a lot of things that parents … the things that come natural to parents, if kids have mental health difficulties, the thing that would work just fine for a child without that mental health difficulty doesn't work for that child. And so, it's about being okay with changing up how we're working with things, really.

Adam Sockel:

I love that you mentioned that objectivity, because for me that was the biggest thing when I started going to therapy was like that white bulb went off for me where I was like, “Oh my God, I can unburden is the wrong word, but I can unburden my soul to this human being.” And they will 100% judgment free, not only will they not be affected by what I'm saying because they have no direct personal connection with me.

But more importantly, because it is quite literally your and their job to understand all this, they would know how to provide me with the tools to understand the things that I'm going through when I'm going through them. Whether it's panic attacks or even just how, ironically as a person who loves words and writing and books, it's like I didn't realize that words have power.

It's like when you're having a difficult conversation with someone, the words that you're saying to them or being able to say, “What you are putting on me right now is unfair,” and being able to say those things.

And when you amplify all of those things that I'm feeling as an adult going through that, and then you think about it as a teenager going through these things for the first time. I love that you mentioned that objectivity, because I do think that is something that every teenager can probably benefit from having someone fully outside of their circle or family to say, “Here's what's going on, here's why it's normal, here's how it-

Carissa Orlando:

Yeah. So, my spouse and I are both in the field of mental health, we both have our degrees in psychology, and we could never be each other's therapist, never. I cannot be a therapist in a conversation with him and he could not be there having a conversation with me.

So, even if you got a trained professional in the house, you need that third party because yeah, like you said, there's that judgment free zone. It's real hard to rattle a therapist, especially if they've been doing it for a little while and their job is to understand you and it feels really cool to be understood.

Adam Sockel:

Oh, my gosh, it is the best.

Carissa Orlando:

Yes.

Adam Sockel:

Before we started recording, you mentioned you're literally in your office at the moment. And I want to ask if all of your, not only passion, but knowledge for mental health and psychology in general, does it affect you, the writing, I'm leading the witness because of the book that you wrote we're going to get to in just a moment.

But does it affect your storytelling? And I guess how does it affect your writing process as your other career, I suppose?

Carissa Orlando:

I mean, I'm sure it affects it in little ways that I don't even know about. There are little mental health tidbits kind of sprinkled into the story, try to keep things kind of spoiler free. I'd like to think that it affects my character development because I hope I can flesh people out a little bit more.

I think the way that it affects how I write the biggest is I'm very, very particular in how I handle anything related to mental health, broadly speaking.

So, be that like being characters in therapy or characters shown as trying to work on themselves. How I handle maybe things like addiction, intimate partner violence, I'm very, very particular in how I handle all of those things because the mental health issues just historically have gotten incredibly bad.

Bad rap in society. And I think in the horror genre in particular, it can be a little rough sometimes. I don't know, I want it to be well portrayed. I don't think that that helps people with mental health issues if it is seen as the primary antagonist in-

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. There are of course lots of examples of mental health not being portrayed in it properly. Or like you said, it being the main thing. Like, “Oh, that person's crazy.” And it's so reductive.

But I think that is why I love — first off, I'm also a huge horror genre fan. That's why I was so excited to talk to you. But I think I really do love when there is psychology baked into a horror novel or a movie or show, and when it's done well, and it's layered and nuanced like that.

So, I guess what I want to ask and sort of getting into The September House, your novel is, what was it about the haunted house idea, and we're going to get into how you sort of turned it on its head a little bit.

But I feel like there are lots of haunted house stories that aren’t … if you can connect them to mental health in a lot of different ways. What was it about this genre that you wanted to tell a story and it could be a very challenging genre to get into with that type of story.

Carissa Orlando:

I am for some reason endlessly drawn to haunted house; I think in particular movies. I can watch any bad, haunted house horror movie; it does not matter, I have no quality control. I'll watch anything and I can watch them over and over and over again.

And I mean, if you've seen just a handful, you can identify the tropes in a typical haunted house. Family moves in, hauntings develop, things escalate, we learn the backstory. Either we leave or the house kind of gets them.

And so, it was always interesting to me to just turn that on its head and say, “Okay, so we've already, skipped that part, let's just kind of see how they cope.”

But I think the other thing that really has always fascinated me about the haunted house stories, and this is probably also where psychology comes in, is because so many of them are predicated on family moves into new house, usually the family brings something with them.

Or the couple, they're in financial trouble or there was an affair or there's, I don’t know some stuff going on. There's always some baggage that the family is bringing with them and in the bad ones that baggage is just supposed to get them from point A to point B. It's just supposed to get them in the house and then it's immediately forgotten.

But the good ones actually carry it through a little bit. And so, I've always enjoyed the way that the haunted house brings out that baggage and kind of putting them like, “Okay, so I got rid of all the typical tropes, but I kept the baggage. It's like, yep, that's what I want it to do.”

Adam Sockel:

So, actually this is a good point to kind of have, can you sort of introduce the idea of The September House because I think I could give an introduction to without being spoilery because I feel like what I love about your book is the hook of your story is, people will see it on page six or something like, “Oh, this is what's going on.”

But you kind of want to introduce listeners to the book and then we'll kind of dig a little bit deeper into it.

Carissa Orlando:

September House is about my protagonist, Margaret Hartman, who she and her husband Hal had bought their dream Victorian house and it turns out is incredibly haunted. But we actually joined up with them four years later.

So, instead of fleeing as most people would do in the haunted house tropes, Margaret has decided that she is not leaving this house for anything. And she just finds a way to make it work.

She creates a whole bunch of rules, these very intricate rules that must be followed. And she's made it work. She's going to live in this house, it's nothing to her anymore.

But four years in, Hal not on the same page anymore, he decides he's going to peace out and he just disappears off somewhere and cuts off contact. And so, their adult daughter, Katherine, kind of wondering where her dad has gone, comes to the house to try and figure out where he's off to.

Katherine does not know that the house is haunted. So, Margaret has to both protect Katherine from the house and continue to follow the rules. And the hauntings are only getting worse and worse in the month of September, which of course is when Katherine decides she's going to come visit, so-

Adam Sockel:

Of course.

Carissa Orlando:

That's where we join.

Adam Sockel:

What I love so much about the opening of the book is actually, my partner and I were just talking about this the other day about the challenge with writing books with kind of supernatural or just crazy things outside of what we would classify as a normal world experience.

I feel like there's so many books where they want it to be a huge plot twist that there's some paranormal activity type thing going on. And so, you don't really read about it until page 200 where it feels weird because you're like, “We just spent chapter after chapter about setting up this very, what feels like a normal world.”

In yours, you're just like, “Listen, everyone get on board, page five, she's talking to a ghost who's cleaning, making her toast,” right away. Did you always know you wanted to write it this way? Or was that something that kind of took place in the writing process?

Carissa Orlando:

I always knew I wanted to write it that way. The original kind of hook for the story that I came up with in my brain before even had a plot was just person lives in the world's most haunted house and is totally cool with it.

And it'll just be the story of them trying to coexist with a bunch of ghosts. So, that I always knew kind of from the get-go, we were going to be in it with these hauntings.

Adam Sockel:

So, I guess, to kind of tie in with your day job, how do you go about separating? Because there's lots of people who have a day job and then they write on the side.

I feel like there aren't many people who have as much of a heavy mentally draining job where we're talking about emotions and life experiences and heavy, heavy things all day long and then you go write about heavy, heavy things.

So, I guess how do you go about, I guess protecting your own mental health throughout this process and approaching it in a way that is conducive to you enjoying both of those processes still?

Carissa Orlando:

That's an excellent question. Weirdly, the writing about heavy, heavy things is kind of a coping skill. When I was starting to write this book, I was finishing up my degree and it actually came at a really beautiful time because I could kind of get home from doing just a day of straight clinical work and then I could completely shift focus to writing.

And I genuinely think anything that is useful for mental health is something that can disrupt any sort of ruminative processes.

So, where for me, mental health work can get draining is, you leave work and you're still thinking about your clients and you're worrying about them, or you're wondering, “How did they feel this session went and could I have said something a little bit different to make this more impactful?” And just on my end at least a lot of second guessing.

And so, being able to shift away because that second guessing isn't helpful, I can't go back in time and change anything. And so, being able to shift to now I have this thing that takes my full focus, and it also brings me a lot of joy was incredibly useful.

And so, that's my advice for anyone that's looking — find something that takes your full brain and that kind of gives you joy and just put that in periodic points in your day, is feasible.

Adam Sockel:

I have discovered this in interviewing a bunch of horror novelists over the years, and I'm sure you will as you just do more and more panels and conversations with people. I feel like horror novelists are the most well-adjusted people I've ever met.

They're all happy and cheerful and I was joking. There's a YA horror novel, she's Dawn Kurtagich and she writes very, very dark books and she's the most bubbly person I've ever met in my life. And I feel like it is like, she jokingly told me, she's like, “Yeah, I write all of my trauma into my characters.”

So, she's like, it's like going to therapy once a day for myself. I don't know if you feel that way, but it's been a really funny thing-

Carissa Orlando:

It’s so funny, I feel like, yeah, about the well-adjusted thing, ask my family. But I've heard that stereotype about horror people that we're all just bubbly.

Adam Sockel:

Again, I know it's not the same for everybody, but it is almost exclusively the horror novelists I've interviewed over the years, and I've interviewed a lot of them. They're all just like, “Hey, how's it going?” And I'm just like, got done reading this absolute dark work that they wrote, and I was like, “You kept me up for six nights in a row.”

You mentioned kind of the various tropes and the things that we see in both horror and just I guess like media in general about mental health that it shows the negative connotations of them. Are there examples in the horror genre or even just normal media of ways that it is construed in a way that you think is positive and a well done way of discussing mental health?

Carissa Orlando:

I really liked The Babadook in terms of taking a theme that is very much about trauma and depending on interpretation, showing how kind of one family copes with that and then is ultimately … it’s like spoilers for The Babadook, but they're kind of ultimately able to live with this.

And I appreciate the messaging that that gives for trauma and mental health issues where it's not necessarily something that needs to be defeated as if it was like a literal monster nor is it something that needs to defeat you, which is usually how the movies tend to end, but it's something that you can learn to live with in a way that makes sense for you and your family and that kind of how The Babadook handled that. And so, I think that that was very well done.

Adam Sockel:

I really liked The Babadook. I really liked The Haunting of Hill House when they had the-

Carissa Orlando:

Oh God. Yeah.

Adam Sockel:

I was a little nervous. I was like, “Oh, I hope you don't say it's an actual bad example.” But that one I thought did a really good job of — especially with it being the family aspects just similar to The Babadook.

It's like this family comes together and there's this house and there there's just a million things going on. But yeah, that was another one where I was like … and I very much love the book, but I thought they did such a good job with the season as well on Netflix.

Carissa Orlando:

I agree. And that's the ones I've been getting asked, “What's your favorite haunted house bit of content,” and that's the one that I've been citing because it's just excellent.

Adam Sockel:

So, now that you're kind of in this world of writing about, or writing in the horror genre, what types of horror stories are you drawn to personally as a reader?

Carissa Orlando:

I'm trying to read a lot of new stuff coming out. So, I just finished Grady Hendrix's, Final Girls Support Group, which was excellent. I'm in the middle of Stephen Graham Jones, My Heart is a Chainsaw. I really like Paul Tremblay.

I think I'm the same as literally every horror writer. I grew up reading a lot of Stephen King. And so, that was my big background into it. And I mean all respect to Stephen King, he's amazing, he rules the genre. But it's been really refreshing to listen to new horror voices or new-ish horror voices, just to hear other people's take on the genre.

And I think I can really tell the people that are kind of kindred spirits where it's like, this person clearly has just watched every horror movie and you can see that influence. I'm just like, this speaks to me. This very speaks to me.

Adam Sockel:

It's funny you say that. I have a good friend who's been on the show a couple times, her name is Mallory O’Meara, she also hosts a podcast called Reading Glasses. She and I have been buddies for a long time now, and she's my horror friend.

Like I'll text her, I actually sent her a photo of your book. It's like our back and forth, and it feels like such a prize to be able to show her one that she's not expecting, but it's the same way.

I think that's why I love having a friend who's my age and we're talking as we're in our mid to late 30s. And exactly what you said, it's been really refreshing to read new voices in the horror genre and hear these different takes on books.

Whether it's from, like you said, you mentioned Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians is just stunning. And Alexis Henderson is an African American author's written two just phenomenal LGBTQ style horror stories.

I feel like horror is one of my fav — I love reading diversely, but I think I love it most in horror just because there's so many different stories from different backgrounds or different style of stories that people can tell.

So, you've been super, super gracious. You're literally at your office. So, I always end every episode though by having the author give one recommendation of any kind. It can be a book; it can be a TV show.

I've had people say, “Hey, go for more walks,” anything you want to recommend to people that you think they should do or know more about from your point of view.

Carissa Orlando:

Oh man.

Adam Sockel:

I'll give one while you're thinking, I'll play one. Everyone should go to therapy. That would be mine. I will say everyone should go to therapy.

Carissa Orlando:

I mean, this is my thing of just, I think this is so helpful for mental health, but just make little decisions throughout the day. The only purpose of it is to make you happy. Just as many opportunities as you have of just like, “This just gives me a little bit of joy.”

In my office, you can't see it, have a lamp shape, like a T-Rex. It's right there. I bought that because every time I look at it, it makes me smile.

And so, just find your little T-Rex lamp and put it in your life. And it doesn't matter if it makes anyone else happy, as long as it makes you happy, that's all you need. So, that's my recommendation.

Adam Sockel:

I love that. And so, for people who are listening to this, it'll come out right around when the book comes out, it's called September House. It won't surprise anyone that it comes out in September on September 5th, this will be out right around that same time.

Obviously, we were a little light on talking about the plot because we didn't want to give too much away. But I am loving it so, so much. I told you before we started recording, but it's so wonderful and I just loved this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

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Carissa Orlando:

Well, thank you so much.

Adam Sockel:

Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast and was created by Adam Sockel. It was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman. And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcasts, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.