Year-end wrap-up

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Somehow it has gotten to be December (how the hell?)  and one of my editors and I have been commiserating about how really freaking glad we both are that this year is drawing to a close. Even if the world does end (or start over) in 2012, it’s just got to be better than this year.  Doesn’t it?

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I’m not one for the in-depth online personal disclosures.  Authors live a little in the spotlight, if just a minor one, and that’s fine, it’s not that I’m shy– but let’s face it, there are some strange people out there and you never know who’s reading.

So without getting too detailed about it, on the personal level this has been an enormously hard year for me. A lot of loss, as in death. Within six months: my father, a beloved aunt, and my cat of 19 years. My father from Alzheimer’s, and all I can say about that is – Don’t get it.  And I hope to God someone figures out prevention and cure to end that scourge.

All of this was coming down while I was not long out of and certainly not recovered from a devastating and permanent split from my significant other.

While here in New Agey California people are liable to say cheery and optimistic things like “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “God (the Goddess, the Universe) never gives us more than we can handle,” I’m not so sure about that. I think lots of people get more than they can handle.  Just take a look at all the crime and illness and tragedy in the world. People snap all the time. Does that mean they could have handled it and they just didn’t?  Well, yeah, sometimes, but some, I think, really do get more than anyone could handle.

Anyway, I’m handling it, I guess, but I’m also very aware that I’ve been pretty effectively shut down for most of the year, enough so that sometimes I've wondered if I'd ever really be coming back from it. Surviving is not the same as thriving.

On the other hand, I’d have to be the biggest narcissist on the planet not to know that I have it a lot better than a lot of people, especially in this economic climate.  I’m making a comfortable living at the thing I most love to do (although I admit, sometimes that love looks a lot like—something not so loving.).  E books are a godsend, and I have a lineup of book contracts that sometimes gives me panic attacks, but after a really rough patch there after Dad died, I have been managing my deadlines and doing a book on the side,  too, as well as getting some of my backlist formatted for e-release.  In fact it’s kind of amazing how much I got out there this year:

- I e-published a second Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook:  Writing Love, and my first YA thriller: The Space Between.

- I finished the first book in a paranormal trilogy for Harlequin: Twist of Fate. 

- I finished a draft of and am now rewriting a new crime thriller than I’m writing on spec (about which I will say very little because I'm superstitious that way).

- The Unseen came out in the UK.

- I wrote a short story, In Atlantis, for Thriller 3, Stories to Keep You Up at Night, coming out in June 2012.

- I am about 100 pages into Night Shift, my second book in the continuing paranormal series The Keepers, that I’m writing with two of my best friends and favorite authors, Heather Graham and Harley Jane Kozak.

- And this month, I am releasing e versions of The Harrowing, The Price, and Book of Shadows in various countries.

It’s absolutely amazing, really, for me to look at that list, which doesn’t even include the workshops I taught this year, when I feel like all I did sleep and once in a while shuffle around the house running into furniture like some kind of undead thing. And I wanted to put it all on paper (or whatever this is) to prove to myself that I’m haven’t checked out of life completely, no matter how I feel sometimes.

In fact I am actually starting to love writing Night Shift, which is not something I say very often about my writing; finishing is so infinitely superior to the actual process.

And it’s great to be full time in the Hotel California again, except for time on the road, of course...  Both of the books I’m working on now, and my last, The Space Between, are set in California and it’s taken me a while to come around to it, but there aren’t many people more qualified than I am to write about this state. (I know it’s a terrible thing to say but I LOVED those violent winds last week; that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.) I’m finally far enough out of the Hollywood trauma to write about that, too, and I am truly loving using the movie business as a backdrop to this paranormal thriller.  It’s so easy, in a way; I don’t have to think, I can just have fun.  I can set a scene on Catalina if I want and I don’t have to research it, I don’t have to take a field trip (although I could).

Maybe writing could be this way all the time.

And I may not know where I’m going to live next in any permanent way, but I am starting to have at least the beginning of faith that I will find a direction. Eventually.

Maybe I’ll find the rest of it, too. Eventually.

So, everyone – how was YOUR year?

- Alex

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!!REVIEW COPIES!!

I am giving away 100 review copies of Book of Shadows, The Harrowing and The Price for potential review on Amazon, Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Book of Shadows for UK readers and anyone in France, Germany, Italy or Spain who might want to review it on Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, or Amazon.es.

The Harrowing and The Price: for US readers and anyone in France, Germany, Italy or Spain who might want to review either or both on Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, or Amazon.es.

If you’re interested, please e mail me at alex AT AlexandraSokoloff DOT com and I'll get you a copy of your choice.

Thanks, everyone!!

Cheating on my book

by Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m the only one here, right?   I can feel it.   Every single other person in the Universe is on vacation.    Hah.   That means I can say anything I want.

I’m working this weekend, but it feels like vacation when there’s no one around to bug me.   I love that.   I get my work and play in at the same time.

Okay, so here’s the problem.    I seem to be writing three books at once.   How did that happen?

I’m supposed to know better than that, aren’t I?   Wouldn’t I scathe a student up one side and down the other for not focusing on one project until it was done?

Well, I’m not exactly a student, though – and as a screenwriter I juggled multiple scripts at various stages of development all the time,  I had to, it’s just the job.

But books are different.    They’re so much bigger.   Can you really compare the two?

I think I know how this happened, actually. 

First, I’m in transition.     The Universe in its wisdom has decided to revamp every single aspect of my life in a major, bone-shattering way, and it’s been – special.      So it’s not all that surprising that all that upheaval from all directions would start to reflect itself in my writing life.

Second, I just turned in two projects, one right after the other, my paranormal that comes out this fall and a book I wrote with three fabulous other female authors, four interconnected novellas that make up an – apocalyptic – story of its own.   

And everything always looks different, disorienting, when you are finished, truly finished, with the immense task that writing a book is.

So it’s not so very surprising that I’m not entirely sure which of the three projects I was toying with - before I had to power down and finish these last two – I want to go back to, now.    I don’t even know who I am, anymore – how the hell am I supposed to know what I want to write?

Now, some of this is just rhetorical.   I KNOW which book I have to finish first.   That would be the one that’s almost finished, duh.    It’s unfortunate that I had to leave off on that one at the very worst possible time to leave a book – 3/4s of the way through a first draft, that Slough of Despond where you realize that you never had the slightest bit of talent to begin with, that in fact elves wrote your last four books, along with everything else you’ve ever written, and you might as well go do that other thing that you can’t do because no writer is really equipped to work at anything else, but you better figure something out fast, because your writing career is officially over.

I’m sure none of you has the slightest idea what I’m talking about.  

But yes, that’s where I was, and that’s what I had to face when I picked that book up again.    Sheer, unadulterated panic ensues.  

Now, as I tell my students, as writers we have to push through that section, it is not optional, because it’s exactly the emotional and physical predicament that our CHARACTERS are experiencing at that point of the story… when there is no possible solution to anything in front of them, or us, and we have to have that experience together to get to the final battle.   The process is cleverly, sadistically designed that way as part of the magic of storytelling.

And the truth is, I have hit this wall in every single script I’ve ever written, and all six novels, now, and I have always, every single time, gotten through it.    That’s a pretty damn good track record.  

But it still feels like dying, every single time.

And there are particular elements about this particular book that are making me more nervous even than usual.   First, I’m adapting my own short story as a novel.   So the gremlins are whispering:   This is a short story.   What ever made you think it could be a full length novel?   You’re stuck because THERE IS NO MORE TO WRITE.   Fool.

Also, it’s my first YA.   And it’s way too dark to be a YA.   Oh, I know, everyone says there’s no such thing as too dark for a YA anymore, but trust me, there is a limit, and I am it.

So that’s Book One.   I had 170 pages when I stopped.   Clearly need to finish that one first, but - see above.

Book Two is a huge departure for me.   Agent loves story.    Brilliant group of author friends love story.  It’s something I’ve been thinking of for years but finally figured out how to actually do it.    Okay, it’s a bit of a departure, urban fantasy, I guess is what I have to call it, and suspenseful, but not so dark as usual, but I was wanting to write something not so dark.    Started it back before I had to finish the last two projects and got 85 pages pretty fast.    Went to NY for BEA and researched locations, fabulous trip,  lots of ideas, should be able to jump right in, no problem, right?

Except that this is the first thing ever that I’m writing in first person.   What in hell made me want to do that?   I don’t even READ first person.    Add to that, it keeps feeling like it should be first person present tense.   Aaaaah!!     I am completely paralyzed.    Go back and rewrite it in third?    Push forward but switch to third?    Push forward and try first person present tense?     I’m not paralyzed, I’m comatose.

So, enter Book Three.    Book Three was an idea I was toying with at the same time I was thinking about doing Book Two.    More along my usual – very adult, very dark, half crime thriller, half supernatural, or maybe the characters are just crazy…   there is an emotional core to it that intrigued me, characters that felt already real, but Book Two felt like a Bigger Idea.

Only once I came up for air from the two just-finished projects, I couldn’t get Book Three out of my head.

And you know how it is about that book you left behind, especially when you are struggling with your current project.     I KNOW you know.    A few weeks ago Dusty called it “the bright and shinys”, but let’s be blunt.   It’s the ultimate forbidden fruit.    You know you should be committed to your relationship, and you are, really you are… but….

So I was just toying with it, really, a little harmless brainstorming on the side, and suddenly, WHAM!!!  That whole book is in my head.   Can’t stop thinking about it.    And Book of Shadows has just come out and I’m getting the reviews and the letters and realizing – oh my God, I really am writing a very specific thing and these people who are reading it are expecting that very specific thing – why on earth, when I’m just starting to hit my stride with my particular brand, would I want to suddenly jump track?

My readers would LOVE Book Three, it has everything that they say they read me for.

And it’s in third person.    Unless I make it first person.    Which I might.

So that’s where I am.    Utter chaos.   Confusion.    When I know – I KNOW – that the only possible way to maintain a career as an author, or any kind of writer, is to FINISH WHAT YOU START.

Well, but this last week, the smoke is starting to clear.   I think.   I’m not out of the woods yet, but I have been writing five pages a day on Book One.    Mind you, the book went off on a tangent that when I reread it might belong to a different universe entirely, but it was so fascinating I just had to go with it.    And I was able to remember, barely remember, but remember, that THE FIRST DRAFT IS ALWAYS GOING TO SUCK. It doesn’t have to make any sense.   Whole sequences can be thrown out.   My only job at this point is to get to The End.     Once I reach that happy place known as the Second Draft, I know I can make it happen.   I always do.

And you know what?    I think I needed to have the release of that illicit brainstorming on Book Three to break through my paralysis on Book One.   The utter absurdity of juggling three books took the pressure off all of them.   Maybe even Book One got jealous and stopped playing so hard to get when it felt like it was losing my attention.     Yes, that sounds completely insane, but can YOU explain how writing works?   I thought not.

So now I think I have a plan.   Five pages a day on Book One until The End, no excuses, and after that’s done I can do whatever I want on either of the other two for the rest of the writing day.   I can live with that.

And the moral of the story?     Well, it just goes to prove my number one and only rule of writing.  

WHATEVER WORKS.

Really.   Whatever gets it written, is gold.

So here's the question, if there's anyone here.   Have you ever cheated on one of your books?   How'd that work for you?   Humiliating disaster, or creative breakthrough?   Can you have multiple projects going, or are you a True Blue?

Hope everyone’s having a great holiday.   I know I am.

- Alex

PS:  If you’re looking for a little Independence Day spirit, and you haven’t seen it in a while, I just want to remind you of one of the best musical films ever made:  1776.    I think I might have to hunt that one down myself.

For God’s Sake, John, Sit Down!

  Molasses To Rum To Slaves



That's Witch With a "W".

 by Alexandra Sokoloff

It’s amazing how many 'Rati have new books out this month.   Oh, right, I guess that’s what we do.

But yes, me too! -  my fourth supernatural thriller from St. Martin’s is out on Tuesday, Book of Shadows, my first novel without “The” in the title, and my favorite book so far. 

 

It’s about a very male, very rational (he thinks)  Boston homicide detective who reluctantly must team up with a very female, very irrational, mysterious (and of course, beautiful) witch from Salem, to solve what he thinks is a Satanic killing - which she insists involves a real demon.

As a lot of you know, my favorite thing as a writer is to walk that “Is it or isn’t it?” line between reality and the supernatural, and I think this may be my finest line yet.   Because this is actually a police procedural, but the question is, “Whatdunit?”  (Thanks, Dusty…)

And I can already tell I’m going to get in trouble with this post, but what the hell.   So to speak.

I have been fascinated with witches and the modern practice of witchcraft for as long as I can remember.   I mean, please, didn’t we all grow up with The Wizard of Oz, not to mention Halloween?  And in a way my book is precisely about that existential question posed by Glinda the Good, in her very first line of the movie:   “Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”

And I don’t mean that just literally, but metaphorically.   Because the whole history of witchcraft seems to me to boil down to the question of whether women are good or bad.   For centuries, during the times of the old earth religions, witches were seen as good: healers, midwives, mystics, helpers, the folk equivalent of doctors.    In the Middle Ages (and I’m sure throughout history, but particularly starting in the Middle Ages), the organized, patriarchal church (and male doctors) tried to stamp out this manifestation of feminine power with the systematic torture and genocide of women in the form of the Inquisition.    Witches were evil, women were evil.

In the 1960’s, when societies were expanding the borders of ordinary consciousness, there was a newfound fascination with the earth religions and an upsurge in the practice of goddess worship, including witchcraft.     I’m sure all of us who grew up in California have known a practicing witch or two in our lives – anyone who’s ever been to the Renaissance Faire as many times as I have probably knows whole covens.

But get outside of California and OH, it’s a different story.   It’s always been hard for me to comprehend he defensiveness that arises in response to the suggestion that God might actually be female, too.   (Um, doesn’t even Genesis (that's the Bible Genesis, rock stars…) say “God created man in his own image, male and female he created them”… ?)

I mean, I love you guys, you know I do – but you’re only HALF the human equation.

Try referring to God as “She” in, oh, the Bible Belt, for example, though.   Which yes, I do frequently, and I feel that collective internal gasp of horror around me   (And then women, girls, come up to me in private to say, ‘Thank you”).  

Women are just not supposed to have that kind of power.

So in Book of Shadows, I wanted to dive right in and explore some of those things that make some men – and a lot of women – uncomfortable with feminine power, and feminine energy,  and feminine sexuality, and feminine deity - the whole yin of things.    It’s noir, but it’s supernatural noir.    I wanted to take two people who were as different as I could make them on the surface:  male vs. female, rational vs. intuitive, doing vs. being, real world vs.  the unconscious, psychic world – even their cities are opposites:   Boston vs. Salem – and force them to work together and learn that they’re a lot more similar than they seem on the surface.

Actually I think my cop protagonist, while he doesn’t exactly trust this witch, probably with good reason, takes all of the above feminine stuff pretty much in stride, admirably so.   What he’s not so comfortable with is the idea that there might really be something supernatural going on in this troubling case.

One theme I come back to over and over again in my writing is the idea that messing around with the occult, or other dark forces (which you could say about drug abuse, or certain kinds of sex, or abuses of power)  can open doors that let undesirable elements through that aren’t so easy to get rid of.   And that young people are particularly prone to supernatural experimentation – and attack by supernatural predators as well as human ones. That’s definitely something that goes on in the book.   And some of my earliest exposure to that idea was my sixth grade study of the Salem Witch Trials.   (That’s right, isn’t it – we all got the Salem Witch Trials about sixth grade?)

The ambiguity of that situation has always drawn me.    Were the girls who accused the “witches” pawns of land-grabbing villagers?   Bored and frustrated pre-teens seizing the only power they’d ever have by acting out?   High on ergot?   Freaked out - maybe a little possessed - by their experimentation with voodoo under the tutelage of Tituba?     Wouldn’t you just kill to know?

I tried to capture some of that ambiguity in my accused killer, a troubled musician in a Goth band who has taken a little too much of an interest in that very bad real-life magician, Aleister Crowley. 

The research for this one was a real treat, too.   Of course I had a whole backlog of witch stories to draw on, from people I met working at the metaphysical bookstore The Bodhi Tree, in L.A. (and that’s also where I met a lot of grunge teens who were rabid about Crowley),  to attending ceremonies with Craft friends, including witnessing what for me was the real magic of “Calling the Corners”.    I’ve had a love affair with Boston since I set The Price, there – it’s not just layered with American history and an amazing art history as well, but there’s just something deliciously eerie to me about the whole place.   I got to go to Salem on Halloween (think Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras but with more witches, pirates, and Puritans).   And I was incredibly lucky to find a criminalist in the Boston Police Department who gave me an extensive tour of Schroeder Plaza, the department and the crime lab, and answered all kinds of technical questions for me.   It was one of those projects where even though circumstances around me were very complicated at the time, everything I needed for the book fell into my lap – I love it when that happens. 

Almost like... hmm, magic.

You can read the first couple of chapters on my website, (look for the link under “Excerpt”)  and I’ll gladly give away a copy to a randomly drawn commenter today.   (Will post winner here tomorrow).

And my questions for the day are –  What’s your take on witches?   Know any?   Are you familiar with the way witchcraft is actually practiced, or is that whole world completely mysterious to you?   Or do you do the odd spell or two yourself?

- Alex