Alison Gaylin, We Are Watching and a Bloody Mary

Oh! OH! This one is BONKERS! You're going to need a Bloody Mary at some point while reading this absolute page turner.   Alison combines conspiracy theories, cults and grief. It's a huge story and also a very small story. I honestly feel like there were some magic tricks in the writing of We Are Watching - all of which we talk about in our fantastic conversation.

“Alison Gaylin proves once again that she is a master at mining the zeitgeist to create smart thrillers that are at once emotionally resonant and truly terrifying… utterly captivating.” — Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Note

From USA Today bestselling and Edgar and Shamus Award–winning author Alison Gaylin comes a slick, riveting, and all-too-plausible tale of psychological suspense where a mother is desperate to protect her family as they become targets of a group of violent conspiracy theorists.

Sometimes the world is out to get you.

Meg Russo was behind the wheel when it happened. She and her husband Justin were driving their daughter Lily to Ithaca College, the family celebrating the eighteen-year-old music prodigy’s future. Then a car swerved up beside them, the young men inside it behaving bizarrely—and Meg lost control of her own vehicle. The family road trip turned into a tragedy. Justin didn’t survive the accident.

Four months later, Meg works to distract herself from her grief and guilt, reopening her small local bookstore. But soon after she returns to work, bizarre messages and visitors begin to arrive, with strangers threatening Meg and Lily in increasingly terrifying ways. They are obsessed with a young adult novel titled The Prophesy, which was published thirty years earlier. An online group of believers are convinced that it heralds the apocalypse, and social media posts link the book—and Meg’s reclusive musician father—to Satanism. These conspiracy theorists vow to seek revenge on The Prophesy’s author...Meg.

As the threats turn violent, Meg begins to suspect that Justin’s death may not have been an accident. To find answers and save her daughter, her father, and herself, Meg must get to the root of these dangerous lies—and find a way to face the believers head-on … before it’s too late.

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Transcript

Molly Fader (00:26):


(00:29)
Happy New Year everybody. Welcome to Day Drinking With Authors, the podcast series where I pick a book and the author picks a drink and we discuss both. Today, I am really excited to be sitting down with bestselling and award-winning author Alison Galen about her latest release We are watching, which I'm not going to lie to you. Scared the bejesus out of me because Alison's like mission accomplished. I mean, it's so plausible right in the world we live in right now. It is so plausible. And now I'm jumping ahead. I'm going to read the back cover copy because my mom likes that. Mom, I know you're not really a thriller reader, but I think you'd like this one. It's beautifully written. It's a beautifully written thriller. Alison Gaylin (01:19):

Thank you. That means a lot, really. Molly Fader (01:22):

I feel like that's not a thing we often say about thrillers. Alison Gaylin (01:26):

No. People are just like, where's the twist? Molly Fader (01:29):

Right. But your prose was really crackly and fun. And anyway, I'm jumping ahead for my mom. The back cover copy from USA Today bestselling, an Edgar and Seamus award-winning author, Alison Galen comes a slick, riveting, an all too plausible tale of psychological suspense where a mother is desperate to protect her family as they become targets of a group of violent conspiracy theorists. Meg Russo was behind the wheel when it happened. She and her husband Justin were driving their daughter Lily to Ithaca College. The family celebrating the 18-year-old music prodigy's future when a car swerved up beside them, the young men inside it behaving bizarrely, and Meg lost control of her own vehicle. The family road trip turned into a tragedy. Justin didn't survive the accident. Four months later, Meg works to distract herself from her grief and guilt reopening her small local bookstore. But soon after she returns to work bizarre messages and visitors begin to arrive with strangers threatening Megan Lily.
(02:27)
In increasingly terrifying ways, they are obsessed with the young adult novel titled The Prophecy, which was published 30 years earlier. An online group of believers are convinced that it heralds the apocalypse and social media posts link the book and Meg's reclusive musician father to satanism these conspiracy theorists vow to seek revenge on the prophecies. Author Meg. As the threats turn violent, Meg begins to suspect that Justin's death may not have been an accident to find answers and save her daughter, her father, and herself. Meg must go to the root of these dangerous lies and find a way to face the believers' head on before it's too late. Welcome, Allison. Thank you. Good to be here. My first question is the back cover copy kind of focuses on the conspiracy theory as it relates to, oh shoot. No, we got to talk about your drink. See, I got excited. Allison, what are we drinking today besides coffee? Alison Gaylin (03:26):

Yeah, I'm drinking coffee literally, but my favourite day drink is a Bloody Mary and I love extra horse radish in it and a few sprigs of dill. So yeah, the first time I had a Bloody Mary with Dill in, it was years ago, my husband and I went to this little inn in Connecticut where it was known because Malcolm Forbes loved to go there. We weren't doing fancy things all the time, but we decided to go to this place and they served. They made these bloody Mary's from scratch, and the dill just brought out everything. I don't know what it is about Dill, but with be the spicy and yeah, I just love it. I've had some good bloody Mary's also in the Midwest where they put an entire side of beef in it, Molly Fader (04:24):

And I love that. I'm from northern Illinois and Wisconsin is famous for you get a piece of pepper jack cheese and a pepperoni and a pickle. It's Alison Gaylin (04:35):

A lot. I love that. I love a meal and a drink together. It's so multitasking and it's very enjoyable, I think. Molly Fader (04:42):

Yeah, I mean, I think it's supposed to slow you down, but absorb some of the booze because it is the day Alison Gaylin (04:48):

It's actually really smart. It's like you can't force somebody to eat with their alcohol, just put the food in there. So they have to eat it to get their way around it. Molly Fader (04:59):

And I do have to say in all my interviews about day drinking, the most notorious day drink of all the bloody Mary has never once been selected. Alison Gaylin (05:09):

You know what? I think people think it's probably too basic a selection. That's probably it, but I don't mind basic. I enjoy the Bloody Mary. I've never too hung over from one. That was terrible. That's awful. I didn't mean that. Molly Fader (05:28):

Well, I mean, they do perform that task. No, I'm with you. I live in Canada now, and it's here. They're called Bloody Caesars, which are, I think in your part of the world they would be called clam diggers. They have a little bit of clam juice in it. Alison Gaylin (05:40):

Yes, I've had a bloody Caesar and I loved it. That was Megan Abbot and I actually were in Austin, Texas at book people. And when you used to have events over there, Scott, who was the bookseller at the time, would take you out to this chilli parlour that was next door. And they have great chilli there, like great Texas chilli, and we have Bloody Caesars, and it was really fabulous. I love it. I love the clam mato edition. Molly Fader (06:10):

Yeah, a chilli parlour talk about Alison Gaylin (06:16):

It sounds kind of illicit in a weird way. Molly Fader (06:19):

Yeah, like dirty and delicious. Yeah. Bathroom chilli parlour. I would like to go to a chilli parlour. Yeah, me too. Yeah, but weirdly polite too. I don't know. I have no idea. Alison Gaylin (06:34):

Kind of a chilli parlour society where you have your chilli and you toss off bone mo. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Molly Fader (06:43):

We'll figure it out. We're going to workshop this idea. We're going to figure it out. Chilli Alison Gaylin (06:47):

Parlour. It needs to spread. Molly Fader (06:49):

But speaking of working out ideas, how about that? First segue back to my question. So the back cover copy of the book really focuses on Meg's part of the conspiracy theory, but this is a multi-generational conspiracy, which was fascinating in a lot of ways that, and I want to talk about it, but could you talk about the building of the events that led to this conspiracy theory? Because I want to know, were you like, oh, I'm just going to do the dad and the satanism and the song, or no, I'm just going to do the book. How did it all come together for you? Alison Gaylin (07:28):

It came together over a long and arduous period of time. My initial idea was that I wanted to write about a normal family, not an Illuminati, but a normal family being targeted by conspiracy theorists. And a normal family doesn't have access to private detectives or security most importantly, or bodyguards or anything like that, and probably wouldn't have even the idea that they would be targeted by conspiracy. So that was my initial idea. Okay, that's scary. I want to write about that. But I wrote a whole other draught probably three years ago, I think, at this point. And the only thing that I retained from that draught were Megan Lilly's names, and Molly Fader (08:19):

That they, oh my gosh, Alison Gaylin (08:20):

Nathan, the father wasn't in it. Meg was an entirely fame different character or former actress, and it was a whole other book that honestly didn't work. And the reason why it didn't work, the only way something like this, which is I will be the first to admit just a crazy idea to work, is to make it as real as possible and to make it as real as possible, you need characters that are as real as possible. So I started thinking about it. I'm from Woodstock, New York. There's a lot of old rockers up here. Speaker 1 (08:53):

And Alison Gaylin (08:54):

Then I started thinking bands, not lard, but like Iron Maiden or Led Zeppelin even that were accused weirdly of satanism back in the day. And some of them went along with it. It was kind of performative, but it wasn't, they weren't members Speaker 1 (09:13):

Satanists, Alison Gaylin (09:14):

Satan. No, they weren't. And I've always, because of when I grew up the eighties, seventies, the whole Satanic panic thing has been fascinating to me how people's lives have been ruined by it. Modern day witch hunt, whatever. So I invented this character, Nathan, and I kept Megan Lily, mother and daughter, but I changed their personalities. Meg's occupation, Lily's age. Lily was much younger in the first draught. Everything just, and I decided those three points of view would be the best way to sort of tell the scariest story. So this intergenerational thing, and this is sort of how these things happen and how they warp. It's like even before the internet, there were of course urban legends about people and people's reputations getting ruined by lies, being spread about them through dark corners. The internet has acted as an accelerant to that sort of talk. So I thought it was very plausible that something could have started sort of satanic rumour about a rocker back in the day, and it would build steam over the years. And with a daughter, he had a daughter who's also creative and a granddaughter who's also creative and in different ways how that sort of thing could pick up speed. So I found that when I finally wrote the draught with these characters, it was so much easier to tell the story. I hope that makes sense. But it's just, Molly Fader (10:58):

I mean, one of the things that felt so plausible, I mean, again, I, I'm going to say plausible like 8 million times during this interview. So her dad is the rocker. Speaker 1 (11:10):

He Molly Fader (11:11):

Wrote one song or he wrote a bunch of songs, but one song that got attached to the Satanic panic thing, and then she quotes the song in a book that she had published through Slab, which I remember those contests. So that worked for me on every level. And then the daughter, there's just a recording on YouTube of her playing the bass beat of the song. So those three things connect them all. But the daughter, the mom, the daughter rejecting her father's conspiracy theories. So he's been like, the wolves. The wolves, we have to hide. We have to be careful. And she's like, oh my gosh. Dad again, added a level of credibility and the character of it was so perfect. And then you have another, a teenage daughter. I mean, as a mom of teenagers, it's like I couldn't be less cool all of the time. And she had the same sort of, it just again, was so real. It was just so, so real. Alison Gaylin (12:19):

Yeah. There's a part in there that I put that I have a daughter who's now 23, but this Lily is 18. And I think I had a line in there, especially since they go through, the mother and daughter go through something really traumatic in the first chapter, and they've already been kind of drifted apart and everything. But Lily feels a mixture of wanting to avoid and protect her mother at the same time. And I think that's the way most loving mother child relationships are. When your kid is in their teens, they're trying to break away, but they still love you and they don't feel that you truly understand the world the way you should, even though you actually might or these complex. And I feel like there's, between these three generations, which is probably pretty common, there's a distrust. There's a scepticism about how much you're going to believe of what your parents are telling you, and that's healthy, but it also can get in the way when you're being targeted by conspiracy theory. Molly Fader (13:35):

So really quickly, to go back to this first draught that didn't work and you scrapped everything, I mean, first of all, has that happened to you a lot in your career? I mean, as a writer, it sent, we've all done it, right? We've all blown that first draught. But how painful is it, or do you find that? Is that part of the process for you commonly? Alison Gaylin (13:58):

Well, okay. I always write a first draught. That's pretty terrible because if I didn't, I would never have a book written. I do the best I can. Molly Fader (14:10):

That's a prayer for authors, Alison Gaylin (14:11):

Just do the book. And the great thing about writing, unlike say brain surgery, is you can rewrite and you can redo it and you can make it better. You flub up a brain surgery, you're kind of screwed. So it's great to be a writer and to be able to rewrite and be able to spend a week or a month away from a project, come back to it with a new perspective and then tackle it from there and figure out what's wrong with it. So yes, all my first draughts are terrible. I'm really embarrassed that my agent and my editor see them, and even my husband sees them. I'm embarrassed of showing it to anybody.
(14:57)
And it's kind of amazing. I still have an agent editor background, but I'm a very diligent, and I have a background in journalism. I went to journalism school, so I am used to taking criticism, working with it, and trying to do it as quickly as I can, and not without my ego getting in the way and realising what criticism you can take and what kind of defeats the purpose of what you're trying to tell and being able to self criticise. So yes, I do write a bad first draught. No first draught was as bad as this first draught though. I mean, I turned it in. I'm going to be totally honest. I had a different editor at the time who was my longtime editor who I absolutely loved, and she wound up going to another publishing house, and I went through, I had a different, it was wonderful, the editor, they're both great editors.
(15:51)
But anyway, she was like, this really means a lot of, I dunno how to fix this. I have to leave. I have to leave the company how much work this means. Exactly. I think that's why she went to another place. She's like, on this piece of crap. No way. But she told me this and was, I have to say it was a little, it gutting, but it was not unexpected. I knew that it didn't work, and it was because of the characters and the situation I had chosen, which is something so endemic that's so basic to the plot of a story that I had to just rip that thing down and rebuild. And she's like, take as long as you want, whatever. And I also, in addition to these books, I write the Robert Parker, Sonny Randall books. So I just went and I wrote a sunny book, which was great and fun and a little bit, kind of gave me a break from this. And then I came back to it and I'm like, A lot of what I need, sorry, my screen froze for a second. Molly Fader (17:11):

Your audio kept going. You're Alison Gaylin (17:12):

Good. It was a little seizure that I had or my screen had or something. But anyway, when I came back to it, I had a fresh perspective and I was able to create these other characters for whom a plot this would work and who could make it real. And it was like recasting a movie or something. So coming back to it with that fresh start, the idea of Nathan just sort of came to me. I have my best from college. He lives with me in my same town in Woodstock and owns a bookstore. So I'm like, I'm going to make her a bookstore owner. That would be so good, because I mean, he's had people come into his bookstore that are like, why don't you have such and such a book that's like a conspiracy book or whatever. Why do you put the religious books in the back? Why don't you put them in the front? Why do you put them in the front? People get, so you don't go into a clothing store and get all irate. Yeah, attacking like that. So being a bookstore owner in and of itself is a daring and wonderful thing to be because everybody has such passionate opinions about books. Molly Fader (18:31):

I also really liked that it gave her an analogue life. Her entire life wasn't digital. She was in between the worlds of her father and her daughter in a way, again, that she would sort of be disbelieving of this huge world out there that was focused on her, that she could reject it and not know about it, that it felt completely believable. Alison Gaylin (18:59):

Exactly. And it also could have her say things like, oh, these people are being weird just because I own a bookstore. This has happened to me before. I put in the book that 10 years ago, a bunch of women were protesting the fact that they had Harry Potter in there because these was a witch book or something. I mean, things like this happen. So she was just thinking, oh, of the books. It's not this weird conspiracy that my dad is talking about. Yeah, I think that's Molly Fader (19:38):

The question. So one of the other things that I really loved about the book as I was reading and I've been thinking about ever since, is the push pull for a thriller writer between, as you had joked before we started the recording, about the twist or the big reveal and the push pull between this ominous sense of doom when your reader, so I'm thinking in particular of the character that the boy that likes the daughter, we know as the reader, we go through some, no, he can't be a bad guy. He's so sweet. And then we're like, oh God, he's a bad guy. And so the impending doom of when that landmine goes off. And I was wondering how you think about that as a writer, because you have a couple of great reveals, some characters that you're like, oh, I never saw that coming, versus these impending doom moments. Is it something you think about in terms of keeping the reader turning pages, or is it just story by story? Alison Gaylin (20:51):

I think it's story by story. I mean, it's interesting, that character that you talk about. I actually went through a couple of different scenarios, one in which that character dies trying to save Lily and is a different type of a character or somebody who's involved. I kind of play with different things. Even as I'm writing, I try to think outside the box and I try to think which of these characters could be involved. The whole idea of the book is that you don't know who to trust and who not to trust. So you're going to figure out some of the twists and you're going to not hopefully figure out other twists. But I'm just of the belief that I always, I tend to have twists in my book just because books, because I just think they're fun and Molly Fader (21:47):

So fun. The most fun Alison Gaylin (21:50):

Surprise people. That's why you read a thriller. You want to be surprised. You want those twists, but there's always going to be a percentage of people that are going to figure out your twists. And they're, that's fine. If you have other stuff going on, you have other stuff that scares you. I mean, Rosemary's Baby, for instance, I love that book and by Ira Levin and there, there's a whole conspiracy going on involving this poor woman who's pregnant with the devil and doesn't know. But that's a really bad situation to be in, and that as a reader, you kind of know what's going on that that's happening. You're not like, oh, everything's, she's just crazy. Everything's going to be fine. But it's still terrifying because he created such believable characters within this type of outlandish, insane, bonkers situation that it's scary. So I feel like if you can create compelling characters, which makes a reader say, wow, what if that was me and put themselves in that situation, even if they're figuring out a few things, one or two things faster than the characters are, it's still going to be a compelling read for them because it's still scary. Yeah, Molly Fader (23:10):

That tension, right? It really is that tension on four different plot points, right? Alison Gaylin (23:19):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I love books that are like, oh, they have this great twist and it's an unreliable narrator from the beginning and all that, but I like the kind of book where you're sort of right there with the character and these things are happening that you could not possibly imagine how you would deal with that if that was you. It's just too crazy and too scary. So to me, that's just a little bit scarier. Molly Fader (23:49):

One of another thing that I really appreciated about the novel is the claustrophobia of it. It starts with, I mean, they don't understand what's happening, but it starts with them literally being hunted by this car full of guys. But then it's a small novel anyway in terms of it's two settings, three settings, maybe the world is small, but the pressure of the social media and this conspiracy theory as they start to really wake up to it makes it feel like, I mean, obviously you can't trust anybody. I mean, these lunatics online have to live somewhere, and lo and behold, they're like your neighbours. Was that the claustrophobia of it and keeping those settings down to one or two settings, was that a choice at the very beginning for you, or was that how it just worked out? Alison Gaylin (24:55):

It was a choice from the beginning because I feel like if we had them escaping to Canada and still getting chased around by people, it would turn it into a different type of book. I like the claustrophobic setting. I like the sort of nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. And also, I like the concept of this town that live in Lily's lived there her whole life. She was born there. Meg has lived there her whole life. She grew up in this town, and it's a tiny little town. It's smaller even than the town I live in. And it's a place where you assume that you would be able to trust everybody. And so I wanted it to be a place where they've known people for years, but they still don't know who's involved in this thing. Another choice that I made was, I mean, one of the things I could have done that I really consciously chose not to do was to tell, was to include a point of view of one of the conspiracy theorists. I didn't do that because to me, it's much scarier finding out along with 'em. Imagine if I put the point of view. I Molly Fader (26:04):

Just think that would be, so who would you have done? Who were you going to do just between us? Who Alison Gaylin (26:09):

Would you have done put the point of view in? Well, the character you mentioned, I could have maybe put, but that would be, not only would that give away a lot, it also would, the more about this conspiracy theory, the more the stupider it is. And so it's like if you're in somebody's head, I just feel like it would be less scary. The one thing I did do was I had posts from the leader of this, so you're reading this online, and so to me, that was enough from that sort of, Molly Fader (26:52):

Yeah, it gave you a glimpse into the stories they were telling themselves, which was helpful and unhinged. Alison Gaylin (27:03):

Yeah, Molly Fader (27:03):

It was unhinged. Your last book, the Collective also had a real element of Be careful who you meet online. The online worlds really rich for you, for authors, for you, for these kinds of plausible thrillers. Can you talk a little bit about that? Have you had enough now? Are you scared of, have you gone too deep? What's happening? Alison Gaylin (27:38):

Terrifying. Molly Fader (27:39):

It's terrifying. Alison Gaylin (27:40):

Yeah. There is something like, I think as I was saying earlier, the idea of the internet is an accelerant for these crazy beliefs is just such a very real thing that exists in our world today and is like a part of our times and just an evil that exists in our world. The Internet's wonderful for a lot of different things, connecting with old friends, dog and cat videos, lots of wonderful things like that. But unfortunately, it's not all dog and cat videos. And I always write about the things that scare me the most. That's what makes me want to write a story. So when my daughter was a younger teenager, I wrote, if I die Tonight, which is really just a scary story about raising teenagers, that's scared me the most at the time, and it was happening. I was the parent of a teenager.
(28:37)
Now, the thing that scares me the most, and I don't know if the pandemic had anything to do with the lockdown. I don't know what really put this fear in me, but it's large groups of people large frighten me. That's what I've been writing about for the last two books, like-minded individuals that you find on the internet when you yourself are an isolated person, can make these thoughts that you have these negative thoughts snowball into something that is very, very dangerous. And in the collective talk about points of view, that was very specifically told through one point of view, one person, she's a person who was isolated in her grief, who was destroyed by her grief, who meet a bunch of other people who are also destroyed by their grief and full of rage. And that is the ultimate accelerant towards some actions that might feel great at the time, but are ultimately wrong. Yeah. Well, Molly Fader (29:50):

Again, it is. It's so believable. I mean, we're living in this sort of new frontier where so many people can gather with the wrong ideas, with misinformation. It is epidemic now. It's completely epidemic. And it actually leads me to, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about writing for the Robert B. Parker series. Can you talk to me a little bit about it? Robert B. Parker was a giant thriller writer. Does he have hundreds of books? He has so many books. Alison Gaylin (30:38):

He has a few different series, A private investigator series. He also wrote westerns, which I'm not quite as familiar with, but he wrote the Spencer Books, which those are his most famous books. There was a old TV series, Spencer for Hire with Robert Urick that was on his books, and he's very Boston oriented, and that's fun for me. My dad was from Boston and I've been there a lot. I love it. So he wrote the Spencer Books, the Jesse Stone books, and Jesse Spencer's a private detective. Jesse Stone's a cop, and he lives in a place that's based on Marblehead, Massachusetts, and then there's the Sonny Randall book. So Sonny Randall is his only female character. It was his newest series. I think he introduced the series in the nineties, and it was originally written as a vehicle for Helen Hunt, the actress who was Molly Fader (31:35):

A friend. Oh my gosh, Alison Gaylin (31:36):

Isn't that interesting? Yeah. I picture her looking like Helen Hunt, but so he created this female character who is, she's kind of similar to Spencer. She's really cool, and she knows how to shoot. Speaker 1 (31:51):

She's a Alison Gaylin (31:52):

Pretty awesome, amazing sidekick. Like Spencer has Hawk and she has Spike, and Spike is a restaurateur, and he's gay, and he's big and he's tough, and he beats the hell out of people. She can just call him and he'll just pick up a guy and throw him on the ground. He's just so tough and awesome, and I love that idea. The books are, I just think they're great books. They're a lot of fun. They have these great characters already that I can use, and then I can sort of add my own characters to the mix, which I have. I've written two of them, and I'm working on my third, and I'm trying to bring Sunny, in particular, about around 40 years old, and she's been around when she started in 2000 or whatever, 1990 something. I think she was 32. So she's aged very slowly, slowly over the years. Mike Lupa wrote her before me, but it's fine. I'm the first woman writing this female character by a man, written by a man. So it's an interesting challenge. Molly Fader (32:59):

How did this come into your life? Alison Gaylin (33:01):

Oh, well, my agent, Deborah Schneider works with, she Doesn't Work. She knows the agent for the Robert Parker estate. And Mike Luca had been writing these Sonny Randall books as well as the Jesse Stone books. Ace Atkins, who's a fantastic writer, was writing the Spencer Series, but Ace decided to leave, not do the Spencer Series anymore. They moved Mike Lika to Spencer, so he couldn't do Spencer, Jesse Stone and Sonny. So he gave up Sonny. So they were looking for a new writer to write Sonny. So my agent asked me if I'd be interested. I said, yes, absolutely. And she said, just write 20 pages. There was no write 20 pages about blah, blah, blah. There was nothing like that. It was just Right. 20 pages of a sunny ramble. Molly Fader (33:55):

If you can get the vibe and the voice and the Alison Gaylin (33:57):

Exactly energy. That's the most important thing I think in these Parker books, is that voice. And I try to do it as best I can. I'm not going to do it perfectly mean. I'm not going to be an exact imitation of Parker. I try to do it as best I can. I wrote 20 pages, and for some reason I thought about a case involving internet influencers. I don't know why I just did Molly Fader (34:20):

That. So I did it. Terrifying. Terrifying. I mean, the latest one, which is the caffeine drink owner. Yeah, Alison Gaylin (34:28):

Terrifying. Exactly. So I wrote 20 pages and they liked it, and then they hired me. So I wrote the first book was Bad Influence and it was Bad Influencers. And the second book had to do with a missing CEO of an energy drink company who was introduced in Bad influence. So I was able to bring my own characters in the second, and now I'm working on a third Parker book called Booked, and that includes a character that was used by both Parker and Mike Luka, Melanie Joan Hart, who is a world famous author. So that's a really fun thing to write involving this author. Molly Fader (35:02):

The challenge of stepping into a world that's already fully formed and has a huge backstory. Do you find that challenging and fun, or is it challenging and hard? I would think it would be kind of like, oh, and then this idea, this idea, this idea. And they're like, no, we did that, or that was a thing. You can't do that person's some lines around your creative process that maybe wouldn't be there normally. Alison Gaylin (35:32):

Yeah. I mean, there are characters that I love that I would want to put, and then I realise, oh God, they got killed off in that book. I really did that in the First Bad Influence. I had a character, I had Felix, who I loved that character so much. He was the brother of Sonny's, former father-in-law who was a mob boss, and Felix was a really badass mafia guy, Irish mafia, but he was also had a slight soft spot for Sunny Loving Side. So I put him in the book and I'm like, I turned it. I turned it in, and then I'm like, oh God, he died. We died. So I had to go back and rewrite, and I changed it to her, who is still alive. I'm going to keep him alive. Molly Fader (36:23):

Right, right. You don't want to lose another one, another good. Alison Gaylin (36:27):

Yeah. So there is this whole thing, and then there are people who would think like, oh, this character would never do that or that character, but in my opinion, they would. So it's like I'm familiar enough with the books that I feel like I do have this very rich toolbox of characters. There are amazing characters that he created that I can just use, they're told in the first person, so I don't have to go through it and go, am I going to do first person or third person? How many points of view? I don't have to go through any of those things. They're all first person detective procedural books with a lot of humour in them. So that short chapters, lots of dialogue, all those things are there, all those things I need to observe. I can't go off doing a stream of consciousness third person thing, because that's not a Sunny Ramble book. I can Molly Fader (37:22):

Totally see how that would be a break from a book we are watching. It would be like a little mind while your subconscious is working on this generational trauma story. Yeah, I can appreciate that. That's a huge, huge relief. Alison Gaylin (37:42):

Yeah, it really is. There's some, it's interesting. There's some freedom to be found in restraint, in restraints put on you. For instance, I wrote a graphic novel with Megan Abbott years ago called Normandy Gold, and it was a totally different writing process, and you're not writing, you're writing in a very small little panels basically, and you have just little bits of dialogue. You can't have somebody going on if you have any type of narration, voiceover, it has to fit under a panel. Most of it is describing what you want the panels to look like. But it was so much fun to have all those restraints, and it's not the same thing as writing a novel, writing a Sunny Randall novel, but having the restraint of, no, you can't do that. You can't do that. You can't go into the killer's point, and you can't have to just do this. And there's freedom to be found there. Molly Fader (38:46):

So you have one more of the Robert B. Parker books, the mystery series, and then what's next for Alison Galen? Alison Gaylin (38:55):

Well, I'm thinking of an idea. I have an idea that I'm too shy to. Okay, no, Molly Fader (39:00):

Fair. Let that percolate. It's Alison Gaylin (39:02):

Scary. It's really scary. So I'm hoping it works. Watch, three years later, I'll be like, I completely not only changed all the characters, but I changed the plot so Molly Fader (39:17):

Well, I can't wait to read it. So thank you. Thank you so much, Alison, for coming on and chatting with me today. Reward yourself with a little bloody Mary when you get a chance and everybody out there pick up this book. It is really fun and scary, and it will make you think. I've been thinking about it ever since I put it down a few weeks ago. It's very, very fun. Alison Gaylin (39:38):

Oh, thank you, Molly. This has been such a pleasure. I really had a great time. Molly Fader (39:43):

Thank you. Glad to have you, everybody out there. Stay safe. Read a book. Have a good day. Alison Gaylin (39:48):

Stay Speaker 1 (39:48): 

Drinking with.