Are you a Cumberbitch?

by Alexandra Sokoloff

If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about.   If you don’t, you’ve somehow been missing out on the biggest thing since Jesus.  I mean, you know, since the Beatles.

So I’d like to talk today about the new Sherlock Holmes.  (Hey, it’s crime fiction, isn’t it?)  Those of you who know can just scream and faint in the background, there, while I fill the others in.  And for the hopelessly straight men of Murderati, well,  you’re just going to have to endure a little erotomania.  It is, after all, coming on Valentine’s Day.

Once in a while there is in film or television or music what has become known in technology as a Black Swan.  Something that defies all expectations at the same time meeting all the expectations you never actually knew you had.  And that's a good enough definition for the Masterpiece Mystery! TV series, Sherlock.

The series is brilliant – a redefining of Sherlock Holmes exactly as he would present himself in modern London, complete with e mailing, texting, GPS—and blogging by his faithful Boswell, John Watson, a veteran doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan, just as the original Watson was (I mean, when something is right, it’s right, right?).  And Sherlock is as he is depicted, an unfettered and unrepentant autistic-slash-high-functioning sociopath.

And a rock god.

An unfettered and unrepentant autistic-slash-high-functioning sociopath of a rock god.

The tagline for the show is “Smart is the new sexy.” And that pretty much sums it up.  This is not just a modern imagining of one of the - or is it THE? -world’s most popular and enduring detectives.  It’s a sexual fantasy for smart people.  And may I say it’s about bloody time we got one?

This is the unlikely catnip at the heart of this show:

 

A truly incredibly actor with the unlikely name of Benedict Cumberbatch (who is now banking upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars, or at least tens of thousands, for every time he was ever called Cumberbitch as a kid. It’s revenge of the geeks in spades.).

You really need to see the real-time reactions of women, girls, men, boys, dogs, horses to this actor to understand the physiological phenomenon going on here.  There are fan groups that call themselves Cumberbitches.  There are cat fights over him on Facebook (think Dionysus, Maenads...) Mention his name or the word Sherlock to a girl (or boy) of fifteen or a woman (or man) of fify and you will get the same helpless, delirious giggling.  That’s actually part of the appeal, the group experience, the knowing that you are not the only one dissolving into goo over this man and this show. And if you are not a fan, you might as well move to Antarctica, because you are going to be seeing Cumberbatch in every movie that Hollywood can cram him into for the next fifty years (fortunately, I think he’s beyond smart enough to choose his roles and limit his exposure.)

I admit that I become flushed and breathless when he launches into one of his twenty-pages-in-a-minute and-a-half-monologues about who ate what pastry at which Tube stop after whichever assignation with whatever coworker that is a trademark of the show.  But my actual fantasies about Cumberbatch are not exactly sexual; they’re more about going back to school in lighting design just to be able to properly light the man’s face.  These are the cheekbones that launched a thousand ships. He is literally golden-eyed.  And I say “man”, but one of the guilty pleasures of the show is that this is a thirty-five-year-old man who looks and acts like the world’s most precocious fourteen-year-old; you feel as if you’re committing a felony just watching it.

One of the delicious ironies of the show is that all of this extreme sexual response from TV fans all over the world is occurring over a character who is not only massively socially incompetent but patently asexual.   The character is explicitly referred to as a virgin, although the gay subtext is – not subtextual at all. This is a love story. But still, clearly unconsummated. (Or is it? It's your fantasy, after all...)

All this sexual confusion I think is one of the delights of the show.  It is polymorphous perversity in the flesh. Well, in the flesh on screen. The creators even make Doyle’s Irene Adler character a dominatrix (not the world’s most convincing one, in my opinion, but anything further I could say on the subject will only get me in trouble so I’ll refrain) who is just as fritzed out by Sherlock the virgin as he is by her.

But there's more to it than the sex, I swear. This is a truly perfect melding of an actor and a role.  Cumberbatch is a star, period - I loved him as Stephen Hawking in Hawking, he conveyed not just brilliance but a heartbreaking sweetness and innocence as the young Hawking. But Sherlock is a career-defining role. It reminds me a bit of Cary Grant, before and after Hitchcock got hold of him. Grant was clearly one fine hunk of actor even in the fluffy romantic roles he did early in his career, but it was the darkness and edge and ambiguity that Hitchcock saw and encouraged (or should I say demanded?) in him that made him an iconic, archetypal movie star. (Take a look at Cumberbatch in Masterpiece's pre-Sherlock miniseries The Last Enemy. There are hints of Sherlock, there, in the irritated monologue the character finally explodes into on national television, the kind of monologue that makes you say THERE.  Do THAT. Much more of THAT.  Please forget the love plot and just let this guy talk, and visibly think, on screen.)

Clearly creator/writers (of Dr. Who fame) Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who also wonderfully portrays Sherlock’s fussy and hovering older brother Mycroft), have that masterful Hitchcockian understanding of the material and their star. They saw it, and they gave him what he needed.  It's filmmaking collaboration in its most perfected state, the stuff that dreams (and smart people's sexual fantasies) are made on.

The writing is stellar, wicked and joyous and - I'll say it again, unrepentant; I’ve had whole years of my life that haven’t given me as much pleasure as the scene in which Sherlock compulsively corrects a convict’s grammar.  (Well, I may be exaggerating JUST a bit, but that’s how it felt in the moment...)

And yes, there is a Team Watson (we have a representative among us, actually, if she wants to speak up), and I don’t at all mean to give Martin Freeman short shrift; he is the perfect, earthy, touchingly maternal counterpart to Sherlock (talk about catnip, I so LOVE that adenoidal British voice), and I’m also thrilled to have Rupert Graves as Detective Inspector Lestrade.  (Graves is a former punk rocker I’ve loved since he made his sizzling acting debut as little brother Freddy in Merchant/Ivory/Jhabvala’s swoony Room with a View).  I wasn’t quite as thrilled with Andrew Scott as little-boy-psychopath Moriarty in the first season, but he grew on me in season two; there was just a certain way he bared his teeth that was endearing enough to make me stop hating him for the two seconds required to commit to an arch villain.

You’ll notice I’m not expounding on the plot lines (I’m too busy designing lights over here....).  I confess, it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything in the Sherlock canon, although it seems to me the second season is more true to the plot lines of the Sherlock stories I remember from my childhood than the first season. The episodes are not adaptations, but there are plenty of clever-to-brilliant references and homages for those in the know. The plots work just fine, and there are always wonderful setpieces (the Chinese circus setting in Episode 2(?) is truly dazzling), but it’s the character interaction, chemistry, and the dialogue that provide most of the breathtaking suspense. And to be perfectly honest, I’d have to watch every episode again to be able to focus on the plots because I simply DON'T CARE; I am way too busy being dazzled by - other things (and remember, I TEACH structure,  I’m telling you, this is how bad it is!).

As for social and cultural relevance, Sherlock makes Asperger’s both normal and attractive, which in an age driven by minds like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg makes the whole show not just topical but inevitable. There is something uncannily true about the series.  We KNOW this Sherlock; he is the natural, timeless, entirely present-tense incarnation of an immortal character.

He is US.

So— those of you who don’t know Sherlock like I know Sherlock, go treat yourself to a little Holmes crack, available on Netflix and Amazon and iTunes.   I dare you not to get hooked.

And for all you Cumberbitches, pull up a chair, grab the riding crop, slap on a couple of nicotine patches and let’s dish.  What is it about this show?  What does it do for you?

And yes, let's hear about other perfect portrayals of classic characters, too.

- Alex

Zoë Sharp's FIFTH VICTIM

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Today I have the great pleasure of interviewing my blog sister, Zoë Sharp, on her new book, the ninth in the Charlie Fox series: FIFTH VICTIM.

 

To introduce the interview, I started thinking back to the first few times I met Our Zoë.  And I realized when I first met her, I was intimidated. Now, that’s not something you’ll hear me saying often, about anyone. And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that I was intimidated because I knew I couldn’t fool her. Writers are perceptive people as a species, but even so I think most people tend to buy my public persona.  Which is not NOT me, it’s just not ALL of me.  With Zoë – I knew that wouldn’t work, not for two seconds. There was going to be no hiding anything from this woman.  I didn’t know how I felt about that, so I hung back until I knew her better.  (It was worth the wait!)

Zoë’s heroine Charlie Fox is that way. You cannot get anything by her; she sees to the core of people and also to the core of situations. She has a wry sense of humor and she can take the piss out of anyone (how’s that for British?) without even trying. But she also has this aura that is pure, white-hot power. You do NOT want to mess with this woman.  You especially want to be careful when she gets still. And if you were in trouble, this is the first person you would want to have watching your back.

Just exactly what you would want in a bodyguard.

We sat down over our computers, transatlantically, to talk about the book.

FIFTH VICTIM  

On Long Island, the playground of New York’s wealthy and privileged, Charlie Fox is tasked with protecting the wayward daughter of rich businesswoman Caroline Willner. It seems that an alarming number of the girl’s circle of friends have been through kidnap ordeals, and Charlie quickly discovers that the girl herself, Dina, is fascinated by the clique formed by these former victims.

Charlie worries that Dina's thrill-seeking tendencies will put both of them in real danger. But just as her worst fears are realized, Charlie receives devastating personal news. The man who put her partner Sean Meyer in his coma is on the loose.

She is faced with the choice between her loyalties to her client and avenging Sean, but the two goals are soon inextricably linked. The decisions Charlie makes now, and the path she chooses to follow, will have far-reaching consequences.

Alex: So how do you research the habits and habitats of the wealthy and privileged?  Enquiring minds want to know. 

Zoë: My day job used to involve a lot of writing about classic cars – often very expensive and rare vehicles that were, by their definition, owned by people with a lot of disposable income. Spending any time of time around these people tells you that the rich are another country – they do things differently there. For the families I describe in FIFTH VICTIM, I guess I just built on that experience and took the next instinctive leap forwards.

Alex: Well, I love how completely unfazed Charlie is by all of it - her dry nonchalance is a riot. Also I noticed Charlie's pretty comfortable around horses and slings that terminology around like a pro. Did you grow up riding?  Do you still?

Zoë: I confess that I did grow up with horses. In fact, my only professional qualification is as a British Horse Society riding instructor. It struck me when I started planning FIFTH VICTIM that I’d  never used this knowledge in any of the books, and yet I’d made mention  of Charlie having horses in her background, so I thought I’d like it to  play a larger role. Besides anything else, it fitted into the story so nicely, in a way that tennis lessons, say, simply would not have done.

Alex: Wow, I didn't know that about you, although you do have the aura. I thought it was clever how Charlie uses the horse in that one fight scene. So obvious, and yet I've never seen it before.

Okay, since we’re kind of on the subject, when I blog and teach I'm always reminding my readers/students that people read books and watch movies for a vicarious experience. In FIFTH VICTIM you take us into the rarefied world of the Hamptons, the horse culture, the yacht culture.  As an author, do you consciously use settings like this to provide a fantasy experience for your readers? 

Zoë: Not especially, although for people to require close protection, often by definition they have the most to lose. The higher the stakes, the greater the conflict, and I like to put Charlie in situations of conflict.

Alex: Speaking of conflict, you've got a great love triangle going on in FIFTH VICTIM (I'm Team Parker, if you're wondering).

Zoë: Are you? Hmm, interesting. I thought you’d be more of a fan of Sean’s bad-boy image.

Alex: Maybe I hit my limit in real life. But what I was wondering was - did that complication surprise you, or have you been plotting the triangle for years, now?

Zoë: I’d love to be able to say it was all planned from the start, but the truth is that the awkward relationship between Charlie and Sean and her boss, Parker Armstrong, was one of those things that developed more as the series went along. When I came to write this book and I was looking back, though, I was surprised to realise that there had been little signs previously that Parker looked on her as more than a simple employee. So it must have been fermenting away at a subconscious level somewhere. 

Alex: I love it when that happens, actually!

All right, now I have to ask about Torquil. He’s one of those wonderful love-to-hate-him characters. Just that name! You can refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate you, but is he anyone you know?

Zoë: Actually, Torquil is nobody I know – honest. OK, so there might be one or two traits I’ve observed in various people who shall definitely remain nameless, but nobody specific. I think that all through this book I was working on a theme of people appreciating what they have – or failing to appreciate it until it’s too late and they don’t have it any more by which time it’s too late to go back. I wanted to embody some of that feeling in one character in particular, and Torquil was it. 

Alex: That is the way it played out – I never expected to feel sympathy for him, but I did. 

A completely different question, but fascinating to a non-series writer: I like the way your number titles are always actually significant to the story!  Does your series name concept influence your plots at all, or do you have the plots first and then figure out how to integrate the proper number in as a clue or significant phrase?  Is it a hassle or does it actually inspire you?

Zoë: It’s both inspiring and a hassle – and totally confusing, as FIFTH VICTIM is actually the ninth book, not the fifth. See what I mean?

Alex: Oh, yike. That is confusing.

Zoë: I wrote the first three books (KILLER INSTINCT, RIOT ACT, HARD KNOCKS) before the title FIRST DROP arrived from the rollercoaster reference. I  had absolutely no idea that my first US publisher would jump on that  and want the next book they took (actually book six, as ROAD KILL came  after FIRST DROP) to be called SECOND Something. I’m dropping the numerical sequence for the next one, a New Orleans-set tale called DIE EASY.

Alex: And you know I can't wait for that one! Tell us a little about your research in my favorite city. 

Zoë: There’s a feel and a texture to New Orleans that really interested me. Plus the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing aftermath give the city a stark edge. People there spent a long time looking into the abyss and you can’t go through something like that and not emerge unchanged.  I was in New Orleans in mid 2010 – five years after Katrina – and some parts of it still look as though people evacuated and never went back. 

And although you look at the tourist areas and it’s all business as usual, there felt to be something defiant about it, something ever so slightly forced. I found that contrast fascinating. As an outsider I also felt there was a great sense of betrayal. Coming four years after 9/11 I think there was an expectation that if something really bad happened – whether a natural or man-made disaster, the government would be ready for it. Katrina proved they were not. 

Alex: Not ready or not willing. But you don’t even want to get me started on the betrayal surrounding Katrina!

So what's next for Charlie—besides that complicated love life? 

Zoë: That’s a good question. I’m planning to take a little break from her next so I can write something new. In 2011 I had a pretty full-on  Charlie Fox year, what with organising getting the backlist to e-book  format, plus I did the short story e-thology for which I wrote a brand  new 12,000-word long short, Truth And Lies, and then did another  Charlie short in December, Across The Broken Line, plus DIE EASY. So, I’d really like a breather, just to take stock with the character and the direction she’s moving in. Having said that, of course, an idea for the next book in the series has already been forming vaguely in the back of my mind. I shall try to keep it in check!  I’ll keep writing about Charlie for as long as people want to keep reading about her. As long as I continue to have avenues of her character that I feel I can explore – as long as she has something to say to me – then the interest is there for me as a writer. I keep putting her under pressure, whether it’s physical, emotional, or psychological, and I see what happens. So far she’s always come out fighting. 

Alex:  Was your first Charlie Fox book your first novel, or did you have a few practice novels before that? 

Zoë: I did write a novel when I was fifteen, which I wrote long-hand and  my father, bless him, typed up for me. It did go out to publishers and  received “rave rejections”. I believe it may still be in a box in the  attic. My father keeps threatening to dig it out and put it on eBay. I  just threaten him at this point … Charlie was, therefore, my first real novel, and although I rewrote KILLER INSTINCT several times the basic  core of the book stayed true to the original idea.

Alex: And you've now got all the first Charlie Fox books up as e-books.  Can we get a list, in order? 

Zoë: To try to diffuse the confusion I’ve added the book order into the titles. It just seemed the best way to do it.

The full list is:

KILLER INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one

RIOT ACT: Charlie Fox book two

HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three

FIRST DROP: Charlie Fox book four

ROAD KILL: Charlie Fox book five

SECOND SHOT: Charlie Fox book six

THIRD STRIKE: Charlie Fox book seven

FOURTH DAY: Charlie Fox book eight

FIFTH VICTIM: Charlie Fox book nine

DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten – coming 2012!

And today we're giving away an e book to a randomly chosen commenter - any one of the first five Charlie books, winner's choice.

Thanks so much, Zoë!

New Year's Resolutions/Writing One Day at a Time

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Oh, okay, yes, the year is still new and I am finding myself compelled to do a New Year's resolutions post.

One good thing is about writing a blog is that it makes one – well, me, anyway – more inclined to make public resolutions. I’m not actually sure how useful a list ever is. When it comes down to it, we all have kind of the same resolutions every year. Basically. Write more books and be a better person, right? Yes, okay, and look hotter, somehow.

But this year I wanted to do a list, mostly because as I said recently, 2011 was so hard it’s amazing just that I survived it.

I complain about the abject agony of writing all the time, but this year writing has been lifesaving, just to have one familiar thing to do every day.

But things are getting better. I’m feeling that I could move beyond survival to actually enjoying myself again.

So resolutions make sense, because they imply there IS a future, at least until the world ends in December. JUST KIDDING.

First, the standard ones:

Working out. This is one I don’t have to worry about. Exercise has been periodically too much of an obsession; I’m one who more often needs to tell myself, “You don’t REALLY need to take that two-hour Boot Camp class today.” I know if I don’t work out every day I become a rabid animal within 48 hours; it’s my version of antidepressants (depression being, as David pointed out yesterday, the real health hazard for writers). But these days I’m more balanced about working out. I take mostly dance classes, which is the way I most like to move and it’s so habitual by now it’s never a big deal to get myself to class to do it. So dance four or five times a week and one killer ab/ass class on top of that, not as much fun as dancing but the results are so immediate and visual, it’s addictive. No, I mean, it’s good.

Eating. Pretty good about this, too. I don’t eat too much, I eat mostly the right things, I know how to combine proteins, and I don’t keep anything like ice cream or Cheetos or macadamia nuts in the house, ever. One thing here - I am going to try to eat more Superfoods next year – why not, right? Salmon, blueberries, pomegranates, almonds, yams, dark greens; I love all that stuff anyway. I am finding it very MESSY to eat pomegranates, but wow, are they good.

Getting out more. Well, with my conference schedule this year I don’t have to worry about a social life, even though I have the typical author problem of feast or famine in this department. You live like a hermit while you’re writing, and party till you drop at the conferences. These days I’m mostly paid to go, a big perk of the job. But I am resolved to say yes more than no to social events.

Wear more colors.  I'm terrible about always automatically reaching for one of the five thousand black things in my closet (but they're all different!). I mean, with my hair, I don't really worry about standing out. Or rather, I do worry - about standing out too much. I KNOW why big city dwellers constantly wear black; it's anonymous (and hides city dirt. And SO slimming....) But I also love dressing up for conferences, where I feel safe, and one of the most fun things is having people enjoy what I wear. So yes, a conscious effort to mix up the colors a bit this year.

Giving more. I am grateful to be feeling financially stable, and am glad to plug my favorite charities at the beginning of the year: Children of the Night, Kiva, Equality Now, Equality California. And don’t forget Wikipedia – you KNOW you use it.

- Children of the Night - Rescues teenagers from prostitution.
- Kiva You can pledge $25 or more as a microloan to small businesswomen in developing countries, the loan will be paid back and you can loan again to someone else.
- Equality Now Ending violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
- Equality California - Advocates for civil and legal rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Californians.

Writing more?

Okay, this one is not possible without a total brain meltdown.

My problem here is not that I’m not writing enough, but that I have too many concurrent projects. But I had a really productive December and am on track to finish my latest paranormal by my deadline at the end of January, which will make me less frantic about my contractual obligations. And I am closing in on finishing the thriller that I’ve been working on this year, sometimes just a few minutes a day. But five minutes a day for a year equals a book.

Did you catch that? I’ll say it again. Five minutes of writing a day for a year equals a book.

Which is what I really wanted to write about today, because I don’t think it’s said often enough that you CAN write a novel (or a script, or a TV pilot....) in whatever time you have. Even if that’s only five minutes a day. If you have kids, if you have the day job from hell, if you are clinically depressed – whatever is going on in your life, if you have five minutes a day, as long as you write EVERY DAY, to the best of your ability, you can write a novel that way.

I don’t know if I’ve posted this here before, maybe a million years ago, but I wrote my first novel, The Harrowing, by writing just five minutes per day.

My day job was screenwriting, at the time, and yes, it was a writing job, but it had turned into the day job from hell.

But fury is a wonderful motivator and at the end of the day, every day, I was so pissed off at the producers I was working for that I would make myself write five minutes a day on the novel EVERY NIGHT, just out of spite.

Okay, the trick to this is – that if you write five minutes a day, you will write more than five minutes a day, sometimes a whole hell of a lot more than five minutes a day most days. But it’s the first five minutes that are the hardest. And that often ended up happening. Sometimes I was so tired that all I could manage was a sentence, but I would sit down at my desk and write that one sentence. But some days I’d tell myself all I needed to write was a sentence, and I’d end up writing three pages.

It’s just like the first five minutes of exercise, something I learned a long time ago. As long as I can drag myself to class and endure that first five minutes of the workout, and give myself permission to leave after five minutes if I want to, I will generally take the whole hour and a half class, and usually end up loving it. (There are these wonderful things called endorphins, you see, and they kick in after a certain amount of exposure to pain...)

The trick to writing, and exercise, is – it is STARTING that is hard.

I have been writing professionally for . . . well, never mind how many years. But even after all those many years—every single day, I have to trick myself into writing. I will do anything – scrub toilets, clean the cat box, do my taxes, do my mother’s taxes – rather than sit down to write. It’s absurd. I mean, what’s so hard about writing, besides everything?

But I know this just like I know it about exercise. If you can just start, and commit to just that five minutes, those five minutes will turn into ten, and those ten minutes will turn into pages, and one page a day for a year is a book.

Think about it.

Or better yet, write for five minutes, right now.

So what are other people's resolutions? And what are your tricks for actually following through?

Happy New Year, everyone!

- Alex

Men of Mystery/ Rage Against the Night

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur of men, exactly, or a gourmet, or heaven forbid, a gourmand.

But I do, well, notice them. 

One of the not-so-often-talked-about perks of the author life is that you are thrown in with some of the most fascinating, charismatic and fun males on the planet.

The variety is staggering.  Just consider our own men of Murderati. 

The oh-so-cool and oh-so-soulful Steve Schwartz. Well, who wouldn’t melt at the Kerouac/Cassady beat aura, the rhythm of a musician, that leather jacket?

Dusty Rhoades, an earthy, sexy bear of a man who calls himself a redneck when no redneck was ever so smart or so freaking liberal – but who you can see strangling a man with one hand if he ever even THOUGHT of messing with one of Dusty’s friends. 

David Corbett, so scary smart you want to whack him, but he’s carried noir elegance into present day and has the street cred to back it all up. And loyal as the day is long.

Gar Haywood, the sophisticated chameleon, who does “urban” noir and heartwarming cozy with equal skill – always the coolest man in the room but OH, you would not want to cross him and get caught in the fire. (Or would you?) 

Jonathan Hayes, who you KNOW could introduce you to a spectrum of sensual delights usually reserved for Arab men in patriarchal cultures who die gloriously in battle and get 100 virgins and the world’s best chefs working around the clock for them or something like that.

Ken Bruen, the Irish poet. I don’t know how any of the rest of us even have souls of our own: it seems to me that Ken has the keeping of the universal soul.  There is no harshness in this man, he is beautifully, truly himself to the core.

Expanding into the greater community. . .

Lee Child, every woman’s fantasy of James Bond but OH so much more interesting.   As radical as the day is long, and people call him shy but HAH. I’ve never met a man more capable of making any woman feel she is the most fabulous thing on the planet.  Reacher is a pale copy of the creator.  Plus he has that dreamy brother, the dreamy Andrew Grant, who has his own sleek spy thriller cred.   Lee or Andrew?  Andrew or Lee?  Or . . .  well,  that kind of speculating could keep a girl busy for a long, long time. 

Harlan Coben. The ultimate family man with bad boy written all over him.  He will drive you insane by telling you the absolute truth about why you are not where you should be as a writer, and then tell you the exact thing you need to know to get to the next level, driving you even more insane, because he’s right.  I love his passionate meltdowns on panels, they’re worth the price of admission to any conference. 

Joe Konrath.  If you can keep from killing him on first contact (or tenth), the most fun anyone can have standing up. Brilliant, visionary mind, nail-biting writer, and a sense of humor that will keep you young if you have the ovaries to survive it.  An earthy life force, and one of the only men who understands that all a woman wants on the dance floor is for you to be out there on it with her.  He would deny he is a good guy but I know better, and if you don’t, you’re missing out. 

F. Paul Wilson.  There is nothing this man does not know or cannot do. A practicing doctor AND genre-bending bestselling author AND serious drummer and wonderful actor; the sweetest man on the planet, as well as the most wickedly funny. You can rock out with him to ass-kicking Cajun music in a down-and-dirty Zydeco club on Bourbon Street, and talk to him about Deism while the band is taking a break.  A prince among men, and that’s no lie.

Barry Eisler. Well, what can I say – that hair!  No, there’s so much more to Barry. So much gorgeous and talented in one package would be insufferable if he weren’t so passionately political.  Get your mind out of the gutter and take a look. Barry has a moral compass that could lead us all.  If there were a zombie apocalypse, I’d want him rebuilding the world.

Speaking of Hollywood gorgeous - Marcus Sakey.  All right, I always had a thing for Starsky, so sue me.   But Marcus you can’t hate either, he’s the real deal. Uber-talented, doesn’t miss a trick, and a great guy – I’d love it if they’d just clone him.

Blake Crouch – hmm, can’t say anything here, I’m practically certain I could get arrested.  But someone so talented (writing AND music), so sweet, so fun, so loving, and so YOUNG, is going to rule the world any second now. And I’d be happy to have him do it.

We have men in this community who can turn you into a puddle just with their voices (Reed Farrel Coleman and and Gary Phillips)  There are brilliant soulful poets you want to save, while the more conscious half of your brain is saying they will destroy you if you stay a second longer at the bar (fill in the blank...)

I could go on and on and ON.  But there’s one man you might not be as familiar with as the others, while I, being the cross-genre slut—uh, wench—that I am, have had a little more exposure. And this is one you NEED to know. 

Rocky Wood is the current president of the Horror Writers Association, and the author of  Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished (Softcover), Stephen King: The Non-Fiction, Stephen King: A Literary Companion, Horrors: Great Stories of Fear and Their Creators

Rocky is a born New Zealander, current Australian, and believe me, Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe have nothing on him. They so very seldom make men like this anymore, it’s tragic. If there’s any point of cloning at all it should be to make more of these.

First of all, there’s that accent. But that’s just window dressing, really. 

He is charming in the way that the most charismatic movie stars I’ve met are charming.  He is totally present and focused in exactly the moment he is in, and on the person or group he is with. He has an aura that is sexy and smart and just beyond what you see in the real world.

You are drawn to the accent and his intensity, first, and the charisma, and then you very quickly start to realize that this is a wonderful person.  An exceptional person.  That whatever you thought you were rushing off to do can wait, possibly forever, because you really need to be right here and just find out who this person is.

A purely good person. 

They say about certain gurus and great spiritual leaders, like the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa, that you feel uplifted just as they walk in the room. That their physical presence changes your own auric vibration. Well, that's Rocky.

All right, here comes the hard part.  And if you’re not sitting down, maybe you should, because when I say hard, I mean hard.

Rocky has ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease,  or Motor Neurone disease. It is an evil, insidious thing. It turns the muscles to soup. There is no cure.

The news of this, this year, made me want to take whatever pills that would get me out of this life as fast as I could exit it.  It made me wonder what was the point of anything at all.

Horrible things happen to good people all the time. No one can tell me that there is not actual evil in the world.

But this is one of those – THE PERSON WHO LEAST DESERVES THIS SCOURGE – events. 

So what is anyone to make of something like this?

Believe it or not, I’m not going to be dark about it.  I had that phase a while ago.  I’ve moved on, to two basic thoughts.  Which actually might be in opposition, but here they are anyway.

1. The perfect cure can happen instantly, tomorrow, this afternoon, this second. Miracles happen. Not consistently, but they happen.  As I wrote in THE PRICE, and as I believe (on good days): “If one miracle has ever happened in the world, why not this one, for you?”

2. Another, and possibly the more important point is that: this world is only illusion.  What you feel, what you can touch, right now, it’s only illusion.  There is a better state we pass on to, which to me is—pure energy.  Without the heaviness of a body.  Without the agony of what people do to each other on the earth plane.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my body, it gives me great pleasure, and I’m happy to know that it gives other people great pleasure.  But it’s so very heavy.  I have to think that there is a lighter kind of existence, and that it’s a much better existence.  I do enough yoga to believe that, with every cell and neuron in me.

And if this is true, it is not such a hard or horrible thing to have a fatal disease. Anything that is what the Hindus call Moksha: liberation, release from the earth plane, is a blessing.

(So I’ve gone from the ridiculously sensual to liberation from the physical body.  How’s that for a blog post?)

But since we’re still on this plane, a bunch of Rocky’s friends, who happen to be pretty incredibly great writers, have contributed a passel of short stories to a collection called RAGE AGAINST THE NIGHT, edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings, with short stories by Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Sarah Langan, Scott Nicholson, and many more. My short story, The Edge of Seventeen, is reprinted in the book, too. You may be especially interested in a story by Stephen King, which details a deal with the devil that Rocky would never make: passing this kind of illness on to another human being. But the book is also packed with tales from rising stars in the horror genre you may not be as familiar with.

The price is $3.99, and all proceeds go to buying Rocky an eye gaze machine, a miraculous device that allows which allows the severely physically impaired to communicate via eye movements.

Rocky has already made arrangements to pass the machine on to another family that needs it, because that’s the kind of man he is.

No one knows what will happen tomorrow.  I may drop dead long before Rocky does. Any one of us could. What I do know is that anyone who has not known this man is the poorer for it.   I hope this post will go a small way toward correcting that.

Thank you for reading.

- Alex

RAGE AGAINST THE NIGHT:

E book now available for $3.99 from: 

- Amazon (Kindle)

-  Smashwords (multi-format ebook)

In the coming weeks, the anthology should be available at all good online retailers, and the print version will be available in January.

Synopsis:

Under the onslaught of supernatural evil, the acts of good people can seem insignificant, but a courageous few stand apart. These brave men and women stand up to the darkness, stare it right in the eye, and give it the finger. These are the stories of those who rage against the night, stories of triumph, sacrifice, and bravery in the face of overwhelming evil.

- Edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

The Walking Dead

 by Alexandra Sokoloff

That would be me, after two weeks of something that never quite turned into flu but wasn't much fun anyway.

I don’t really watch television, no time and very little tolerance, but I do occasionally binge on it.

And I don’t know whether it’s my way of avoiding the traditional Christmas chocolate binge, or the fact that I’ve been sick for a lot longer than I figured on being, but I have been having a mother of a TV binge this week.

In the past I have become obsessed with shows like DEADWOOD (still the best of all), THE WIRE (excruciatingly close second), ROME, and MAD MEN. Obsessed means that I watch every episode as soon as I can get it, which can present a time management problem when I discover a show that has actually been on the air for several seasons already.

I may be able to blame this current one on Our Steve, because it actually started when I was feverish and I guess I needed to see people sicker than I was or something, so I watched Outbreak (a movie Steve helped develop) on Netflix. I’ll see Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Spacey in anything, and this is them together, and I’ve been kind of wanting to see it again after seeing one of what must be one of the year’s most excruciatingly dull movies—CONTAGION.

I don’t know what it is about the plague that is so hard to get right in a feature film.  At least I didn’t until I discovered the AMC TV series THE WALKING DEAD.  And now I know what has been missing from these plague movies.

Zombies.

Now you have to understand this. I like apocalypse stuff but I am NOT a zombie girl. Couldn’t care less. Mystified by the popularity (plus, that wave has   l  o  n  g  passed, hasn’t it?)  I read THE PASSAGE (good book) and some of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (cute, but you get it after a few chapters and don’t have to keep reading.  ZOMBIELAND was funny and 28 DAYS LATER was scary but has one of the worst endings I’ve ever seen from a talent like Danny Boyle.

But WALKING DEAD – well, it’s created by Frank Darabont, based on the graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore and Charlie Adlard.  Darabont is one of my favorite filmmakers. Only person who’s every pulled off a Stephen King novel on film (besides Cronenberg with DEAD ZONE. I love Kubrick’s THE SHINING but it’s not King’s THE SHINING. And yes, STAND BY ME is great but it’s not a King NOVEL.).

The first episode of WD is so scary I had to turn it off periodically and calm myself down. I am beyond stunned that it didn’t give me nightmares.

It’s cinematic and riveting, often heartbreaking, purely wonderful storytelling.

Well, only the first 13 episodes are available so far and I went through that in a day.  (When I say binge, I mean binge.).

Which meant that I could actually resume writing the next day, which is the good news.

The bad news was I was jonesing for more apocalypse.  So I did some searching and discovered the BBC series SURVIVORS (the recent remake, or revision), which is post-flu apocalyptic.

Watching both series back to back was a seriously interesting exercise.  I’m not entirely sure in what – British vs. American TV, British vs. American gun culture, British vs. American people. . .  zombies vs. flu. . .

Here’s the thing.  I’m not a particularly violent person or writer; I avoid gore in my reading and my own writing. But after 13 episodes of WALKING DEAD, I am seriously craving bloodshed on SURIVIVORS.  Sure, everyone but a dozen people died in the first episode (shown through tasteful shots of the soles of tennis shoes and limp manicured hands).

But once the human encounters started again, there were some people who needed to be dead. And the British characters in SURVIVORS just refuse to kill people.  Also, I know this series aired on the BBC, but I have to think that in actuality there are more than two guns in Britain.  I’m sure Zoe has at least that many.  Okay, I’ve actually seen four guns on the show so far, but only two in play at once. 

Now come on, Brits, in case of an apocalypse, even without zombies—wouldn’t guns be one of the FIRST things you’d be looking for?  Like, after water, but before food?  That seems to me basic survival.  I know that you don’t have gun shops at every random strip mall, but you do have a military, and in the world of the show, the military is just as dead as the rest of the world.  So there would be guns to be had, right?

I’m sorry, but tire irons aren’t going to cut it.

That’s me being logical, there. But there’s another aspect to it, not logical at all.  I have to confess, thatcompared to WD, where zombies are shot, arrowed, pickaxed... skulls crushed with shovels, bodies torn apart by ropes (and by other zombies) – gruesome casualties by the dozens almost every episode . . .

Well, it sounds terrible to say it, but after all the excruciating tension of WD I just was not sure SURVIVORS was going to be violent enough for me. Even with all those British accents, I wasn’t getting into it.  It was, no big surprise, sex that kept me with it for the first two episodes.  There are two pretty fine leading men in this show, Max Beesley and Paterson Joseph;  I’m happy to see the producers realized they should be shirtless more often.  The other characters grew on me and the lead actress I disliked in the first episode turned out to be a villain, so that was okay. The lead actress I like best got to kick some serious ass a few episodes in, which was a pleasant—or maybe I mean gratifying—surprise. And I like the conceit of the show, which is that, at least so far, the Odyssey-like encounters the main group has with other survivors are modeled around famous stories from literature, like Peter Pan and Oliver Twist. It could have been corny but it works.

I am having one continuing problem with it, on the morality front.

With zombies of course you don’t have to have debates about morality, you can just break skulls—although THE WALKING DEAD does pretty well finding moral dilemmas, with some zombie killing anyway.

But I’m starting to wonder if my own morality got a little warped by the show, as with SURIVORS I am getting TIRED of the good guys letting the bad guys go. Especially in the case of two would-be rapists, who should have been put permanently out of commission.  The good guys could have talked about it, argued it, but someone should AT LEAST have brought up the idea.  Instead of turning them loose to attack other women. Or children, if there don’t happen to be any women handy.

There’s another weasel I’m sure the writers are just keeping around to keep people’s blood boiling, but it makes me long for the take-no-prisoners skull-crushing of WD.

I bet you’re all starting to wonder what my point is.  I’m not sure, actually.  My questions are not so much about zombies, but if you’d like to talk about them, have at it.  Give us some classics. But what I was really wondering was - have other people started to experience holiday meltdowns?  How did or do they show up for you? 

There’s also a question for the Brits.  Do you have more than two guns in the entire country?  (Sorry, kidding.)  But I can’t say that I’ve seen a lot of gunplay in my favorite British series.  Am I just missing the gory ones, or do you all look aghast at the level of violence in American cable TV, especially?

And I’m up for any recommendations of apocalyptic favorites. I only have five more episodes of SURVIVORS to go . . .

The very happiest holidays to all (with or without zombies), and hoping all wonderful things for everyone in the new year.

- Alex

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P.S.   If I have not responded to anyone who requested review copies of THE HARROWING, THE PRICE or BOOK OF SHADOWS, please re-mail me at alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com.  I was late getting to my webmail on this because of my bout with plague, and may have deleted a few e mails along with the deluge of spam.

(And Reine - your e mail is not working for me....)

Alex