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MEET ALEXANDRA SOKOLOFF
by Bonnie O'Brian

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

Alexandra Sokoloff

I always liked the scary and mysterious stuff – all of Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Ira Levin, Ray Bradbury, Sheridan Le Fanu. I was especially influenced by Shirley Jackson (the perfect psychological horror writer!) and the Bronte sisters, and Daphne Du Maurier. A WRINKLE IN TIME and Madeleine L’Engle’s other works are touchstones. And Shakespeare, of course.

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

No, not at all! I was into acting and theater as a child. But I was writing all the time – obsessive journaling, writing in math class, writing plays that we put on in my neighbor’s garage. And I had that other fatal indicator – I was always reading. When you see a kid reading while walking home from school – you know that’s a born writer. Doomed.

If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?

I was a drama major at Berkeley, emphasis on directing, some acting and dance. Then I took a dramatic literature class and the professor had us all write one act plays. He took the five best and had graduate students direct and produce them and put them on in the campus theater. When I saw those characters I’d created walk onto the stage as living, breathing people, it was like a shot of heroin. It was all about writing from then on.

Was your first book accepted immediately?

Yes, I got my literary agent within a week and he sold the book two weeks later. But I had worked for years as a screenwriter already, selling original scripts and doing novel adaptations for various studios, so I had a long, long training period.

What are the topics are some of your books?

I write ghost stories, dark mysteries, and supernatural thrillers. I’m obsessed with exploring how good people confront and battle the evil that’s all around us in the world, and how ordinary and perhaps marginalized people find courage and their true strength in the face of malevolent forces. My stories always skirt the line between reality and the supernatural – there’s always as much psychological going on as supernatural.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

My first novel, THE HARROWING, was nominated for both a Bram Stoker award for best first novel (horror) and an Anthony award for best first novel (mystery) this year.

Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

I LOVE research. Even though I write about the supernatural I want to create a world that’s only a fraction of a step removed from ordinary reality. I want the reader to believe absolutely that the story could happen exactly the way I’m telling it. So I’m constantly reading about real-life supernatural occurrences: how ghosts actually present themselves, theories of what hauntings really are, the relationship between mental disorders and psychic phenomena, world myths and archetypes and how they’ve manifested in real life. After all, if I don’t believe it, you won’t believe it.

What are you working on now? When do you expect to star submitting it to publishers?

I’m working on another supernatural mystery/thriller: a group of researchers attempt to duplicate a poltergeist experiment in which all of the original participants went insane or met otherwise tragic ends. It’s my third book for St. Martin’s Press – I have another two-book contract with them - so it should be out in early 2009.

When is your next book going to be in book stores?

THE PRICE comes out February 20, 2008. It’s a psychological thriller set in this labyrinth of a Boston hospital about a District Attorney who begins to suspect that his wife has made a terrible bargain to save the life of their dying child.

What other jobs you had before you became a writer/illustrator?

I’ve worked in bookstores, libraries, movie theaters, museums, as a story analyst for film studios, and in the Los Angeles Juvenile Court system, teaching English and history to incarcerated teenage boys. That was definitely my best real job. They were great kids.