Four Questions with Alison McBain

I was intrigued when I first learned of author Alison McBain’s current project. She has set out to write a novel a week over the course of a year to prove humans make better novelists than AI, and can not only match bot output, but can do it better.

I feel guilty for asking her to break from her work, but I am delighted she has found the time between penning 52 novels to stop by and answer these four questions.

Tamika Thompson: What is horror? 

Alison McBain: To me, horror is very subjective because it’s what you absolutely never want to happen to you. It’s the embodiment of the lizard part of your brain that screams, “Run!” It definitely doesn’t have to be blood and guts, but it can be slow, creeping terror. The best horror, to me, is psychological rather than all-out gore. Hitchcock rather than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Both are valid types of horror—that’s just what I personally prefer.

Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?

McBain: I used to live in a haunted house—does that count? Not that I necessarily believe in any of that outside of writing fiction, but we lived in a house that had weird things going on that were all rationally explainable when taken individually, but gave us the heebie-jeebies when put together.

Among other things (I’m sure I’m forgetting quite a few), we had a gas leak in the basement in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, which would have killed us if I hadn’t woken up and gotten us out of the house; the stove would catch on fire by itself; bats invaded our house and one bit my sister, who was visiting; radios would turn on and off by themselves no matter what outlet we plugged them into; the lights would flicker only in the bedrooms; it would “rain” inside the (downstairs) kitchen even after we had the roof and pipes fixed multiple times; there were weird, dark stains on the bedroom floor that weren’t from any leaks; we found large bones in the yard when doing gardening; there would be “screaming” sounds late at night from the basement that didn’t seem attributable to anything we could find (not wind, not appliances, not people); we would get snakes in our basement a lot, including in the wintertime with feet of snow on the ground, even when all the windows/entrances to the basement were closed (we didn’t live in a rural area at all, but in the heart of a 60,000-person city); and the doors inside the house had outside locks (so you could lock people inside and they couldn’t get out).

Probably the creepiest thing of all was that the people who sold us the house knew the place had bad juju. After we had a flood in the basement, we tore open the cupboards and found built into the walls huge, half-burned red candles. The previous owners had obviously performed some type of exorcism there, but…well, it didn’t work. They had also left us a note with the keys about the inside locking doors being for “the bad children.” That was creepy as hell. Some day I might write about it, but there was honestly so much that happened in the house that such a story probably wouldn’t be believable or would seem like genre clichés.

Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?

McBain: Horror novels don’t frighten me. What does are true crime books about serial killers. Horror is fiction and comes from some demented part of our writer brains, but real life serial killers who have taken trophies of their victims, eaten their body parts, and done twisted things with the dead bodies—ugh. It keeps me up at night that there are people like that probably walking among us today, and you wouldn’t know it if you passed them on the street or saw them in the grocery store or at a gas station. We use our imagination to create twisted characters, but they are the twisted characters.

Thompson: You are weeks into your Author vs. AI project in which you set out to prove that “writing can be done quickly, efficiently, and better with human instinct, emotion, and passion.” Are you finding this to be the case? How has the process been so far?

McBain: It’s been a fun but bumpy ride at times. While I’ve written 40,000-plus words in a week before while working for various ghostwriting clients, I’ve always had some sort of break in between. I might take a week off after completing a project or switch to doing editing instead of writing.

So, to keep producing words nonstop week after week can be pretty mentally tiring.

I feel like I’m starting to hit my stride now, but it can be a disorienting experience. When I write, I immerse myself into the world I’m creating. I live the life the characters live and go through the same triumphs and losses that they do. So, for me to start a new adventure each week—I sometimes forget who I am by the time Wednesday rolls around. I’m living so many lives right now and going on so many amazing (and some terrible) adventures through my characters.

But would I consider that my books are better than AI books? Heck, yeah! And I encourage readers to check out the excerpts I’m reading each week from these books to see what you think too.

Alison McBain’s novels are the recipients of over 13 awards, including the Foreword INDIES. When not writing for herself, she’s a ghostwriter who has penned over two dozen books for clients, as well as an award-winning editor who has worked with both celebrity and New York Times-bestselling authors. She’s currently pursuing a project called “Author Versus AI,” where she’s writing a book a week over the course of a year, using NO AI at all (52 books total). When not writing, Ms. McBain is associate editor for the magazine ScribesMICRO and draws all over the walls of her house with the enthusiastic help of her kids. She lives in Alberta, Canada.