Please Welcome Author ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF! [ Edited ]

[becke_davis]

What was the inspiration for The Harrowing?

The Harrowing is based on real incidents from my high school and college years. Very early on in life I noticed what seemed to be a correlation between mental/emotional illness and paranormal events. Emotionally disturbed people seem to have a high level of psychic awareness, and they attract synchronicities and even weirder occurrences. That's a theme in a lot of my writing (and reading).

I wanted to take a bunch of misfit, troubled college kids and put them into a situation similar to Shirley Jackson's great The Haunting of Hill House, and play with the idea that the emotional dynamic between them attracts an equally troubled spirit -- or that the whole thing is just psychological or a prank that gets out of hand and builds its own momentum.

And the Thanksgiving weekend part -- well, I spent a stormy Thanksgiving weekend in the dorm my freshman year at Berkeley. It was a natural setting for this kind of thing -- I knew exactly what it felt like!

What was the inspiration for The Price? 

It’s a sad story. A friend of mine and his wife had just had their first child, and she was born with a hole in her heart. She lived the whole of her two months of life in the children’s ward of a Boston hospital, and her parents moved into the hospital, to be with her. When she died, her parents were too distraught to come home to all the unused baby furniture and clothes, so a bunch of their friends packed everything up for them, and because I have a huge attic, we put it all upstairs in my house. That night I started having dreams of a beautiful little five-year old girl who was not alive but not dead, either –- somewhere in between. And that was the beginning of the book. 

But I’ve always had a fascination with the concept of a deal with the devil -– the things we have in the back of our minds that we would do for what we most desire –- fame, fortune, love. What would we really do? What is the one thing that we would do that we would never confess to a soul? So that’s what the story is about. 

What was the inspiration for The Unseen? 

I’d been reading about Dr. Rhine and the Duke parapsychology lab’s experiments for years – I think I must have gotten obsessed with the Zener ESP cards when I was just 8 or 9 years old. As a daughter of scientists I love the idea that something so mysterious as ESP ability could be proven in a laboratory by scientific means.

I always knew I wanted to do a story about the ESP testing and the poltergeist investigations, but the story clicked into place when I learned that there are actually are 700 boxes of original research material and files from the parapsychology lab stored in the basement of the graduate school library at Duke. And they’ve only recently been opened for public reading. That’s when I knew what the story was going to be - as a thriller you just live to be handed a story line like that. I just love it when that happens!

To prepare to write the book I revisited all the books I could find on the subject, and everything I could get on poltergeists and paranormal research, and attended numerous lectures by parapsychology experts and went on a few ghost-hunting expeditions, as well.

Then I actually moved into a haunted house for a week to get the ambiance of “the Folger House”. I had a very specific mansion in mind for the poltergeist house, which is now a writers’ retreat in central North Carolina, very isolated and elegant, and I was able to live there for a whole week with a group of mystery author friends. So I got to know the house like the back of my hand – and it’s supposed to be haunted, and I did experience some interesting chills at night – mostly my own imagination, of course, but another of our group had a very specific haunting experience that apparently often occurs in that particular room. The mansion does have an ambiance – there were rooms I simply would not go into at night by myself; I would break into a cold sweat just moving up to the door. But there was also a very sexual imprint on the house, I thought. As I describe in The Unseen, the mansion was a vacation retreat for some of the most famous literary figures of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and I can only imagine the decadent parties that went on, there, very Great Gatsby! That feeling is still very much present in the house today – bluntly, it’s a turn-on.

I spent a lot of time on the Duke University campus, too, surely one of the most Gothic campuses in the United States, totally spooky! and at the present Rhine Research Center http://www.rhine.org/ in Durham, North Carolina, where Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine and Dr. Louisa Rhine continued their parapsychology research after Dr. Rhine retired from Duke.

[becke_davis]

Was it hard to make the transition from screenwriter to novelist?

All writing is impossible, so in a way writing a novel was just a different kind of impossible. I knew how to tell a story, and about character and dialogue and theme and suspense -- it was the device of narration that was the brand new thing I had to learn: authorial voice, I guess I mean. And you have to use a lot more words! Honestly, I have so much more to learn, it's completely overwhelming. But I keep thinking of a quote -- I wish I knew who said it: "You would not have had the idea if you did not have the capability of executing it." Something like that. I try to hold on to that. There's a funny thing about being a writer -- you have this enormous sense of responsibility about your characters and worlds -- this urgent drive to bring them to life. So you keep knocking yourself out to somehow get good enough to do them justice.

How did you get your agent and publishing deal?

My extremely patient and supportive film agent, Frank Wuliger, gave the book to my agency's book acquisitions agent and she loved it, and she gave the book to several New York book agents, and Scott Miller at Trident Media Group read it within a week or two, and loved it. A month later we had a two-book offer from St. Martin's.

It all happened so incredibly much faster than you always hear about, but remember, I'd paid my dues for years as a screenwriter -- they don't call it development hell for nothing... Believe me, I've suffered enough!

What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Oh, there are so many ways to answer that question. The first that springs to mind is -- Don't do it! Which is what I heard from so many writers when I was an aspiring writer, and of course you see how well I followed that advice. The thing is, if you're a writer, you're going to write, and nothing anyone can say will talk you out of it. You will take the advice that makes sense and ignore the rest and fight it out, whether it's good for you or not, whether it makes you happy or not -- you'll do it.

But there's so much truth to that old saw -- If there is anything, ANYTHING else you can do and be happy -- do that instead.

The second bit of advice is the best and truest I've ever heard about becoming a writer, from Saroyan: "Find a small room in a big city and put your desk in front of the window and sit down in front of the blank page. And when you stand up ten years later, you will be a writer."

The trick, of course, is that you have to STAY in the chair.

The third, and probably the one that people want to hear, is -- Find a system. Read a lot of books on writing, take a lot of classes, and when you find a writing system that makes sense to you, follow it. And then expand on that. There are some very, very good teachers out there, and some not so good, but you have to decide for yourself who is the best teacher for you at a certain time. I cannot recommend John Truby's Story Structure classes and CDs highly enough. I am also indebted to the late, great Frank Daniels for letting me audit his USC classes on screenwriting and story structure -- I wish his taped lectures were available to the public.

And of course everyone is welcome and encouraged to check out myScreenwriting Tricks for Authors blog, which I have been told is a gold mine of information. For free! 

I guess I have a fourth bit of advice, too. Learn everything you can about how to manage your money wisely. Professional writing is a feast or famine rollercoaster. Being smart about money will make you free to do the kind of writing you want to do. Try The Motley Fool, The Complete Idiot's Guides, any basic guide to money management. Make sure you understand the miracle of compound interest. I could not be more serious about this.

What is your life like now?

Just a little frenetic!  My supernatural thriller Book of Shadows comes out from St. Martin's Press in June, 2010, and my paranormal thriller Shifters,  the second book in a New Orleans witch and vampire trilogy, The Keepers, withHeather Graham and Deborah LeBlanc, is set for release from Harlequin Nocturne in Fall 2010.  I teach my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop all over the country, and Screenwriting Tricks For Authors, the workbook based onmy blog and workshops, is now available at the Amazon store for Kindle, PC and Mac.    And of course I go to a lot of writing conventions -- I love the traveling and I love meeting people. 

I practice my Berkeley political activism on union and creative rights issues in theWriters Guild of America, west, where I recently served on the Board of Directors. I'm also the founder of WriterAction.com, a large and unruly cyber-community of professional screenwriters. I just finished a term on the board of the Mystery Writers of America. I perform with Heather Graham's Slush Pile Players. And I'm still a dance addict! Jazz, ballet, salsa, Lindy, swing -- I do it all, every chance I get. 

[becke_davis]

About Alex

Alexandra Sokoloff is a California native who grew up in both Northern and Southern California as the daughter of scientist and educator parents, which drove her into musical theater at an early age. She acted, sang, danced and played classical piano through the turbulent tween years, and started directing plays at age sixteen, a year she also lived in Istanbul as an AFS exchange student and began college.

At U.C. Berkeley, she majored in theater and minored in everything that Berkeley has a reputation for. While not doing -- everything else -- she wrote, directed, and acted in productions from Shakespeare to street theater; trained in modern dance; directed and choreographed four full-scale musicals; spent a summer singing backup vocals in a bar at Glacier National Park, audited at least three times as many classes in various subjects as she was actually taking, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, which is a miracle considering -- well, never mind that.

After college she moved to Los Angeles, where she has made an interesting living writing novel adaptations and original suspense and horror scripts for numerous Hollywood studios (Sony, Fox, Disney, Miramax), for producers such as Michael Bay, David Heyman, Laura Ziskin and Neal Moritz. Her adaptation of Sabine Deitmer's psychological thriller Cold Kisses, co-written with Kimball Greenough and Thomas Reuter, was filmed in Germany by director Carl Schenkel.

The Harrowing, her debut ghost story, was nominated for both a Bram Stoker award (horror) and an Anthony award (mystery), for Best First Novel. The book is based on real experiences from her high school and college years. The psychological undercurrents of the story are drawn from her experience teaching emotionally disturbed and incarcerated teenagers in the Los Angeles County prison system. 

Her second novel of dark suspense, The Price, explores troubling questions of what people will do for love, or personal survival, in the eerie setting of a labyrinthine Boston hospital. 

Her new supernatural thriller, The Unseen, centers on a team of psychology researchers who decide to replicate a long-buried poltergeist investigation, and is based on the real-life ESP experiments and poltergeist studies conducted in the Rhine parapsychology department at Duke University.

In her fourth supernatural thriller for St. Martin's (June 2010),  Book of Shadows, a Boston homicide detective teams up with a beautiful, mysterious witch from Salem to solve a Satanic killing.  Alex also just finished Shifters, a paranormal thriller for Harlequin Nocturne, part two of The Keepers trilogy with Heather Graham and Deborah LeBlanc, out in October, 2010.

In her free time (!) Alex enjoys adventure travel and all kinds of dance, which she has also taught, and performs in the all-author Killer Thriller Band, and with Heather Graham's Slush Pile Players. She is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America, west, and the Mystery Writers of America, and is the founder of WriterAction.com, a large and unruly online community of over 2000 professional screenwriters.

She can be found blogging at Murderati.com and teaching her popular workshop on Screenwriting Tricks for Authors on her own blog, Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.  Screenwriting Tricks for Authors is now available as a workbook on Kindle and for Mac and PC.

[becke_davis]

Performance

Long before I really committed to writing, I was a theater kid: acting and writing and directing, first in my best friend's garage, where instead of selling lemonade we charged our neighbors a dollar to endure our theatrical extravaganzas; then moving on to community theater and school productions: singing, dancing, playing classical piano.

I directed my first play at age 16, directed and choreographed full-scale, big-budget musicals in college, sang in various girl groups and seedy bars, acted in (and co-wrote) improvisational and street theater in Berkeley, and I've even danced professionally (no, not THAT kind of dance!).

One fabulous and unexpected perk of being an author is that I get to use my musical and theater training constantly. It turns out that a lot of authors are hams. Um... I mean... just as talented in other arts as they are in writing.

Here are a couple of the things I do these days in my "spare time":

The Slush Pile Players

The staggeringly talented, bestselling author Heather Grahamalso comes straight out of theater, and she's pulled together an all-author theater troupe that performs an original comic musical revue every year at theRomantic Times Booklovers Convention; at Heather's Writers for New Orleans; and this year for the first time, at the Horror Writers' Association Stoker Weekend.

Heather has a hypnotic gift for pulling recovering theater, film, and garage-band authors into her evil web, and the result is her gypsy theater troupe The Slush Pile Players, which includes authors F. Paul Wilson, Harley Jane Kozak, Beth Ciotta, Mary Stella, Debbie Richardson, Dave Simms, and Nathan Walpow, publisher/author Helen Rosburg of Medallion Press and her daughter Ali, actors/directors/writers Lance Taubold and Rich Devlin, and Heather's numerous and multitalented progeny: Jason, Derek, Bryee Annan, Shayne and Chynna Pozzessore.

It's truly a gift to be part of this theatrical family.

Photos: Top: Bloodsucking Vampires; Middle: Heather Graham and the Vampirettes: Beth Ciotta, Harley Jane Kozak, Alex Sokoloff; "This evil must be schtupped!" F. Paul Wilson as Van Helsing, Debbie Richardson, Helen Rosburg

[becke_davis]

The Killer Thriller Band

The Killer Thriller Band, produced byRobert S. Levinson, and made up entirely of thriller writers, had a smash debut at ThrillerFest in Phoenix, July 2006. 

The band is John Lescroart, F. Paul Wilson, Dave Simms, Scott Nicholson,David Morrell, Blake Crouch, Nathan Walpow, Michael Palmer, Daniel Palmer,Gayle Lynds, and the Killerettes: Heather Graham, Harley Jane Kozak, and Alexandra Sokoloff. 

In the News

• Thrillerfest article by Scott Nicholson, with photos
• Killer Thriller Band, with photos
• More Thrillerfest, with band photos

Photos: Above, Producer Bob Levinson and the Killerettes.

Below, From left, "Killerettes" Heather Graham, Harley Jane Kozak, Alexandra Sokoloff; Band members Scott Nicholson, John Lescroart, Daniel Palmer, David Morrell, Blake Crouch, Dave Simms, Michael Palmer. Band members out of view: Gayle Lynds, Nathan Walpow, F. Paul Wilson.

Killer Thriller band rehearsal: (L-R) Scott Nicholson with bass; F. Paul Wilson on drums; John Lescroart with acoustic guitar; Killerettes Alexandra Sokoloff, Heather Graham, Harley Jane Kozak; David Simms on guitar. 

[becke_davis]

Alexandra's Website

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors Blog

Blogs & More

For constantly updating information, my own blog is the first place to check: Alexandra Sokoloff.

I write a continuing series of articles on story structure on my blog. If you're a writer, or just enjoy film discussion, come learn how classic screenwriting techniques can help you craft a better novel.

I'm a proud member of Murderati, the Anthony-nominated group blog on marketing, mystery, and murder. I blog every other Saturday, but we have a no-holds barred discussion pretty much every day, open to all. Come join the fun!

And I blog on the 24th of every month at Storytellers Unplugged, a group blog slanted toward horror.

MySpace

Visit my MySpace page.

Twitter

Follow me on Twitter.

Facebook

And of course you should friend me on Facebook!

[becke_davis]

Please give Alexandra Sokoloff a big B&N welcome!!

[becke_davis]

Hi Alexandra - or should we call you Alex?

I'm so excited you could join us! I'm a huge fan - I'm trying to get my husband to read THE PRICE, even though he doesn't read much fiction. I LOVED it, and I think he'll really get into it. He liked Stephen King's THE STAND and in some ways, THE PRICE reminds me of that book.

I also loved THE UNSEEN - I'll warn people who haven't read your books before, once you start them, you won't be able to put the books down until you've reached the end.

I just ordered your latest book, and THE HARROWING is in my TBR pile. I'm looking forward to reading them both.

What book are you working on now, or is it too soon to say?

[TiggerBear]

I've read The Harrowing, excellent book Becke.

Thanks for stopping by Ms. Sokoloff! While I've only read one of your books, it was excellent.

[AlexSokoloff]

Thanks so much for having me, Becke..   Wow, a comparison to Stephen King/ THE STAND  - I can just go home now, you've made my day!  Because of course, one of the main reasons I started writing is that Stephen King just doesn't write fast enough and I needed something to do between reading his books.

Please call me Alex, especially this early in the morning.

I have a new book coming out November 1, THE SHIFTERS, about, yes, shapeshifters, which is part of a paranormal trilogy set in New Orleans (THE KEEPERS).  It's my first foray into that wildly popular genre.

And I'm working on a couple - well, more than a couple - of things at once - a very dark Young Adult which is a supernatural thriller I always thought was too dark to be YA, but YA seems finally to have crossed that line into "as dark as you can get".

Then I have a paranormal trilogy that I'm doing - my first series ever, scary!   And I also have another dark adult thriller and an urban fantasy brewing.     A little overbooked, actually...

[AlexSokoloff]

Thanks, Tiggerbear, I'm so glad you liked The Harrowing.   I hope you'll try one of the others one of these days when you're looking for a good spooky read.

[AlexSokoloff]

What was the instpiration for Book of Shadows?

I’ve always wanted to write a story with the backdrop of the modern practice of witchcraft. Being a California native, I have friends who practice the Craft, and it’s so rich in visual and archetypal imagery and power. And anyone who's read any of my books has probably noticed I am fairly obsessed with gender issues and differences. I wanted to write a book that would pit a very outwardly rational, logic-driven man, in a very male profession (homicide detective), from a very rational city (Boston) against a very otherworldly, psychic, subconsciously driven woman (a practicing witch), from a much more mysterious town (Salem) — and play with the contrasts and the line between what is real and what is supernatural as the two of them investigate what he thinks is a serial murder which she insists involves a real demon. I thought I could create some great chemistry and distrust between the characters there, a paranormal noir, if you will. Then I was also working with my constant theme of people, especially young people (in this case a troubled college student) opening doors that they really don't understand and having to deal with what might be supernatural consequences.

[becke_davis]

---

AlexSokoloff wrote:

Thanks so much for having me, Becke..  

Sorry I'm late - I'm a garden writer, too, and I've been buried in deadlines lately. ALMOST caught up!

Wow, a comparison to Stephen King/ THE STAND  - I can just go home now, you've made my day!  Because of course, one of the main reasons I started writing is that Stephen King just doesn't write fast enough and I needed something to do between reading his books.

LOL!

Please call me Alex, especially this early in the morning.

I have a new book coming out November 1, THE SHIFTERS, about, yes, shapeshifters, which is part of a paranormal trilogy set in New Orleans (THE KEEPERS).  It's my first foray into that wildly popular genre.

The Shifters (Harlequin Nocturne #99) 

Alex, I'm glad you mentioned THE SHIFTERS - for some reason the link didn't come up when I was posting your books, but it is up and it can be pre-ordered now.

For those who haven't read Alex's books, I would call them mysteries with paranormal elements. And they are definitely thrillers!

And I'm working on a couple - well, more than a couple - of things at once - a very dark Young Adult which is a supernatural thriller I always thought was too dark to be YA, but YA seems finally to have crossed that line into "as dark as you can get".

My almost 27-year-old daughter is hooked on YA - when this comes out, I'll pick up a copy for her.

Then I have a paranormal trilogy that I'm doing - my first series ever, scary!   And I also have another dark adult thriller and an urban fantasy brewing.     A little overbooked, actually...

Series definitely seem to be what publishers are looking for. I'm amazed at how many books you are working on. How long does it take you to write a book? On average, how many books do you write in a year?

---

[becke_davis]

---

AlexSokoloff wrote:

What was the instpiration for Book of Shadows?

I’ve always wanted to write a story with the backdrop of the modern practice of witchcraft. Being a California native, I have friends who practice the Craft, and it’s so rich in visual and archetypal imagery and power. And anyone who's read any of my books has probably noticed I am fairly obsessed with gender issues and differences. I wanted to write a book that would pit a very outwardly rational, logic-driven man, in a very male profession (homicide detective), from a very rational city (Boston) against a very otherworldly, psychic, subconsciously driven woman (a practicing witch), from a much more mysterious town (Salem) — and play with the contrasts and the line between what is real and what is supernatural as the two of them investigate what he thinks is a serial murder which she insists involves a real demon. I thought I could create some great chemistry and distrust between the characters there, a paranormal noir, if you will. Then I was also working with my constant theme of people, especially young people (in this case a troubled college student) opening doors that they really don't understand and having to deal with what might be supernatural consequences.

---

We used to have a Garden Book Club here, which I also moderated. (Now we've moved all the garden-related content to the Garden Variety blog). One of our guest authors was Ellen Dugan, who calls herself the Garden Witch. She has written several books on witchcraft and gardening. Fascinating!

I've ordered your book but haven't read this one yet. It sounds as scary as your other stories!

[becke_davis]

Alex - with all the popularity of scary, somewhat paranormal movies right now, is there any chance we'll see one of your books on the big screen? (Especially since you happen to be a screenwriter, too!)

If you could cast your books, who would star in them?