Alexandra Sokoloff's Blog, page 32

The Bash-Through Draft

I started a new book this month, a sequel to the thriller I
just finished (Huntress Moon). It’s the first time I’ve ever really done a sequel, and it’s
pretty new and terrifying.


 






To jumpstart the process I spent a week at Weymouth Writer’s
Center – which is also the haunted mansion I used in my poltergeist thriller
The Unseen – with my magical writer’s group,
the Weymouth 7.  (You can read more
and see photos on my Pinterest board, my new favorite distraction!)











































Weymouth – and our group – did its magic, as always; I went
into the manor with no idea whatsoever what that sequel would be about and came
back from that one-week retreat with a 23-page sequence-by-sequence outline of
the new book, start to finish.




So now I am in the throes of my least favorite part of the
writing process, to put it mildly, and that’s the first horrific bash-through
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 whole 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. As you
all know, I outline extensively, index cards, story structure grid, all of it.
Then 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 a book  (the suspense writer Mary Higgins Clark called it “clawing
through a mountain of concrete with my bare hands...”) 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 I will finish
a book or a script.




I
do five pages a day minimum, more is gravy. I write the page count down in a calendar every day. And I never, ever, think about how much
is left to go, I just get through those pages one day at a time, however I can.
I think of myself as a shark – if I don’t keep moving, I’ll die. (What I would really like is for someone to put me to sleep
for three months so I could just wake up when the bash through draft is DONE. I
would pay a lot of money for that.)




And I’ve written about this before, here, but as far as I’m
concerned the only thing a first draft has to do is get to the end.   (Your First Draft is Always Going to Suck). 










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




After that first draft 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.




I may be totally wrong about this, but I’ve had a lot of
contact with a lot of writers over the years, and I would unofficially guess
that the ratio of writers who grimly bash through that first draft to THE END
without revision to the writers who polish along the way is about 90 percent
bashers to 10 percent polishers.  A
recent Facebook discussion I started seemed to back up those percentages. I might even go as
high as 95-5.




Yet the interesting thing is, a lot of writers are surprised
to hear that other people besides themselves use this “bash your way through to
the end” approach. So I thought I’d bring it up today just in case this is news
to some of you, so you can consider it. 
It might just set you free.




So what about you? 
Basher or polisher? Do you swim sharklike through that first draft to
the end, or when you write THE END, are you actually done?




Have you ever tried doing it another way? How’d that work
for you?




- Alex



=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.



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-------------------------------------------------------------------

Love is Murder: the Art of the Short

This week is the release of the International Thriller Writers' ITW’s  new romantic suspense anthology Thriller 3: Love is Murder .







Edited by Sandra Brown and Allison Brennan, featuring stories by Lee Child, Heather Graham,  Sherrilyn Kenyon, several authors some of you will know from Murderati: Allison, Rob Browne, JT Ellison, and a whole lot of other great
authors.  And me.



As you can see from that lineup, it’s going to be a bit more
heavy on the suspense than on the romance!



I’ve said here before I very rarely write short stories. For me it’s
every bit as hard to come up with a great idea for a short story as it
is for a novel, so my feeling has always been: why not push through and
MAKE it a novel (or script) which will serve as an income stream instead
of just a fun advertisement for your books that ARE income-producing?



That may sound pretty crassly commercial, but writers have to be practical if we want to eat.



(And I don't think that it's a coincidence that the art of the short was at its zenith back when short story authors were paid an actual living wage for their efforts. An older author friend told me what she
was paid for a short story in the 60's and OH MY GOD. Seriously.)



But maybe I’m just a long-form writer by nature. I wrote my first short story, The Edge of Seventeen ,
only because I was asked to contribute to an anthology I thought was a
really cool idea – stories about marginalized superheroes (people of
color, women), and I thought I could probably manage a dark story about
an alienated high-school girl who has to become a heroine in horrific
circumstances. She’s dreaming about a terrible massacre at her school,
and becomes convinced that she can stop the shooting with the help of a
popular boy, her secret crush, who is having the same dream. I wrote it,
loved it, and it went on to win a Thriller Award for Best Short
Fiction. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters and the
situations and it just kept nagging me that there was a lot more to it,
and last year I finally just gave in to that pull and adapted the story
as a VERY dark YA thriller, The Space Between.



I was right – there was a whole hell of a lot more to it, including
quantum physics and parallel universes, and I’m actually now going to
have to continue the whole thing as a trilogy.



And now that I’ve written my dreamlike Bahamian cat-and-mouse encounter In Atlantis for the Love is Murder
anthology, I’m having the same thing happen – I can’t stop thinking
about the characters and what happens for them next, and I know I’m
going to end up expanding the story into a novel which may actually turn
into a series.



So my very infrequent attempts at short stories seem to turn out to be springboards for future novels.

Yet people are always asking me to talk about how to structure a
short story. And even though I don’t have much experience writing them
myself, I can look at them analytically and come to conclusions that may
be helpful (you know my prescription for everything by now – MAKE A LIST of ten of your favorites and see what the storytellers are doing and how they do it.)



I don’t read many short stories these days but I grew up compulsively
reading Alfred Hitchcock Presents anthologies, and actively sought out
stories by my favorite authors: Shirley Jackson, Daphne Du Maurier,  Ray
Bradbury, Poe of course, and Stephen King.



The ones that spring to mind instantly are the horrific "They Bite", by
none other than Anthony Boucher, for whom the unpronounceable Bouchercon
is named;"The Yellow Wallpaper" - even more horrific in a feminist kind
of way, by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore; "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson,
to which The Hunger Games owes, well, just about everything. "The
Birds" and any number of shorts by Daphne DuMaurier, she is just
electrifying. Just about everything in Ray Bradbury's The Martian
Chronicles. And Stephen King's "The Mist", really more of a short
novel, but we've already established that I like long. In fact, every
single one of my list (except, I think, The Lottery) are shorts that
have been adapted into full-length movies, so it's pretty clear what my
taste is. 





I've noticed that ones that I love not only have enough going on to make a whole full length novel - they also have
that great high concept premise, which usually includes a huge twist.  I
really think that the essence of a short story is the twist, and once
you have that, you can set up the story with a basic three-act
structure: You have someone who wants something very badly (The Act I
setup) who is having trouble getting it (The Act II complications) and
eventually DOESN’T get what they think and say want, but they get what
they really need instead. (Which creates the Act III twist.)



Because of the restriction of length, often all a short story really
does is take a premise and set it up (Set Up is generally just Act I of a
novel or film) and pretty much cuts directly to the chase: the final
battle and TWIST. The Edge of Seventeen was basically that set up
and then the twist. As a matter of fact, when I actually sat down to
write the first draft of the novel, I found I used most of the story
almost directly as written as the first act!



So with a short story, you have a beginning and an end, but not much
of the vast middle section that comprises a full-length novel or film.



I think that's why shorts are so seductive (and arguably good
practice) to more beginning writers.  It's pretty easy to write a first
act.  It's the middle that's hard. (I may just have gotten myself in a
world of trouble, we'll see!)



Another thing I think a short has to deliver - every bit as much as a
full-length novel does - is the genre EXPERIENCE (or maybe you've noticed  I'm just a
little obsessed with this aspect of writing, these days).



I had no premise at all in mind when I was asked to do a story for Love is Murder.
I said yes because - well, seriously! It's not like I could turn this
opportunity down - with that lineup of writers, I was going to do
whatever it took.  But when I actually had to sit down and write
something, I was in a very difficult place emotionally and I wasn’t
feeling very romantic. Suspense I can do in my sleep, but love wasn’t
the first thing on my mind. So I asked myself what would be a romantic
escape, the kind of fantasy setting that I think really helps deliver
the experience of romantic suspense? And the first thing that came to
mind was my first trip to the Bahamas. We Left Coasters don’t generally
do the Bahamas – we tend to go to the far closer paradise of Hawaii if
we’re in the mood for an island, so the first time I was in those
other islands it was truly an overwhelming experience.



I knew I could do the sensuality of that setting justice, and then I
decided not to fight the emotional place that I was in, but rather use
the experience of heartache and devastation as a jumping off point for
the story. And once I’d put a wounded character into that lush setting,
everything started coming alive – it’s just the magic of the process. I
also took a huge hit of inspiration from the image of the Tarot Queen
of Cups – that card was a touchstone for the main character, the
Macguffin, and the whole story.







I layered water imagery and the theme of Atlantis and precious
objects and art throughout, to make a kind of dreamnlike  modern fairy tale (which I
won't talk too much about because it's too easy to give away a short.).
I did structure the story in three acts (I'd actually say that ALL
stories are three acts, that's what makes them stories), but I'm
very aware that the first two acts of the short would be no more than a
first act in a full length novel, and that the third act of the short
would still be the third act of a novel - with many more twists and
action, of course.



But I'm perfectly aware that I may just be looking at the structure
of a short that way because it allows me to fit the longer-form ideas
that I have into the format of a short.



I know that there are others here who are far more experienced at
writing shorts than I am, so I'd like to hear from you all. Do you read a
lot of shorts? Do you write them?  How do you write them?  Is my
"Act I set up, then cut to the Act III chase" resonating with you (as a
reader OR a writer) or do you find yourself doing something completely
different?



- Alex





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Are you a Cumberbitch?

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 (in honor of the last episode of Season 2 this week) I'd like to talk today about the new Sherlock Holmes.  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 (you know who you are) you’re just going to have
to endure a little erotomania.



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.



And yes, there is a Team Watson, 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 adored 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, but the episodes are surprisingly true to the plot lines of the Sherlock stories I
remember from my childhood. The episodes are not strict
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 the late 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



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FREE!



Remember, today you can download my spooky ghost thriller The Harrowing to your Kindle for free here.









Five
troubled students left alone on their isolated college campus over the
long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious
presence – that may or may not be real.



Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award (horror) and Anthony Award (mystery) for Best First Novel.









Click for free download:



Amazon US

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT

Amazon UK (not free - available from Little, Brown, e book and pb)



“Absolutely gripping...It is easy to imagine this as a film. Once started, you won’t want to stop reading.”

--London Times


“Poltergeist
meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an
ancient evil presence. Plenty of sexual tension... quick pace and
engaging plot.”

--Kirkus Reviews


“The Harrowing is a real page-turner, a first novel of unusual promise.”

-- Ira Levin, author of Rosemary's Baby

Free at last!

I finally, finally, finally have the rights back to Book of Shadows and The Unseen in the U.S. and can offer these spooky thrillers as e books at the infinitely more reasonable price of $2.99 (as opposed to the publisher-set price of $11.99.  I mean, truly, does ANYONE pay $11.99 for an e book? Even your most highly prized authors? I was about to kill myself).



Oh, you thought I meant FREE.  Well, what I meant was LIBERATED, but all right, today (Wednesday) and tomorrow (Thursday) you can also download  The Harrowing for free here.



But I can't tell you how excited I am to have these rights back. The absolute worst thing about being a screenwriter was having studios and production companies hold my original scripts hostage - it's like the physical pain of having a loved one imprisoned, and knowing there's nothing you can do about it. I've contemplated murder more often than I like to think.



It's the same with book rights. That really is a post of its own, one that I need to do here, because these days it's critical that authors think clearly before they sign away their rights, especially e book rights. In the exhilaration of being offered a contract, it's far, far too easy to just say yes to whatever a publisher is proposing.



A mistake you may well regret for longer than you ever want to think.



But we'll talk about that in depth some other time. Today, I'm celebrating Liberation Day.



So tell me - DO you pay $11.99 for e books from your favorite authors? Because myself, at that price I will just pay $26 for a hardcover.



- Alex

 



_________________________________________________________





Now available on Kindle, $2.99!







After experiencing a precognitive dream that shatters her engagement
and changes her life forever, young California psychology professor
Laurel MacDonald decides to get a fresh start by taking a job at Duke
University in North Carolina. She soon becomes obsessed with the
long-buried files form the world-famous Rhine parapsychology
experiments, which attempted to prove if ESP really exists.



As she teams up with another charismatic professor, they soon uncover
disturbing reports, including a mysterious case of a house supposedly
haunted by a poltergeist, investigated by another research team in 1965.
The two professors and two exceptionally gifted Duke students move into
the grand, abandoned mansion to replicate the investigation, unaware
that the entire original team ended up insane... or dead.





Inspired by the real-life paranormal studies conducted by the
world-famous Rhine parapsychology lab at Duke University.






$ 2.99 US, €2.99 Europe. Also available in Amazon's lending library.
Click to download:  



Amazon US

Amazon UK  (paperback/e book from Little Brown)

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT


"Destined to become a horror classic."  - Romantic Times Book Review



"Gave this reviewer a bad night's sleep - what more could you ask of a horror novel?" - SFX



_________________________________________________________



Now available on Kindle, $2.99!





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.




$ 2.99 US, £2.14 and €2.99 in
UK/Europe. Also available in Amazon's lending library.
Click to download:  



Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT



"A wonderfully dark thriller with amazing is-it-isn't-it suspense all
the way to the end. Highly recommended."    - Lee Child



"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, 4 1/2 stars



_________________________________________________________



Free on Kindle today and tomorrow!





Mendenhall
echoes with the footsteps of the last home-bound students heading off
for Thanksgiving break, and Robin Stone swears she can feel the creepy,
hundred-year old residence hall breathe a sigh of relief for its
long-awaited solitude. Or perhaps it's only gathering itself for the
coming weekend.



 As a massive storm dumps rain on the isolated
campus, four other lonely students reveal themselves: Patrick, a
handsome jock; Lisa, a manipulative tease; Cain, a brooding musician;
and finally Martin, a scholarly eccentric. Each has forsaken a long
weekend at home for their own secret reasons.



The five unlikely
companions establish a tentative rapport, but they soon become aware of a
sixth presence disturbing the ominous silence that pervades the
building. Are they victims of a simple college prank taken way too far,
or is the unusual energy evidence of something genuine - and intent on
using the five students for its own terrifying ends? It's only Thursday
afternoon, and they have three long days and dark nights before the rest
of the world returns to find out what's become of them. But for now
it's just the darkness keeping company with five students nobody wants
-- and no one will miss.



Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award (horror) and Anthony Award (mystery) for Best First Novel.



“Absolutely gripping...It is easy to imagine this as a film. Once started, you won’t want to stop reading.”

--London Times


“Poltergeist
meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an
ancient evil presence. Plenty of sexual tension... quick pace and
engaging plot.”

--Kirkus Reviews


“The Harrowing is a real page-turner, a first novel of unusual promise.”

-- Ira Levin, author of Rosemary's Baby




FREE on Kindle May 23 - 24.  Also available in Amazon's lending library.
Click to download:  



Amazon/Kindle

Amazon UK (paperback & e book from Little, Brown, NOT free)
Amazon DE
Amazon ES
Amazon FR 

Amazon IT    

Sample Sunday: Book of Shadows

I'm thrilled to finally be able to offer my spooky crime thriller  Book of Shadows as an e book in the U.S., just $3.99 on Kindle:
 




Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT







And for the reading phenomenon known as Sample Sunday, here are the first two chapters of the book.









 










Chapter One




September 22




It was a vision of hell.

A dismally foggy day over stinking heaps of refuse—a city
landfill, the current euphemism for an old-fashioned dump. Caterpillar trucks
and front-loaders crouched with metal jaws gaping, like gigantic prehistoric
insects on the mountains of trash, an appalling chaos of rotting vegetables,
discarded appliances, filthy clothing, rusted cans, mildewed paper: the
terribly random refuse of a consumer society gone mad. A lone office chair sat
on the top of on one hill, empty and waiting, its black lines stark against the
fog.

And below it, tangled in the trash like a broken doll, was
the body of a teenaged girl.

Stiffened…naked…bloody stumps at her neck and wrist where
her head and hand used to be.




Homicide detectives Adam Garrett and Carl Landauer stood on
the trash hill: Garrett, with his Black Irish eyes and hair and temper,
hard-muscled, impatient, edgy; and chain-smoking, whisky-drinking, donut-eating
Landauer, a living, breathing amalgam of every cop cliché known to man:
middle-aged spread, broad sweating face, and bawdy, cynical humor—a lifer who
used the caricature as a disguise. The partners were silent, each taking in the
totality of the scene. The landfill was a succession of hills and pits and
carefully leveled ground; rutted roads wound up the hills to the fresh dumping
mound on which they now stood. A strong, cold wind whipped at their coats and
hair, swirling plastic carrier bags across the trash hills like ghost
tumbleweeds and mercifully diffusing the stench. On a hot day the smell would
have been beyond bearing.

On one side of the summit a forest stretched below,
startlingly green and pure against the chaos of human waste. On the other side
the city of Boston was a hazy outline, like a translucent Oz in the bluish fog.
Far below at ground level were smaller hills of gravel, sand, broken chunks of
concrete, logs and stumps, wood chips, various earthy colors of mulch, a black
pile of tires. A corrugated tin roof sheltered an open-walled recycling center.

A row of BPD cruisers lined the dirt drive up to the
landfill’s main office trailer. The temporary command post had been set up
beside the trailer, and two dozen mostly African-American and Latino workers
huddled beside it, waiting to give statements to a couple of uniforms, while
other patrolmen walked the periphery of the fence. A long line of city
sanitation trucks was stalled at the front gate, being diverted by traffic
control. The first responders had done their best to establish a perimeter,
considering the crime scene was a joke: how do you begin to process a mountain
of refuse a hundred yards high?

Landauer looked over the reeking heaps of garbage, shook his
head gloomily. “Shit.” He spat the word. “I don’t know if he’s the smartest
perp I’ve ever seen or the dumbest.”

Garrett nodded, keeping his breathing even, trying not to
suck in too deep a lungful of the sulfurous stink. Smartest—because any trace
evidence would be completely lost in the junk heap. Dumbest—because the unsub
must have driven straight in past the office trailer and paid the attendant for
the privilege of dumping his terrible cargo. Garrett lit a mental candle,
half-thought something like a prayer. Please let there be a record.

The partners turned away from the dismal panorama and
climbed over trash to where Medical Examiner George Edwards, a stocky Irish
banty rooster of a man, stood looking down at the body. Seagulls circled
sullenly high above, their breakfast taken from them.

Two crime scene techs were extracting and bagging one piece
of garbage at a time from around the corpse, meticulously preserving as much
evidence as possible in the hope that the refuse in which she lay might yield
some personal connection to the killer. A videographer documented the original
placement of each piece. All three technicians stood and moved back in solemn
simultaneity so Garrett and Landauer could approach.

It was Saturday, which meant Garrett was the lead on the
case. Department protocol was that partners alternated leads, but Garrett and
Landauer had found through long experience that if they took regular days of
the week and flipped for Sundays, it all evened out anyway. Garrett nodded to
Dr. Edwards and crouched beside the body.

The girl was as stiff as a Barbie doll, still half-buried
and splayed on her stomach; a handless arm, a curve of buttock, one leg visible
in the bed of trash. Garrett’s face tightened as he stared down at the jagged
red stump of the neck, the gleaming white nubs of cartilage, the black stream
of ants swarming over the gaping wound. The gulls had also been at it. But
there was shockingly little blood; none at all on the trash below the severed
neck and very little congealed around the stump. A small blessing: the
decapitation had occurred after she was dead.

Garrett pulled a micro-recorder from his suit coat pocket
and clicked it on. “Killed elsewhere and dumped,” he said aloud. “Decapitation
was post-mortem.” Above him, the M.E. grunted affirmation, before Garrett
continued, “Head and hands probably removed to prevent identification.” It
happened more often that anyone would want to think.

Garrett studied the visible arm and leg. Despite a
fashionable slenderness and gym-enhanced muscle tone the girl’s limbs were
rounded, and silky smooth, the heartbreaking plumpness of baby fat. Garrett
felt hot and cold flashes of anger. He spoke aloud, biting off the words.

“Eighteen, nineteen years old. Twenty-five at the most, but
I doubt it.”

Landauer shifted behind him grimly. “Yep.”

Garrett swallowed his fury and continued his visual
inspection. He was fighting his assumptions, fighting to keep his mind clear. A
naked girl on a trash heap; so often these miserable victims were prostitutes.
Sex killers notoriously trolled highways and rough neighborhoods for these
easy, anonymous targets. But there was not that sense about this one.

Okay, why?

He looked her over, looking for the facts. He gently used a
latex-gloved hand to lift a stiffened forearm. No track marks, no cuts or
bruising, no ligature marks—although telltale abrasions might have been cut off
with the hand. “No defensive marks, and it doesn’t look like she was bound.” Someone
she knew? Or just someone with
the element of surprise?

Garrett was about to set the arm down, then noticed a trail
of six black dots along the partially exposed shoulder, about the diameter of a
pencil eraser. Hard, smooth, shiny, irregular…

Scabs?

He used a fingernail to dislodge one of the drops and
examined it on his thumb, held out the dot to Landauer, then Edwards. “Wax, I
think.”

“Black wax? Kinky.” Landauer commented.

Garrett nodded to a tech, who crouched with an evidence bag
to take samples of the dots.

Garrett turned his gaze to the exposed leg—not just smooth,
but hairless—a salon wax, and fresh pedicure. The skin was healthy and
blemish-free.

This was not a runaway, not a heroin addict, not a
prostitute.

“Not a hooker,” Garrett muttered.

“Not any I could afford,” Landauer agreed.

Garrett stood, and the detectives watched as the techs
resumed clearing the trash around the body like archeologists uncovering an
ancient skeleton, painstakingly removing trash one piece at a time, placing
beer bottles, fast food wrappers, orange rinds, a stained lampshade, into
various sizes of labeled paper evidence bags. Garrett turned to the medical
examiner.

“What do you say, Doc?”

“Livor mortis is fixed and she’s in full rigor. I’ll have to
wait for the vitreous potassium tests to confirm, but given the temperature I’d
put the time of death at no more than twelve to sixteen hours.”

The techs cleared several more pieces of refuse to reveal
her back. Between her shoulder blades there was a single stab wound, in the
vicinity of the heart. The slit was narrow and practically bloodless.

“Could be the fatal wound.” Edwards said, neutrally. The
photographer clicked off photos.

Garrett’s attention was suddenly drawn to the right arm,
still mostly buried. “Look at that.” He crouched beside the body again, lifted
a wet clump of coffee filter and grounds so the other men could see. The right
hand was still attached to the right arm, intact.

The detectives looked at each other. “He takes the left hand
but not the right?” Landauer said, perplexed. “S’up with that?”

Garrett stood to let the techs back in. “Maybe he was
interrupted. Didn’t get to finish.” But it sounded wrong as soon as he said it
aloud.

With enough trash now removed from around her, the techs
rolled the stiffened body onto its back.

“Holy shit.” Garrett heard Landauer breathe out behind him,
as all the men stared down.

There were dark streaks of blood on her thighs, and the
sight was a sick stab, though hardly unexpected.

The true shock was higher, in the pale flesh of the girl’s
chest.

Someone had carved into the torso with a knife, cruel red
slashes against the young skin: the number 333 and a strange design, three
triangles with the points touching.

Looking down at the crude slashes, Garrett felt his stomach
roil with apprehension, even as his investigative mind registered details. No
bleeding from the cuts; they were done post mortem. So why the looseness in his bowels, the tightness in his scalp, the
overwhelming impulse of fight or flight?

Landauer was speaking, the hoarseness in his voice hinting
that he was struggling with a similar reaction. His eyes were fixed on the
bloody carvings. “That s’posed to be satanic?”

Garrett found his own voice, tried to breathe through the
constriction in his throat. “Or someone trying to make it look that way.”

“Three-three-three?” Landauer blustered, some of his panache
returning. “The fuck is that? The Devil Lite? Satan can’t count? I say someone’s
messin’ with us.”

Garrett stood slowly, an anvil in the pit of his stomach. It
didn’t feel like a game. Not at all.

The three men, and the techs behind them, stood looking down
at the girl’s corpse, puzzling over the design. The three triangles were
maddeningly familiar, and ominous. Garrett was fighting a creeping dread, a
feeling of imminent danger. All of the men had moved slightly back from the
body. Garrett realized what he was thinking at the moment that the M.E. spoke
it.

“Radiation,” Edwards said suddenly.

The three crime-scene techs drew back, more noticeably this
time.

“That’s it. The radiation symbol,” Landauer said, his voice
thin.

“It’s not exactly, though. There’s something different about
it. The fallout shelter symbol?” The M.E. frowned, thinking.

“Do you think she’s hot?” Landauer said. For once the morbid
double entendre was completely unconscious. The wind gusted around them. All
the men shifted slightly, uneasily.

“I don’t think so,” Garrett said, only half aware that he
spoke. The whole damn thing is weird enough already.

“I doubt it,” Edwards agreed. “I’ll call HazMat, but I don’t
see any burns or inflammation.”

Radiation or not, this was a bad one. And the acid feeling
in Garrett’s gut told him it was going to get worse.














Chapter Two







The men split up to do other work until a Hazardous
Materials team could arrive to take readings. The detectives left the crime
scene techs behind to walk the grid, and unhappy uniforms to start the odious
process of sorting through refuse looking for the missing head and hand. An
exercise in futility, Garrett was sure, but it had to be done.

Landauer lumbered down toward the trailer set on blocks that
served as the landfill’s office to question the attendants, lighting up a Camel
nonfilter as he went.

Garrett shouldered the backpack he carried at crime scenes,
filled with the bags and flags and miscellany of evidence-gathering, and took
off in the opposite direction, along the road, walking the curve the killer
must have driven to access the dump site. The road was gutted and gouged, a
bitch to drive even in a heavy truck. On one side there was only the flimsiest
of fences between Garrett and a sheer drop to the valley below, thick with
green trees. On the other side of the road, gripping the hill, was a wide
shoulder of startlingly luxuriant weeds. There had been a full week of rain
just days before and now ferns and grasses and golden black-eyed Susans and
feathery white Queen Anne’s Lace rippled in the wind, which still carried a
surprising chill—a fall day with the underbite of winter.

Garrett shivered slightly, found he was wishing for a
cigarette himself. The carvings in the body disturbed him. Ritualistic elements
almost always meant multiple killings. And if he really analyzed his feelings
about it, there was an unease that went deeper, back to childhood, to the huge
and dark mysteries of the masses that were an unquestioned part of his early
years, the enforced service as an altar boy.

But along with the disquiet there was a thrill: the strong
sense that this was a big case, huge, maybe the case that cops dream about, with all the mediagenic elements that made
careers. Along with the shifting uncomfortable memories, Garrett felt the stir
of ambition.

He stopped at a turnout to look out over the entire dump,
the consecutive hills of refuse. The property was circled in fencing, and
patrolmen had already been all around the perimeter; nothing had been cut,
making it likely that the killer had driven straight in through the gated
entrance to dump her.

Why would he risk it?
Why not dump her out in the forest somewhere?

He. Another
assumption. But the chances of a woman doing this to another woman were
microscopic.

Garrett took in the scene again, and couldn’t help feeling
that the unsub had chosen the setting deliberately, had reveled in the filth
and chaos and ungodly waste; had sought the ugliness like a civilized person
seeks beauty.

He turned back toward the road and was startled by movement
in the sand right in front of him. A horned beetle the size of his kneecap was
creeping across the road, shiny black carapace gleaming. Garrett felt a shudder
of revulsion, moved sharply aside to avoid the thing.

As he circled the creature at a good distance, he eyes were
drawn to a bare patch in the green shoulder beside him. He moved closer to the
clump of weeds, staring over the small field.

There were irregular oval brown marks in the wild grass, the
size of footprints. The wildflowers around the marks were shriveled and
blackened, as if by fire. Through his initial confusion, Garrett thought
immediately and oddly of the three triangles.

Could it really be? Radiation?

What in God’s name would make footprints like that?

A feeling of dread rose up through him, from his legs
through his groin and spine, up to the top of his head. The hair was standing
up on his scalp and arms.

He gasped in, sucking breath, inhaling a rotten egg smell…

Sulfur.

He wheeled in place, staring around him.

Nothing but piles of gravel and crushed concrete, tangled
heaps of rebar.

After a long moment he turned back to the dead flowers. He
fumbled his digital camera from his backpack and snapped a few shots, then took
a plastic evidence bag from a side pocket of the bag and broke off several of
the burned flowers, slipping them into the plastic sheath. He stepped back and
scanned the dirt road. It was criss-crossed with tire tracks, an amorphous
mess, but he pulled a handful of colored flags from the pack and flagged the
brown scorch marks in the grass, and the multiple tire marks in the sand of the
road.

On his way back toward the body, he stopped a tech beside
the parked crime scene unit van and pointed out the flags he’d placed. “Get
impressions of the treads in that area. And there are some burn marks in the
grass—get some photos of those, too.”

Landauer met him on the road, his big face flushed red with
heat despite the chill, and sucking smoke from probably his fifteenth Camel of
the day. “See no evil, speak no evil,” he grumbled, exhaling and jerking a
thumb back down the road toward the office trailer. He lit a second cigarette
from the one he had burning, carefully dropping the butt into a metal Band-Aid
box he carried around at crime scenes for that precise purpose. “These bozos
don’t record names or plates, just vehicle size and classification of load. ‘Sanitation
Truck, Pick-Up, Trailer, Truck, Dump Trailer.’ ‘Refuse, Stumps and Brush,
Concrete, Rebar, Dirt/Asphalt, Brick.’ The attendant doesn’t even leave the
trailer—just eyeballs the load through the window, weighs the truck on the in
and out, and collects the cash. Next time I got a body to dump, I’m a comin’
here too.”

“How many customers today?”

Landauer grimaced. “They average 2,250 a day.”

Garrett’s heart sank. “So this morning…”

“Over nine hundred by noon. Got a patrolman getting Closed
Mouth Mary to write down every make, model and color she can remember, but we’re
not talking rocket scientist here. And yeah, she collected a few checks, but it’s
mostly a cash business. I don’t think we’ll be pulling devil-boy’s name and
coordinates off one of those stubs.”

The big detective paused, puffed in smoke. “There is
something, though.” He exhaled a noxious cloud and nodded up the trash mountain
in the direction of the body. The sun was sinking in the sky, throwing long
shadows over the hills. “That whole area was scheduled to be capped this
morning. They bulldoze dumploads of dirt, cover it up, level it off.” He
indicated a high heap of dirt on the flat road above the trash pit. “Thing is,
this morning the front-loader broke down, threw the schedule off.” He pointed
to the gigantic vehicle next to the pit.

“So she would have been completely covered if there hadn’t
been that glitch,” Garrett said slowly. She wasn’t meant to be found. And
that means carving the numbers and symbol was a private ritual, not done for
anyone else to see.

“He’s familiar with the operation and schedule of this
particular landfill, then,” he said aloud with cautious excitement. “A worker,
or landscaper or contractor.”

“That’s the best case,” Landauer nodded. “The catch is, a
lot of these loads that get emptied are from Dumpsters that get picked up all
over the city. Someone coulda just tossed her in the nearest one of those, it
gets picked up, and she gets dumped out with the rest of the trash. The
Dumpster trucks back up to the pit and are emptied hydraulically, so the driver
wouldn’t even see what he was dumping.”

Garrett fought a wave of disappointment. “What about the guy
who found her?”

“Worker who came up to repair the dozer.”

Garrett’s eyes immediately traced the distance between the
bulldozer and the body far below. A hundred yards, minimum.

Landauer watched him calculating.

“Guy’s got good eyes,” Garrett said slowly.

“Says he saw seagulls fighting over something.” Landauer
offered, his voice flat.

Garrett glanced at his partner sharply. “You don’t believe
him?” In fact the gulls were still circling above, hoping to return to their
interrupted meal.

Landauer spat. His face was neutral. “Guy’s skittish, is
all.”




Garrett found the mechanic in the office trailer. He sat in
front of a raggedy corkboard bristling with invoices and flyers, his hands
tearing apart a whitefoam coffee cup a precise quarter inch at a time. He was
short and built like a bull, with dark copper skin and an Aztec nose. He
hunched in the metal folding chair as if trying to disappear into it.

Garrett’s Spanish was serviceable, but the bilingual version
of Severo’s story was identical to what Landauer had related in English.
Landauer was right, though; the Mexican was decidedly jumpy—eyes shifting
around the room, sweating profusely even in the cold of the underheated
trailer.

“Tienes calor?”
Garrett asked. Are you hot? The
lone space heater was on the other side of the room; Garrett couldn’t feel any
heat coming from it at all.

“Poco,” the mechanic
said, and his eyes shifted away again. His fingers found the cross at his neck.

“You seem nervous.”
Garrett remarked in Spanish.

The mechanic half-shrugged. “It is a terrible thing,” he answered.

“It is,” Garrett
agreed. Una infamia.” An
outrage. It was one of the first Spanish
words he’d learned on the street and it seemed to express what he felt better
than any English word that existed.

“Pero—es todo?”
Garrett pressed. Is that all? The
mechanic dropped his eyes. Garrett looked at the litter of white chips at the
man’s feet. “I think you are afraid.”
Garrett challenged.

The mechanic stiffened, but said nothing.

“Porque?” Garrett
demanded. Why?

The mechanic glanced toward the screened front window, in
the direction of the trash hill. The sun was a bloody crimson ball on the
horizon.

“Bruja,” he mumbled,
and Garrett’s flesh rippled again.

Witch.










-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------









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.



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



"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, 4 1/2
stars



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



Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT

Book of Shadows, e book out now!

I'm thrilled to finally be able to offer my spooky thriller  

Book of Shadows as an e book in the U.S, just $2.99 on Kindle

( £2.14 and €2.99 in
UK/Europe).



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So of course every time 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?



Book of Shadows is about a cynical Boston cop who must team up with an enigmatic witch from Salem in a desperate race to solve what looks like a Satanic murder.



So naturally everyone who reads it thinks 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. Readers just come right out and say it.



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.



And I’d been 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 fortune tellers, 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 - I think this weekend is the last week in LA and it is a great faire this year).



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.



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 green, 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?



- Alex



-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------









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.



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



"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, 4 1/2
stars



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



Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

Amazon FR

Amazon ES

Amazon IT

Setpiece Scenes - the unlimited production budget

I’m headed off to teach a Screenwriting Tricks workshop in Cleveland (open to all, if you’re in that part of the country, see here).



So of course my head is in craft mode.



I sit on the plane thinking about what is really essential that I
want to get across in an always too-limited time to talk about our
craft, and also about what people are hiring me in particular to teach.



One of the things I always hope people get out of my workshops and writing workbooks is the concept of setpiece scenes. I try to hit that hard up front in a workshop, and keep going back to examples during the day.



There’s a saying in Hollywood that “If you have six great scenes, you
have a movie.” And I’ve said before that these six great scenes are
usually from that list I’ve given you of the Key Story Elements.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Scenes like The Call To Adventure and
Crossing the Threshold (and on the darker side, the Visit to Death or
All is Lost scene) are magical moments: they change the world of the
main character for all time, and as storytellers we want our readers or
audiences to experience that profound, soul-shattering change right
along with the character.



Filmmakers take that “six great scenes” concept very literally. 
These scenes are often called the “trailer scenes” or the “money
scenes”  (as opposed to “money shots”, which is a different post, with a
different rating!).  As incensed as I am personally about how trailers
these days give every single bit of the movie away (I won’t even watch
them before a movie I’m interested in seeing), I understand that this is
essential movie advertising: those trailer scenes have to seduce the
potential audience by giving a good sense of the EXPERIENCE the movie is
promising to deliver.  The scenes that everyone goes into the theater
to see, and that everyone comes out of the theater talking about, which
creates first the anticipation for a movie and then that essential “work
of mouth” that will make or break a film.



And do not for a second think that directors aren’t putting
excruciating thought and time and detail into designing and staging
those scenes.  There’s not a director out there who is not in the back
of his (or her, but statistically mostly his) mind hoping to make
cinematic history (or at least the Top 100 AFI Scenes of All Time list
in whatever genre) with those scenes. These are scenes that often cost
so much money that producers will not under any circumstances allow them
to be cut, even if in editing they are clearly non-essential to the
plot.



The attention paid to these critical scenes is not all an ego thing,
either. We are not doing our JOB as storytellers if we are not
delivering the core experiences of our genre. Genre is a PROMISE to the
audience or readers; it’s a pact.



And a setpiece doesn’t have to cost millions or tens of millions of
dollars, either, although as authors, we have the incredible advantage
of an unlimited production budget. Did you authors all get that?  We
have an UNLIMITED PRODUCTION BUDGET. Whatever settings, crowds,
mechanical devices, alien attacks or natural disasters we choose to
depict, our only budget constraint is in our imaginations.  The most
powerful directors in Hollywood would KILL for a fraction of our power.
Theoretically, they can’t even begin to compete.



However, directors can and do compete and top most authors on a
regular basis because they know how to manipulate visuals, sound,
symbolism, theme and emotion to create the profound and layered impact
that a setpiece scene is.



So how do we take back that power? By constantly identifying the
setpiece scenes in film and on the page that have the greatest impact on
us personally and really looking at what the storytellers are doing to
create that effect and emotion, so we can create the same depth on the
page.



I’ve compiled some examples (and categorized them by story elements they depict) here and in my second Screenwriting Tricks workbook.



But just in the last week I’ve come across some great examples that have really stayed with me.



I’m on an Edith Wharton tear at the moment, and it’s striking how
beautifully she sets her love scenes, on every visual and sensual level,
like this setup from THE HOUSE OF MIRTH:



Selden had given her his arm without speaking. She took it in
silence, and they moved away, not toward the supper-room, but against
the tide which was setting thither. The faces about her flowed by like
the streaming images of sleep: she hardly noticed where Selden was
leading her, till they passed through a glass doorway at the end of the
long suite of rooms and stood suddenly in the fragrant hush of a garden.
Gravel grated beneath their feet, and about them was the transparent
dimness of a midsummer night. Hanging lights made emerald caverns in the
depths of foliage, and whitened the spray of a fountain falling among
lilies. The magic place was deserted: there was no sound but the splash
of the water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might
have been blown across a sleeping lake. 



Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene
as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have
surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the
lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The
strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being
alone in it together. At length Lily withdrew her hand, and moved away a
step, so that her white-robed slimness was outlined against the dusk of
the branches. Selden followed her, and still without speaking they
seated themselves on a bench beside the fountain.



On a different note, in the romantic comedy FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
(a younger audience would call it a “lude comedy”, and I don’t
disagree!), the hapless hero has his first kiss with the love interest
at the Midpoint, of course, a classic “sex at sixty” scene (sixty
minutes, that is, halfway through the film.).  Every kiss in a romance
or romantic comedy is, or should be, a setpiece and the filmmakers give
the lovers a typically gorgeous romance setting, in this case a cliff
overlooking the ocean in Hawaii. But being as this is a comedy, the
reckless heroine tells the hero, quite rightly, that they’re both in
ruts and need to take a leap of faith, which she promptly does, off the
cliff.  The hero doesn’t land quite so well, but after narrowly escaping
death and possible castration on his slide down, he ends up in the
water with her, for a beautiful backdrop to a sensual first kiss that is
also a baptism that the hero has been sorely needing.



On the nose? Yes, but well-played and effective, and it does what the
Midpoint is supposed to do – it kicks the second half of act two up to
another level.



In the film of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, over and over the filmmakers use
images of bridges and interesting corridors, or stepping stones in a
creek, to underscore significant moments. The heroine first meets her
love interest, The Chairman, on a bridge over a stream, with cherry
blossoms in the background. Now, those of you with jaded eyes might look
at that and think, ‘Oh, right, another “lovers meet on a Japanese
bridge in an explosion of cherry blossoms’ scene, but the setting is
utterly gorgeous, and I would be very surprised if most of the
moviegoing audience even notices the bridge or the cherry blossoms –
except subliminally, which is how these things are supposed to register.



And in a subsequent scene, the nine-year-old heroine has just
realized what the desire of her life is to be, and runs through a long,
curving passageway, another classic symbol of transition and birth, but
the scene is filmed as an endless following shot in the psychedelically
orange gateways of the Fushimi Inari shrine (just click through and look!), and truly delivers on the sensation of transformation that the moment is.



Now, filmmakers have location scouts to find these perfect physical
settings for them, but I think it’s one of the great joys of my job as
an author (as it was when I was a screenwriter) to be constantly on the
lookout for perfect locations to use in current and yet-to-be-conceived
storylines.  And they're all ours for the taking.



So you know the question.  What are some of your favorite setpieces
and locations in films or books?  Come across any good ones lately?  Or –
what is a location you’ve always thought would make a great setpiece
scene in a film or book?



- Alex



=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.



- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)



- Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amazon DE



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Sassy Gay Friend! Character stereotypes and archetypes

I am constantly rewatching Notting Hill, I can’t help it, I just love Richard Curtis! And there’s a character in that film that – despite an eccentric turn on it by Rhys Ifans, his breakout role – we’ve seen a million times before: the puckish (that's Puck from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream), irrepressible, slightly lunatic magical ally/mentor that's such an archetype in romantic comedy.

I could really teach a whole class on this one character - the "asexual", usually meaning gay, friend who solves all the straight lovers' problems. (Now, in Notting Hill Spike is not gay, but definitely Puckish, and he got me thinking about the origins of this character and what it’s really about.)



Modern romantic comedy has really overused the gay best friend archetype (see My Best Friend's Wedding, He’s Just Not That Into You, Sweet Home Alabama, etc.), but it’s a centuries-old tradition - from Shakespeare and Commedia Del Arte, to Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes and Edward Everett Horton in Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies and Donald O'Connor in Singing in the Rain. These movies often ghettoized gay characters by making them buffoons and/or magical helpers for the heterosexual main characters - the exact role Spike Lee excoriated as the "Super-duper Magical Negro," a secondary African American character who seemed to live to help the white main characters solve their problems, still unfortunately extremely prevalent in Hollywood - see The Help as the latest lauded and extremely uncomfortable example. (And the uber-successful Hunger Games gives its heroine a gay African American ally/mentor. Just saying...)



Well, a few weeks ago at LCC I was thrilled to be introduced by my friend Elle Lothlorian to the ultimate satire of the character: Sassy Gay Friend!









And there are more:



HAMLET - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnvgq8STMGM&feature=relmfu 



EVE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQhkzYVlLl8&feature=relmfu



OTHELLO - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKttq6EUqbE&feature=relmfu 



 I love these videos for satirizing the archetype, and because it's actually true. All these disasters could have been averted by a Sassy Gay Friend.



So yes, it’s a stereotype, but there’s something else working here as well.


For one thing, the dance movies I mentioned above were largely created by gay men, and for them, I’m sure it was a way to layer a subversive gay perspective into movies in a time when homosexuality was actually illegal and censors were keeping close watch. (Take a look at the trio dances in Singin’ in the Rain: who’s really dancing with whom?)







There’s no excuse for the modern romantic comedies that keep these gay characters subservient to the heterosexual leads, and deny them a romantic life of their own to boot (with rare exceptions - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).



But I do understand these lame attempts at working gay characters into the action. There is an archetypal resonance about homosexuality that is a powerful draw. These characters have been over the rainbow, so to speak, and they have wisdom beyond the ordinary world that the rest of us want. It’s not entirely surprising that lost het characters latch on to them looking for enlightenment, or at least advice for the lovelorn. Also at play is the powerful archetype of Puck, the fairy (I’d say bisexual, but who really knows? There were all KINDS of things going on in that play....) who both meddled in and solved human lovers’ problems in perhaps the ultimate romantic comic fantasy, Midsummer Night’s Dream.



It’s that same “outsider” knowledge that people are grasping for in some depictions we see of African Americans that more often that not fall into stereotypes. But some of them, I think, are at least reaching for archetype. I love the character of “the Oracle” in The Matrix: the priestess/seer/sibyl that Morpheus takes Neo to see in order to confirm if he is “The One.” She’s played by Gloria Foster with a kind of Billie Holiday flair, and to me she’s a quirky personification of the Black Madonna, Lady Wisdom, the black Universal Mother who has absorbed the sins of the world. I respond deeply to that icon of the feminine.



The point I’m trying to make is that there can be a very thin line between stereotype and archetype. As authors we have to be careful not to fall into stereotype, but at the same time we can’t be afraid to dig for archetype.


So today – what are some character stereotypes that drive you crazy? And now – can you think of books, movies, plays that depict that same character, but raise the characterization to the level of archetype?



Here's a partial list of tropes to get you thinking!



Chosen One, Cinderella, Mysterious Stranger/Traveling Angel, Knight Errant, Boy Next Door, Girl Next Door, Femme Fatale, Seer/Sibyl, Christ Figure, The Fool, The Third Son, The Third Daughter, Whiz Kid, Final Girl, Absent-Minded Scientist. Byronic Hero, Bad Boy, Bad Girl, Gentleman Thief, Reluctant Hero, Sinner Who Becomes a Saint, Female Scientist/Academic Who Just Needs to Let Her Hair Down, Retiring Cop with Target on His Back, Supervillain, Shapeshifter, Trickster, Dark Lord, Evil Twin, Pissed-Off Brother (or Sister), Black Widow, Mad Scientist, Perverted Old Man, Mystery Villain, Witch, Crone, Evil Clown, Evil Wizard, Absent-minded Professor, Expert From Afar, Magician, Divine Fool, Wise Child, Seer/Sybil, Religious Nut, Hooker With A Heart Of Gold, Too Dumb To Live, Mary Sue, Manic Pixie, Martial Arts Master, Jedi Mentor, Cannon Fodder, Blonde, Ingénue, Jailbait, Jewish Mother, Magical Negro, Dark Lady, Clown, Crone, Fairy Godmother, Monster-In-Law, Pompous Ass, Nerd, Supernatural Ally, Wise Old Woman/Man, Snooty Clerk or Waiter, Devoted Domestic. 



 - Alex



=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.



- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)



- Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



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- Amazon UK



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-------------------------------------------------------------------

What's the EXPERIENCE?

I taught a Screenwriting Tricks workshop at Left Coast Crime last week, which went very well, although they always do.

I had this fear going into the workshop that I might get, um, testy. The thing is, when I teach a workshop, I always ask the participants to do a little homework up front – some exercises all you regulars are familiar with:

I always like to get some info from workshop participants before the conference so I can tailor my examples to the people who are actually in the class. Obviously this isn't mandatory homework, but it will pay off for you to do it. ;) The whole principle of what I teach is that we learn best from the storytellers and stories (in any medium) that have most inspired us, and that we as authors can learn a whole new dimension of storytelling by looking specifically at films that have inspired us and that are similar to what we're writing. So here are a few questions/exercises to get you thinking along those lines:

1. Tell me what genre you're writing in. All right, yes, it's a mystery conference. So tell me what subgenre or cross-genre you're writing in.

2. Make a list of ten movies and books - at least five movies - that you feel are similar in genre and structure to your work in progress or story idea (or if you don’t have a story idea yet, ten movies and books that you WISH you had written!)


3. Write out the premise of your story. If you're unclear on what a premise sentence is, here's a practical explanation with examples:


Not everyone does the homework, but the answers I get give me some ideas of examples to work with when I’m going through the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure. In a long workshop I can also work a little with the idea of premise; I’m not able to do that in a 2-hour workshop. This time I stayed away from much talk of premise; in fact it was a little hard to refrain tearing the class a collective new orifice. (Although with teaching, sometimes a good rampage is exactly what a student needs at the time; I’ve certainly been the beneficiary of some beneficial – and memorable - ones from my favorite teachers myself.)

Because I got a reasonable number of homework assignments back, and almost half of them went like this:

A professor (librarian, banker, accountant, divorcee) goes on holiday (to a high school reunion, to a Scottish castle, to his ex-wife’s wedding) and gets involved in solving a murder.

Uh huh.

Okay, I get the amateur sleuth fantasy about vicariously solving a murder. And maybe that’s all there does need to be to it to attract a certain type of reader. Maybe just that one situation in an infinite variety of settings really does get the job done, sort of like porn for the mystery-oriented mind. I’ve even picked up books myself that could be summed up the same way. Except that they happened to be written by Agatha Christie or Elizabeth George or Ruth Rendell, and I knew I was going to be getting my money’s worth.

But why would anyone buy a book described like that by someone they’d never heard of? And I’m not talking just readers – but how does that book even get read by an agent or editor to begin with?

I understand that people have problems with loglines, or premise sentences. Believe me, I do. I would teach a class on writing premise if it weren’t so damn hard to do that it exhausts me too much to teach it. After all, teaching is just this fun little sideline for me, and why should I wear myself out teach something so hard when there are much easier and more fun things to teach?

But look. Where’s the hook? Is it the quirkiness of the detective? Is it the fantasy aspect of the setting? Is it the jeopardy to the detective or to an excruciatingly sympathetic victim? Is it the startling and topical arena? It is an untenable moral choice the protagonist will be forced to make?

I guess what is really missing for me in most of the premises I read – ever – is the EXPERIENCE that the story is going to give me. Now, any of us know what that experience is going to be with an author we are already familiar with. I don’t need anyone to spell out what the experience is that I’m going to get from a Mo Hayder book - I know that I will be wrung out emotionally from the experience of human evil so overwhelming it might as well be supernatural. And call it masochism on my part, but that’s why I buy her books.

As authors it’s not just our job to know the experience that our books deliver, and that readers buy us for, it’s our job to be able to communicate that experience in the logline or premise sentence of our books. Myself, if I’m not making the hair on the back of people’s heads stand up when they read my flap copy, I’m in trouble.

Some of that knowing about the experience comes with – experience. Readers TELL you what they buy your books for, and that makes it easier both to deliver it in the next book, and to get a feeling of that experience into your promotional material.

But you have to know it to say it.

So the question today is, authors, what is the EXPERIENCE you feel you deliver in your books?

And readers, what is the EXPERIENCE you look for in some of your favorite authors’ books?

Alternately, tell us about a great rampage you got from a teacher or mentor that changed your work or life!

- Alex

=====================================================

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.

- Smashwords (includes pdf and online viewing)

- Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)




- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)

- Amazon/Kindle

- Barnes & Noble/Nook

- Amazon UK

- Amazon DE

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Something has to happen

I am assuming most of you have noticed that I've been participating in a huge thriller e book giveaway this week (The Space Between still free today, US, UK, and internationally).

And because I've been checking the Top Ten pages and watching my rankings, I've also been tempted by and have downloaded a bunch of books myself that looked interesting.

Well, I read through a bunch of first chapters last night, a couple dozen books at least, and it was pretty shocking how few of them grabbed me enough for me to want to keep reading.

Now, I'm not saying these books are badly written. The prose is fine, really. I'm just like everyone - there are very few books out there (proportionately) that I'm actually going to take the time to read. I like certain things in a book and if they're not there, I'll move on. Nothing wrong with that AT ALL - the wonderful thing about books is that there ARE books that deliver the exact or almost exact experience we're looking for. So of course we look for those over less satisfying ones. I'm perfectly aware that just as many people discard MY books after the first few pages because I'M not delivering the experience they're looking for. I'm certainly not for everyone's tastes.

But there was something I was noticing in book after book that I started and then discarded last night that was just a structural error that could so easily have been fixed to - I think - increase the number of people who would want to keep reading. It's pretty simple, really.

I couldn't figure out what the book was about.

Or why I should care, either.

What was missing in the first ten, or twenty, pages I was reading was the INCITING INCIDENT (or the term I prefer - CALL TO ADVENTURE).

The Inciting Incident is basically the action that starts the story. The corpse hits the floor and begins a murder investigation, the hero gets his first glimpse of the love interest in a love story, a boy receives an invitation to a school for wizards in a fantasy. (More discussion on this key story element here).

SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN, IMMEDIATELY, that gives us an idea of WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT.

You can do this to some extent by setting mood, tone, genre, hope and fear, and an immediate external problem, but there is something about that first action that lets us know, at least subconsciously: "Oh, I get it. That teenage girl was murdered and that cop is going to find the killer." "Oh, I get it. There's a shark out there off the coast eating tourists and that police chief is going to have to get rid of it somehow."

And once we know that, we can relax. It is a very disorienting and irritating thing not to know where a story is going.

Which means in general you should get to your INCITING INCIDENT and CALL TO ADVENTURE as soon as possible. Especially if you are a new writer, you cannot afford to hold this back. And I would argue it's critical to get it out there if your book is or has any chance of being an e book, too, because it's just so easy to go on to the next e book on your reader.

Genre fiction is popular because we go in knowing pretty much what the story is going to be about. The kid is kidnapped and the detective has to get him back. The house is haunted and the new residents are going to have to fight to survive. But setting your book in a certain genre does not always guarantee that the reader is going to know what the story is going to be about (as evidenced by what I was reading last night.)

So I'm suggesting - find a way to get that critical inciting incident into the first few pages or at the very least, strongly hint at it right up front.

Reading a bunch of first chapters in a row points out a lot of common errors, actually. So here's a brief list.

1. Inexperienced writers almost inevitably START THEIR STORIES IN THE WRONG PLACE.

Now, please, please remember – I am not talking about first drafts, here. As far as I'm concerned, all a first draft has to do is get to "The End". It doesn't have to be polished. It doesn't have to make sense to anyone but you. Screenwriter and novelist Derek Haas refers to his first pass of a story as "the vomit draft". Exactly. Just get it all out – you'll make sense of it later. (for more on this: Your First Draft Is Always Going To Suck)

BUT - when you've gotten to the end, you will probably want to start your story 20, 30, 50 pages later than you do. And this is partly why:

For some reason newer writers think they have to tell the whole back story in the first ten pages. Back story is not story. So -

2. NEVER MIND THE FUCKING BACKSTORY!!!!!

With almost no exceptions, you should start your book with an actual scene, in which your main character (or villain, if that's who you start with) is caught up in action. You should put that scene down on the page as if the reader is watching a movie – or more specifically, CAUGHT UP in a movie. The reader should not just be watching the action, but feeling the sweat, smelling the salt air, feeling the roiling of their stomach as they step into whatever unknown.

We don't need to know who this person is, yet. Let them keep secrets. Make the reader wonder – curiosity is a big hook. What we need to do is get inside the character's skin.

Here are two tips:

3. IDENTIFY THE SENSATION AND EXPERIENCE YOU WANT TO EVOKE IN YOUR READER – AND THEN MAKE SURE YOU'RE EVOKING IT.

I cannot possibly stress this enough. We read novels to have an EXPERIENCE. Make yourself a list of your favorite books and identify what EXPERIENCE those books gives you. Sex, terror, absolute power, the crazy wonderfulness of falling in love? What is the particular rollercoaster that that book (or movie) is? Identify that in your favorite stories and BE SPECIFIC. Then do the same for your own story.

Now that you know what the experience is that you want to create, start to look at great examples of books and films that successfully create that experience FOR YOU. In other words - Make A List.

4. USE ALL SIX SENSES.

A great exercise is to make sure that every three pages you've covered specific details of what you want the reader to see, hear, feel, taste, smell, and sense. All six categories, every three pages.

5. SHOW, DON'T TELL.

This is one of those notes that always annoys me until I have to read 15 pages of "telling". Then I realize it's the essence of storytelling. If your character has a conflict with her brother, then let's see the two of them fighting – don't give me a family history and Freudian analysis.


6. DETAIL THE INTERNAL DRIVES OF YOUR CHARACTER AND SET THE GENRE.

You don't need to detail the family tree or when they moved to whatever house they're living in or their great love for their first stuffed animal.

What we need to know their DESIRE and WHAT IS BLOCKING THEM. We need to feel HOPE AND FEAR for them. We need to get a sense of the GENRE, a strong sense of MOOD and TONE, and a hint of THEME.

So tell me - have you noticed this lack of inciting incident problem in some of the free books you've been downloading? Or in general? Do you know where your inciting incident is? Do we KNOW where your story is going by page ten of your book?

And for more discussion and examples of all of these terms, see ELEMENTS OF ACT ONE.

- Alex


=====================================================

Free today until midnight: my very dark thriller The Space Between

Sixteen-year old Anna is having terrible dreams of a massacre at her school. Anna's father is a mentally unstable veteran, her mother vanished when Anna was five, and Anna might just chalk the dreams up to a reflection of her crazy waking life — except that Tyler Marsh, the most popular guy at the school and Anna's secret crush, is having the exact same dream.

Despite the gulf between them in social status, Anna and Tyler connect, first in the dream and then in reality. As the dreams reveal more, with clues from the school social structure, quantum physics, probability, and Anna's own past, Anna becomes convinced that they are being shown the future so they can prevent the shooting…

If they can survive the shooter — and the dream.

Click to download your free copy now:

Amazon US
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"Alexandra Sokoloff has created an intricate tapestry; a dark Young Adult novel with threads of horror and science fiction that make it a true original. Loaded with graphic, vivid images that place the reader in the midst of the mystery and danger, The Space Between takes psychological elements, quantum physics and multiple dimensions with parallel universes and creates a storyline that has no equal. A must-read. " -- Suspense Magazine

I am definitely portraying the darker side of high school here - the book is for older teens (and younger ones whose reading tends toward Stephen King and Shirley Jackson!) and adults.