Taking the bad with the good, making lemonade out of . . whatEVAH

If you know me, you know I try not to whine.  

I may rant and shout like a sailor.

But I don't "think" I do too much whining.

Well, honeys, this is a whine of a sort to make up for all those past un-whines.

Skip it if, like me, you're pretty turned off by the noises made by a constant whiner.

Pitiful is just not my thing.

And I do not mean this to sound as though it's directed at those of you who have very legitimate complaints.

There are, after all, real reasons for complaints and then there are those who feel as though if they don't "suffer" a drama a day they're not going to get the attention they so need.

THOSE are the people I'm talking about here.



But enough about them - this is gonna be all about me.



All about me whining . . .


Being pitiful . . .


I hope I've made that perfectly clear.  (insert little winking emoticon here)


So.


I was suffering a bad case of the blues about this week.


Thanksgiving.  My birthday.  Happening this week without my mom.


My answer to combating this week of the blues is the same as it is for so many other things.


A week at the beach.


Now, as you may have figured out over time, the beach, the ocean, any big expanse of water meeting the sky is a balm to my soul.


It's not something I simply enjoy.


It's something I truly need.


Need from the very bottom of my feet to the very depths of my heart.


If I had known my ties to the water were so strong I doubt I could have ever left Cambridge where every drive I ever took was, sooner or later, going to have me going across a bridge.  Or have me within just a head's turn to see the water.  Cambridge Creek.  The Choptank River.  I get emotional by only thinking about them.  


But.  Had I never left Cambridge, what are the chances I would have ever met Don Barley?


Or many of the other people I've met on this life journey.  People I'm privileged to call "friend?"


So.  There's my making lemonade out of lemons.  


Oh, hell - enough of that.  


I am here to whine, I tell you!



We were able, on very short notice, to rent a house at Topsail Island.  Our favorite "go to" beach of the past many years.


The house was perfect.


Dog friendly.  Ocean front.  Large deck facing the ocean.  A sunroom in case the weather was a bit too nippy for early morning/late night coffee times.  As long as I can see, hear, or even sense those ocean waves, I am a contented woman.


And there was going to be a bonus this trip.


Because we pass closely to my friends Margaret and Joe's place we sometimes get to visit with them on this trip to the beach.  I was hoping to meet them for lunch today on our way.


But, as chance would have it - that couldn't happen this time because Margaret was already planning a trip to Topsail and would already be there.


Long story short  -  plans were made for me to get together with her for dinner this evening.  The dinner was to also include some of her writing group - The Weymouth 7.  The Weymouth 7 includes Margaret Maron, Sarah Shaber, Diane Chamberlain, Mary Kay Andrews, Brenn Bonner Witchger, Katy Munger and Alexandra Sokoloff.  Pretty stellar group, huh?


While all seven were not part of this week's writing retreat at Topsail, Margaret, Sarah, Diane, Mary Kay and Brenn were.  


And my beach bonus was to include dinner with those who were there.  Except Brenn who ended up not feeling well.


Oddly enough, she apparently was pretty contagious with vertigo which she passed along to me.  (is that even possible?!  I don't think so . . .  but I need to place blame on someone and Brenn gets to be it).

<insert another winking emoticon right here>


So.


Not only are we not spending this week at the beach.


I am not having dinner with Margaret, Sarah, Diane and Mary Kay.


Insert every four letter bad word you have ever heard uttered in your entire life right here.


And now do it again with greater emphasis.


More gusto, please!


Believe me, you're not even coming close to expressing the disappointment I feel.



Except for Mary Kay, I know these women.   I was looking forward to meeting Mary Kay because I've been a long time fan.  Loooong time fan.  I lived in the area she used to write about under the name Kathy Hogan Trocheck in her Callahan Garrity series.  And I love the books she's writing now.


So.  A group of women, most of whom I'm lucky enough to know.  Women I admire.  Read.  Women whose work I read for heaven's sake - how cool is that?!   How could I not be sad and disappointed.


I demand a "do over!"  (and Brenn joins me in this demand).


In the meantime, today I'm picking up my copy of Diane Chamberlain's newest book, "Pretending to Dance."  I'll read it and about 6:00 this evening I'll lift my glass in a toast to the women at Topsail who I'll be missing.


<clink>

How long, oh Lord, how Long? by Alex Sokoloff

Alexandra Sokoloff is a California native and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where she majored in theater and minored in everything that Berkeley has a reputation for. After college she moved to Los Angeles, where she made an interesting living doing novel adaptations and selling original suspense and horror scripts to various Hollywood studios. Her ghost story, THE HARROWING, debuted from St. Martin's Press in 2006, and was nominated for Bram Stoker and Anthony awards for Best First Novel. Her supernatural thrillers THE PRICE, and THE UNSEEN are out now; BOOK OF SHADOWS is coming in June 2010, and THE KEEPERS in fall 2010. She's a Thriller award winner, a former Director of the Writers Guild of America, west and a current board member of Mystery Writers of America. She is also the founder of WriterAction.com, a large and unruly cyber-community of professional screenwriters. AlexandraSokoloff.com   ScreenwritingTricksForAuthors.com  

How long, oh Lord, how long?

by Alex Sokoloff

I’m about to go on tour for my newest book, which means that I actually have to start talking to people coherently about the whole process of writing.    And I’m remembering that one of the questions I most often get at book signings and panels is, “How long does it take you to write a book?”

Well, my feeling is what’s always being asked is not how long it takes ME to write a book, but how long it would take the person asking to write a book.   Which of course,  I have no way of answering, unless it’s to cut to the chase and shout,  “Save yourself!   Don’t do it!”    But that’s never the question, so I don’t say it.

What I usually answer instead is,  “About nine months.”     Which, from Chapter One to copyedits, I guess is true enough.    But the real answer is almost always:   “Decades.”

Because honestly, where do you even start?   I’m quite convinced I’m a professional writer today because my mother made me write a page a day from the time I could actually hold a pencil.   At first a page was a sentence, and then a paragraph, and then a real page, but it was writing.   Every day.    It was an incredibly valuable lesson, which taught me a fundamental truth about writing:  it didn’t have to be good, it just had to get written.   Now I make myself write however many pages every day.    And now, like then, it doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get written.   Some days it’s good, some days it’s crap, but if you write every day, there are eventually enough good days to make a book.

Then there were all those years of theater, from writing and performing plays in my best friend’s garage, to school and community theater, to majoring in theater in college, to performing with an ensemble company after college.   Acting, dancing, choreography, directing – that was all essential training for writing.

And then the reading.    Again,  like probably every writer on the planet, from the time I could hold a book.    The constant, constant reading.    Book after book – and film after film, too, and play after play – until the fundamentals of storytelling were permanently engraved in some template in my head.

Hey, you may be saying,  that’s TRAINING.   That wasn’t the question.    How long does it take to WRITE A BOOK?
 

I still maintain, it takes decades.     I think books emerge in layers.    The process is a lot like a grain of sand slipping inside a clamshell that creates an irritaion that causes the clam to secrete that substance, nacre, that covers the grain, one layer at a time, until eventually a pearl forms.    (Actually it’s far more common that some parasite or organic substance, even tissue of the clam’s own body, is the irritant, which is an even better analogy if you ask me, ideas as parasites…)

My fourth supernatural thriller for St. Martin’s,  BOOK OF SHADOWS, comes out next week, June 8.    When did I start it?   Well, technically in the fall of 2008, I guess.    But really, the seed was planted long ago, when I was a child growing up in Berkeley.   Which pretty much explains why I write supernatural at begin with, but that’s another post.    Those of you who have visited this town know that Telegraph Avenue, the famous drag ending at the Berkeley campus,  is a gauntlet of fortune tellers (as well as clothing and craft vendors).

Having daily exposure to Tarot readers and psychics and palm readers as one of my first memories has been influential to my writing in ways I never realized until I started seeing similarities in the two books I have coming out this year (the second, THE SHIFTERS, will be out in November) and discovered I could trace the visuals and some of those scenes back to those walks on Telegraph Ave.

Without mentioning an actual number, I can tell you, that’s a lot of years for a book to be in the making.

Over the years, that initial grain of sand picked up more and more layers.   BOOK OF SHADOWS is about a Boston homicide detective who reluctantly teams up with a beautiful practicing witch from Salem to solve what looks like a Satanic murder.   Well,  back in sixth grade, like a lot of sixth graders I got hooked on the Salem witch trials, and that fascination extended to an interest in the real-life modern practice of witchcraft, which if you live in California – Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. –is thriving, and has nothing at all to do with the devil or black magic.    Hanging out at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (more Tarot readers!), I became acquainted with a lot of practicing witches, and have been privileged to attend ceremonies.  So basically I’ve been doing research for this book since before I was in high school.

And my early love of film noir, and the darkest thrillers of Hitchcock, especially NOTORIOUS, started a thirst in me for stories with dark romantic plots that pit the extremes of male and female behavior against each other.   BOOK OF SHADOWS is not my first story to pit a very psychic, very irrational woman against a very rational, very logic-driven man; I love the dynamics – and explosive sexual chemistry - of that polarity.

So to completely switch analogies on everyone, this book has been on the back burner, picking up ingredients for a long, long time.

Now, what pulls all those ideas and layers and ingredients into a storyline that takes precedence over all the other random storylines cooking on all those hundreds of back burners in my head (because that’s about how many there are, at any given time), is a little more mysterious.   Or maybe it’s not.   Maybe storylines leap into the forefront of your imagination mostly because your agent or editor or a producer or executive or director comes up with an opportunity for a paycheck or a gentle reminder that you need to be thinking of the next book or script if you ever want a paycheck again.   I know that’s a powerful motivator for me.

But the reason a professional writer is able to perform relatively on demand like that is that we have all those stories cooking on all those back burners.    All the time.    For years and years, or decades and decades.   And if a book takes nine months, or six months, or a year to write, that’s only because a whole lot of stuff about it has been cooking for a very, very, very long time.

A long time.

If there are other writers reading, today – how long does it take YOU to write a book?   Or your latest?   How many stories do you figure you have on the back burner at any one time?

And readers, do you ever notice certain themes – or recurring scenes or visuals - in your favorite authors’ books that make you suspect that story seed was planted long ago?

Alexandra Sokoloff - Lessons from the Back Seat

As a screenwriter, Alex has sold original mystery and thriller scripts and written novel adaptations for numerous Hollywood studios. Her debut ghost story, THE HARROWING, was nominated for both a Bram Stoker award and Anthony award for Best First Novel. Her second supernatural thriller, THE PRICE, was called “some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre” by the New York Times Book Review, and her short story, “The Edge of Seventeen” is currently nominated for a Thriller award for best short story. Her third spooky thriller, THE UNSEEN, is out now, and is based on real-life experiments conducted at the parapsychology lab on the Duke University campus. She is currently working on a fourth supernatural thriller for St. Martin’s Press and a paranormal thriller for Harlequin Nocturne, and is writing a book on SCREENWRITING TRICKS FOR AUTHORS, based on her popular workshop and blog. http://thedarksalon.blogspot.com/

Lessons from the Back Seat
By Alexandra Sokoloff

Since I am on the road touring for my new book, THE UNSEEN,
http://alexandrasokoloff.com/unseen.html and I will be doing God only knows how much driving in the next month, including today (from Virginia to New York, for Book Expo America, with several dozen bookstore drop-ins along the way)… I thought for my guest post I would be extremely faithful to the title of Kaye’s great blog, here. “Meanderings and Muses.” That just says it all. That’s maybe the story of my life – inspiration from traveling. Only, as you’ll notice, I changed it around to suit my own, um, tendencies and got: “Lessons from the Back Seat”.

I know that there are other life lessons generally associated with the back seats of cars. And okay, I’ve had a few of those, too. But for me, I really believe that the back seat was where I learned how to write.

My father is a peripatetic kind of guy. Because of various revolutions and natural disasters and immigration restrictions, his family moved from Leningrad to Tokyo to Mexico City before he was three years old. (We think we live exciting lives - but if you ask me nothing we do holds a candle to what our parents have lived through.) That sense of movement never really left Dad; he got into the U.S. when he was 15 and rode the rails all over the country before he was 18, and I’ve never seen him happier than when he’s behind the wheel of a car (“King of the Road” is one of our family songs).

Though when he married and started a family he put down roots in California, Dad and my mother are both educators, and at the time my siblings and I were growing up, schools still had those three-month long summer vacations. And we spent those long summers on the road, driving all over the country, different routes every year, because Dad and Mom thought that we should see the country. All of it. Intimately. You might even say, would definitely have said if you had seen how grimy we all got after two months on the highway, that we became one with it.

So some of my earliest and most enduring memories and sensations are – movement. Perpetual movement. Constantly changing scenery and huge contrasts: endless brutal deserts turning into palm oases. Towering craggy mountain ranges with pockets of ethereal fields of wildflowers. Geysers and glaciers… and grizzly bears trying to claw their way into the car.

I don’t think it’s any surprise, then, that I’m a sucker for big visuals in my reading and my writing, or that I crave stories that have a constantly moving pace and surprises around every bend. I definitely picked up those rhythms and preferences on the road.

But as everyone knows, road trips aren’t necessarily a thrill a minute. Especially in portions of, say, Oklahoma and Texas, where the same kind of flat landscape seems to go on for days. Oh, right, that’s because it DOES go on for days. So I did a hell of a lot of reading along some of those stretches, and sometimes would read the same book several times in a trip, which was great training for writing, because with multiple readings you start to see the mechanics of it all. I could recite whole sections of my favorite thrillers and mysteries to my family. I also learned to make up stories to entertain myself. What if that car following us was full of CIA agents? (Oh, right – the car behind us sometimes WAS full of CIA agents. My father is a scientist, and Russian, and that was a suspicious combination when I was a child).

But what if they kidnapped us? What if I was the only one who could get free?

What if those dinosaurs in Dinosaur World suddenly came to life? (Okay, Michael Crichton beat me to that one)

What if there were real ghosts in that ghost town?

You have a lot of time for those “What ifs” on the road.

And God knows all that traveling – the national parks, the different cities, the museums and art galleries and reservations and ghost towns along the way, gave me a whole lifetime of fodder for different stories.

I’m eternally grateful for the traveling because it’s made me not just unafraid about doing research traveling, but eager for it. I write supernatural thrillers and the PLACE of a ghost story is sometimes the most important part of the whole deal. I always want to visit and explore the city or region I’m writing about, because it’s the best way to give a reader a true and complete experience. I need you to believe in the reality of the story - to feel and smell and hear things - so I can sneak in there and scare the pants off you.

And the traveling was especially good preparation for THE UNSEEN, interestingly enough, because it gave me an angle on how to write realistically about the South (the book is set in North Carolina) even though I’ve lived in California my entire life and wouldn’t begin to pretend that I could speak from a Southerner’s point of view.

But I sure can write from the point of view of a transplant, a fish out of water, because I have been that, in so many places, for so much of my life.

In THE UNSEEN my main character, Los Angeles psychology professor Laurel MacDonald, has a precognitive dream that makes her aware that her fiancé is cheating on her. It shatters her life, of course, but also her whole sense of reality. She decides to take the “geographic cure” and moves to North Carolina to take a professorship at Duke, where she becomes obsessed with the long-buried files from the Rhine parapsychology department there.

Laurel is so out of place in the South that she’s a good observer, which makes her a perfect person to solve a mystery – but also, being in a strange new place with people who look at her as an outsider contributes to her sense of alienation and disorientation – a great undercurrent for a supernatural thriller.

All that traveling also prepared me for the author’s life – although I never would have known that going in. I don’t think anyone can possibly realize how much traveling is required of an author: the conventions, the book signings, the workshop gigs. It’s a wonderful gypsy life – you go to different cities every year for Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, Book Expo America, the Public Library Association conference, Thrillerfest, Malice Domestic, Romantic Times – and all your friends are there, including your agent and editor, so you end up doing business in all these different cities. It’s a huge traveling circus, really.

And it helps me with dreaded book promotion that I have no problem jumping in the car and driving all over the state – any state – to stop in at bookstores and sign stock. I’d prefer to be driven, but driving itself is relaxing to me, and a welcome break from writing, so I find it a great balance – exhausting, I won’t lie about that, but also rejuvenating.

I don’t panic if I get lost, I don’t worry when little things go wrong, and I really do end up enjoying the ride. And I never, ever forget how lucky I am: I always wanted the kind of life that would take me to new places all the time, and now, well, I’ve got it – in spades.

Thanks for having me, Kaye, and I hope I see you all on the road!

Alex

http://alexandrasokoloff.com