A Dark New Voice

Sokoloff’s dark occult tales with fast-paced, page-turning plots are making a splash in the horror world. Her first novel, The Harrowing, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and the Anthony Award which earned her praise from horror insiders for its creepy mood and tight plot.

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But this sunny-haired California girl is the opposite of her books. She focused on dance, music, and theatre in high school and college. Her years in college were spent choreographing and directing musicals. Like most writers, though, she demonstrated a wide range of interests in just about everything, and claims to have audited about three times as many classes as she took for grades, still making Phi Beta Kappa and graduating with honors from UC Berkeley with a degree i n theatre. This is the sort of energy that makes for an excellent writer.

Her first love was not novel-writing; instead, she started her writing career selling original scripts and doing novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios. Her training in theatre and movies has given her one enormous advantage for the horror novel: a distinct ability to create images in the mind with words.

Sokoloff’s stories do not focus on character; in fact, her tales maintain a certain distance from the characters reminiscent of a movie screen. Her pacing and plotting form the core of her stories. Even her harshest critics agree that they can not put down her books. If you want to know how to write a real page turner, Sokoloff has the key.

Sokoloff is someone to watch for in the future. Her second novel shows enormous growth of the sort that promises some really excellent stories in the future. St. Martin’s Press thinks so; they have her under contract for two more novels right now, and she has just signed with Harlequin Nocturne for another paranormal thriller.

The Harrowing focuses on five college students alone in a gothic dorm battling a force they do not understand, and brings in such disparate elements as ouija boards and kabbalah. Her second novel, The Price, uses the gateway of real-life horror – an adorable child dying of inoperable cancer – to bring the reader into a world of strangeness, where life crosses death and things in between, and miracles can be had – for the right price. The Unseen will be out in hardcover in May 2009; the story uses the world-famous Rhine parapsychology experiments as a backdrop for a modern poltergeist mystery.

What You Can Learn From Alexandra Sokoloff

Alexandra Sokoloff is quite young, but has packed away an enormous array of experience to draw from, ranging from her year in Istanbul to her recent term on the Board of 20 Directors of the Writers Guild of America, West, from active engagement in all kinds of dance and theatre to an online presence so vibrant that one questions how she has the time to do it all. Energy, activity, and eclectic experience, all bound together, is her strongest suit, the one thing she brings to her novels that most people do not.

She also has an intense and profound understanding of her audience. Writing horror screenplays in Hollywood for picky producers is a great way to get a world-class education on what viewers really want, and Sokoloff has taken full advantage of that opportunity. Look at her novels: fast-paced, spare prose, and good dialog are the tools she has borrowed from her screenwriting days, and they all translate well to the modern popular novel world.

Writing, however, is only a part of storytelling today. Some seventy years ago, the writing world changed itself completely to accommodate the new, more visual world people were growing used to in movie theatres. Today, publishing changes have moved storytelling to the surprisingly personal online world, where writers must promote themselves, make connections and network in order to find true success.

Sokoloff is a master of this. She has worked for years increasing her profile among the professional writing world. She’s the founder of WriterAction.com, owns and maintains two blogs she will admit to, maintains an excellent professional website, and participates in the Killer Thriller Band (composed entirely of authors, like the Rock Bottom Remainders) and Heather Graham’s Slush Pile Players.

This is a very, very smart thing to do. By being an active participant in writing communities, you get much more than social support for the slow times and practical advice for the problem areas; you also get the inside track on special events, workshops, calls for submissions, and hundreds of bits of other industry information you would never discover from outside.

Between networking, vivid life experience, and true understanding of her audience’s desires, Sokoloff has published two, written three, and contracted four novels. Her example is one to emulate.