SHORT BIO: Alison McMahan’s short mysteries are in collections by Level Best Books, Wildside Press, Down-and-Out Books, and HarperCollins’ Scream and Scream Again middle-grade horror anthology edited by R.L. Stine. She’s a two-time Derringer finalist and listed as an "Other Distinguished Mystery Stories" author in Best American Mystery Stories of 2018.
REAL-LIFE THRILLER MOMENT: I was a non-fiction filmmaker for nearly thirty years and found myself in many such situations. Most memorable was the demonstration in the main square in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in 1988. As I was filming I realized the crowd was hemmed in by trucks filled with machine-gun armed soldiers. There was nowhere to take cover should violence erupt. Luckily, it didn't.
I also walked across landmine-infested fields in Cambodia, having to trust my guide to show me where to step safely. Luckily, I made it through that one too!
WHO I ADMIRE: My maternal grandmother was the seventh child of gold miners and oil prospectors. She made her living dancing in vaudeville - the dance all night, travel on the train all day type of vaudeville circuits. When that played out she earned her living teaching dance, selling real estate, and whenever times were bad she could always make up the shortfall playing poker. Every world she lived and worked in was a man's world, and she had more than her fair share of heartbreak. She never let any of it stop her and never lost her bawdy sense of humor. I loved her stories of making out with her fiancé in the back of one of the first Model T Fords and of getting a $100 tip from Al Capone.
FAVORITE MEDIA MOMENT: Really liked Reptile (Netflix, Dir. Grant Singer). And Killers of the Flower Moon. The 4th season of True Detective with Jodie Foster is really amazing so far.
WHAT I’M WORKING ON: I'm working on a series featuring a Cambodian woman who escaped the Khmer Rouge and ended up adopted by an American couple. She is now a cop like her adoptive father was, in a town where Cambodian gangs and Mexican gangs are at war.