CSA: This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is author Adam Sass. We’re talking about his debut novel, Surrender Your Sons, a queer teen thriller set in a conversion center in Costa Rica. Kirkus Reviews described Surrender Your Sons as a “hard-to-read story [with] hard-to-stop-reading writing,” and Jessica Cluess called Adam Sass, “one of the most talented new voices in YA.” In addition to his writing, Adam is a recurring co-host on Slayerfest 98, a popular podcast about the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Adam Sass, welcome to Story Behind the Story. AS: Thank you so much for having me! What an intro! (both laugh) I love that! That was amazing. I was like, oh my gosh, did I do that? Yaaaas. CSA: Well I feel like you should get used to it as you go on your press tour! AS: A little bit, yeah, yeah. I mean press tours are very much a weird thing to go through when you have even a mild case of imposter syndrome. You're a little just like, “no it's not it's really bad. (They both chuckle) CSA: Well, given the nature of this book and what it’s about, we’re going to get into some dark topics pretty quickly. AS: I know, yeah. (Both laugh awkwardly and knowingly) CSA: As I mentioned in the intro, this book takes place at a conversion center. So for listeners who might not know, can you briefly explain what conversion therapy is? AS: Of course. Conversion therapy is… I'll give you the Webster's dictionary definition first. It’s basically a dangerous and discredited practice. It can be either scientific medical, a doctor's office, a therapist’s office, or in a religious center that attempts to — through so-called therapy — change someone's sexual orientation or gender expression. CSA: ...and specifically change it from a queer identity to a straight or cisgender. AS: Definitely. It is definitely the motive is to destroy queer identities and make kids as headeranormative as possible. CSA: How common is conversion therapy today? AS: It's shockingly still very common. That is something that comes up a bit in these discussions, is it doesn't necessarily have to take place in a dramatic center, that it takes place in Surrender Your Sons. It could be just your local pastor, could be your local priest. It’s anybody who is trying to do that, so that is definitely pervasive, but the actual act of conversion therapy as it's more traditionally known is still very widespread. There’re thousands of survivors who are currently going through this. CSA: And so what drew you to this topic for your novel, and in particular what made you want to write a teen novel about conversion therapy? AS: Well, I came at it a little from the side, cuz this was something where it came from a…a not as noble beginnings. I wanted to write… I had loved Inglorious Bastards, the Quentin Tarantino movie? CSA: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm AS: I was very, very jacked by that movie (obviously) and I wanted to write a story, to write a big revenge extravaganza, but for queer people. And one of these… and I wanted it to be this ensemble; I wanted it to be a little on the action/adventure side, even though we're talking about a little bit of a heavy topic here. I wanted it to be a big story of queer victory, and it seemed to me that the root of a lot of our, the queer communities, ills is conversion therapy. It is in the denial and attempted destruction of the queer self. And conversion therapy holds a very, very dark strange place in people's minds. It's been known for a while, kind of wrongfully, as, like, electroshock therapy. I know that when Vice President Pence came into power there was a lot of talk because he had supported stuff in the past CSA: Right, right. AS: And a lot of short-hand people use online will be like, ‘oh, he's down for electrocuting gay kids.’ Which, not trying to invalidate that! He's definitely, definitely according to things that he has supported in the past, would be up for that; but I think the thing was about is that they're not really using electroshock therapy. It's much more pernicious and emotional abuse and that is something that I wanted to first correct. Readers are not going to open this book and see giant electro machines and zapping, because a lot of that…electroshock therapy can be very — electroconvulsive therapy as it's known — can be very helpful for people who have disorders that that can treat. But with this, with conversion therapy, it’s so misunderstood very often. And underestimated. It’s been my experience that I have noticed people tend to downplay emotional abuse as much as… CSA: Yeah, yeah… AS: as well as physical abuse. So I wanted to draw a very direct line between emotional abuse and how that can really escalate into something extremely violent and extremely destructive for everybody in this story. So that was something I thought was a challenge I wanted to meet and show how could this so-called “therapy” that really ropes in so many people every year, and does great long-term damage — great in the VAST sense, not in the "it's good" sense — how does something that does that much damage and provokes that much trauma into a queer person, how can that be an extravaganza story? How can that be a revenge story? How can that be a story of queer victory? We've seen so many great conversion therapy stories. Miseducation of Cameron Post, most recently. The memoir Boy Erased, and they each show a different part of that. I would say if anybody's looking to read, or watch, conversion therapy as it is most realistically: definitely start with those. What Surrender Your Son's is attempting to do is take something that a lot of people know a lot about, or think they know a lot about, and really crank up the emotional extremes to tell a much broader queer victory story. CSA: And I think it's really interesting, because both of the aspects of that that you talk about… because you talk about it being a queer victory story, and you also talk about how the popular portrayals that people are most familiar with are ones that tend to be more extremely physically abusive. I think that's interesting. My first exposure to conversion therapy was But I'm a Cheerleader. It was the Natasha Lyonne movie, which is very much… like, it is a queer victory story. It also makes conversion therapy look extremely tame. AS: Yes. CSA: And I guess I'm just curious, going back to that first point: why specifically a TEEN novel? AS: I think with teen novels, and teen YA novels…When I first started writing this… I had been writing this for years! This was the Hunger Games heyday so, I mean, definitely YA is bread and butter now and forever. And definitely back then, in the Hunger Games days, was: these teens were completely on their own, and they are going to lead a revolution. That was pretty much every major teen YA book back then. And so that was something where it seemed to really mesh really well. Another thing is that these popular (or more well-known) conversion therapy stories, like you said, are a little on the…they’re a little on the quieter side. Because it is a little bit… First of all, Boy Erased is HIS lived experience, so you can't put the two together. Sometimes… I know a lot of people… I sometimes see reviews of Boy Erased where they’re like…’Was it really that bad? Because he was only in there for a little bit,’ and all that. There's all sorts of responses people have that are really… If you miss the mark. But that is something where, that story in general tells a quieter story. It tells you tells HIS story about HIS one experience, and he's been very vocal about, like, ‘My experience is not the only experience in this.’ So to that, what I wanted to tell with this was (and I think that that's why the TEEN aspect of this was so important)... was that in a young adult's life this is, for a lot of people, the most vulnerable, crossroadsy time, and you're going to see an ensemble of teens in this book who are all at varying degrees of activist, very self-possessed, don't need a lot of deprogramming from the… and then some of them are a lot more in the tank. Some of them have been there for a lot longer, and then through pure survival, have had to adapt to this point where they're not really up for a revolution; They want to just quietly get through this as quickly as possible. I think I really was interested in seeing that hodgepodge of different identities and experiences that ultimately leads to a revolution story. And that just felt — the BIGNESS of a revolution story, the high emotion, the high drama: that's something that YA does so well. You can really tap into the emotions, like first love, and sense of self, and identity, and learning to… that first moment you're really breaking away from your family, and realizing that maybe they don't have all the answers, and that you have to form your own person… it's really this crossroadsy time. It's very, very rich. That's why a lot of very, very emotional, high emotion stories are in YA and why YA is doing… YA is also doing some of the best intersectional diverse work of pretty much any medium right now, and that was something where I knew this story could thrive in a YA market. Because so many people have been trailblazing every year in this, and making new inroads where I think the YA audience is definitely really primed for consuming a story like this, and being really, really on board. There's a market for this. CSA: This is a really painful topic for many queer people, and many people in the queer community(in different queer communities have a complicated relationship with media that centers queer pain. So like Andrew Sean Greer addresses this in Less (which is his Pulitzer prize-winning novel). His title character is accused by another gay man of being a bad gay, because his gay characters always suffer without reward — which is a charge that has been leveled at Greer himself before Less came out. So how do you navigate that space with a topic like yours? AS: It’s tricky, and I just knew there would be no tap dancing around it for a book like this. And also, in YA, some of the most successful books right now in the LGBTQ YA space have been very sunny stories. There's stories that are about queer victory, not so in against-all-odds ways, so I knew I'd be going into this knowing that a lot of people… maybe this wouldn't be their cup of tea. I mean, and even so far in the advanced reviews and response we've been getting to this — it's generally been very, very good and it's been wonderful to see, but there is always… a lot of the reviews do come with caveats, like, ‘well, if you're sensitive to queer pain…’ and that seems to be happening, like, ‘maybe gave it a skip.’ I mean, I think even Publishers Weekly this week said, " Maybe skip this if you're sensitive to queer pain," which, I understand. I mean, there's… we include some content trigger warnings at the beginning of the book, and there are some stuff that's just unavoidable with telling the story like this because, it's one of those things where I've never really been one to say ‘we only need to show this one part of queer life in order for it to be healthy for for queer people.’ First of all, I myself — this is a book that I would have wanted to read when I was coming out of the closet. So I knew, first of all, I was pleasing the audience of one who is writing it, and a lot of times I do believe that, like… I wrote this book for me. I wrote this book during a time in my life where I was going through a lot of changes. I had been working in LA in different Hollywood desks for a while, and I had always edited myself and never really front and centered queer characters. and this was just the book I was like, this is what I want to tell. I want to tell a big story, an explosive story. And to tell that, to tell a revenge story, you need to have a bad thing happen to a queer person up front. I do think there is, like, conversations to be had about, like, don't just senselessly show a bunch of queer pain. I mean, the queer pain that I show in this book is to set up a success later. It's to make the victory more sweet, and on a more personal note, we've been seeing this ever since the debate (around 2015 when marriage equality passed), we had been seeing a lot of this thought that as soon as marriage equality passed, queer troubles were over. CSA: Yeah. (Both laugh) AS: That we were done. Moving on, next. CSA: Which is not true. AS: Of course it’s not true! And we all said it at that time! It was such a rush to be like, ok we never have to talk about it again. Which, it’s only opened up another can of worms. It's one of those things where, this is a minority group. You're never going to be done. Even just from the othering and isolation of not being part of the majority could be its own trauma. Whether or not somebody is visiting that intentionally upon you, you're living in a society that is built around heteronormativity. CSA: Yeah. And of course you're seeing, right now, all of these laws, all of these protections being questioned and coming up, like, workplace… AS: All it took… CSA: Yeah, it's very precarious. AS: Yes! It's so precarious. All it took was one bad person getting in to undo a lot of stuff or throw everything into jeopardy and it can all go away. It's very easy to go away. So this was something where I… how I started from is I shut out the noise of, ‘should a queer story be this? Should a queer story be that? What’s a good example? What’s a bad example?’ Put all that inside, and in my head, I had a teen character who I knew was growing up in the age of, post “it gets better” videos, which I believe have been so, so important and doing a force of positive good. However, like everything, like marriage equality — there is a negative reaction inversely to that. And I wanted to show a kid who had a bad situation at home, who all the other queer people he knew — his boyfriend — lived in this Glee paradise — CSA: Fantasy World. AS: Fantasy world! Where they were like, they had it good. And what does that do to a queer closeted kid to see all these videos, and to see all this representation in movies and TV with all of these great parents and an amazing partner coming over for dinner or whatever. Just living living your big queer life in a big city, or whatever. What does that do? Because I know… like, I mean, that's my joke always, is like: oh that's definitely something gay guys love — is to see other gay guys (not them) having a great time. (He laughs) They really love seeing people that are not them thriving. So I really wanted to show, like, okay, well, what's that kid going through? Like, ask these questions that really didn't have an answer. Which is my character, Connor Major, has just come out at the beginning of the book to his mom. His boyfriend really pushed him into it, and really, really… in a positive way pushed him into it, but nevertheless he did push him into it, cuz he wanted an out boyfriend that he could put on social media and do all the stuff — CSA: An Instagram boyfriend, right? AS: The Instagram boyfriend! He wanted the Instagram boyfriend, which, he should have! But I think he maybe misjudged the situation that Connor would be in, and Connor wanted to have that. Connor wanted that. He wanted all of that, and in his zeal to obtain that and to make his boyfriend happy, he came out before he was really in a super secure place. And then, just through bad luck, his mom reacted extremely negatively and that sets him on this path that brings into a conversion therapy place. The book asks a lot of questions with no answers like that which is, ‘well, was it good that Connor came out?’ Because if he hadn't gone to this camp, he would not have met everybody at this camp and helped them through this, and been the catalyst for a lot of good change for them, and on the other hand… Should he have just stayed closeted? It's one of those things where I think a lot of young queer people (and queer people of any age are asking themselves right now if they're closeted or out to only a certain degree), is… it's a constant negotiation. It's, is this safe yet? What is good, what is bad? Am I being a “bad queer person” if I don't come out? Am I missing a lot of time myself? I came out a lot later, maybe not by my standards — I came out when I was 20 — and every year I spent closeted I deeply regret. So… but that was the time that was right for me to come out then, so it's one of those impossible situations where you’re not really sure what is the right choice — which of course is great drama for books! (both laugh) So that was (unintelligible) at the beginning CSA: How much did you know about conversion therapy going in, and what was the research process like for you? AS: I knew enough about it, but I probably was one of those folks who only knew that it was…. I'd seen But I'm a Cheerleader, I'd seen the SNL sketches where the clearly still gay camp counselor is talking about how much he loves his wife…. It was the butt of jokes, so I probably had this extremely skewed / not all the answers version, and definitely did not have an appreciation for the lasting trauma it leaves on someone. So this was something where, this book about 7 years. and I wrote several different big overhaul versions of it, so the book people are going to get in stores is miles different than how it began. So it really began more of as a very, very light conceit; and then the more I read, the more I saw — and then the book Boy Erased came out, then the movie Boy Erased came out, then I got the pleasure of being able to interview Garrett Conley himself. I read these other books, and then there was a showtime movie in 2014 called Kidnapped for Christ; it was a documentary. That informed Surrender Your Son's probably the most because that was on (it’s not closed), it's called Escuela Caribe, it was a conversion camp in the Dominican Republic where kids would be — wealthy evangelical American kids — would be taken out of bed in the middle of the night and brought to this island nightmare/paradise place. It was it was shock, it was it was culture shock. It was to take them out of their environment and bring them here. Escuela Caribe was religious run, but it was not just conversion therapy for for queer people; there was elements of behavior modification, drug rehabilitation… it was basically, as it was described in the documentary, a dumping ground for wealthy Evangelical parents. So the more I became an exposed to this, the more appreciation I had for how vast of a problem this is and how lasting the marks can be. II definitely credit the last few years of conversion therapy stories for opening my eyes to that, so now the Surrender Your Sons you see then, “the Night Light” (which is the name of the camp that you see in the book) is a reflection of that. It became a lot less dramatically physical, a lot less electroshock, and became way more psychological mind games and control games, and it became a much more interesting story because it became honest. Because it was about, really about who is psychologically giving up control? And you have these kids who are very disenfranchised: they are completely cut off from their homes and that really is the core crisis in this book, and one of the characters (the director of the camp) says that there is no… ‘if you escape, there is no going home. Home sent you to us.’ So that is really the core crisis, which is like, they have to escape — but what happens when they do? Will they go home? How… Can they go home? Will they just be sent right back so that really becomes a matter of, they need to not just escape but also close the camp down. And luckily they have insights: some of the campers who have been there a while have discovered that the camp is hiding several dark secrets that could get it shut down, so that really becomes the driving mystery of the story. It's not just about escape, it’s about ‘when we leave, this place can never open again and we can never come back here.’ ***AD BREAK*** CSA: If you're just joining me, my guest today is author Adam Sass who's debut novel Surrender Your Sons tells the story of a group of queer teenagers who are kidnapped to a conversion therapy center in Costa Rica. So I think now is a good time to have you read a little bit from the novel. AS: Wonderful! CSA: So why don't you just set up for us what you're going to read. What are we going to hear? AS: These are the opening pages. This is chapter one, it's called “Mom's Ultimatum,” and this is just a very simple scene between Connor and his mother. They're at dinner, and it really sets up what I explained before, which is Connor has recently come out a few weeks prior it didn't go well and what we're faced with here really is about how can Connor and his single mother— Can they live in the same house? The tension is really ratcheting up. So that's what we'll be hearing right now. CSA: Great, Take it away! AS: Chapter one MOM’S ULTIMATUM This war has gone on long enough, but not for my mother. Even though she’s been in an upbeat mood since she arrived home from work, I know better than to drop my guard. It’s a trap somehow. Her cheeriness lingers over our home-cooked meal like the Saharan sun—omnipresent and pitiless. She thinks I don’t have the guts to ask the question that will blow apart our fragile cease fire—the question that has dogged me for over a week—but I very much do have the guts: “Hey, so…when do I get my phone back?” I ask calmly, without demands or tantrums. Nevertheless, the question ignites a fire in my mother’s eyes that has been kindling underneath our brutally pleasant dinner. Mom shoves away her plate of half-eaten chicken and asks, “Your phone?” My question is the scandal of the century, apparently. “Are you serious?” I’m dead serious, but I shrug: it’s crucial that I project an aura of casual indifference, even though my heart sinks with each day I’m cut off from Ario and my friends. Mom would keep my phone forever if she could. Last Thanksgiving, my uncle scolded me, “You treat that thing like it’s your second d*ck!” He’s not wrong, but I’ve been phone-less for almost two weeks and this battle for my sanity has reached D-Day levels of slaughter. “It’s just that…” I begin cautiously, remounting my defense, “… could I get a timeframe of when I’ll get it back?” “Are you kidding me?” Mom’s conviction grows as every muscle tightens in my neck. “You are being punished, Connor—” “I didn’t do anything wrong!” A reckless energy seizes me as I leap from my chair in a foolish attempt to intimidate her with my height (as of my seventeenth birthday, I’ve accepted the reality that I’m tapped out at five and a half feet). “Don’t come at me with your trash attitude! And you’re not excused.” Mom grasps the silver cross hanging outside of her nursing scrub top and kisses it—no, mashes it to her lips; her typical plea to Christ to help her out of another fine mess her heathen son has dragged her into. She fans her hands downward for me to sit, and—with an extra loud huff—I oblige. Mom and I take turns sneering at each other, a performance battle to prove which of us is the more aggrieved party. She blows tense air through “O”-circled lips, and I pissily toss a sweat-dampened curl from my eyes. Our clanking swamp cooler of an air conditioner doesn’t provide any relief from the latest heat wave tearing through Ambrose; however, the stench of hot July chicken sh*t from the farm next door manages to travel on the breeze just fine. I ladle peppermint ice cream into my mouth at a mindless speed until a glob of pink goo drips onto my shorts next to a hot sauce stain…which is from yesterday. It’s the same Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week-worthy outfit I’ve donned all summer: gym shorts and a baggy hoodie with the sleeves chopped off. What do I care how I look? Because of Mom, I might never see my boyfriend again. When I was closeted, all my boyfriend Ario squawked about was how important it was to come out: it would save my life; food would taste better; fresh lavender would fill the air. Well, I did that—I’ve been out for months, but I’m starting to think he was only repeating shit he heard from YouTubers who were either lying or lucky. If this is what being out is like, he can keep it. When I first came out to my mom, I didn’t mention having a boyfriend. I enjoyed a frigid—but unpunished—summer of Mom dealing with my queerness as nothing more than some unpleasant hypothetical. But then she found out there was an actual boy involved, with lips and stubble and dirty, filthy, no good intentions. That’s when she confiscated my phone. The rest came rapid fire: laptop—gone, Wi-Fi—cut off. My friends have been banned from coming over—all except for Vicky, my best friend (and ex-girlfriend), aka my mother’s last hope for a straight son. Not that that matters. Vicky stopped having time to hang out as soon as her son was born—I don’t know how she’s going to handle our senior year while taking care of a newborn. The baby isn’t mine, but try telling that to my suddenly desperate-for-a-grandchild mother. Gay? Jesus wouldn’t like that. Knock up your girlfriend? Well, babies are a blessing, and at least you’re not gay. Scowling, I licked drying peppermint off my fingers, where remnants of electric purple nail polish still hide under my cuticles. Mom stripped off my color when she took my phone — it was a merciless raid. She was weirdly violent about it too. Plunged my hands into a dish of alcohol and voila: no more purple fingers. Just manly, pale white sausages as the Lord intended. If Ario were here, he’d repaint them. Ario makes everything okay again. "I forgot to tell you earlier... " Mom says, commanding her voice to soften. "It turns out I was right — your dad's birthday present for you did get turned around in the mail. " I roll my eyes and scrape the last dregs of ice cream from my bowl. My birthday was Memorial Day, and we're currently past the 4th of July. " Turned around in the mail. " Clearly, the man forgot. I've made peace with Dad missing, ignoring, and forgetting every single thing about my life, but, like,... Don't try to trick me into thinking he gives a shit. A puffy yellow envelope with my name scrawled across The face lies propped against a candle in the center of the table. Whatever Dad left for me in that envelope, it'll be something half assed. I'm ignoring it. “You know what probably happened, it's that international shipping. You can't count on it, " Mom continues, eager to sell me on this lie — whether it's her own feeble creation or something dad made her swallow. "Sure, yeah, international shipping," I say. “Everything takes two months because it's the 1900s. They still send mail across in the Titanic dash" "Connor—" "You believe anything, won't you? " Mom's smile freezes and then dies. Victory. An evil warmth fills my lungs as I savor landing a hit finally. Unfortunately, as usual, guilt follows. Dad put Mom through the ringer for years — lying, raging, drinking, disappearing — and I just squeezed lemon juice into her most painful wound. I don't relax my scowl, though. If she stays vulnerable, there's a decent chance she'll give up and return my phone. CSA: Thank you. So you talk to a little bit about how Ario's experience and his desire not to go back into the closet informs the power dynamic between them, and pushes Connor out of the closet a little bit. AS: Right. CSA: Do you think it was fair for him to push his boyfriend to come out, and do you see Ario as responsible for what happens to Connor? AS: I think it's one of those situations… I see Surrender Your Sons… One of my favorite things in any drama, anywhere, is when it's just a preponderance of things, like it’s just a perfect storm. Where it's just the weather and everything else converge to make a really chaotic situation happen, and that's definitely something I wanted to play with in Surrender Your Sons, which is just: all of these people have built their lives out of a house of cards, and it takes very little to have it all come tumbling down. And so, with Ario— CSA: That precarity. AS: That precarity, exactly. So you see how was soon as Connor even sets foot in this camp, he immediately starts changing things. Just his… You can already tell from that reading, Connor is a very spirited… he's closeted, but he is mouthy. He's got opinions. He is not afraid to tell people off. He has no protection on his mouth, he just says what he wants to say. So right away that's a troublemaker. That's someone who, in conversion therapy, has something where it would immediately start causing chaos. And that's luckily what we see! But to your question about is Ario responsible: Yes, in this way, but really I make it very, very clear in this book that it can all really be traced to… it’s the parent's job to protect this kid, and it's one of those things where Ario was looking out for himself. And then there's… This story really evolves from this point. We do meet Ario, we see different layers and different colors to their story together where there is a push - pull between them, where it it doesn't quite absolve Ario and it doesn't quite absolve Connor. There's a few things where it's just… it's very messy. It’s one of those things where I do not approve of pushing someone out before they're ready, but this is something that Connor wanted so much and you could see people who are very young and want a lot. And a lot of what our few queer stories that are out there have been saying which is, just: your life begins as soon as you come out. Everything before then is false and a lie. That's something that I really wanted to investigate, which is really not a ‘You’re closeted’ and then there's a hard moment, and then you're out.’ CSA: And as queer people we really want to believe that. We want to believe that everything is magically solved. AS: Oh my gosh, it's the beginning of your problems! It's one of those things for like… it’s an ongoing thing. There's no magic bullet to anything in life, least of all coming out. However, it is the next step. So it's one of those things where in general in the past, I've been a big proponent of — me personally? I met all my best friends. I met all the most wonderful people, the most wonderful things in life happened to me after I came out. However, that doesn't mean I was this, like, non-entity before I came out. I had lots of good memories, and there were happy times when I was closeted. It's just one of those things where, and I go into this in the book, which is just: it goes down to the family and the parents, and it's who holds emotional strings on these kids? Who holds financial strings on these kids? Because a lot of them, if they're under 18, they still got to go to school. They have… A lot of them aren’t paying for their own stuff. A lot of parents who respond badly to a coming out might even hold college up for ransom. For some of these kids, there's a lot of their lives that they hold in their hand, and this book — and me! — are very pro “be sneaky.” If you think they're going to be a problem… like, sneaky. Fake it. Lie to them. Have a side life. It’s one of those things where it's very much pro “have your own life, be smart, be careful, protect yourself.” If you think that you're going to have a really…if you think that it’s going to be really that bad, definitely do not put yourself in harms way with that. Emotionally, financially, even physically, even. It's very pro “Do what you can to survive,” and add includes lying so you have your college paid for, lying so you can afford your own phone. If you really, really can't stand… you know if it's livable or not. And I would say that if it's doing real emotional damage to you, find a way sooner rather than later to make your own money to pay for your own place and car and phone. A few things that you would need to really look out for yourself in the woods. So that way it removes the strings from your family, so the worst that could happen is you have a bad fight, and then you just don't go there anymore. CSA: Well so let's talk about Connor's relationship with his mother, because it's very complicated. And as much as she puts him through, he doesn't hate her. And I mean in the book, you give all of those reasons that you just described for why some people appear not to hate their families, but it doesn't seem like that's exactly what's going on with Connor. So why not? Why doesn't he hate her? AS: It's hard. I think that even in these first few pages that Connor is… especially in Conner's specific situation: he's raised by a single mom, he witnessed firsthand his dad put her through the ringer on a lot of different issues, and they became very codependent. She really depends on him for a lot, he depended on her for a lot. And that's the thing people I don't think maybe super get who are outside of this life: is that you could have a really nasty relationship with a parent, you could have a bigoted parent, and there’s still so many good memories potentially with that parent. It's very messy. It's very complicated, and it goes into… I did not want Connor to just have it very easy, and say, ‘oh well, you know… she was always bad. She never had a kind word. It was always bad — da-da-da…’ It’s, I mean I personally (not in my own life, thank God), but like, you read enough stories, you read enough things, you listen to and talk to enough people, you do get the sense of just like, wow. I mean, the reason people stay in these family units is there's so much — and it’s so easier said than done to say goodbye to your whole family. There's great memories, there's Christmases, there's what that means for the future that… One of the campers we meet later, Marcos (who's one of my favorite characters), basically says as much in the middle of this, cuz he's been there for a long time. Marcos is a lifer. He's been there for at least 6 or 7 months while Connor's been there… it's his first day. But Marcos is just… if it’s even remotely easy for Connor, it's definitely not easy for Marcos cuz his family is in the church completely. His dad is a reverend himself. Every person he knows is wrapped up in the church, so to leave all that behind, to do what people tend to say is the easy thing to do; ‘You just tell him that you're gay and you're out and that's that, and they got to get on board or bye!’ That, for an 18-year-old — for anybody! Saying goodbye to your whole lived life. I couldn't write this story without honoring that for each one of them. And that's one of those things where, the more happy memories I filled this book with is cuz throughout the book, Connor is remembering happy moments with his mom, almost like he's reminding himself of this cuz he needs to. Because to think about not being around her anymore is too unbearable. That's something where I wanted… the more you bring in these stories of happiness and good times, and what you'd lose if you don't — I mean, it just makes it all the more cruel what's happening to them, because this camp is forcing these kids into a terrible situation, and the family is forcing them into a terrible situation. These kids have — CSA: Yeah, that's one of the questions you were mentioning before. Home sent you here, so where is home? AS: HOME sent them here. So it's like, how do you square with that? And the answer is not easy. There's no answer. CSA: So you mentioned Marcos, and he has a refrain: ‘It was so kind of you to visit me in my loneliness.’ Can you talk about that? Where does it come? How does it connect to the themes of the novel in your mind? AS: “It's so kind of you to visit me in my loneliness,” is a quote that’s really been a marker throughout all the different versions of this. It technically is a line from MGM’s Wizard of Oz. It's a thrown away line that the witch says to Dorothy when she captures her. The flying monkeys catch Dorothy and bring her the castle; when she first sees her and the witch is saying “It’s so kind of you to visit me in my loneliness,” sort of an old-timey turn of phrase, you know? Sort of like, ‘so nice of you to visit this old lady.’ (Clara laughs) Marcos… He has adopted this, cuz like I said, he's a lifer. Sort of a mother hen character to all the younger characters, cuz there's tiers of campers in there; There's Overs, Unders, and Beginners. Overs are kids who are over 18, Unders are like high-school-age-kids who are under 18 but still adults, and then you have Beginners who are really around middle school. Marcos has taken it upon himself to be… he's a people pleaser, so he wants to feel very useful, and for all of the negativity that is swarming through his life and his head right now, Marcos very much wants to feel useful as the only positive experience he's getting in life right now. So he sees it as his job to be the caretaker of these kids as they come and go, so he's been there so long, he's seen so many campers come and go, he adopted this ‘aloha’ which he says it for his goodbye and hello. Every time a camper arrives or departs he says, “it's so kind of you to visit me in my loneliness.” It's just something that he's seems to have developed to protect himself as a way of basically making sure he doesn't get heartbroken every time someone leaves, and he can't leave. In that, it’s him reminding himself that he has appointed himself; that he is not leaving because he's really taking control. He's saying like, ‘oh no, no. It's my job to be this watcher on the wall here, and I'm not supposed to go because I'm supposed to stay here and make sure these kids are okay.’ Because he is terrified of how empty he feels his life would be outside of the island, back home if he left. So that definitely is a refrain that comes throughout the book, and it eventually starts to take on multiple meanings cuz him and Connor develop a bond. They're the two lead campers there, and Connor is definitely this troublemaker/wise-ass: ‘we're getting out of here, and I'm doing this, and I'm saying that.’ For him, it's a little… he's become the Ario to Marcos in that he's like, ‘Well, what we gotta do is we just got to get out of here, and then that's it — simple as that!’ And Marcos is really the one reminding everybody that it's just like: yeah, it's going to be super exciting to get out of here and close this place down and say bye, but what is it… CSA: Where do we go from there? AS: What do our lives look like after? And he's not wrong to bring that up. CSA: Yeah. So, without giving away too much, one thing that you deal with is the importance of sticking together instead of acting alone, and that happens on a bunch of different levels in the book. Do you see solidarity as a necessary component in breaking that cycle of queer pain, and what does that look like in the real world? AS: 100%. That is the only way forward out of queer pain. And it's the only way forward for the queer community. This is something where (one of the characters says it frequently) — we’re less of a target if we're together. And so this really… Surrender your Sons was something where I wanted to show Connor (who's really an avatar of myself), who's this white gay kid who's thought he's at the lowest end of the… at the worst end of the stick. And then he gets to this camp where he sees characters who have different intersectionalities, who have way different (sometimes worse) life experiences than he does, and he realizes that his trauma is not the worst trauma. And it's not really a trauma contest, but it is more of a — he does learn to… it's not just him alone, it turns into… it comes from him saying, ‘I got to get out of here. I can't stay here. I got to get back to Ario. I got to go…’ to, ‘I can't leave until every one of these kids can get out of here.’ It's really what I wanted to say, larger, how I feel about the queer community which can very often resort to these different sections, and white gays can definitely… have been accused many times, rightfully, of being a little selfish and not inclusive of everybody in the queer community. And I really wanted this to be a rulebook, a guide book if not for the whole queer community at least for white gays to just be like, ‘This is how we're going to get out of this — all together. There is no escape for you if these other folks are left behind.’ I was seeing that so much, especially in the last few years and it was driving me nuts. This definitely was a thing… I said, like, even if you take it from a purely selfish standpoint, you will never, ever, ever have the escape you think you can get on your own if you do this on your own. The only way out is by all of us working together and listening to other people and realizing that you don't have all the answers. Connor does not have all the answers about how to get out of the island; He has only been on the island for a day! There are people who have been there for 6 months, 7 months who have been plotting this escape. They know the way out a lot better than Connor does, and they really only start to see success when those people start being listened to. So that was definitely my way of going about doing that. ***AD BREAK*** Listened at 7x…. CSA: AS: CSA: If you're just joining me, my guest today is author Adam Sass who's debut novel Surrender Your Sons tells the story of a group of queer teenagers who are kidnapped to a conversion therapy center in Costa Rica. In the acknowledgments you talk about the way this book has changed from your early drafts to the published form, and you gave us the brief overview but I'm going to make you talk about something that you say you're not going to talk about in the acknowledgments… AS:Let's do it! CSA: …Which is the fact that it was originally a fantasy novel set in the '80s! So tell me about those early iterations, and how the heck did you… like how the heck did the revision process lead to a contemporary realist thriller? Like how literally nuts and bolts did you do that? AS: It’s wild. It’s something where I really wanted, like…. I will definitely talk about this right now, but I will say… I'll probably, once the book is out (and it's been out for a few months), I'll probably release a page outline of, ‘Here's what the first version was like.’ (He laughs) It's just not good. It was one of those things where, I wrote this back in 2013, it was my first book, and I really wanted… I don't know how I got into fantasy, but it basically was this thing where it was always about Connor versus this camp, and he was always on an island and it was always a conversion camp. I had it set during different times cuz, like I said before, I set it during the '80s cuz I was like, oh okay well… it was 2013 and I was one of those folks who was like, ‘Oh, it's done. It's not a relevant thing right now.’ And so I just said, ‘Okay, well, I’ll just set it in the '80s when it was a really really dark time for queer people, and that will be why I set it during that time.’ So that’s why it was 80s; it was from a place of full ignorance. And then the sci-fi elements of it were… so we've always had this protagonist, Conor Major, and we've always had this antagonist — the Reverend who runs the camp. At one point it was… I went a little X-Men-y, cuz right now on Slayerfest in the summer we are talking about… we are going through the summer of X-Men. I'm such an X-Men fan, so we are doing this Summer of X-Men there. Something that X-Men does a lot is basically the powers are a metaphor for a lot of stuff, and queer stuff probably a lot. So I was like, okay well, what I'm going to do is: I'm going to be really clever and I'm going to show… I've been trying to do the, like, okay… well how does this emotional harm that the camp is doing translate into something physical and visual and movie excitement? And so it was something where Connor himself… It was confusing because not all the campers had powers. It was just Connor and the Reverend had these… it was almost like… it was like a superhero story where it wasn’t known. There was no rule book, there wasn't any like, ‘Oh, here's where the person explains, and here's how society knows what these people are.’ It was just, they had these powers that were lightning-based powers, and it was all this energy that was inside of each of them. The Reverend had these, but they were… because he was so… because he was so twisted and using it for, you know. It was all very chi-centered, so because his Chi was very poisoned, his energy was very unpredictable and dark and uncontrolled. But he really wanted to learn these secrets from someone like Connor who's a little more pure, and his energy was a little more. It was… (Clara laughs) it was very a mess, but it was the same story. So how we got from that to this where… Oh my God just pretend I didn't even just say the last 5 minutes! (Clara laughs) Nothing like that happens. It is a straight up, just regular folks, regular timeline energy. How we got from that to that is… That’s the other thing when you're selling a book is, I didn't realize that it's one part writing the book, and it's another part learning the industry. So I was writing a book for the first time and I didn't know anything about the book industry. I thought I could do it on the fly. Bad idea. Or, maybe a good idea, but I learned. I learned, and I failed a lot along the way. One of my first rejections in 2015 was… it was an adult novel because I didn't really know much about YA at that time. It was an adult novel, and it was still a teen character. So this agent was like, I know it's a no for me, but please just… this is YA. The way you’re — I'm writing everything: the big emotions, the arc… the everything. He's like, this is YA. This is writing a very familiar way and you will see a lot more like that. So that's why it became YA. And then a few years later, in 2017, I had just had so many rejections. I had had like, I think upwards of 90 rejections at that point, and it wasn't just going anywhere. There was a there was a very wonderful agent who rejected, again. She had seen two revisions and rejected both times. And she just kept saying, every single time she said, ‘Listen. The sci-fi stuff is just… it's like a weird hat that the store is wearing. Like, so just take it off. It's one of those things where it's just this extra element. It keeps weighing everything down. It’s weird. It's just not clicking.’ Cuz I wanted the sci-fi stuff for the big WHA-BANG! Marvel: YEAH! Explosive! Like, ‘oh, we blow up a whole camp at the end!’ She was very, very nice. She was like, you can tell such a more interesting story, just with them at the camp and with this one subplot; And the subplot was this story that is now the main plot of it, which is there was a very small subplot of this former camper who had been severely injured— CSA: Ricky. AS: Ricky Hannigan. That the camp was covering up what happened to him. It was tied… the solution of that was tied to bringing them down. So that was a very… I had seven different subplots, and that was just a small one. It was like a side character, a side quest in a video game. She was like, ‘This story is very interesting, and the rest of the camp is very interesting. I would throw everything else away.’ At the time… CSA: But like, literally, how do you do that? That's the part that I don't understand! Like, how...? AS: It was in good time, because it was right after Trump was elected, and it was right after the inauguration, so it was just… I was moving anyway. I was like, I was in New York. We had moved there and things had not gone well there, and we were coming back to California. It was one of those things where every part of my life needed a full reboot. So it was like: this book that I've been working on for years was like going nowhere; Trump was getting in; We had to move; We had done this big New York City thing — big dreams! — and it failed. And we were like… okay, we need to just scurry back to California, lick our wounds, and rebuild. So during that time I got this full-time job. I had only previously done part-time work and freelance stuff, and so it was one of those things where it just started making me feel confident again. And then that working — taking my mind off of it, taking, like, 6 months away helped free my mind up to a point where I started thinking about the story again. It was creeping in, cuz at first — believe me — I did not take that feedback well. I was like, ‘oh my God, you're wrong,’ (Adam makes an embarrassed noise and laughs) — and then didn't respond to that email that way! No I decided it was very, (Adam mimics a square professional voice) ‘Thank you so much for your time.’ And then privately I was like, (Adam does his embarrassed voice again) ‘Oh my God! Biggest mistake!’ Then it just started slowly being like… oh, okay. I could see that being that, and I was frustrated with the world building and it, too, wasn’t super clicking for me, so I was like, ‘Great! Well, if I did this, and I could keep this chapter… though there's a few chapters that still remain that way… and then I just remove that…’ and it became a lot lighter. It became a quicker story. It became, not lighter in the tone, but it just became breezier to write. CSA: (Empathetically) Yeah. AS: It wasn't carrying all this excess weight. I wasn't having to keep eight different plot lines going; It was just one story: it was Connor at this camp helping everyone get out, and the simplicity of that just made it for everybody. I mean, I rewrote it, and then my agent Eric Smith — he had rejected this book when it was still a fantasy whatsit. And typically what they say to authors is — listen. If it's a no from that agent, do not bring that book back to that person. So I was a little… I just got along well with Eric online, and he had written me a very nice note. So he had rejected it in 2016, and then a few months later sent me a very nice email saying, ‘Just so you know, I really think you're talented. I really believe in you, and just please make sure you send me whatever the next thing is. I know all these rejections are really hard and suck, and it’s still a no, but just make sure whatever the next thing is, you send it to me.’ So I took enough time — it was like a year and a half — and then I just emailed him, cuz it's like… well no one's going to… I had some friends who were like, They're not going to take you to author jail if you just email him! …’ CSA: What do you have to lose? AS: ‘...He's the nicest guy in the world — What do you have to lose?’ As long as I'm not harassing him and going to his door being like, ‘Hey it's me again!’ It's one email. He can respond or not respond, I just wanted to offer it, and I just said, ‘Hey listen, your advice really cut me through. Your chin up thing — that was just above and beyond, and it really helped me out in a bad moment and a dark time. Having said that, I have rebooted this book from scratch. It's a different genre, it's a different this. Here's my here's my pitch. If you want to see — it shot in the dark! — if you want to see it, I would love to send it to you.’ And I swear to god, within a week he had signed me. It was wonderful. It was truly magical. Like he was just really ready to… for whatever it was… was like enough time had passed, the book was way different enough, it was *clearly* working again. CSA: I mean, is it weird if I say… it's kind of like your book came out? AS: It did! Exactly! There was this whole other identity that I was trying to force on to it, and it just was really… and everybody knew that it was ludacris but me. Wow, you're blowing my mind. This is like 3 years of therapy in one go. (They both laugh) CSA: Well, like therapy our hour is almost up — AS:Awww! CSA: — so I have one more question for you. I wanted to give you a chance at, given the nature of this book — and I know there are so many great organizations who are working either to help people who have been through conversion therapy, or to stop it, or both — Do you have resources that you recommend or… AS: Absolutely. CSA: …organizations that you want to mention? AS: I have two. Born Perfect, which is a wonderful, wonderful organization. If you've seen news stories of like, ‘This city or this county or this state has passed a law that has banned conversion therapy!’ They're usually the ones behind the legislation on it. They're really working on it. They were formed in 2014 by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, but I've spoken with several of these people. I've been able to / lucky enough to work with some of them. When I was at my company, Attn: — they are wonderful. They have tons of resources here. You can donate to them if you want to help the cause. They have toolkits and resources. They've got education about the different laws and legislation state-by-state, so if you know these states and cities: there's currently legislation on their way! You can you can call up the legislators in that area and be like, ‘I super support this bill. Please pass it.’ They educate, there's a lot of education, and then they also have a survivor network. So there's them, and then the Trevor Project which everybody knows is this very wonderful LGBTQ organization. They also have survivor resources. They also have a ‘50 states 50 bills’ plan that they're trying to do; They're trying to get, obviously, a nationwide ban on conversion therapy which would be great, but something that both of these organizations and people who are more survivors themselves and are still active in trying to fight this will tell you, is that it has to be done grassroots. There is such a… there's different laws in different states, and each one… It’s very difficult because (I even bring this up in the book as well) where a lot of these laws are passed, they’re for minors only, and then if they're over 18, technically they're making their own decisions; However, as we've talked before, these families can hold lots of strings on these kids even after they're 18 that will force them into these situations, and it's a little hard to legislate that. And it's also hard to legislate to religious organizations, so a lot of these bans are secular. It's definitely one of those things where, like, it's a two-fold thing, which is just fight it in legislation, and then fight it through educating yourself. The worst thing you can do is say it's not happening anymore, and to deny these survivor stories because there's more and more survivors all the time. In general, it’s not necessarily a camp. It doesn't have to be a facility, it doesn't even have to necessarily be someone else; It can just be your parent saying, ‘You better be this way or these will happen.’ That itself is a conversion therapy. A lot of these characters realize that their conversion therapy began months and months and years and years before they ever arrived at the camp so I think that's important to be very vigilant about. CSA: Well thank you! We’ll put those resources on the KSQD website when we air this episode. And, Adam, this has been truly delightful. Thank you so much for joining me today. AS: Thank you so much for having me. CSA: Learn more about Adam, or to pre-order Surrender Your Son's visit Adam's AdamSassBooks.com.