Alexandra Sokoloff | Murderati

By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

THE INDEX CARD METHOD

by

Here’s what it looks like on a trifold board:

So you have your structure grid in front of you.

What you will start to do now is brainstorm scenes, and that you do with the index cards.

Get yourself a pack of index cards. You can also use Post-Its, and the truly OCD among us use colored Post-Its to identify various subplots by color, but I find having to make those kinds of decisions just fritzes my brain. I like cards because they’re more durable and I can spread them out on the floor for me to crawl around and for the cats to walk over; it somehow feels less like work that way. Everyone has their own method – experiment and find what works best for you.

A movie has about 40 to 60 scenes (a drama more like 40, an action movie more like 60), every scene goes on one card. Now, if you’re structuring a novel this way, you may be doubling or tripling the scene count, but for me, the chapter count remains exactly the same: forty to sixty chapters to a book.

So count yourself out 40-60 index cards. That’s your book! You can actually hold it in your hand. Pretty cool, right?

This is the fun part, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. All you do at first is write down all the scenes you know about your story, one scene per card (just one or two lines describing each scene – it can be as simple as – “Hero and heroine meet” or – “Meet the antagonist”.) You don’t have to put them in order yet, but if you know where they go, or approximately where they go, you can just pin them on your board in approximately the right place. You can always move them around. And just like with a puzzle, once you have some scenes in place, you will naturally start to build other scenes around them.

I love the cards because they are such an overview. You can stick a bunch of vaguely related scenes together in a clump, rearrange one or two, and suddenly see a perfect progression of an entire sequence. You can throw away cards that aren’t working, or make several cards with the same scene and try them in different parts of your story board.

You will find it is often shockingly fast and simple to structure a whole story this way.

And this eight-sequence structure translates easily to novels. And you might have an extra sequence or two per act, but I think that in most cases you’ll find that the number of sequences is not out of proportion to this formula. With a book you can have anything from 250 pages to 1000 (well, you can go that long only if you’re a mega-bestseller!), so the length of a sequence and the number of sequences is more variable. But an average book these days is between 300 and 400 pages, and since the recession, publishers are actually asking their authors to keep their books on the short side, to save production costs, so why not shoot for that to begin with?

I write books of about 350-400 pages (print pages), and I find my sequences are about 50 pages, getting shorter as I near the end. But I might also have three sequences of around 30 pages in an act that is 100 pages long. You have more leeway in a novel, but the structure remains pretty much the same.

In the next few posts we’ll talk about how to plug various obligatory scenes into this formula to make the structuring go even more quickly – key scenes that you’ll find in nearly all stories, like opening image, closing image, introduction of hero, inner and outer desire, stating the theme, call to adventure/inciting incident, introduction of allies, love interest, mentor, opponent, hero’s and opponent’s plans, plants and reveals, setpieces, training sequence, dark night of the soul, sex at sixty, hero’s arc, moral decision, etc.

And for those of you who are reeling in horror at the idea of a formula… it’s just a way of analyzing dramatic structure. No matter how you create a story yourself, chances are it will organically follow this flow. Think of the human body: human beings (with very few exceptions) have the exact same skeleton underneath all the complicated flesh and muscles and nerves and coloring and neurons and emotions and essences that make up a human being. No two alike… and yet a skeleton is a skeleton; it’s the foundation of a human being.

And structure is the foundation of a story.

ASSIGNMENTS:

— Make two blank structure grids, one for the movie you have chosen from your master list to analyze, and one for your WIP (Work In Progress). You can just do a structure grid on a piece of paper for the movie you’ve chosen to analyze, but also do a large corkboard or cardboard structure grid for your WIP. You can fill out one structure grid while you watch the movie you’ve chosen.

— Get a pack of index cards or Post Its and write down all the scenes you know about your story, and where possible, pin them onto your WIP structure grid in approximately the place they will occur.

If you are already well into your first draft, then by all means, keep writing forward, too – I don’t want you to stop your momentum. Use whatever is useful about what I’m talking about here, but also keep moving.

And if you have a completed draft and are starting a revision, a structure grid is a perfect tool to help you identify weak spots and build on what you have for a rewrite. Put your story on cards and watch how quickly you start to rearrange things that aren’t working!

Now, let me be clear. When you’re brainstorming with your index cards and you suddenly have a full-blown idea for a scene, or your characters start talking to you, then of course you should drop everything and write out the scene, see where it goes. Always write when you have a hot flash. I mean – you know what I mean. Write when you’re hot.

Ideally I will always be working on four piles of material, or tracks, at once:

1. The index cards I’m brainstorming and arranging on my structure grid.

2. A notebook of random scenes, dialogue, character descriptions that are coming to me as I’m outlining, and that I can start to put in chronological order as this notebook gets bigger.

3. An expanded on-paper (or in Word) story outline that I’m compiling as I order my index cards on the structure grid.

4. A collage book of visual images that I’m pulling from magazines that give me the characters, the locations, the colors and moods of my story (we will talk about Visual Storytelling soon.)

In the beginning of a project you will probably be going back and forth between all of those tracks as you build your story. Really this is my favorite part of the writing process – building the world – which is probably part of why I stay so long on it myself. But by the time I start my first draft I have so much of the story already that it’s not anywhere near the intimidating experience it would be if I hadn’t done all that prep work.

At some point (and a deadline has a lot to do with exactly when this point comes!) I feel I know the shape of the story well enough to start that first draft. Because I come from theater, I think of my first draft as a blocking draft. When you direct a play, the first rehearsals are for blocking – which means simply getting the actors up on their feet and moving them through the play on the stage so everyone can see and feel and understand the whole shape of it. That’s what a first draft is to me, and when I start to write a first draft I just bash through it from beginning to end. It’s the most grueling part of writing, and takes the longest, but writing the whole thing out, even in the most sketchy way, from start to finish, is the best way I know to actually guarantee that you will finish a book or a script.

Everything after that initial draft is frosting – it’s seven million times easier to rewrite than to get something onto a blank page.

Then I do layer after layer after layer – different drafts for suspense, for character, sensory drafts, emotional drafts – each concentrating on a different aspect that I want to hone in the story – until the clock runs out and I have to turn the whole thing in.

But that’s my process. You have to find your own. If outlining is cramping your style, then you’re probably a “pantser” – not my favorite word, but common book jargon for a person who writes best by the seat of her pants. And if you’re a pantser, the methods I’ve been talking about have probably already made you so uncomfortable that I can’t believe you’re still here!

Still, I don’t think it hurts to read about these things. I maintain that pantsers have an intuitive knowledge of story structure – we all do, really, from having read so many books and having seen so many movies. I feel more comfortable with this rather left-brained and concrete process because I write intricate plots with twists and subplots I have to work out in advance, and also because I simply wouldn’t ever work as a screenwriter if I wasn’t able to walk into a conference room and tell the executives and producers and director the entire story, beginning to end. It’s part of the job.

But I can’t say this enough: WHATEVER WORKS. Literally. Whatever. If it’s getting the job done, you’re golden.

Next up – a list of essential story elements that will help you brainstorm your index cards.

– Alex

———————————————————————————————

All the information on this blog and more, including full story structure breakdowns of various movies, is available in the workbooks.:

STEALING HOLLYWOOD

This new workbook updates all the text in the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors ebook with all the many tricks I’ve learned over my last few years of writing and teaching—and doubles the material of the first book, as well as adding six more full story breakdowns.

STEALING HOLLYWOOD ebook $3.99
STEALING HOLLYWOOD US print $14.99
STEALING HOLLYWOOD print, all countries

WRITING LOVE

Writing Love is a shorter version of the workbook, using examples from love stories, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy – available in e formats for just $2.99.

– Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

– Amazon/Kindle

– Barnes & Noble/Nook

– Amazon UK

– Amazon DE

———————

You can also sign up to get free movie breakdowns here:

Get free Story Structure extras and movie breakdowns

By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

That woke everyone up this morning, didn’t it?

I’m at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, paneling, signing, doing interviews and of course, catching up with friends in the bar. This morning I moderated a panel called “Keep it Moving: Pace in Mysteries and Thrillers.” We were discussing tricks of pacing and suspense, and I think I’ll just continue that discussion here, with one of THE most important techniques of pacing I know.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re already familiar with the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure. But I still have to fill new readers in, so bear with me, or skip ahead!

There is a rhythm to dramatic storytelling, just as there’s a rhythm to every other pleasurable experience in life, and the technical requirements of film and television have codified this rhythm into a structure so specific that you actually already know what I’m about to say in this post, even if you’ve never heard it said this way before or consciously thought about it. And what’s more, your reader or audience knows this rhythm, too, and unconsciously EXPECTS it – in books, which have picked up on that rhythm and evolved along with movies and television. Which means if you’re not delivering this rhythm, your reader or audience is going to start worrying that something’s not right, and you have a real chance of losing them.

You don’t want to do that!

So today we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite subject. You know it’s true! What’s not to like about a climax?

Early playwrights (and I’m talking really early, starting thousands of years ago in the Golden Age of Greece) were forced to develop the three-act structure of dramatic writing because of intermissions (or intervals). Think about it. If you’re going to let your audience out for a break a third of the way through your play, you need to make sure you get them back into the theater to see the rest of the play, right? After all, there are so many other things a person could be doing on a Saturday night….

So the three acts of theater are based on the idea of building each act to a CLIMAX: a cliffhanger scene that spins the action of the play in such an interesting direction that the audience is going to want to hurry back into the theater at the warning chime to see WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Many plays break at the middle, so the Midpoint Climax is equally important.

This climactic rhythm was in operation for literally thousands of years before film and television came along and the need for story climaxes became even more, um, urgent. Not just because life was faster paced in the 20^th century, but again, because of the technical requirements of film and television.

In a two-hour movie, you have not three climaxes, but seven, because film is based on an eight-sequence structure.

The eight-sequence structure evolved from the early days of film when movies were divided into reels (physical film reels), each holding about 10-15 minutes of film. The projectionist had to manually change each reel as it finished, so early screenwriters incorporated this rhythm into their writing, developing sequences that lasted exactly the length of a reel and built to a cliffhanger climax, so that in that short break that the projectionist was scrambling to get the new reel on, the audience was in breathless anticipation of “What happens next?” – instead of getting pissed off that the movie just stopped right in the middle of a crucial scene. (If you get hold of scripts for older movies, pre-1950’s, you can find SEQUENCE 1, SEQUENCE 2, etc, as headings at the start of each new sequence.)

Modern films still follow that same storytelling rhythm, because that rhythm was locked in by television – with its even more rigid technical requirements of having to break every fifteen minutes for a commercial. Which meant writers had to build to a climax every 15 minutes, to get audiences to tune back in to their show after the commercial instead of changing the channel.

So what does this mean to you, the novelist or screenwriter?

It means that you need to be aware that your reader or audience is going to expect a climax every 15 minutes in a movie – which translates to every 50 pages or so in a book. Books have more variation in length, obviously, so you can adjust proportionately, but for a 400-page book, you’re looking at climaxing every 50 pages, with the bigger climaxes coming around p. 100 (Act I Climax), p. 200 (Midpoint Climax), p. 300 (Act II Climax), and somewhere close to the end. Also be aware that for a shorter movie or book, you may have only six sequences.

If you put that structure on a grid, it looks like this:

Looking at that grid, you can see that what I started out in this article calling the three-act structure has evolved into something that is actually a four-act structure: four segments of approximately equal length (30 minutes or 100 pages), with Act II containing two segments (60 minutes or 200 pages, total). That’s because Act II is about conflict and complications. While plays tend to have a longer Act I, because Act I is about setting up character and relationships, the middle acts of films have become longer so that the movies can show off what film does best: action and conflict. And books have picked up on that rhythm and evolved along with movies and television, so that books also tend to have a long, two-part Act II as well.

You don’t have to be exact about this (unless you’re writing for television, in which case you better be acutely aware of when you have to hit that climax!). But you do need to realize that if you’re not building to some kind of climax in approximately that rhythm, your reader or audience is going to start getting impatient, and you risk losing them.

Once you understand this basic structure, you can see how useful it is to think of each sequence of your story building to a climax. Your biggest scenes will tend to be these climaxes, and if you can fit those scenes onto the grid, then you already have a really solid set of tentpoles that you can build your story around.

So here’s the challenge: Start watching movies and television shows specifically looking for the climaxes. Use the clock on your phone or the counter on your DVD player to check where these climaxes are coming. It won’t take long at all for you to be able to identify climactic scenes.

Your next task is to figure out what makes them climactic!

I can give you a few hints. The most important thing is that the action of your story ASKS A QUESTION that the audience wants to know the answer to. But climaxes also tend to be SETPIECE scenes (think of the trailer scenes from movies, the big scenes that everyone talks about after the movie).

And what goes into a great setpiece scene?

Well, that’s another post, isn’t it?

– Alex

———————————————————————

All the information on this blog and more, including full story structure breakdowns of various movies, is available in the workbooks.:

STEALING HOLLYWOOD ebook $3.99
STEALING HOLLYWOOD US print $14.99
STEALING HOLLYWOOD print, all countries

WRITING LOVE

Writing Love is a shorter version of the workbook, using examples from love stories, romantic suspense, and romantic comedy – available in e formats for just $2.99.

– Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

– Amazon/Kindle

– Barnes & Noble/Nook

– Amazon UK

– Amazon DE

———————

You can also sign up to get free movie breakdowns here:

Get free Story Structure extras and movie breakdowns

Via: Alexandra Sokoloff

By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

Amazon.US has dropped the price of

By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

Yes, the long-awaited PRINT textbook of my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop is now available. Just in time for you to start prepping for Nanowrimo!

STEALING HOLLYWOOD ebook
STEALING HOLLYWOODUS print
STEALING HOLLYWOOD print, all countries

And I must say this book turned out beautifully – it’s a nice big 8 x 10 workbook, so well laid out! And it even lies flat for easy highlighting and scribbling in margins.

This book updates all the text in the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors ebook with all the many tricks I’ve learned over my last few years of writing and teaching—and doubles the material of the first book, as well as adding six more full story breakdowns.

There’s also a companion ebook that you can buy separately – or can get for just $1.99 as a Kindle Matchbook if you buy the print workbook. But let’s face it–I know print is what people have been waiting for.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my writing workshops, workbooks and blog, here’s a bit about what I teach.

Many of you know I was a screenwriter for ten years before I wrote my first novel (and despite all my complaining about it, I am back into it now that my Huntress Moon series has been optioned for television!).

But in between that and my full time – more than full time – job as a mystery and thriller novelist, I also teach my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop all over the US and internationally (last week as a master class for the Bloody Scotland Crime Festival) as well as to film students in Los Angeles.

The key to the story structuring technique I write about and that everyone’s always asking me to teach is the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure. Most writers are at least vaguely familiar with the concept of the Three Act structure (but it never hurts to review – and this post may give you a better idea of why it’s so important!).

But the real secret of film writing and filmmaking, that I teach authors to steal for their novel writing, is that movies are written in a Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure. Yes, most movies can be broken up into eight discrete 12-15-minute sequences, each of which has a beginning, middle and end.

I swear.

The eight-sequence structure evolved from the early days of film when movies were divided into reels (physical film reels), each holding about ten to fifteen minutes of film (movies were also shorter, proportionately). The projectionist had to manually change each reel as it finished. Early screenwriters (who by the way, were mostly playwrights, well-schooled in the three-act structure) incorporated this rhythm into their writing, developing individual sequences that lasted exactly the length of a reel, so that as the reel ended, the sequence also ended, on a cliffhanger climax – so that as the projectionist was scrambling to change reels, the audience was in a state of high anticipation about WHAT HAPPENS NEXT – instead of being frustrated and pissed off about having their moviegoing experience interrupted in the middle of a key scene. Nobody likes having a climax interrupted, right?

Obviously these days we have digital projection and no one is up in that projection booth scrambling to change reels, but modern films still follow that same climax-every-15-minutes storytelling rhythm. Because – what storytelling form came along mid-twentieth century that really locked that cliffhanger rhythm into place?

Right! Television! Network TV writers always end a sequence on a cliffhanger before the station cuts away to a commercial break. It’s just too easy to change channels, otherwise.

And the eight-sequence structure actually translates beautifully to novel structuring, although we have much more flexibility with a novel and you might end up with a few more sequences in a book. But watching movies with the eight-sequence structure in mind is an excellent way to get familiar with this storytelling rhythm, and once you’re able to spot the sequence and act climaxes in movies, they’ll start becoming very apparent in the novels you read as well (you’ll be seeing these climaxes about every fifty pages in a 400-page novel.)

If you’re a writer, you are probably already unconsciously following this structure – that’s what most people in my workshops discover! They just needed someone to point it out to them and show them how to make the most of their climaxes (sorry, it’s impossible to talk about this without sounding like the non-fiction version of 50 Shades…).

Think about it. How many movies and TV shows have you seen in your lifetime? I’m willing to bet it’s thousands. You knowthis rhythm. Your readers know this rhythm. And here’s the thing: your readers unconsciously EXPECT this rhythm, and if you’re not giving it to them, they’re going to get worried that you’re doing something wrong.

So it’s very, very useful to get conscious about the eight-sequence structure yourself, so you can use it most effectively.

If you’re new to story breakdowns and analysis, then you’ll probably want to check out my sample breakdowns (full breakdowns of different movies are included in the workbooks) and watch several, or all, of those movies, following along with my notes, before you try to analyze a movie on your own. You can also sign up for my Story Structure Extras list and get free sample movie breakdowns.

But if you want to jump right in with your own breakdowns and analyses, this is how it works:

— Take a film that is similar in structure to your own WIP (work in progress), and screen it, watching the time clock on your DVD player (or your watch, or phone). At about 15 minutes into the film, there will be some sort of climax: an action scene, a revelation, a twist, a big SETPIECE. It won’t be as big as the climax that comes 30 minutes into the film, which would be the Act One climax, but it will be an identifiable climax that will spin the action into the next sequence.)

Proceed through the movie, stopping to identify the beginning, middle, and end of each sequence, approximately every 15 minutes. Also make note of the bigger climaxes or turning points – Act One at 30 minutes, the Midpoint at 60 minutes, Act Two at 90 minutes, and Act Three at whenever the movie ends.

NOTE: You can also, and probably should, say that a movie is really four acts, breaking the long Act Two into two separate acts. Hollywood continues to use “Three Acts.” Whichever works best for you!

So how do you recognize a sequence?

It’s generally a series of related scenes, tied together by location and/or time and/or action and/or the overall intent of the hero/ine.

In many movies a sequence will take place all in the same location, then move to another location at the climax of the sequence. The protagonist will generally be following just one line of action in a sequence, and then when s/he gets that vital bit of information in the climax of a sequence, s/he’ll move on to a completely different line of action, based on the new information. A good exercise is to title each sequence as you watch and analyze a movie – that gives you a great overall picture of the progression of action.

But the biggest clue to an Act or Sequence climax is a SETPIECE SCENE: there’s a dazzling, thematic location, an action or suspense sequence, an intricate set, a crowd scene, even a musical number (as in The Wizard of Oz and, more surprisingly, Jaws. And Casablanca, too.).

The setpiece is a fabulous lesson to take from filmmaking, one of the most valuable lessons for novelists, and possibly the most crucial for screenwriters, and I talk much more about them throughout the Screenwriting Tricks workbooks.

But me talking about it is not going to get you anywhere. You need to DO this. Watch the movies yourself. Do the breakdowns yourself. Identify setpieces yourself.

Screening one movie looking for this structure one will get you far, three will lock it in, and as you continue to practice looking out for it, this new awareness will open new worlds in your writing.

Eventually, it will be as natural to you as breathing, and you will find yourself incorporating this rhythm into your storytelling without even having to think about it.

So go, go, watch some movies. It’s WORK (don’t you love this job?)

And here’s where you can learn more:

STEALING HOLLYWOOD ebook
STEALING HOLLYWOODUS print
STEALING HOLLYWOOD print, all countries

  Get free Story Structure extras and movie breakdowns

And remember – I always do a month of prep for Nanowrimo here on this blog in October. Come join me for brainstorming and feedback on your story before you launch into your Nano writing frenzy!

Happy Fall….

– Alex

Via: Alexandra Sokoloff

By noreply@blogger.com (Alexandra Sokoloff)

“A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing “Is-it-isn’t-it?”suspense all the way to the end. Highly recommended.” – Lee Child

Book of Shadows is about a cynical Boston cop who teams up with a mysterious Salem witch to solve what looks like a Satanic murder.

It’s fascinating to me how when you write a book, everyone always assumes it’s about you. Few people get that sometimes, if not most times, when you write a book it’s about getting OUT of you. Just like reading is, right?  

So naturally everyone who reads it assumes that I’m a witch (that’s with a “w”). Oh, the interviewers don’t come right out and say it, but you know that’s what they’re asking. 

Well, I’m not. Really. Not really. No more than any woman is a witch. But I can’t deny that writing Book of Shadows was a really excellent opportunity for me to indulge some of my witchier nature. 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.  

I was working up to this book for quite a while. I’ve been around practicing witches most of my life. That’s what happens when you grow up in California, especially Berkeley. Actually the Berkeley part pretty much explains why I write supernatural to begin with, but that’s another post. Those of you who have visited Berkeley know that Telegraph Avenue, the famous drag that ends at the Berkeley campus, is a gauntlet of clothing and craft vendors, artists, and fortunetellers, forever fixed in the sixties. Well, look a little closer, and you’ll see just how many pagans, Wiccans, and witches there actually are.  I’ve walked that gauntlet thousands of times in my life. It does something to your psyche, I’m telling you.  

There was also the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, where I spent many summer days in my interestingly misspent youth. Renaissance Faires are teeming with witches (check out the Fortune Tellers’ Grove next time if you don’t believe me).  So even though I don’t actually practice, not in an organized covenish kind of way, I’ve been to a ceremony or two, and you could say I’ve been researching this book for quite some time. In fact, I think I’ve known I was going to write this book ever since I first saw a “Calling of The Corners,” a Craft ceremony which is one of the ritual scenes I depict in “Book of Shadows.” It’s one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences I’ve ever had — such elemental, feminine power. And in everyday life, there some things that are just useful to know about the Craft.

I’m not much one for spells, I’m more of a meditator. But when I had to kick my evil tenants out of my rental house? A cleaning service was just not enough. You better believe that the second the locksmith was done changing the locks, I was down at the witch supply store, buying black and white candles (for protection and cleansing), and sage (smudge it for purification). I opened every window and swept the whole house widdershins (to the left, to dismiss) with a new broom dipped in salt and rosemary to dispel all lingering energy. Ritual works, and it doesn’t really matter what accoutrements you use; it’s really about the intention: in this case to cleanse, heal, and start over fresh.  

Another concept of the Craft that I’ve always found particularly useful is Maiden, Mother, Crone. Those are the three aspects of the Goddess, and also the three phases of the moon, corresponding colors white, red and black. They represent the three cycles of a woman’s life – youth, womanhood and age – but women also pass through all three aspects every month when they’re menstruating, and knowing that has saved my life (and the lives of many of those around me) many a time.  The time right after your period is Maiden: you have a rush of estrogen, so you’re glowing, you’ve just dropped all that water weight, you have a ton of energy, and you’re – well, up for it. And men can sense it. Best time to snag a partner, although your choices might not be exactly the best in this phase of the cycle.  

The Mother (also called Queen) phase of the month is around ovulation. You’re powerful, grounded, and can get a lot done, especially creatively, because of the pregnancy connotations. It’s a sexy time in a different way than Maiden, because there’s the extra knowledge  that yes, you really can get pregnant right now.  

The Crone phase is raging PMS and the “death” that a period often feels like. Wise people know to avoid you at this time unless they really want a faceful of truth, and I try not to schedule meetings, especially with men, when I’m in this phase. Best for me to be solitary and contemplative. And contain the damage. But the things that come out of your mouth during this phase are the deep truth, even if they’re not pleasant, and if you remember to breathe, put the knife down, and pay attention to what you’re feeling and saying, you can learn a lot about your life and what you really need to be doing. Also your dreams will tend to be the most powerful, vivid, and significant in this phase. I know mine are.  

I appreciate the earth/nature centeredness of the Craft. I like to be aware of whether the moon is waxing or waning, and focus on bringing things into my life during the waxing, and letting go of things (or people!) in the waning. And I like knowing that there is extra power and magic at the Solstices and Equinoxes; that knowledge makes me stop at least four times a year to consider what I really want to manifest in my life.  (Obviously I used all of that Moon knowledge and more in the Huntress Moon series, too…)

Let’s face it: I also like the clothes. With my hair, I’ll never be able to pull off the tailored look. I love lace and fishnets and velvet and sparkles and corsets and big jewelry. I love the candles and the scents and that every day has a color (today is white, if you’re wondering). And there is another aspect of the Craft that has been truly important to me, spiritually. It’s about balance. I have never, ever bought the idea that God is male. It runs contrary to my entire experience of reality. I love you guys, really I do, but you’re only half the equation. I can’t see how an ultimate power could be anything but BOTH male and female. So the notion of a Goddess, in all Her forms, to me, completes the equation.  

And a Supreme Being who likes velvet and fishnets? Even better.  

So how about you? What’s your take on witches? 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?

— Alexandra Sokoloff

Book of Shadows

Homicide detective Adam Garrett is already a rising star in the Boston police department when he and his cynical partner, Carl Landauer, catch a horrifying case that could make their careers: the ritualistic murder of a wealthy college girl that appears to have Satanic elements.

The partners make a quick arrest when all evidence points to another student, a troubled musician in a Goth band who was either dating or stalking the murdered girl. But Garrett’s case is turned upside down when beautiful, mysterious Tanith Cabarrus, a practicing witch from nearby Salem, walks into the homicide bureau and insists that the real perpetrator is still at large. Tanith claims to have had psychic visions that the killer has ritually sacrificed other teenagers in his attempts to summon a powerful, ancient demon.

All Garrett’s beliefs about the nature of reality will be tested as he is forced to team up with a woman he is fiercely attracted to but cannot trust, in a race to uncover a psychotic killer before he strikes again.

“Sokoloff successfully melds a classic murder-mystery/whodunit with supernatural occult undertones.” – Library Journal

 ”Compelling, frightening and exceptionally well-written, Book of Shadows is destined to become another hit for acclaimed horror and suspense writer Sokoloff. The incredibly tense plot and mysterious characters will keep readers up late at night, jumping at every sound, and turning the pages until they’ve devoured the book.” – Romantic Times Book Reviews

“Fast-paced with strong characterizations, fans will enjoy this superb thriller, as Adam and the audience wonder if The Unseen could be the killer.” – Publisher’s Weekly

“A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing is-it-isn’t-it suspense all the way to the end. Highly recommended.” – Lee Child

Via: Alexandra Sokoloff

Murderati

MURDERATI examines critical themes, historical archetypes and trends in publishing, marketing and the life of the published author.

Category Archives: Alexandra Sokoloff

Nanowrimo Prep: What’s the PLAN?

Nanowrimo: Elements of Act One

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Nanowrimo Prep: The Index Card Method and Story Structure Grid

Nanowrimo: Give them Climaxes!

$1.99 Sale: Huntress Moon series, Books 1, 2 & 3!!

Nanowrimo Prep: The Master List

October is Nanowrimo PREP month!

STEALING HOLLYWOOD, available now in print and ebook!

Book of Shadows on sale, 99 cents this week!