Episode 76: Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

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Sarah Harrison  01:37
Carolyn, we have such a cool guest today. I’m very excited about our guest today. She’s only had like one snack, though, so I hope she snacks some while she’s here.

Carolyn Daughters  01:46
Snacks are a very important part of the podcast.

Sarah Harrison  01:48
For you audio listeners, I’m sorry you cannot enjoy the beautiful tray of snacks that Carolyn always prepares me. Yes, I have the pleasure to read a summary of today’s book, Tell Me Everything. Today we have our super special guest, Erika Krouse, and we are going to be talking about Tell Me Everything. Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a contract job as a private investigator for a lawyer named Grayson who hires her to investigate the sexual assault of a college student attacked by football players and recruits at a party over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about private investigator techniques, tracking down witnesses and investigating a university culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and historic Civil Rights case that revolutionizes Title Nine law, Erika becomes consumed on a personal level when the case and her life both implode at the same time. Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.

Carolyn Daughters  03:11
Erika Krouse is the author of four books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently, the forthcoming collection of short stories, Save Me, Stranger, out with Flat Iron Books in January 2025. Erika’s memoir, Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation is a New York Times Editor’s Choice winner, winner of the Edgar Award and the Colorado Book Award. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Esquire.com, and other places. Erika mentors for the Book Project at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado, where she won the Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence. And Lighthouse Writers Workshop and its literary community is where I first met Erika, many years ago. Erika, welcome. We’re so happy to have you here to talk about Tell Me Everything.

Erika Krouse  03:58
Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited.

Carolyn Daughters  04:02
Erika, before we start asking you, we have approximately one million questions. Would you read from Tell Me Everything for us?

Erika Krouse  04:15
This is just a little bit into the book. And probably, I think this first chapter. One night, I picked up a night shift as a favor to one of my coworkers, because she wanted me to get laid. This is, by the way, at a diner by three in the morning, the manager and all the post bar customers had left, except for the cooks sleeping in the kitchen. I was alone in the diner when a pale blonde boy walked in. He was about my age, wearing a black leather jacket, kind of cute. I asked him if he wanted coffee. He told me he had killed his girlfriend. He said her name was Sharon. She looks like you, skin like yours. Cheated on me and I killed her with a knife, stab, stab after he made love. Of she’s in the crawl space under my parents’ house in Ohio. She’s hot, beautiful. I love her. I love her so fucking much. Can I have a cheeseburger? I don’t have any money. The boy spoke quickly, brow smooth. I said, I’m sorry. They won’t let me. A familiar terror had already seized my stomach like a cramp. The diner sat on a highway bordering New York and New Jersey. If what he said was true, the boy’s dead girlfriend in Ohio was eight hours away. He heaved a giant boom box onto my counter. He said, Is your name? Sharon here. This is about you. I donate this song to you. Dedicate I whispered. He pressed a button on the boom box with his thumb a heavy metal song stretched its tiny fingers toward every wall in the diner. Do you remember dancing to this? He asked. The Chorus was his girlfriend’s name, Sharon. Over and over, my name isn’t Sharon. I tried to say, but he interrupted. He said, Sharon Honey, if I don’t eat something soon, I can’t be responsible for what happens? Our Cook was still sleeping in the kitchen, slumped against the blue plastic bin, head deep in his folded arms. What could he do? Anyway? He was undocumented, sending money every week to his family in Chiapas. We liked each other, fine, but he wouldn’t help me. If there was trouble, he would run before the cops came. He would get fired if he left during his shift and without his job, his six children would starve 3000 miles south. I pulled two slices of white bread from a plastic bag, toasted them and scraped butter across their surfaces. I carried the plate through the swinging doors that didn’t lock, and set it on my counter with a soft clink. The murderer took a few bites of toast, his thin jaw working hard. What if he didn’t like it? But he swallowed and said, that’s better. Can I sleep in a booth? I said yes, and he lay down on the crack vinyl seat in the corner. His silver boom box still throbbed on my corner. Oh, sorry, on my counter. Sorry, his silver again, his silver boom box still throbbed on my counter. When I turned off the music, the boy barked a warning, Sharon, I didn’t know if he was calling my name or requesting the song. I pressed the play button again, letting the tape run to the end. I was terrified he would wake up and I’d be the Sharon he killed, not the Sharon he loved. I quietly paced the restaurant and let both men sleep, the murder in the booth and the cook in the kitchen. I didn’t know if I should hide behind the counter inside the kitchen or in plain sight. I didn’t even think to leave after 5am truck drivers trod into the diner loudly, slapping newspapers and ordering black coffee. I took trembling orders on my green pad and tried to speak softly over the frying bacon in the kitchen, afraid the boy in the booth would wake up. Shortly before the manager arrived, I realized the boy had slipped out, taking his boom box, but leaving the cassette tape on my counter for me. Someone had scrawled a curly girly Sharon in blue and blue ballpoint on the sticker label. The original Sharon might have written it somewhere in Ohio, a girl who looked like me was maybe riding in a crawl space. Too many years went by before I realized that I should have called the police, that they might have looked in Ohio for Sharon to see if she was okay, that they could have protected me at the diner, that anyone would think either of us was worth saving.

Erika Krouse  08:56
I’ve never read that part of Tell Me Everything aloud before. I was like, when you read the same thing over and over and over again, you’re like, Oh, this one, I know, I don’t even remember writing it.

Sarah Harrison  09:07
Okay, I mixed it up a bit, but it struck me really hard on a lot of levels. So there’s the part we were talking about before we got started, which was like, Oh, why didn’t I call the police to protect you. I can share my own little assault story, which is pretty minor, but I would just say, I get it. I get not calling the police to protect you, but also like waking up the cook to cook the hamburger, or saying, like, No, I can’t do that person who murders people, I cannot let you have a free cheeseburger, like those things, really, I want you to talk about, all those levels of that interaction. If you wouldn’t mind if we could jump into that.

Erika Krouse  09:53
Sure. And I don’t know what your experience was.

Sarah Harrison  09:57
I’ll throw it out there real quick, because it’s pretty short and sweet. It was not sweet, but it wasn’t tragic, either. It was unfortunate. I was walking home, not home. I was traveling for work, and I was walking back to the bed and breakfast in the tiny, adorable, small town where I was and the bed and breakfast was just like a couple blocks from where I had dinner at a really early hour, because I’m an early dinner reader, or maybe it was seven or something like that, but it was dark and I was walking home, and some guy grabbed me in the butt from behind, and I like leaped into the ear, turned around, and my voice dropped like octaves.

Carolyn Daughters  10:46
Like, I’m serious, it got lower, not higher.

Sarah Harrison  10:51
Drop octaves. I don’t know whose voice it was, but it didn’t really deep, and I just like, stood there like a beast full of rage, and he looked really confused, and he just turned around, and I just stood there, and I stared at him until he had walked completely out of sight, and then I went back to the bed and breakfast, and I ended up calling, like my boyfriend at the time, and I was like, still very adrenaline rushing, and I went to work the next day, and they were like, Why didn’t you call the police? We could have caught him. I’ve called the police before, guys. Nothing against the police, but I’ve never experienced any doing anything in that department, like I’ve been robbed multiple times. And it’s always like, All right, we got our notes, right? I get everybody, of course. Was like, why were you walking alone? I was like, you know what? Nobody traveled with work to work for me, I didn’t come with it, come with the escort. I wasn’t scantily clad. It was like, five to 7pm it was an adorable down, like there was no reason for me not to walk home, like, four blocks five to 7pm.

Erika Krouse  12:17
I was even if it was three in the morning and your drunk is anything right still, like, you weren’t like, Please, someone grab my ass.

Sarah Harrison  12:24
I was like, shocked that everyone’s questioning, what were you doing to invite this into your life? Kind of like they were in Tell Me Everything. And I was like, literally the opposite of everything. Like, why are you asking me that?

Carolyn Daughters  12:39
That sounds like that contextualization, right? So it’s well set up the scene for me, like, how did this thing happen? There was this guy who basically was grabbing women on a street. That’s essentially it. But people are looking for, well, that it can’t be that simple, right? Surely you were walking at some weird hour.

Erika Krouse  13:03
I think there are two things about that. One is just an inherent like, well, women are blamed for everything. And that’s throughout Tell Me Everything, right? That was everyone I talked to when I was working on this case. But I think some of it also comes from not an evil place where they want to figure out, well, what could you do next time that will keep you safe? What could I do that will keep me safe?

Sarah Harrison  13:29
I can jump around and, like, drop my voice, right?

Erika Krouse  13:34
It sounds like you.

Sarah Harrison  13:36
But I was actually. I was dating a DA at the time, so that’s who I ended up calling. And he said something similar. Well, no, he didn’t say, like, what were you doing? He said, People just have this urge to find some cause and effect, meaning it leads them down to an unfortunate questioning path, right, right?

Erika Krouse  13:57
It sure does, and that happens all the way up to the judicial level. Unfortunately.

Sarah Harrison  14:03
So that was my little story to just say, like, I get, are you not calling the police? Or feeling like that was the first thing that would come into your mind. But I also feel like if somebody just murdered their girlfriend and asked for a free cheeseburger, I’d be like, a double cheeseburger. Talk about the other aspects of that scene, what, what was going on?

Erika Krouse  14:26
Well, I think a lot of it was where I was coming from myself. I’d grown up in such a rough environment that I didn’t really have a sense of personal protection or agency, or a feeling that that I could either protect myself, or affect any kind of change in the environment that wasn’t going to be negative, which is why this case, when I was. Hired as a private investigator to work on this case that was super meaningful to me, to really, for once, work not just toward protecting myself probably would have been too much for me to handle, but like, working toward protecting other people was a new idea for me. That was like, wow, I could, maybe I could help, even me. So that was really interesting to explore in Tell Me Everything and meaningful also for me to explore.

Carolyn Daughters  15:27
It felt to me that you had qualms, for sure. I mean, you, when you hear about the case from Grayson, you’re almost ready to do a 180 Not, not going to do this case. But then it’s like it’s in your head and you’re thinking, maybe I will do this case. And it reminded me a little bit of your jiu jitsu experience, where you’re very small and the win is rare. It is so uncommon, but when you get it, boy, that euphoria. And so, hey, I don’t know that I can handle this. I don’t know that we’re gonna win, but I’m, I’m gonna try this. I’m gonna be part of this. And so that was an act of bravery. It felt to me.

Erika Krouse  16:08
Thank you. I don’t know what it was. I think I was ready for it in a way. I mean, as a as a sexual abuse survivor myself, I it was this situation where I was like, there are points in your life, oh, I think in some times, sometimes daily, where you’re like, do I turn, do I like, steer into the crash, or do I try and skid away from it? And this was the time when I was like, going to steer into it and see, see what happens. And in some ways that there was a degree of safety, because it was, it was a lawsuit. I had a job to do. The job is to find, to some degree, and it wasn’t this chaos that that it could have been. I don’t know if it was brave, though. I think, I think if you grew up under certain circumstances and you’ve experienced trauma, I think every single day, you’re dealing with those kinds of choices. And in some ways, the big choices are just as easy as the small choices, and the small choices are as hard as the big choices. Sort of how I look at it.

Carolyn Daughters  17:23
I mean, from childhood on, so you say you were a storage locker for people’s secrets, and Tell Me Everything starts with a discussion of your face. And so the idea that your face, your empathy, your body language, or it could be this whole myriad things, right? But what do you chalk it up to your whole life, where, even as a child, but also as an adult, people would come to you and they would just bear their soul.

Erika Krouse  17:55
I mean, I think I have a very just strange face that it’s like everyone thinks I’m their cousin, like and it doesn’t matter what their ethnicity is, everyone thinks that I’m their cousin. And I think also it might just be that I also think that from a very young age, I’ve always been sussing out social situations to try to figure out how does this work, knowing that I was this weirdo and an outsider, and also knowing that outsiders get picked off of the herd and killed. So I think I always just tried to read the room and read the room, and knowing that if someone trusted me and told me something, then they might be inclined to be on my side, at least a little bit.

Carolyn Daughters  18:52
Feel a connection with you, and maybe from that, you would have maybe a good relationship, protective relationship or something.

Erika Krouse  19:00
Or learn a little bit more about how to get to the next minute. I think that that was what more, what it was for me, but then I think it evolved. I think I started really liking it, and I’d be like, Tell me more. And then learning how to how to draw people out, or how to ask them the right questions, just like you guys do, right like figuring out how to, you know how to get to the heart of something. I also get bored really easily, and I hate chit chat.

Sarah Harrison  19:34
There’s another thing I actually identified with super strongly, and I wanted to ask you about your story arc in Tell Me Everything in that regard. So I would say, in my early 20s, I was also that person, that people would come up and just start confessing crazy. And when I was, when I was actually 20, I worked as an art museum guard. Oh, I remember. The first show was a pop art show, so we had Andy Warhol’s there and stuff. And you stand in front of this Andy Warhol and don’t let anyone cross the tape line. So I am suddenly captive to a position in space as well. So I’m standing there like, please step behind the line. Please don’t swing your keys in front of the close old number. And people at the art museum especially would just come up. Wild, wild stories. Sometimes for hours, I was like, Okay, I get I’m a captive audience, but I don’t think any of the other guards are having this experience. And I would wonder, what is it that’s doing this? I do think I was a listener. I was like, This is wild. Tell me more. But also I feel like, as I aged, people will still tell me things, but not as randomly as all that. Do you still have the same experience? Because I’m wondering how I’ve changed between now and then. Have you had a changed experience, or is it still just the same?

Erika Krouse  21:08
Still the same. My mammographer just told me about her mother’s breast cancer and death. I mean, I thought during COVID It would get less because limited contact and the masking? The funny thing is, when I was wearing a mask, even more people will tell me things. I think there’s something about like you said, listening. I think also a lot of people just they don’t ask questions. They don’t care.

Sarah Harrison  21:38
They are sharers. There’s a lot of shares out there.

Erika Krouse  21:41
I think being asked a question about yourself is something that you might even be in a relationship, and that doesn’t even happen. You know what I mean? So if a stranger does it well, that this is where I’m this is where I’m talking. I guess I feel like there are a lot of people who are just really dying to express themselves, dying to talk. Maybe they haven’t discovered writing and don’t know that you can do this right? To your delight, so speaking to a stranger and a burdening yourself feels like a relief to them, instead of just holding it all inside.

Sarah Harrison  22:17
They don’t just necessarily spontaneously speak. You will ask them a question or something else.

Erika Krouse  22:23
They’ll usually initiate. I feel it. So there is this thing I think I wrote about in Tell Me Everything, and I can’t remember everything, but I think I wrote there’s this thing I think of us like conversational barbs. So someone says something, right? For example, you said, I’ll skip right over a little bit my own, you said, my own assault experience. But question, question, question, right? And then, but that’s like a little thing. It’s a little hook in my side, and then I think, well, what, she left that out there. She wouldn’t have said it if she wasn’t willing to talk about.

Sarah Harrison  23:02
I would be willing. That’s true, but I wasn’t necessarily wanting to focus there, because you’re our guest, right.

Erika Krouse  23:08
But then, since it does naturally fit the conversation, so, so then, if you ask about it, right? I think people speak to women more than men. Oh, I had the extreme pleasure of going to a meeting at this private investigator firm downtown that I don’t, that I that I don’t belong to they just had me as a guest at lunch, like this happy hour thing, I think. I looked around, and there were, like, I think 12 investigators in there, and 11 were women. Like, it’s that the normal thing. Usually think of the man gums you. But the thing about being a woman is men will talk to women, and women will talk to women, sure. Whereas, if you’re a man, men will talk to men, right? And that’s it.

Sarah Harrison  24:05
Well, and even not always, that I had a male friend talk to me. He’s like, it’s so much easier to talk to women. I don’t feel like I can just talk to my other guy friends that we go have a beer together or something that’s not our relationship, is to talk about our feelings.

Erika Krouse  24:20
Or if they talk, they’re staring at something side by side. I think a lot of things come into play with the way women are taught to be.

Carolyn Daughters  24:31
You talk about the chameleon effect in Tell Me Everything as well, right? So this ability to mimic and you say, not everybody has this ability, but the ones who do you know how to optimize the use of it. And one of the things about mimicry is it’s sometimes protection. And I was even thinking, this is very so silly, but in the office, the office you. Yes, there’s an episode the TV show. And Andy Bernard is coming to Scranton, and he has all these tips that are going to help him grow in his position at this Scranton paper office. And one of them is personality mirroring. And so when he comes in to see Michael Scott. Michael Scott says, oh, Andy, it is a pleasure to see you, and it is a pleasure to see you, and they’re banding back and forth a little bit, but you’re able to do this, which I’m able to do. And maybe Sarah, you are probably as well, but understand your audience and read them, and live where they live, and talk, smile.

Sarah Harrison  25:42
When they smile, a little bit more than they smile.

Carolyn Daughters  25:47
I mean, can you talk about that a little bit like, really, like being able to assess the person across from you and delivering what you think that they need, but also the idea that it can be protection, the ability to do this right,

Erika Krouse  26:02
Like in The Office, it was very artificial, right? That can be really artificial. And some people study NLP, and I find that to be incredibly artificial, too. NLP is a neurolinguistic programming. It’s a lot of that same kind of interaction, but sometimes manipulation. I think a lot of the thing that makes it successful might be the feelings behind it. You know what I mean? Like, if you really are trying to connect with someone, really trying to learn about them, they feel it in in whatever techniques you’re using, inadvertently or on purpose, they just that they’re beside the point. It’s more than like that energy in the room, right? But I so it wasn’t. So although I was very, very, very manipulative in my job, I had this agenda, I wanted to help this case, and I wanted to help the other person understand why the case was important. As I describe in Tell Me Everything, I wanted them to help the case. I wanted that to bring meaning to their lives and their experiences. So that drove it, but I do know that I moved a lot as a kid, it’s just a ton.

Sarah Harrison  27:18
Did you move a lot? You had a lot of changes, though.

Carolyn Daughters  27:22
I moved a little.

Erika Krouse  27:25
We moved a lot, a ton. And when you go to a new school, there’s a new vocabulary, there’s a new culture, there’s new clothing, there’s new accents there. I mean, everything is you have to and you have to adapt pretty much immediately at the very beginning of the school year is when all the lunch tables get set and when you find your friends and when people decide to accept you or reject you. Are you the weird new kid? Or are you? Oh, wow, new opportunity. Weird new kid over here? Well, I needed to have friends so I could get the house? So that was really important to me. So I learned how to do that to the point where, if I’m in Tennessee for a day, I have a Tennessee act, yes.

Sarah Harrison  28:10
Yes, I was thinking about this when I was reading Tell Me Everything. I feel so validated because I’ve always like I’ve moved. And I was even told my husband, I moved so much. And you have to make friends right away, right away. And you have these strategies. My strategy was to pick out the person that seemed even more shy than myself. And then they were so happy when I started asking them questions. And they weren’t evaluating, is this a weird new kid? They’re like, wonderful. Someone must be friends with me. I’m so awkward. That’s a good all my friends are listening now. No, not you. She’s talking about her other friends, other friends.

Erika Krouse  28:55
I had a great strategy for all you high schoolers wanting to so I’d go to the school, and before class, I’d say, I have study hall here. Do you know where that is I’m new? And then they show me or take me. And then at first period, I in between the periods I’ve I have this math class at this room. Do you know where I’m new? And then you tell me. And if they just gave me instructions, I asked, I’d wait three seconds till they were outside. Then I asked someone, then I asked someone else, then ask someone else. So by the end of, like, the week, everyone knew that I was new.

Carolyn Daughters  29:30
You would also probably identify the helper or two out of the bunch, right? Some people are like, Oh my gosh, let me take you there. And other people are like, it’s down there, right?

Erika Krouse  29:38
And then I could approach them, or they could approach me. But it was for me, it was very, incredibly important to socialize with others, so I think that was part of it that’s awesome.

Carolyn Daughters  29:51
Can you tell us about the case this Title Nine, groundbreaking case that Grayson takes on? As you describe in Tell Me Everything, he asks for your help. And the help you’re going to provide is integral to the case. Talk a little bit about what is happening at this university and the role that you’ll be playing to help build the case against the university.

Erika Krouse  30:16
So the case was instigated by a sexual assault against a female college student. And it was a bunch of like, I think 20 or 30 football players and recruits showed up at her very small apartment when she was having a girls only party where they were just going to be safe and stay home and get drunk. And then so by the time the players showed up, she was drunk and she went to bed and then people entered her room, and a large group of very large football players and recruits sexually assaulted her. And when I was hired for this, at that time, all sexual assault was criminal, I don’t, I’m putting just in quotes, just criminal. But it, it was never considered to be a human rights case or civil rights case, or any or anything larger than one individual, or in this case, many individuals assaulting one person. But what ended up happening is the lawyer I worked for Grayson, who was like, I think this is a culture issue. A university culture of sexual assault. This is a problem of the school, because the football players are paid by the university, right? They were paid for by the university, right? There they’re hosted, and they don’t pay their tuition, and there they have scholarships, and all these things paid for. And the university is especially paid for by federal funds. So if, if a program that is funded by the federal government is not, doesn’t offer protection for everybody, men, women, any gender, then basically That’s discrimination paid for by the U.S. government. So that’s, that’s how the title nine situation started, because at that time, Title Nine was really about like, oh, the basketball men’s basketball jerseys are nicer than the women’s basketball jerseys. That’s what it was really about this field. They have a better field than us, and they have better times locker rooms and all the facilities. So this is the first time that title nine was looked at with an eye for actual safety, and it was the first time I know of that sexual assault was treated as a human rights issue, an equality issue, which, let’s be honest, feminists have been saying forever, but at this point, it entered the courts, which was incredible, right? Fabulous. And about time.

Carolyn Daughters  32:58
As you describe in Tell Me Everything, you’re starting your investigation. You’re meeting with a woman named Simone. You’re meeting with various people Calliope. And at some point, Grayson says to you, and I’m paraphrasing here, the information you’re getting is great. It’s so useful, it’s Thank you. However, you’re not seeing the big picture. This university knew what was happening, and there was deliberate in difference on the part of the university, and that’s what we’re looking for. And it felt to me like there was a shift for you, and you’re like, Aha, okay. And so then you start, you’re mapping your wall out with different strategies of what you’re going to do next, and so forth. And you start approaching it from a bigger picture standpoint. And I think maybe that was, I’m guessing, but maybe you tell us is that the point where you understood the enormity of this case, this was the university. This was an entire campus, an entire university culture of sexual assault.

Erika Krouse  34:01
I don’t think I understood the enormity of the case until long afterwards, when there were all these other cases, it because it was I was thought I’d never really seen a woman win in sexual assault, like just I knew a lot of women who had been sexually assaulted. Not a single one of those perpetrators went to jail. So, so, of course, I knew a lot, right? Everyone tells me so it. I didn’t. I didn’t really grasp, as I, as I worked on the case, I learned more and more about what he was doing, but always seemed like such a long shot. And I thought, Oh, wow. It was almost like, here we’re making our noise, and we have a right to make this noise, and it’s a good noise to make him and but I felt like it, I didn’t feel like it was I honestly didn’t feel like it would be one. And then so after that happened, I was like, Wow, this changed everything, really. It changed the. And changed campuses, but also changed the perspective on women’s safety in a way that I think is historical. I felt really lucky to have played a small part in it. It was a me masterminding.

Carolyn Daughters  35:17
But you were part of this team. I mean, so I was at the time of this case. I was teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder as an adjunct, and so I was aware of different things on campus, and I was aware of campus crimes generally from, I’d gone to grad school and undergrad in in Virginia, and I was aware of things on those campuses. I was aware of all these sorts of details that happen that are sometimes on the front page and sometimes make it on no page. I’d always been friends with RAs and all the different people who have the inside scoop on what is happening on this campus or that campus. And I was surprised in Tell Me Everything with this university, the that the university president seemed to know. The Regent knew the coach, knew everyone, somebody on the police force was, hey, what can I do? And I’m the person, and Sarah knows this when I’m reading a book, I’m the one yelling at the book, because many of the football players in question here go on for fruitful, profitable careers,  they’re praised and lauded, and it’s a lot like, so I even reading this, I was with the background I had and whatever knowledge I had pieced together over my life. I was still raging as I was reading Tell Me Everything.

Erika Krouse  36:58
Right? I mean, that’s the hard thing about writing a book. I was like, oh my god, people are gonna hate Tell Me Everything because it’s gonna make them pissed off. But it’s true. Like, even with the knowledge there’s, there are a lot of people who would much rather profit from a problem than even address the problem, even talk about it or much less fix it. So that, I think that is frustrating, especially when you look at a college, because a college is where you entrust the youth, right? It’s where you it’s an important place for people. It’s where they do those final stages of growing up. So if they grow up learning that the world success pool of being, and that people are just really after their own advancement, that’s a hard no one wants anyone learning that we want. We want people to leave college being idealistic enough to change the world, right? So, so that I think that’s I can imagine you, especially in your role as instructor. What department were you in?

Carolyn Daughters  38:06
I was teaching writing in a graduate telecommunications program, and taught evenings, and saw a lot of things firsthand. Even the telecommunications building had its challenges. So you talk a little bit about the English department. And of the university, and it was a strange space. I mean, as an adjunct, I had to pay for my parking I mean, I didn’t have a parking pass. For example, I had two one semester three TAs, and their hourly pay was higher than my salary for the number of hours I put in. And at one point I even asked the head of the department, can I be my own TA, because I was making so little money as an adjunct. I think in that particular instance, maybe a lot of universities do this, right? It’s, how can I save money here and apply it there? But the university here had it, had what it valued, and as you say it, it was clear what the university valued. How far would they go to protect it?

Erika Krouse  39:17
And pretty far. And that’s still true. don’t think, even as the all the top administration was fired, and there was a big change in rollover, in people, but the culture, and I don’t think the university culture of sexual assault has changed a ton since what I wrote about in Tell Me Everything. I’ve actually been asked back to the university that I helped too. I think I went back there seven times come out yet, of course, like the top administration has no idea. It’s just individual professors asking me to come to their classrooms or whatever. But I always ask the students, I’m like, What’s it like now? And they’re like. This is bad, maybe worse. So I don’t try, don’t make you feel it. Well, I know that it’s that’s a very powerful force, right? Football is our national religion, really. So you’re really dealing with religious zealots. However, I do know that, on the other hand, now there are protections, and also there’s the awareness that it’s wrong. So students would be like, yeah, this is messed up. And then they will talk to someone about it, which wasn’t the case. I think, at the time of this case, of the case I worked on, I think students were like, well, that’s how it is. And there was so much an attitude of, well you know what, you know what players are like if you’re in their orbit, it’s whatever happens to you at any time. It’s your fault, even if they force it. Went to your apartment. And then there was that kind of attitude toward people. And of course, these are kids. Some of these are kids, or 18-year-old kids. So they’re like, well, I should have known that. So there’s the additional shame. So I think the attitude for the students is better, and I have faith in that, and the law backs them up now. So those two things together make it better, but it doesn’t mean that the behaviors are any better.

Sarah Harrison  41:25
Interesting. One of the things I thought was so powerful about Tell Me Everything, because you have this amazing case, and you got to work on it, but intertwining it with your own story, I thought was amazing. And also I was amazed at the level that you were willing to be vulnerable in Tell Me Everything. Was that difficult? Or did it feel like, well, nobody’s reading this one.

Erika Krouse  41:52
If you write that, anyone’s gonna read your stuff, and most of the time people don’t read your stuff. Tell Me Everything was right after, well, not right after, significantly, long time after a book that bombed, so I was like, no one’s gonna read it. It’s fine. It’s okay. I can write whatever. And I always feel like, there again. That goes back to that protection feeling. There are two ways to protect yourself, I think, in when with regard to trauma, one is to get very, very quiet. And I don’t think that actually works. I think it works temporarily, but it has over time, it becomes like a canker in you, and it just wears at you. And the other way is to be really loud. And I think people underestimate the power of being loud about can I say bad words? About shit you got to be loud about, right? Some stuffs really terrible. And if you are quiet about it, it can feel like complicity. And I think I was just a little bit tired of being quiet. I’m actually very, very, very private person. I’ve had friends for decades that I never talked about my family with, ever, ever. So it really was a big deal for me to come out in this way. I also knew that if, if, if and when I published this stuff about that I wrote about my childhood, that that would be the end of certain relationships forever. And even though those relationships are already over, I think you retain a little molecule of hope.

Carolyn Daughters  43:33
It’s like they’re on life support, because they’re actually already dead. I mean, I was even thinking that when I was reading Tell Me Everything. I almost was like, please don’t have this relationship come back to life. But I’m also if somebody is truly reformed or something, and the person who is the survivor of some violence with that individual feels in their heart the grace to forgive that person and every person is different. I don’t know that I would, but I try to be open enough that maybe, maybe you would, or maybe Sarah would, or somebody, somebody would. But I kept thinking, it’s, it’s on life support. Long-term life support. They’re never, this is never coming off life support. So for all intents and purposes, it’s already dead. But I would guess, like you’re saying, publishing Tell Me Everything pretty much sealed that.

Erika Krouse  44:37
I find it’s easy to let go. Well, not easy. It’s really, really, really hard to let go. Really hard to let go. Sarah might let go. I guess it is easier than we thought, trying to get in on the conversation. So it’s hard to let go of. Kind of like a relationship, but I find that very last bit of the book was an act of like, really saying a final, final goodbye that those people won’t read.

Carolyn Daughters  45:17
Probably it felt like an act of defiance to me to say, I’ve put myself in this box for so long. You would return to your family home for the holiday, for example, because you missed everybody so much. Or you’d have a family member come visit you and hey, you would say to your husband, maybe boyfriend at the time. Let’s give her our bedroom. Let’s go do this wonderful meal. Let’s tour around town, really just and these topics make this family member, that family, family member, uncomfortable, so we just don’t talk about them. And so the act of defiance is to say, I matter. Like, I matter. And the more I shrink down here so you guys don’t have to see the violence that was done to me, the more damaged I am. And so it felt so healthy to me to publish Tell Me Everything.

Erika Krouse  46:14
Oh, thank you. I mean, I think it really helped me to do it. I think it was very scary for on a lot of levels, actually, but I think it, I feel like that’s something I needed to do and but I also don’t think it like heals you totally, right? I feel like it, what it does is it creates a new neurological space for your brain to go to when you think of your past trauma. Because before maybe you write about it, when you think about something that happened to you or some something someone did to you, your brain goes to that terrible, terrible place. But when you take that and you make it into art, your brain, that’s the more recent experience. And instead of being passive, it’s active. You’ve taken something shitty and you’ve turned it into something that you’re striving, at least toward beauty or meaning at the very least. So your brain more directly goes to that place. So that’s the part that is quote, unquote, therapeutic. You think about writing.

Sarah Harrison  47:27
You talk about letting go and family, I feel like creates this, like biological longing that defies explanation. I remember I used to mentor a little girl who had the worst mother in the world, like she was horrible. I had to take her in to live with me for a little while, and there’s nothing she wanted more than to go back to this horrible mother. To make this shift from this isn’t good for me. This isn’t a good person for me to be with, like it was just raw longing, and it didn’t necessarily matter how badly this person treated her, she wasn’t like capable of getting over that longing aspect, yet even though it’s so crucial, I think, to moving on in my own self, Like whenever I would talk to my therapist for a number of years, she’d be like, You need to grieve. Grieve, grieve, please. Could you just explain to me a little bit about how the grieving works? Like, what’s the process? I mean, I cried plenty, but she’d be like, I was like, What am I doing? She’s gonna be sad, and I’m like, am I not? I’m crying every time.

Carolyn Daughters  48:46
What’s the next step?

Sarah Harrison  48:48
But it’s like almost an impossible process to get to. But I was wondering, like, I could imagine writing this in my head, in my brain, and just almost like a self-confession. So there’s the writing part, but then there’s the after it’s written part. And like, oh, everyone did read that. Everyone just, actually, I just put that out there for everyone. Was that a shift from the writing to having written?

Erika Krouse  49:14
The comforting part is that very few people have read Tell Me Everything.

Carolyn Daughters  49:19
Oh, thank goodness. I mean, ending it to you.

Erika Krouse  49:24
I feel comfortable with you guys. No. I mean, it has been a little weird when there’s something so out of context, and like someone that you’re just not expecting them to read your work. And I’m like, Oh, well, now really a lot about me, and I don’t know anything about you, and it’s usually the other way around for me,

Carolyn Daughters  49:47
That’s so because there’s this implied intimacy, right? Because I know things about you, but you don’t know the same level of things about Sarah and me, for example, right? Very nerve wracking.

Sarah Harrison  49:59
Maybe I’m trying to, I’ve been trying to confess every little barb that I put out there. Anything you ask. I’m a medium open book.

Erika Krouse  50:07
Even this format of the podcast where you ask me questions I answer, that’s not my thing. For sure, sure I asked the question, you answer the question. So it’s, it’s been, that’s been a little bit of a shift also, because I don’t know. It’s all been good. It’s been healthy. Change is healthy.

Carolyn Daughters  50:32
This is our third year of the Tea, Tonic and Toxin book club and podcast. And we do history of mystery, where we’re in 1939, now. We’re slowly making our way, but we also interview contemporary mystery and thriller writers like yourself. And Tell Me Everything was our first memoir so and I wrote this, and I want to make sure I’m getting everything here, because I think that this is important. It’s important for me as somebody who knows many memoirists, but maybe is not as familiar with the forum as I should be, but also probably a lot of listeners who, like me, could use a little education here. So can you talk about the memoir as a literary form and the author’s note you write to protect the innocent and to protect myself from the guilty. I disguised and changed the names of most of the characters. The biggest irony of Tell Me Everything is that I cannot name my abuser, who is called X in the book because he is alive, perhaps he doesn’t deserve a name. And you also know that the book was under attack before it even made it to print. So as a memoirist, what are you able to say? What are you not able to say? Regardless of what you’re able to say, what are some considerations for an author who’s going to talk about perpetrators of sexual violence, either in their own life or in on a campus or on in another setting, outside of their life?

Sarah Harrison  51:50
Questions in order.

Carolyn Daughters  51:54
I can come back to it.

Erika Krouse  51:56
So to answer your question about a memoir like Tell Me Everything, it’s tricky. It’s super interesting, because if this were a straight nonfiction book and I weren’t really a player in it, I would be bound by journalistic convention to name every name and keep the timeline exactly the way it was, etc., which I actually did. I did keep the timeline of the case and disclose all identities in memo. It’s the opposite. You have to disguise all the identities. So that was, that was super interesting for me.

Sarah Harrison  52:30
Is that a rule? Is that like a genre?

Erika Krouse  52:32
I think it’s a “don’t get your ass sued” rule. I think because you’re not talking you’re not just relying on secondary sources. I mean, I did. I had tons of secondary sources, of footnotes and but you’re, you’re also talking about your own experience, and that is considered to be way sketchier and ways more liable for lawsuit as far as Tell Me Everything being under attack. That was super fun. That was awesome. Oh, my God, so let me just set the stage. It’s COVID, and we’re about to lose our house. I’m working around the clock, taking every client I can, and then I get a call from a couple of lawyers who said, Oh, you can’t publish this book. Now, at that time, the book had already been through all its edits. It was mostly. It had been copyedited. Is mostly almost all the way through a legal read, where a lawyer reads everything and makes you change whatever you need to change, right? And I said, Well, it’s coming out. And they said, No, they weren’t from your publisher. I wish I could tell you, because the story gets so much better after the microphones come off. But they were just and I said, on what grounds? And they said, legal, blah, blah, blah. And they said, What’s that? And they said, everyone knows what that is. And just also to add texture to this story, one of the two lawyers on the phone was chopping a very hard vegetable this entire what I’m hearing this knife against wood, carrots, like, I’m imagining, like, a ton of carrots. So they, they basically were like, we need to have say over whether Tell Me Everything can be published and how much of it, and we need to red line it and redact what we don’t, whatever. And I was like, Oh, they think I’m an idiot. So I was like, Sure, I’ll do whatever you say. And then I got off the phone and immediately called like I talked over the next two weeks, I talked to 20 lawyers. They were all like, I love this case. I’ll give you half off, but half of $600 an hour. I was like, that’s about $300 more than I have an hour. Actually, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, my literary community, connected me with an excellent and really, really amazing pro bono lawyer, which, by the way, that’s the unicorn. You just don’t have that. But during that time, my publisher they were like, understandably, they didn’t know whether I’d done something wrong, and I didn’t know if I had done something wrong by writing this book. So the book was pretty much “on hold,” but canceled for seven months. Wow, seven months while we straighten this out. I didn’t know if I had a career anymore. So that was because, if you’re a “reckless writer,” and that’s a memoir thing, by the way, if you’re a reckless writer, maybe you can’t publish another book. So lucky, I hadn’t done anything wrong, and everything was fine, but they were just bullying me and lying to me. So after we straighten that out, and I got a million affidavits to say that. Then we move forward with Tell Me Everything, and everything is mostly fine. There is another situation later. One thing though, to take away from it, I don’t want people to hear this and say I don’t. I shouldn’t tell my story, right? Just know that the more you talk, the more people want you to shut up, and that’s okay. You have to say, okay, that’s gonna happen. And they have to just be smarter than me about it. Also, I was the part of the problem. I was writing about people were alive. So when I was doing the legal read, that lawyer asked me to make a list of everyone I thought might be motivated to sue me. And the list was 26 people long. And in the end, the people who came after me on this occasion and another were not on the list.

Sarah Harrison  56:55
Oh, wow, surprise suits.

Erika Krouse  56:58
So that was a super interesting so I just learned, like, okay, that’s just part of people’s instinct to be like, don’t, don’t talk, shut up. And very sorry that happened you but Shut the hell up. And this in the corner and be quiet and again, you have choices there, you can do that, or you can get loud. And I have found that the getting loud is the better alternative for me, but I respect anyone in their choices with regard to their own stories.

Sarah Harrison  57:36
That nicely leads into a question I wanted to ask you, even though I know like we went over our stated time.

Carolyn Daughters  57:44
We told you we were going to discuss Tell Me Everything for three hours, right?

Erika Krouse  57:46
I’m here all night. There’s a bed, right?

Sarah Harrison  57:48
All of our listeners are getting tired of me saying yes, I feel like that’s a strange a change in your strategy, from getting quiet to getting loud, and I thinking about my own self and my change in strategy, right I would I’m thinking about the chameleon, the mirror had a realization later in life, I was like all my friends, think I agree with them, and Very often, not only do I disagree, I might strongly disagree, but they’ll talk to me in this confident way that we, of course, we’re on the same page, except for you friend I agree with, but I started to feel like.

Carolyn Daughters  58:36
Wondering if that was the best strategy is being such a complete listener, then my own dear friends might not know what I think at all. And so I’ve been like, practicing, Oh, I feel like you’re really good at it, really good at what, at articulating like, Okay, I don’t agree with that or that, but maybe that’s just with me, and I appreciate that from you been practicing? No, I appreciate it, because I’m that person too, who’s pretty much a mirror for a lot of people, and I’ve had to work on that as well. And I appreciate when I’m telling you something, like, that’s crazy, and I’m like, That is crazy. Okay, you’re right, whereas everybody else could hear me and say, like, Oh, that’s too bad, Carolyn, that’s too bad. And you’re like, No, that’s crazy. And I’m like, You’re right. It is kind of crazy.

Sarah Harrison  59:28
So I’m successfully practicing, and not being a mirror, because I felt like, Who are they friends with? And who am I? Who am I friends with? If this is who they think I am. Do you ever like run into that as an issue in the chameleon mirror? Do you change your strategy? Am I alone in this thought talk a little bit?

Erika Krouse  59:52
I mean to assert yourself is to really say like I am. Here I am. I think I’m still working on reaching your level of enlightenment, but I think for me, I do it with writing, and people be like, Wow, that’s intense, that’s really intense. I didn’t see you that way. So that I think that’s where it comes out for me.

Sarah Harrison  1:00:26
It’s so much more bold, though, because when you were writing it out there, it’s like Tell Me Everything published, whereas I’m very cherry picking, and when I’m practicing.

Erika Krouse  1:00:36
I need to remind you that nobody, except for the people here in this room and listening to this podcast, very few people read. So it’s actually not, it’s, it’s way more cowardly.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:48
But I feel like also saying something directly to someone, is, it’s, it takes courage to do that, I think. So I think that I can see it in writing. I can also see it in person. It’s, it takes courage to put it down, and it takes courage to say it.

Erika Krouse  1:01:05
And then deal with the repercussions later about it, right? I also just, I mean, I think I’ve behaved very well on this podcast, but, and like, there’s things fly out of my mouth. It really shouldn’t, and that’s why, when I teach, I don’t allow anyone to tape my classes.

Carolyn Daughters  1:01:25
I just don’t allow anyone to tape them.

Erika Krouse  1:01:30
To record them, because I’m like, I don’t know what’s gonna come out. I just really don’t know, and probably shouldn’t be.

Sarah Harrison  1:01:38
We’re super honored that you talked.

Erika Krouse  1:01:41
It’s my pleasure, of course.

Carolyn Daughters  1:01:43
We have a couple more questions here. I know you through Writers Workshop, and I was thinking about this as I was finishing Tell Me Everything and thinking about your relationship with JD as it’s presented in the book, and with the friends who come to your wedding and that at one point are were contemplating boarding this particular flight or booking this particular flight, but you took a different flight, and that flight ended up crashing, and like 91 people died on that flight. And various people, including Grayson, wanted to know, are you okay? Are you okay? And Grayson, in fact, was upset because you hadn’t emailed him to tell him. And so I was thinking, Okay, we all have a blood family, and we’re either close with that family, we’re not close, we’re something in between, and then the fortunate among us also have our chosen family. And it felt to me, feels to me, that you have a chosen family. J, D is part of your family. I think Lighthouse Writers Workshop, its literary community, Andrea Dupree, Mike Henry, and others. I wanted to hear you just talk about the importance of this family to you, because your blood family is not currently, they’re not the people I’m estranged. You’re estranged. They’re not the people you can turn to. They’re not your fallback. They’re not the people who comfort you when you’re sad and celebrate your wins and joys with you. So talk about a little bit about your chosen family.

Erika Krouse  1:03:16
I feel super, super lucky. And one thing that people always want to know is, are you and JD still together? You know? Like, we’re married. So that’s, I think, the relief in Tell Me Everything, but I mean, that’s, it’s everything I think we all need connection. I think that’s something we learned during COVID, is that that hunger and longing for connection constantly, and when we don’t have it, that can lead to some really big problems. I think so. And for me, I have that connection with my husband. I have that connection also with my work, which has been a lifelong project of working on that. I mean, it hasn’t always been that hasn’t always been a healthy relationship, that’s sometimes been a toxic relationship. And so working with that, and also having so many people in the community, we have a really thriving literary community in Denver, mostly due to Lighthouse Writers Workshop and just having those connections with so many people who really just get it. They just get what you’re going through. And you can have some stupid problem with writing that is maybe stupid everyone else but the people who understand that that was my last five years, or whatever. So you can that again, just you feel validated, you feel like you have something in common with the world. And I think that’s incredibly important. It keeps you connected, connected to the world. So it’s been very meaningful to me. Me working, working at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, teaching students. Those are relationships that, even if you’re not talking every day, you’ve impacted their life, they’ve impacted yours. It has a deep, a deep, deep meaning for me.

Carolyn Daughters  1:05:17
You’re working, I think, with others, writing memoirs or novels or short stories, or novels and short stories. Everybody’s working on their story in nonfiction or fiction form. But I mean, it’s tough for people, and especially when they’re telling things that are true, whether they happened in real life or they’re just true to them. And so you’re also providing that support in turn, right? You’re getting support and you’re also providing that support.

Erika Krouse  1:05:47
Which, not to be selfish about it, but it does feed you to know that when you feel like you helped somebody in a day. I mean, don’t you feel good after you finish the podcast? You’re like, I probably help someone doing this.

Sarah Harrison  1:06:01
I don’t actually think I’ve helped anyone, but I’m like, I’m so glad they talked to us. You can feel like you helped someone with Tell Me Everything.

Carolyn Daughters  1:06:10
It was another day without dead air.

Erika Krouse  1:06:18
I can’t. I feel like the writers and literary people and readers, we’re trying to learn, and we’re trying to learn how to make the world better. But I don’t mean better, like, let’s all sing a song together. I mean better, like, let’s look at the hard shit and talk about it and figure it out and come up with cockamamie solutions and theoreticals, and, you know, maybe on Mars, it would be different. I feel like we’re really engaged in the struggle of life, and that’s super important. Yes, it’s what we do.

Sarah Harrison  1:06:58
I have a final two-part question, but it’s easy. I want to hear about your upcoming book of short stories, Save Me, Stranger. And I want you to tell our audience where they can find you, your socials, websites, all those things where they can find your work.

Erika Krouse  1:07:17
I have a short story collection called Save Me, Stranger coming out in January 2025. It’s a collection of oddball stories.

Sarah Harrison  1:07:35
What makes them oddball?

Erika Krouse  1:07:36
They’re set all over the world, really. And are they memoirist story. There’s a lot of truth in some of them, but I can tell you right now that I am none of those people, except for one, actually find it folks figure that one hour. You can probably figure out which one, and then, but, but even when they’re a little bit true, oh, actually, there are two that are even when they’re a little bit true. You change them, because we don’t always behave perfectly in the moment. And where can people find my work? You can use evil Amazon or in independent bookstores. I have a website, erikakrousewriter.com. It has some of my work online and Instagram.

Sarah Harrison  1:08:36
Oh, good. I can listen.

Erika Krouse  1:08:42
I’m not as good on Instagram, a little more Facebook, not very much of that either, but, but I’m trying, trying.

Sarah Harrison  1:08:52
All right, we’ll tag you and stuff. We will link your opportunity to share.

Erika Krouse  1:08:57
I’ll post it when it comes up. Thank you.

Carolyn Daughters  1:09:00
Thank you.

Sarah Harrison  1:09:01
Thank you so much for being with us. I’ve been delightful. Tell Me Everything is … delightful is not a word for the book, but you should read it.

Carolyn Daughters  1:09:09
Delightful is a word for the conversation. The book will have you feeling strongly for the wins in the book and the other things in the book that are going to have you screaming at the book, and so it’s got it all basically. So I would highly recommend that you read Tell Me Everything. It’s a beautifully woven tale of a university culture gone very wrong, a university culture of sexual assault, and a personal experience as you’re working through your own experience of violence as a child, and it’s just It’s beautifully written, and it’s an Edgar Award winner.

Erika Krouse  1:09:45
Thank you both so much for having me. You’re amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Sarah Harrison 
We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Tell Me Everything, Erica Krouse, Save Me Stranger, Edgar Award, private investigator, sexual assault, university culture of sexual assault, Title Nine, memoir, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, literary community, short stories