booktalkcorner

Alexandra Sokoloff is a professional screenwriter, director, choreographer and author of the paranormal suspense novels, The Harrowing and The Price. The first was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and for an Anthony Award. She has adapted numerous novels for film for companies such as Sony, Fox, Disney, and Miramax. Sokoloff is a regular blogger at Murderati.com and Muse, a new collective of female dark suspense authors.

In a few lines, tell us what your latest book, The Price, is about.

The Price is the story of Will Sullivan – an idealistic Boston District Attorney from a political family who really has always had it all: a beautiful and devoted wife, Joanna, an adorable five-year old daughter, Sydney, and a real shot in the Massachusetts governor’s race. Then on the eve of Will’s candidacy, Sydney is diagnosed with a malignant, inoperable tumor, and now Will and Joanna are living in this state-of-the-art medical center, waiting for their baby to die, and going out of their minds with grief.

But patients around them are miraculously recovering, and the recoveries seem to revolve around a mysterious, charismatic hospital counselor named Salk. And when Sydney suddenly goes into remission, Will suspects Joanna has made a terrifying bargain to save their child.

How did you come up with the idea for the premise? Is it something you had been thinking of for a long time?

Well, the truth is, I’m always thinking about the devil. I believe that as authors we only have a few themes that we’re working on, or working out, over and over again, and one of mine is the deal with the devil. Part of that obviously comes from working in Hollywood for so long! But it’s the core concept that intrigues me – the idea of what you’re willing to do for what you want, the choices you make, good or bad. We give up one thing to get another – all the time. And who here hasn’t whispered a little prayer that possibly is not meant for God to hear… about what we would really do for what we want?

I’ve always thought that just as God is supposed to, the devil knows you - knows the depths of your soul - knows the things that you want that you would never breathe a word about to another human being. So that’s the tension that draws me again and again to Satanic characters: the idea of an overwhelmingly erotic and all-knowing figure who knows you to your core - knows you well enough to offer you your most secret desire - at a premium price. But what crystallized the story of The Price for me was a dream.

This is an extremely sad story, but this is what happened (in real life). A friend of mine and his wife had just had their first child, and she was born with a hole in her heart. She lived the whole of her two months of life in the children’s ward of a Boston hospital, and her parents moved into the hospital to be with her. When she died, her parents were too distraught to come home to all the unused baby furniture and clothes, so a bunch of their friends packed everything up for them, and because I have a huge attic, we put it all upstairs in my house. That night I started having dreams of a beautiful little five-year old girl who was not alive but not dead, either – somewhere in between. And that was the beginning of THE PRICE – that little girl haunting me in my dreams, and the question of what parents – or anyone – would be willing to do for love.

How long did it take you to write the book?

That is always such a hard question to answer, because as an author you’re always working on multiple projects at once, plus all the business and promotional stuff you do. I had the idea years ago and wrote it as a script, so it was there in bare bones form. But I wrote the novel in the six or seven months I had between selling The Harrowing, my first novel, and I turned that first draft in just as The Harrowing came out, and then I revised The Price on and off for the next few months as I was touring with The Harrowing.

I sometimes get afraid of my own writing when working on a horror novel. If I’m really immersed, it can affect my dreams. Does this happen to you? What was your state of mind while writing this book? Did the writing of this book affect your sleep at times?

As I said, my dreams about the book came before I wrote it, and that’s usually how it happens for me: I rarely have nightmares, but once in a while I’ll have a disturbing dream that becomes a story. I do dream about what I’m writing but it’s usually more atmospheric than scary. But my state of mind was not so great, honestly – I had to go to such dark places, to deliver on the concept of the devil, and what would be a living hell. It was very emotionally draining (and my next two books are spooky but much lighter, by the way! I figured my readers and I all could use a break.).

Most of the story is seen through the eyes of the male protagonist. Was it easy to get inside the head of a man?

It was excruciating! I’m used to writing male leads in scripts, because that’s what Hollywood wants, but this was my first novel from a male POV, and you really are in Will’s head every second, and it was so hard to be a man all the time, like being in an emotional straightjacket, really. Luckily I had good male friends in my writing group helping me (“A man would NEVER do that…”). Funny thing, though – I’m writing my fourth novel from a male POV and it’s much easier this time. I think it was the whole situation of The Price that was so difficult.

There are several segments in the novel where you have three nuns in black robes at the end of a dimly lit hall, their faces shadowed by cowls. I had a Catholic upbringing, so nuns rate high in my ‘Things I Fear Most’ list. What is it about nuns that so many people find creepy?

I think you Catholics have infected the rest of us with this fear. No, it’s a good question! Nuns and priests are apart from society, they live in a secret world, supposedly in direct communion with God. That makes them mysterious and powerful and somehow both more and less than human. And pure feminine power is always a rather terrifying force.

Though the ending was satisfyingly chilling and surprising, I also found it logical and inevitable. Did you know from the beginning what the ending would be like, or did you come up with the idea as you worked on the story?

I knew the end – the choice that Will would make – from the very beginning. The details of the scene changed a million times, but I always knew I was writing a love story. Will’s love is his best quality, and his greatest weakness.

I think your book would make a fabulous movie. The way you executed some scenes, I felt sometimes I was reading a script or following a movie camera. Is this were your script writing experience pays off?

Thanks, I hope it will be! Now you know the secret – it started as a script. But all my novels have that cinematic quality; all my favorite books are highly visual, and I think of writing a novel as directing onto the page. As an author you do every job of filmmaking yourself: writing, directing, acting, production design, composing, art direction, editing, sound, lighting, special effects. And yeah, the film experience has been invaluable. I think the bottom line of my job as an author is to put a movie directly into a reader’s head.

You never mention the ‘D’ word in the book–or at least, I don’t recall your doing it. Was this a conscious decision? If yes, why?

Yes, it was a conscious decision. I felt it was so obvious who Salk was that it didn’t need to be said. I wanted the reader to be ahead of Will in that regard – Will lives in the real world and it takes him a long time to believe this is the devil. At the same time, I also feel that Salk is not the devil - he might be just one of a million beings like him, with different faces, different races, different genders… and then again, perhaps Salk is nothing but Will’s personal demon – completely a psychological construct that manifests out of Will’s own conflicts, and he has the appearance of Satan because of Will’s own religious upbringing. Really, Salk is all of those things, and more.

Thanks for the interview, Alexandra!

Read my review of THE PRICE here.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS