"...HARD TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THEM OR EVEN KNOW WHO THEY ARE...": WE ARE WATCHING'S ALISON GAYLIN

Alison Gaylin's We Are Watching follows mother and daughter Mag and Lili Russo become targets of conspiracy theorists for their believe tied to her father's time in an almost famous prog rock group and a book Meg wrote in her early teens. Alison took some time to take our questions .

SCOTT MONTGOMERY: What was the spark for We Are Watching?

ALISON GAYLIN: I always like to write about the things that scare me the most, and in this day and age, that's large groups of people of fervent and false belief. I was thinking not only about more recent conspiracies like Pizzagate, but of the Satanic Panic of the 80s, where normal people found themselves accused of completely ridiculous and impossibly evil things -- and suffered terribly as a result.

S.M.: Due to the nature of the premise. a whole sub-culture is the antagonist. 

A.G. Yes, that's true!  And since they're largely hidden, it's very hard to fight back against them or even know who they are.

S.M.:There aren't a lot of mother-daughter relationships you see in thrillers. What made that dynamic unique for you to write for?

A.G.: Well, I'm both a mother and a daughter myself. And I like writing about that dynamic because it's rich and complicated and changes a lot over the years as you learn and reveal and understand more and more about each other. A mother and adult daughter have a very different relationship than a mother and child, and in this book, the daughter Lily is 18 and so that new type of dynamic is just beginning to fall into place.

S.M.: Meg's father, Nathan, is an interesting and integral part of the book. How did you construct him?

A.G.: I was thinking about rock stars who were accused of Satanism, so I wanted to write that type of character, only on a smaller, more relatable level. Nathan's band, Prism, only achieved minor success and so the idea that there were maybe hundreds of people out there who believed he was some kind of devil-worshipping warlock could potentially do a lot more damage to him personally than to a rich, famous rocker (with a security detail) like Ozzy Osbourne or Jimmy Page. I also wanted to create a character who was extremely paranoid -- someone who had experienced a lot of unfair prejudice in his life and it made him deeply distrustful of the world. 

S.M.: You said in a discussion with Megan Abbott on The Novel Neighbor's that the first draft was completely different from the finished novel. What was the key to unlocking it?

A.G.: The characters. The only thing that survived from the first draft of the novel were Meg and Lily's names. Nathan was not in the first draft, Meg was a former actress, Lily was 12 years old... None of that worked in terms of the story I wanted to tell. So I basically had to start from scratch and go back to my original idea: What if a normal family was targeted by conspiracy theorists? From there I went to "why would that happen?" And from there, I created a new set of characters.

S.M.: If you couldn't write what other art form would you pursue?

A.G. I wish I was a talented musician, like Nathan and Lily. That said, I don't know if I'd pursue it because I don't have any musical talent. I honestly don't know. I don't really have any other talents. Knitting, maybe.