I’m a real sucker for the slow, sensual, psychological build. When I read or write the supernatural, I need to believe that it could really happen that way. I research obsessively to see what people who claim to have experienced the supernatural actually experienced, and I look for the patterns in the stories: What are the common elements? What has the ring of truth?

And haunting to me is a different experience than terror. So I’m not going to be talking about the scariest books I’ve ever read. Those would include It, The Shining, The Terror, The Exorcist and The Treatment - all of which do have that haunting quality but also unmistakably belong to the horror genre.

Haunting is something else, and some of the best examples I know of that something else are:

• Virtually anything by Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson

• A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle

• “The Yellow Wallpaper” - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Rosemary’s Baby - Ira Levin

• Kindred - Octavia Butler

• Beloved - Toni Morrison

• The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

I started out writing horror, first as a screenwriter then as an author, because it’s what I knew best. It’s been my preferred genre since I was a child, pillaging my dad’s extensive library of dark classics.

From my earliest days of reading, I gravitated toward the spooky, the thrilling, the fantastical, the twisted.

A Wrinkle in Time

I discovered A Wrinkle in Time when I was in sixth grade and something in my mind said – THIS is what a book is supposed to be, do, feel like.

It’s the story of thirteen-year-old misfit Meg Murry, who on a dark and stormy night is visited by three mysterious and iconically eccentric women (ie witches, ie the Triple Goddess) who transport her, her child prodigy brother Charles Wallace, and her high school crush Calvin O'Keefe on a cosmic adventure to rescue her scientist father from the evil forces holding him prisoner on a distant, oppressed planet.

It’s a thrilling adventure with flawed but deeply moral characters, fighting for cosmic stakes. While you’re reading you experience it as a breathless, nail-biting ride, but the moral implications imprint on your soul.

And despite — and really I mean because of— the profoundly spiritual aspects of the book, Wrinkle is a regular target of the book banners - it’s on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books.

That tells me everything I need to know about the immorality of the banners.

• Much more about A Wrinkle in Time

The Yellow Wallpaper

Another of my early discoveries as a voracious young reader was Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s psychologically terrifying short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It’s one of the greatest feminist horror stories ever written, in which a new young mother is confined to her bedroom by her physician husband and is not allowed to write because it would “stress” her. Instead, predictably, she goes horribly and inexorably out of her mind.

The story was an absolutely pivotal shift in my consciousness as a female person and a writer at the time that I read it.

The Haunting of Hill House, Rebecca, The Birds, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

I also read The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Rebecca, and The Birds as a pre-teen and have reread (and rewatched) them all many times since.

What galvanized me about du Maurier, Jackson and Gilman was not just that they told ripping good scary stories, dripping with perverse sexuality and unnerving psychological insight, but that those stories were from an unmistakably and unrelentingly female point of view. They wrote about oppression and patriarchy and a kind of madness, but prophetic madness, that comes with always being the Other.

Rosemary’s Baby

Ira Levin is one of the very few male writers who was able to capture exactly that feminine point of view - he was one of popular literature’s most scathing critics of the patriarchy. One of the most exciting moments of my life was when this amazing author (and amazing soul) blurbed my debut ghost novel, The Harrowing.

The Stepford Wives is the most obvious example of his social criticism, but for my money the story of Rosemary, whose narcissistic husband sells her body to a satanic cult, is just as chilling an indictment of misogyny, and presages today’s patriarchal, demon-believing evangelicals and MAGA politicians who are hell-bent on turning all women and girls into helpless incubators.

Enslavement is the ultimate horror wrought by patriarchy. Which brings me to -

Kindred and Beloved

The next two books on my list combine my love of horror and social criticism - and throw in a time period I’m equally obsessed by: the Civil War and Reconstruction years.

Octavia Butler’s time-slipping Kindred is as tensely atmospheric and thrilling as a book gets, postulating as horrific a situation I can imagine for a protagonist to find herself in (and out of!), but finding emotional connections I never expected.

Beloved is my favorite book by the great Toni Morrison - at times almost unbearable to read for its unflinching examination of human savagery, and also almost unbearably beautiful in imagery and eventual triumph.

The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters

The last book on my list, The Little Stranger, is another slow burn indictment of patriarchy and proscribed women’s roles, as moodily atmospheric as the classics I’ve listed - but I don’t want to talk too much about it because it’s easy to spoil!

I’m a fairly new convert to Waters, but all of the above authors are why I write - and why I write what I write. I learned to write horror from them, and when I turned to crime writing, I brought my horror skills with me, because what obsesses me about the crime genre is the core problem of human evil and how to combat it. I believe we have to feel the horror before we can truly fight it.

These authors also wrote some of the most filmic books ever written, and spawned some of the greatest classics of cinema.

Robert Wise’s movie The Haunting is a perfect film adaptation (of Hill House). It took me a long time to appreciate Hitchcock’s adaptation of The Birds because I love the short story so much, but it does have its own terrifying eeriness. Beloved was gorgeously and devastatingly adapted by one of my favorite directors, Jonathan Demme, and Ted Tally, and Oprah was as ever transcendent as Sethe. The 2018 TV adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, directed by Stacie Passon, written by Mark Kruger, is very good. And reliably prestigious Focus Features did a gripping adaptation of The Little Stranger, starring Ruth Wilson, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and written by Lucinda Coxon. All highly recommended! I always agonize over recommending films by the child rapist who directed Rosemary’s Baby, but film is a collaborative medium and the other amazing artists involved in this classic film don’t deserve to be canceled because of him.

Aargh. This post reminds me that I have not watched the recent adaptation of Kindred! Something to look forward to this month.

And since I’m talking about adaptations, I have to reference Dan Simmons’ beautifully written and harrowing book The Terror, and the seriously interesting TV adaptation of it.

They Bite

Finally, since this month is Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, I want to throw in this short story by critic and author Anthony Boucher, for whom Bouchercon is named.

This year Bouchercon is being held in dazzlingly beautiful Calgary, in Alberta - I’m so looking forward to returning to this mountain wonderland and exploring it with Craig.

But having grown up in Southern California, I am also very partial to the haunting beauty of deserts. Desert locations show up repeatedly in my and our crime novels: I am always mesmerized by the vastness of them, the brutality of the day, the infinity of the night sky, that feeling of being existentially alone —and the sudden moments of knowing you’re NOT alone — but not being able to see who or what is out there.

Boucher perfectly captures all of that in a horror tale that deeply imprinted itself on me in childhood.

Finally, if you’re an author or aspiring author, this entire post is an illustration of the first lesson I teach in my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshops:

The Master List.

Every time you begin to write a book, it is incredibly helpful to start by making a list of your favorite books, films and TV shows in the genre, especially those that are in some way similar to the book or film you want to write.

These are your teaching books and films, and the start of your own highly personalized story structure workbook.

Make the list, and write out what about those stories is so compelling to you. It will activate your writing process on a deeply resonant and synchronistic level.

The works I’ve listed above are my own teaching books and films, and I hope you’re inspired to make your own list. I’d love to hear it!

—Alex

Read more on The Master List method:

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors

The Master List

The first assignment I always give writers who take my workshop is THE MASTER LIST…

Read more

4 years ago · 9 likes · 12 comments · Alexandra Sokoloff

I’m turning on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited.

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

Start the series with Huntress Moon

All six books free with Kindle Unlimited

If you’re a writer, come on over to Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and write A Book By the End of the Year!

Early on in Book 5 of my Huntress Moon thriller series, my FBI team is called to a crime scene on a university campus: two frat boys have been hung from a wall under a sign: DEATH TO RAPISTS. 1

Yeah. That’s how angry.

The news about the Cornell rapists and the university coverup is no surprise, and my anger is not new.

The Huntress Moon books are thrillers and consistently reviewed as unputdownable. But the FBI team and the unique female killer they hunt in the books are my way to explore legal inadequacies and inequities that support and defend atrocities like fraternity gang rape.

I have no interest in reading or writing crime thrillers unless they’re about real crime, and by crime I mean the worst crime. Crime that is more precisely called atrocity.

And — I have no interest in reading or writing books that don’t propose actual solutions.

In Hunger Moon, the crime that the team is called to investigate is a coordinated rash of vandalism and threats on college campuses all over the country - specifically targeting fraternities. But the real crime is what the fraternities, the frat bros, their parents, and the universities are engaged in.

And as always, my research into the book exposed a really practical solution (and no, not hanging…) that I’d been completely unaware of. I learned a lot, and you might be interested too.

Special Agents Matthew Roarke and Damien Epps go to a lawyer to interview her for insight into the case. She’s a fraternal plaintiff’s attorney, and in this chapter she explains her job:

“If your goal is to dismantle the patriarchy, fraternities are a good place to start. That’s where all our best misogynists get trained. And of course, they’re bastions of white male privilege as well.” She looked straight at Epps as she said it. “Fraternities represent an almost cult-like white-cis-hetero-patriarchy—a closed chute that exists to isolate the sons of the privileged among their wealthy peers and keep them moving straight into the highest echelons of society. Fraternities are where the one percent systematically consolidate their wealth and learn how to keep the rest of society enslaved.

“Sororities are a chute into the upper echelons of society, too. The difference is sorority girls aren’t being groomed as power brokers. The Greek system propagates and normalizes female inferiority. Sexual assault is a routine part of Greek life. Bluntly, the Greek system is a hunting ground. We are breeding entitled racist misogynists in a petri dish of rape culture. These thugs go on to make laws and enforce laws that perpetuate rape culture and racism.”

She looked Roarke in the eye, and then Epps. “It’s not accidental, lads. This is a finely honed system of oppression. It’s taken thousands of years to build it. And it’s not going away without all of us using our skill sets to bring it down.”

Roarke took that in. “So your goal is to dismantle the patriarchy.”

She smiled grimly. “You bet your ass my goal is to dismantle the patriarchy. But obviously,” she gestured to the wheelchair, her legs, “I’m not going around scaling university clock towers to do that. I wanted to pick the biggest offender I could go after with my skill set. And that’s fraternities. I’m a fraternal plaintiff’s attorney.”

“Which means—you sue the frats? The universities?”

She grimaced. “That’s an uphill road. College administrators are incredibly reluctant to discipline Greek houses or to publicize the crimes of individual members. They’re much more likely to close ranks around them, block any outside investigation, because universities depend on rich Greek alumni. Also there are very powerful political lobbying groups aimed at protecting fraternities’ interests.” She paused. “So I go after the parents.”

Nothing she had said so far had surprised Roarke. That last did.

“I’ve recovered millions and millions of dollars from homeowners policies. That’s how many of the claims against boys who violate the strict policies are paid: from their parents’ homeowners insurance.”

Roarke and Epps stared at her, unnerved. “You don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about penalizing the parents?” Roarke asked.

Janovy turned cynical eyes on him. “Did you happen to read the letter the Stanford Rapist’s father wrote to the judge, pleading for leniency for his rapist son? Arguing that his precious boy shouldn’t be penalized for ‘twenty minutes of action’?”

Her loathing was palpable in the room.

“Yes, Agent Roarke. I go after the parents. It’s proved pointless to ask them to instill basic decency in their sons. They won’t lift a manicured finger to stop rapist attitudes, rape culture. So I go after them the only place it seems to hurt them. Their bank accounts. Enough high-profile lawsuits and they just might start getting the message.”

Two of these offenders were expelled. The other five had to write essays.

Any bets how effective writing an essay is in preventing further gang rape?

I really, really hope the survivor has a great fraternal plaintiff’s attorney who makes these monsters and their families and the university pay out everything they have and spreads their names so far and wide they are shunned for all time.

If anyone comes across any information, I’d be glad to amplify it, along with other solutions for sanctioning these men and Cornell.

Leave a comment

In Hunger Moon women and girls all over the US are coordinating attacks on predators. (You can read an excerpt at the end of this post).

Obviously, in an ideal world I would rather that predators (and I very much include racists in that term) and MAGAs in general were just Raptured up to wherever they think they’re going. They’re painlessly eliminated and we can get on with rebuilding the world they’ve trashed.

But realistically, it’s going to take a lot more education and effort than that.

At the time I wrote Hunger Moon, a grassroots movement led by young rape survivors had spread to campuses throughout the country. Because of their actions, over two hundred colleges and universities came under federal investigation for their responses, or non-responses, to rape complaints against students, athletic teams, fraternities, and faculty.

I envisioned that movement growing. It was the beginning of one of the biggest cracks in the patriarchy I’d ever seen.

What happened instead was a backlash that elected a self-confessed sexual predator to the presidency. He nominated dismally unqualified fanatic supporter Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary and she immediately dismantled the Title IX investigations.

So now I’m always looking for groundswells of anger that will continue the work. And what I try to do in the Huntress books is to introduce readers who are interested in solutions about real life crimes, real life legal loopholes, and real people who are combatting crimes of the patriarchy.

I would love to hear your stories.

And in case anyone out there is contemplating telling me that “writers shouldn’t write about politics” — bullshit. I’ve made enough money to retire on by writing politics into my thrillers. Don’t let the party of book banning scare you off writing what’s important. Because that’s how the predators win.

—Alex

UPDATE: Prosecutors in central New York say they are reopening the investigation of alleged gang rape at a Cornell University fraternity in 2024.

Start the series with Huntress Moon

All six books free with Kindle Unlimited

I’m turning on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited.

Subscribe now

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

If you’re a writer, come on over to Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and write A Book By the End of the Year!

1

From Hunger Moon:

Fog drifts through the silent, towering redwoods of north campus in the cold, gray dawn.

A lone girl huddles into her coat as she scuttles on a meandering path through the grove, en route to an early TA meeting. Her breath is puffs of white in the fog. Squirrels scatter in front of her, frantic red zips of motion.

The path opens up in front of a looming curved stone wall, like the outside of an ancient Roman coliseum. Rough gray brick with black iron gates.

The girl halts in front of the gates, staring upward. She jolts backward . . . and begins to scream.

Two male figures hang from the arches of the stadium, by ropes around their necks.

……..

Special Agent in Charge Matthew Roarke stood in front of the gates with Special Agent Damien Epps and San Francisco Police Homicide Inspector Clifton Mills, looking up at the figures hanging from the famous arches of the historical wall. They were male, dressed in football uniforms and fraternity hoodies.

Below their dangling feet, a plaque set in the looming gray wall read Simpson Center For Student-Athlete High Performance.

Spray-painted across the wall in red were the words DEATH TO RAPISTS.

Mills turned from the sight to look at the agents. “Not too vague, is it? I’d say that’s not too vague.”

“It’s also not homicide when the victims are mannequins,” Epps said. “So what exactly are we doing here?”

Roarke was silent. He’d been wondering the same thing.

He’d been awakened by a phone call from Mills, asking him to drive across the Bay in blinding fog on some urgent call related to a case they’d recently worked together.

They’d come because it was Mills, of course. The eccentric detective was a piece of work, but they owed him, and they trusted him.

But Roarke had one mission to focus on and it wasn’t this—whatever this was.

“Lemme spell it out for you two sleeping beauties,” Mills drawled. “Two of the athletes in this here program are under investigation for sexual assault. The university is under federal investigation for Title IX violations. I assume I do not have to familiarize you with Title IX and violations thereof.”

The agents were perfectly aware of Title IX and violations thereof. Title IX was a federal law mandating that colleges and universities have a responsibility to protect students from discrimination and sexual assault. In the last two years a grassroots movement led by young rape survivors had spread to campuses throughout the country. Because of their actions, over two hundred colleges and universities were currently under federal investigation for their responses, or nonresponses, to rape complaints against students, athletic teams, fraternities, and faculty.

“Well, this was not just Berkeley, comrades-of-mine. Whilst you boys were catching up on that aforementioned beauty sleep, this was going on all over the country.” He stabbed a finger upward at the hanged dummies, the spray-painted threat. “They hit close to a hundred campuses that we know of so far.”

Now Roarke and Epps looked at each other, stunned.

“And reports keep coming in.” Mills passed over his iPad. The agents looked down at the top image. It was a photo of a mansion with a columned portico. Large Greek letters, prominently displayed, identified it as a frat house. Underneath the letters someone had spray-painted YOU’RE NEXT, RAPIST. And beside that warning was a painted pictogram of a skull with a crown of flowers.

He swiped to the next photo. Another frat house, mannequins hanging by their necks, the same spray-painted threat, and the same skull pictogram.

The next photo: a college football stadium. Spray paint and skull.

Roarke looked up to see Mills watching him. “Yep. All over the US. Overnight. We have no idea of the final count. Colleges and universities in Northern and Southern California, North and South Carolina, Florida, Kentucky, Michigan, Massachusetts. Zero warning. Some of them have the skull, some don’t. Same message, give or take a death threat or two.

“The skull thingy is a stencil, suggesting it was made available for download on the Internet. And according to your Agent Singh—who apparently gets up earlier than you two do—most, but not all, the universities that were hit are under federal investigation for Title IX violations.”

But I’ll get to that…

This year the group went to Malta, and then Craig and I and two other friends moved on to Sicily.

In Malta we stayed in coastal Sliema and spent most of our time in nearby Valletta, with day trips to Mdina and Gozo.

Malta is an archipelago, with three main islands, all very small - the entire country has a population of about 560,000 — but it seems like more because it’s such a popular tourist destination.

Because of its island nature we spent a whole lot of time on boats.

Gondolas took us across the water from Sliema to Valletta - a charming way to get around.

We also took ferries and chartered a boat to take us around to the famous sea caves and swimming spots like the Blue Lagoon and Crystal Lagoon.

The water is as warm and gorgeous as it looks - VERY salty, much more so than the buoyant waters of Croatia, and the boat days were saving because of the cooling factor.

I only knew Malta from high school history: it was a strategic location during both World Wars, and as I now know - throughout history, as Malta is the key to the Mediterranean. In a conflict between superpowers, much like the Strait of Hormuz, if you don’t control it, you’re - well, about where we are now.

Consequently there are fortresses all over the island and a lot of it feels like walking through Game of Thrones.

Because of its location, Malta has been occupied/colonized by a LOT of different countries/civilizations/empires over its history - Neolithic farmers and Sicilian transplants were eclipsed by the Phoenicians, then the Roman Republic, the Arabs, the Spanish briefly. the Sicilians again - and in 1530 the islands came under the control of the Sicilian Order of St. John. When the Ottoman Empire invaded in 1565 the Order spectacularly defeated the Turks in the Great Siege of Malta, and generally began a Maltese Renaissance. Napoleon invaded in 1798 but the French ruled for only two years until the Maltese rebelled, and then Malta became a British protectorate.

ALL those many sieges and invading populaces are still reflected in island culture, which results in an extraordinarily eclectic mix.

Did I mention it’s hot? The first few days we were there hit 100°F, which isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. And worse than the desert heat I’m used to (or used to be used to!) because of the humidity - it actually stops sweat from evaporating, making it hard for the body to cool down.

I’d actually never recommend going there in the high summer months - which we didn’t, but let’s face it - summer is a lot longer than it used to be.

But people can take advantage of the constant opportunities to get in that water, at all hours of the day and night:

It’s really a toss up where to stay. We spent the most time in Valletta - but it was constantly crowded from the cruise ships, and from Sliema we had better views of the city, day and night, and the convenience of the gondolas to get to Valletta in ten minutes.

We mostly had great luck with food - as you can imagine it’s not always easy to get a table for all ten of us, which is why we always book at least one food and history tour. It’s also an excellent introduction to a city.

But we almost always manage, and even Craig approved of this last minute seating in the hopping St. Julian district:

We had a superb dinner at the Chop House in Sliema, with this view on the indoor/outdoor terrace:

Other sights not to miss:

St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta

The outdoor restaurants on the stairs of very steep St. Lucia Street in Valletta - mostly pizza and pasta but the people watching is excellent:

The walled city of Mdina, inland:

And on the island of Gozo:

• The Megalithic Temples - a UNESCO World Heritage Site

• The Cittadella (castle)

• The Basilica

I’ll post on Sicily next!

So is Malta on your travel wish list? Have you been? Would love to hear stories!

—Alex

Subscribe now

I’ll be turning on the option of paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing.

Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

If you’re a writer, come on over to Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and write A Book By the End of the Year!

The Grapevine is out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited!)

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

All six Huntress books free on Kindle Unlimited:

Elle and I have Saudades in common, as we both live in countries far away from our birth homes.

I’m not a full-time nomad like other friends of mine. But I’m an immigrant, living in a country that barely speaks the same language I do (which anyone who’s ever been to Scotland will understand!)

Scotland feels more like home than the US, which has reverted to a terrifyingly oppressive place. I’m not feeling nostalgia for the country, and although I miss my home state, I live in California for most of my day, in the books that I write.

Scotland has a similar stunning natural landscape as California, and nature always makes me feel at home. The progressive politics are similar and deeply appreciated.

And I’ve embraced a citizen of the world state of mind - traveling often enough to feel a routine and rhythm of it - trains and ferries, boats and airports. As this publishes I am in Malta, my first time in that tiny country with the big history, with my Holiday Hat travel group.

I’ve started posting photos and a travelogue! In the meantime, here are my September books (and film adaptations, because that’s what I do!):

The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth is my favorite Edith Wharton novel, and the 2000 adaptation by Terence Davies is one of my favorite films. I reread and rewatch them periodically and I’ve been drawn back to both of them now, with the passing of Gloria Steinem, and at a time of rising institutionalized misogyny.

One of the crucial aspects of the feminist movement in the 1970’s was the development of an actual language to speak about patriarchy and the oppression of women and other non-white cis male groups.

The yearning is palpable in The House of Mirth - but it’s not really a yearning for love, although that is an aspect of the book. Far more important is protagonist Lily Bart’s yearning for something she doesn’t even have the words to define: The right to selfhood. The right to work. The right to own her own money. The right to live alone. The right to speak to and associate with whom she chooses. The right to have an undefined and unbounded relationship.

Over history, patriarchy very carefully constructed a legal, financial, medical, societal cage for women to prevent us from having any of the above, or any agency at all. Feminists worked for centuries to free women from those shackles, which MAGA, tech bro misogynists, and high-control religions are now deliberately and viciously trying to reconstruct and force us back into. Some people misidentify that as nostalgia, when what it is - is criminal oppression.

Identifying the yearning with words is first. But fighting like hell against our would-be oppressors is paramount.

The House of Mirth reminds me of the stakes.

Whistler, by Ann Patchett

Patchett’s Bel Canto is one of my favorite novels of all time, and even more relevant to the spirit of Saudades than Whistler. But Whistler was my latest read, and fiercely expresses longing and nostalgia.

There are some mild SPOILERS here.

This story of a fifty-something woman who reconnects with the man who was briefly her stepfather exists on two timelines. One is the timeline of memory, in which nine-year old Daphne experiences a forever bond with her mother’s new second husband, the ebullient and charming Eddie Kaspbrak, just before he disappears from her life and she suppresses most memories of him - not because of cruelty or abuse, but because it’s so painful to be without him.

The second timeline is the present, in which Daphne and Eddie re-establish the mutual bond, and come to understand why Eddie dropped out of her life.

I saw someone post disingenuously on Substack that it was nice to read a “non-political” novel. Sure. Any book whose main characters are an English teacher and a gay man wears its politics clearly on its sleeve. There is just one party advocating and implementing book banning, with books about LGBTQ+ characters specifically and rabidly targeted.

There are plenty of memorable quotes about love in this book, but this one from Eddie says it all.

“People have no understanding of how love works.”

That’s true, but Whistler does a fine job of depicting it.

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

I confess, while I fully intend to read the book and started it a while ago, I’ve lost it somewhere in the house (you know you have black holes in your house, too!). So I skipped ahead to watch the movie, which I almost never do, but you know… Ryan Gosling.

Protagonist Ryland Grace is not just far from his home country; he’s light years away from his home planet. There’s plenty of nostalgia for Earth, but more importantly, a longing for home and companionship that he never experienced on Earth. (See Eddie’s quote above.) SPOILER - he finds it.

I was completely enchanted from start to finish, as a film writer, novelist, and human being.

Now I get to read the book and watch the movie again, can’t wait! I’ve already written a bit about it for my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors Substack this week.

Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin

Finally, I am reading James Baldwin’s classic for the first time, so I’m not going to spoil it for myself! But I always love living in Baldwin’s poetic prose, and I relate so vividly to his wandering and search not just for love, but for a more just and reasonable home country.

It feels like a perfect holiday novel for me right now. I’ll update this post with a real review when I’ve finished.

And my fifth book for the month? I’m counting on you Bookstackers to come up with one or ten for me!

Can’t wait to read people’s lists.

-Alex

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

Subscribe now

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

If you’re a writer, come on over to Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and write A Book By the End of the Year!

The Grapevine is out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited!)

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

All six Huntress books free on Kindle Unlimited:

I do love an excellent meal —both what Craig cooks regularly (thank you, Universe), and in a good restaurant. I always love experiencing the food of other countries that we travel to. But I’m just as happy with, for example, a simple meal of the incredible dark sweet rye bread with butter we recently encountered in Helsinki.

All kinds of things go into my food issues. A lifetime of dancing. Living and working in LA, in the film industry, possibly the most anorexic city and business on the planet. Having lots of actor friends who don’t eat, either. The fact that I made a deliberate choice a long time ago not to participate in activities that are used by the patriarchy to oppress women (cooking, makeup, salons, Ozempic, etc). Yes, I am aware that eating disorders are also connected to patriarchal oppression, but let’s face it - they get you one way or another, don’t they?

Anyway, all that to say that trying to come up with any books at all that include food in a meaningful way is difficult.

However…

The Nicci French thrillers, by Nicci Gerard & Sean French

I do notice food in the Nicci French books because Nicci and Sean use food as part of the tapestry of sensuality that is so much a part of their writing style. Some of their characters cook elaborately, some don’t — but the sensuality of food, the smells, the colors, the textures, the preparation, are part of just about every book they’ve written, and it’s a trick that contributes to the immersiveness of their crime and psychological suspense novels, all which I own and re-read regularly.

The Little House books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Maybe these occur to me because I was checking out the new TV series adaptation this week. But food was extremely memorable in those books because it was a near-daily struggle both to find it and to make it palatable. That focus was a huge factor in the absolute reality of those books. Who can forget the wheat grinding in The Long Winter, or the ginger water scene, or Ma’s blackbird pie or Laura’s first experience with the overwhelming sweetness of a store-bought cake?

I guess here is the place to mention my thoughts on the TV series. It’s not terrible - which I kind of expected it to be. I appreciate the inclusiveness of it at the same time that I am uncomfortable with the obvious lie of that inclusiveness. The real-life Ingalls were no friends to the Osage, nor to Black pioneers. If kids are watching the series, I support showing the ideal - and there is one Osage staff writer and several Osage consultants on the series. But no Black writers. And I haven’t seen enough of the series to know how it handles the forced relocation of the tribes.

Beyond those key issues, the series is too cottage-core for me and the white characters (except for one French actor) are so strangely soft-spoken it feels like they’re all on Valium. But it is beautiful to watch while I’m doing something else and 11-year-old Alice Halsey is doing an impressive job of carrying the show as Laura. Altogether it feels like a sort of dream retelling of the books - recognizable scenes pop up in a flow of something that is more vibe than story.

Monk and Robot, by Becky Chambers

My in-person book club read the first Monk and Robot book, by Becky Chambers, this month and the focus on the sensuality and comfort of tea (as a both noun and a verb) was a big part of the experience.

Once again I credit the book club for introducing me to a book I would never have picked up on my own, and this one was a good introduction to a new-to-me subgenre: Solarpunk (or Cozy Sci-fi). I won’t be seeking out other books like it - this one is the length of a novella and I was impatient with the pace within 30 pages. But the writing is beautiful, it ties in pretty synchronistically to my van life research for both books I’m writing at the moment, and I understand its appeal in an online, internet/AI dominated world.

Also, I really applaud Chambers for envisioning a future in which humans have committed to and successfully implemented a low-tech and contemplative way of life, harmonious with nature and with each other. In this future, people are kind.

Whereas the vast majority of post-apocalyptic novels are written by men and overwhelmingly they’re violent male fantasies featuring rape and enslavement of women.

Let’s work toward the future WE want.

Food-centric TV

Finally, I need to mention on this month’s topic that, weirdly, two of my favorite TV series/movies of the last five years are ALL about food and the restaurant business: The Bear and Boiling Point. The idea of working in a restaurant is a complete non-starter to me, but I find those shows mesmerizing and almost unbearable in their dramatic tension. Do you realize how good the writing and execution of those shows have to be for me to be invested in the outcome? We’re in the middle of a fascist coup! This is just freaking food!

But the writing and execution really are that good. Both are five star watches.

Okay, enough food for me. Back to female rage.

But I would love to hear if you have a favorite foodcentric book.

Leave a comment

I’ve started collecting my book reviews here.

• Book Review page - (under construction)

If you’re a writer, come on over to Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and write A Book By the End of the Year!

If you’re a Bookstacker, I’ve written a post about How We Started a Book Festival by Accident. It might not be something on your bookish bucket list, but it wasn’t on mine, either! No harm in thinking about it, is there?

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

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Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited!)

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All six Huntress books free on Kindle Unlimited.

Summer is book festival season, and this week is always one of the true highlights of our year.

The Bute Noir Crime Writing Festival takes place the first weekend of August on the beautiful Isle of Bute off the Scottish coast. Getting there feels like journeying into a fairy tale.

Running a book festival was not on my list of author goals, or Craig’s either! And yet it’s become one of the most magical (if often fraught!) elements of our author lives. For ten years we’ve been throwing a yearly party for our author and reader community on a fairy-tale gorgeous Scottish island.

That’s the way the Universe works, though. Excuse me while I go full Californian on your now… but I did make a written list of what I wanted as the experience of my life (and if you haven’t, I highly recommend doing the same). I did have intentions for exhilarating, inspiring, adventures in gorgeous places, with passionately creative people. Which may just be the definition of a book festival!

I have that throughout the year at the various festivals we attend as crime authors. But Bute Noir really is special, from the train station to the ferry to the first sight of the town of Rothesay. I love first-time attendees’ raptures over the setting! And then the fun really starts.

But in the beginning, we were tricked into it by a canny group of Scottish islanders…

I know that some of you out there in the Bookstack community have your own book festival inside you. So I’ve written more about the festival here:

• Bute Noir: How we started a book festival by accident

Front steps of the Glenburn Hotel, Rothesay

And I’ve written about the places and faces of two more of our regular festivals here:

• An American in Harrogate

• Bouchercon (more writer-oriented!)

But that’s barely scratching the surface of July. Hard to believe we packed this much into one month!

We survived our epic RV road tour for our just-released road trip thriller The Grapevine — met fabulous nomads, readers, booksellers and law enforcement all over California and learned reams about the real experience of RVing that is informing Book 2.

Did I mention we survived? Looking back, that’s kind of a miracle. We now have such an appreciation for what our intrepid and more than slightly crazy heroine Lou Gomersall experiences on a daily basis.

We’ve already done quite a few posts on the tour (with photos!) which we’re collecting in a new section of this Substack: The Grapevine. This section will also be where you can find bonus material on the book and upcoming books, such as deleted scenes.

And - if you’re subscribed here, you’re automatically entered into a monthly drawing for books, gift cards and other prizes. Congratulations to the month’s winner (not publishing the name until I know that’s ok with them)!

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The Vanishing Road: Lost Highway Book 2

We’ve just turned in a second round of edits on Lost Highway Book 2, which takes our crew up to the Wild West wildernesses of Humboldt County, along with other weird and wonderful California locations:

At Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park

We’ve still got a lot of polishing to do on The Vanishing Road, but we’re also now back to our solo books - mine is Book 7 of the Huntress Moon series, for which I expect to face more MAGA threats and possibly political imprisonment, but that’s the state of the US until we do something about this dystopia in November. Not speaking out is not an option.

All six Huntress books free on Kindle Unlimited.

Are you ready to write that book?

If you’re a writer, I have a whole Screenwriting Tricks for Authors newsletter that goes out weekly - for well over a decade I’ve been showing authors (and beginning writers!) how to write better books using the storytelling tricks of their own favorite movies.

And this is the time of year I encourage people with a book in their heads — or the desire to live with a book in their heads — to DO IT. Start now, follow my prompts, and you’ll have A Book By the End of the Year.

On the travel front, there are more book festivals to come:

Bloody Scotland is up in September (thankfully no travel for that one!) then Bouchercon in Calgary in October, where I’ll be paneling on what I think is the most important topic for authors to be writing and speaking about, now and always — the problem of human evil.

In between those we’ll be going to Spain, Sicily and Malta (photo below) on non-book related adventures. It’s still hard for me to believe that these exotic destinations are now easier for me to get to than LA to San Francisco! Can’t wait,,, and will write about them, with photos of course.

You want to talk books? I love talking books! In my continuing quest to organize this newsletter/Substack, I’ve made a page where I can put my book reviews and links so I - I mean subscribers! - can find them.

• Book Review page - (under construction)

There’s some film, TV and theater in there as well. For example -

I’m working my way through Mad Men again for I think the fourth time. Why would I do that when there is so much new stuff out there to watch? Because it is one of the perfect TV series of all time and there is always another layer to spot.

But especially because of all this zeitgeist about trad wives and all the books cashing in on it without mentioning, never mind condemning, the far right’s plan to make it political reality. It made me want to go back to this far superior depiction of what life was life for women when they were legally and financially forced to live as trad wives.

I am especially interested to track the character arc of Ken Cosgrove, who starts off the series as just one of the pack of slobbering misogynists at the Sterling Cooper agency, but ends up as probably the most evolved man on the series. We could use a whole lot more of that these days.

And how is your summer going? What are you reading/watching/writing? Where are you going? How are you coping?

—Alex

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

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Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited!)

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

All six Huntress thrillers - free on Kindle Unlimited

This book’s writing journey sometimes felt as long and torturous as the drive through the Grapevine pass. There were a thousand arguments, a few hundred heated debates, and at least four “why don’t you just write the f’n book?”s. But on publication day they’d faded like morning mist on the Californian coast and the sun was shining.

Seeing the book live in the wild and all over social media was joyous. Thanks to everyone who made this happen!

Alex began the celebrations by making a California, road-life, soul connection with Madeleine, the store manager at Flying Flags RV Park, the upscale site we were staying at on Avila Beach. It resulted in Madeleine calling her manager to order books for the site and promising to sell the hell out of them to her customers.

After that, we did a big round of social media, said goodbye to Boris and set out on a two and a half hour, 150-mile drive to our next stop, a scheduled book signing at Lynnette Smick’s fabulous witchy bookstore Untamed Fire in Sand City. Halfway there, ploughing our way up the 101, an email from our film manager threatened to change our plans. She wanted to know if we were still in town (ie Los Angeles) and available for a meeting with several TV producers. The thought of turning the RV around and doing all that drive again was not exactly appealing, but the meeting definitely was. We hastily made plans to ask someone if they knew the way to San Jose and fly from there to LA and back the same day. After a round of emails, better sense prevailed and a zoom meeting was planned instead. Exciting!

Staying on plan meant we could hit our signing at Untamed Fire, which is everything a California metaphysical story should be. After a great chat with Lynnette and her customers (one very experienced RVer who had some excellent pro tips!), we floated out on the good vibes and got back on the road, driving another hour on the coast road to Santa Cruz, our final stop of the day at Pleasure Point RV Park. We hooked up, called an Uber and headed to Capitola Beach to celebrate publication day with food and fizz at an outside table looking over the ocean and a handful of kids surfing a sand hill on the beach. California, man!

After that – and proving that one margarita isn’t enough and two is too many – sleep came easy.

Lynette at Untamed Fire will ship signed copies of The Grapevine to US locations!

Address: 490 Orange Ave Unit D, Sand City, CA 93955

Phone: (831) 582-1724

Craig has a Substack now!

The Grapevine is out now in hardcover and e book versions - audiobook to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon

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Catch up on Days 1 & 2:

Alexandra Sokoloff's Writing Life

Tales From The Road: Days 1 & 2

Craig takes over to give his journalistic take on our trip…

Read more

4 months ago · 7 likes · 7 comments · Alexandra Sokoloff and Craig Robertson

Photos by Siegrid Rickenbach:

But we had work to do that night – we needed to hit the bars (and of course the Barnes & Noble!) on Higuera Street, San Luis Obispo.

Why would we need to do that when we’ve already written the scenes set there and the book would be out the very next day? Because one of our missions for this road trip was to bring these locations to readers - and anyone else who might be interested in these iconic but largely off-the-radar California settings.

San Luis Obispo, or SLO, or just “Slow” – dates from 1772 and is halfway between LA and San Francisco, a “Spanish” mission town – meaning built on the backs of Native Americans enslaved by the Catholic padres. It is part of the California Missions Trail, and a whole lot of California schoolkids have visited it as part of the “Let’s go see all 21 missions this summer!” road trip that educationally-minded parents like mine subjected – I mean treated – us to.

It’s also known as a hell of a party town, thanks a lot to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (my Huntress Moon hero FBI agent Matthew Roarke’s alma mater). Higuera Street was quiet (on a Monday night, after students had left for the summer) but we had no trouble imagining it on a packed Saturday night, where a college girl could disappear without anyone noticing…

The Spanish architecture is gorgeous, the towering, fairy-lit ficus trees create a stunning canopy over the pedestrian-friendly downtown, the boutiques are arty, funky and fabulous, and the bars are themed –and many of them have back decks overlooking a sylvan creek.

It is a visual kaleidoscope and we took so many photos there I don’t know where to start, but hopefully these will give you enough of a taste to put it on your list, if you ever take that California trip.

We were taken around by local longtime friends for a perfect night out – and we truly hope we’ve done the experience justice in the book!

We returned to Flying Flags for a dreamy night’s sleep lulled by the Pacific Ocean.

Well, we would have been lulled if not for this guy, who started yelping when we were on the pier for lunch…

And proceeded to yelp all night long. Avila Bay apparently is a natural sound conductor and I’m sure they could hear Boris all the way down to the Mexico border.

But you know what? There are worse things than being serenaded by a sea lion.

All part of the RV adventure.

— Alex

The Grapevine is out in hardcover and e book versions - audiobook to come in September, and paperback soon!

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Craig Robertson and I have a fantastic life in Scotland, but one of our absolute favorite aspects of our life is our proximity to and relationship with this island:

The Isle of Bute lies along the coast, and getting there feels like journeying into a fairy tale— but in practical reality it’s just a forty minute train ride from Glasgow to Wemyss Bay and then a half hour on the ferry - one of my favorite parts of the weekend! We often spot dolphins and seals on the short cruise.

The main town of Rothesay is centered around the 13th-century ruins of Rothesay Castle, unique in Scotland for its circular plan;

Rothesay is one of those Victorian beach towns that used to be THE place for city dwellers to escape to in the summer (they called it going “Doon the Watter”), before cheap air travel made European destinations more accessible. Although now that Europe is roasting in the summer, these closer and cooler local beach towns are enjoying a revival.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to wake up to this? (View from Glenburn Hotel).

We love a weekend or midweek getaway, where we can enjoy some wonderful beaches…

… along with a historic manor (Mount Stuart) with the most stunning marble work I’ve ever seen in a private home; a fabulously eclectic museum; regular musical events and festivals; antique shopping; a hopping library; and a powerhouse indie bookstore - Print Point.

So one weekend Craig and I were on the island doing a joint author talk at the library and Craig talked about the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival of which he is one of the organizers, and we talked about some of the other crime book festivals we’d been to recently. After our event, the bookstore owner, museum curator and librarian came up to us, radiating all the triple goddess power of Macbeth’s witches, and said, “You should start a book festival here!”

Craig barely has time to write around all the other book and non-book activities in our lives, so we laughed nervously and moved on to other, safer subjects.

We spent a lovely night in one of the sea view Victorian hotels, and when we went to breakfast, a strange thing started happening. Everyone we met in the hotel was stopping us, saying variations of “We’re so excited about the book festival! It’s just what the island needs!”

While we were obliviously sleeping, the Macbeth witches had planned it all out. There really is a perfect vortex for a book festival in Rothesay: a strongly established library and bookstore with their own mailing lists for events, a museum with a gorgeous event space, as well as rooms at the library and the bookstore for events.

All they needed was an experienced festival organizer with author contacts. And oh, did they have Craig pegged as one of those men who can’t say no. I mean, we did say no, repeatedly, especially when bookstore owner Karen kept pressing for a festival launch in two freaking months.

But they’d already spread the word through the lightning fast island grapevine and now they and the rest of the island were acting as if it was a done deal.

And we do know a LOT of great authors, who as it turned out were very happy to hop over to a gorgeous seaside resort town on the spur of the moment to talk about their books.

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And through the power of positive thinking and a little witchcraft, the Bute Noir Crime Festival has been running every August (except during lockdown) ever since, growing bigger and better funded every year.

Our venues have gotten bigger and bigger, with authors and most events now centralized at the historic Glenburn Hotel (not like the Overlook in The Shining at all…)

And all those days when I could’ve strangled Craig with my bare hands for staying up all night writing grant proposals and funding requests instead of working on our book?

This month I got a huge reminder why he does it, why we all do it —and why it matters.

The Isle of Bute has been shortlisted for the brand new designation of UK Town of Culture in 2028, one of the last 15 of 400 nominated towns across the UK.

Bute Noir was specifically named as a festival that’s raised the island’s cultural profile over the last ten years, along with the other fabulous music and art festivals, events and cultural spaces (like the wonderful Bute Museum!) on the island.

One of the reasons Bute Noir keeps getting funded year after year is its mission to bring a passion for reading and literacy to an area outside the major cities.

And even though we were dragged into it kicking and screaming - when you think about it, who wouldn’t want to throw a yearly bookish party for author friends and extended reader and book family?

August 7-9 promises to be another fabulous weekend at the Glenburn Hotel, and we can’t wait to see you all there. It would be a crime to miss it.

• Join the Bute Noir mailing list

Get your tickets from Print Point: 01700 503389.

—Alex

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

Subscribe now

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited!)

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

Festivals are a staple of an author’s summer: for us, there’s Harrogate in July, Bute Noir in August, Bloody Scotland in September, Bouchercon in later fall - this year in Calgary in October.

I’m a big fan of book and writing festivals and conferences - I think they’re essential business for an author, as I’ve written about here - incredibly inspirational, and as much fun as they are useful. So I’m reposting an old blog about my early impressions of Harrogate.

Harrogate is a lovely little Georgian-era spa town with elegant stone mansions and Victorian gingerbread flourishes, gorgeous flowering gardens and ubiquitous hanging flower baskets, hilly cobbled streets lined with restaurants, pubs, and even more mouth-watering boutiques.

And there are a huge number of bath houses. The respectable kind, at least so it seems from the outside of them. I do love a Turkish bath!

At one of my first Harrogates I wrote up some of the differences between US and UK festivals/conferences:

1. US: The host cities and hotel venues often change conference by conference (there are exceptions, like Thrillerfest and Malice Domestic).

UK: Harrogate is permanently in the Old Swan in Harrogate.

2. US: Except for a few headliners, authors generally pay to go to U.S. cons, and most authors who pay their conference fees on time are given a panel spot, which means there are a lot more panels on and the quality of those panels varies wildly.

UK: Authors are invited to panels by a programming committee, and they are paid both for the panel and for travel and accommodations. Obviously I’m in favor of this “authors are paid to appear” thing.

Are the UK panels better for being curated? Sometimes yes, sometimes absolutely not. A panel very much depends on what the moderator (the “chair” in the UK) brings to the table, and there are just as many bad ones on the curated panels as on the more random US ones. It’s important for authors to bring the energy to every panel they’re on and to not be shy about steering the panel if the moderator is not getting the job done, which happens much more frequently than it should.

3. US: Conference attendees pay for either day passes or a full conference pass and then can attend as many panels/events on that day or days as they can handle.

UK: attendees pay for individual tickets to events of their choosing. So you can choose what you attend and how much you want to spend.

4. US: There are lots of panels on at any given hour and people tend to panel-hop, and it’s perfectly acceptable to move in and out of panels, which is kind of great.

UK: There’s usually only one event going on in the one huge double room, capacity about 500 people. (Since COVID it’s been moved to a big event tent outdoors, which means there is far less chance of attendees passing out from the heat). So you can conceivably see the entire program, and the conversation in between events tends to be focused on one event, which is also kind of great.

More specifically about Harrogate:

5. The Old Swan is really quite small compared to big US downtown hotel venues, and the event hall and the bar and the lawn area (which hosts a bar tent and a signing/bookstore tent) are all right up against each other, so despite the impressive 15,000 tickets sold for various events over the weekend, it feels like you’re at one four-day long party of about 400 people.

7. There is a quiz, traditionally hosted by the always hilarious Val McDermid and Mark Billingham. But the questions are really, really hard, and to put it in British-speak, I am rubbish at quizzes, so I avoid it like hell.

8. Last year it rained constantly. Really, really wet. I’m told more often there are sunny days everyone spends lounging out on the expansive hotel lawn. This year we got what I think of as beach weather – alternating pleasantly windy and cool/ pleasantly windy and sunny, and humid, but not muggy. It only rained in the early morning, which meant I missed it.

9. There is more drinking.. I wouldn’t say much, much, MUCH more, but still, it felt like more. But I always feel like a lightweight in a UK drinking crowd. I’m usually up for anything from two a.m. karaoke (Anchorage Bouchercon) to after-midnight absinthe (Romantic Times New Orleans) to drag queen bingo night (Thrillerfest) to a hike through Mayan pyramids on a blazing Caribbean day (Florida Romance Writers’ Cruise With Your Muse), or dressing up as God knows what at Writers for New Orleans or Romantic Times, or a midnight Jacuzzi party (any number of cons in every genre) but after five straight weeks of traveling and accompanying jet lag I was in bed by a reasonable 1:30 a.m. both nights, therefore blissfully unhungover in the mornings.

But it could very well be that the lack of sleep and the overabundance of alcohol combine to create a highly suggestive state that makes you absolutely convinced that the panelists are speaking directly to you, advising you on plot problems and career dilemmas. However the hell it works, the bottom line is it works. I woke up on Sunday morning, reached for my notebook without really opening my eyes, and wrote ten pages on where the story was actually going rather than where I thought it was going.

10. There were no bloody battles between indie published authors and traditionally published authors (that I saw) and I had a very civilized conversation with a Big Five publisher who shall remain nameless, but who was open to hearing about why so many authors I know are happier with the way Amazon treats them. I hope all of this enmity is on its way to dissipating, because the important thing is that authors now have all kinds of ways to make enough money to keep writing great books.

11. In the UK, they call the readers “punters,” which I know is affectionate… (she says hopefully) but which I still find a little shocking. (I have a mouth like the Berkeley hippie child I am, but Brits can outswear me by ten words per sentence.) We’re all readers, aren’t we? Isn’t that the point?

12. Some things are exactly the same. Friday night was the publisher dinners, and I had a fabulous time at the White Hart meeting my new Thomas & Mercer colleagues: authors Helen Smith, Jay Stringer, Louise Voss, Mark Edwards, EM Powell, Mel Sherratt, and Daniel Pembry, and our charming T&M hosts Emilie Marmeur, Sana Chebaro and Neil Hart.

13. The main reason I didn’t make it to many events was that I knew a lot more people than I expected to, not just Americans like author Laura Lippman and editor Kelly Ragland – but quite a few British authors and readers I know as regulars to Bouchercons and Thrillerfests and World Fantasies and World Horror Cons, like Sarah Pinborough, David Hewson, Martyn Waites, Mark Billingham, Stuart Neville, Kevin Wignall, Simon Kernick and Russel McLean. We Americans should really be ashamed that the Brits are so much more willing to travel to the U.S. festivals.

I also realize I’ve met a fair number of terrific UK writers and readers and bloggers during my not very long residence in Scotland, like Helen Fitzgerald and Sergio Casci, Julia Crouch, James Oswald, Chris Carter, Mari Hannah, Rhian Davies, Danny Stewart, Lisa Gray. And I met a whole slew of wonderful new people who are now part of the ever-growing and forever circle of conference friends.

14. I’ve come away every bit as fired up to write as I am after any U.S. conference. I woke up this morning and wrote five pages without even getting out of bed. Magic is magic, in any accent.

Next up: Bloody Scotland. And I can’t wait to see people again there!

- Alex

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

Subscribe now

Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

When I was a screenwriter I was hired for a lot of book adaptations, and examining a story through the lens of a different medium became a sort of addiction that I’ve never moved past. There is very little in life that I love more than to read a book and then experience it as a film, TV series, play — all of the above if available!

Now we’re having conversations with TV producers about our new road trip thriller The Grapevine — and as always it’s extraordinarily revealing to have professionals from that medium look at our book through a filmic lens, so to speak. It opens up the world of the book immediately and puts it into a multidimensional, cinematic universe that will inform all the books that come after.

Craig & I are lucky to have that opportunity — but ALL of us writers can make a regular practice of looking at a story across different media, and the expansion of our writing will be profound. It’s a wonderfully immersive thing for readers to do as well!

So I’m including film, TV and play adaptions of classic books today.

I thought it would be hard to limit myself to five choices, but as it turns out there are five obvious ones for me to concentrate on. (Okay, maybe a few more than five.) (Okay, I may have to do a follow up some time!)

Bright Young Women - book (& I’d love to see a film or TV adaptation!)

How is this classics-related? Because of how society has elevated some serial killers to mythic status. There is a whole freaking canon of true crime, film and television adaptations, fictional depictions, podcasts, etc. about the specific serial killer this book concerns. Author Jessica Knoll tells a story of the devastation left by this prolific, decidedly not brilliant psychopath we all know of. She refuses to use his name in the book and I will not name him either, because he doesn’t deserve naming. Instead, Knoll focuses on several survivors and victims and tells this story most of us are quite familiar with — from their empowered and intelligent points of view. The women take the story away from the predators (plural, because of course there is never just one).

I wrote the six books of my Huntress Moon series for this exact reason of wresting the narrative away from male predators and focusing on women who fight back and men who understand and aid the fight. My loathing for the popular trope of the “genius” or “artistic” pattern serial killer (completely fictional, patently ridiculous) knows no bounds.

So I am 100% there for it when women authors and filmmakers take hold of narratives that victimize us, and this book does it particularly masterfully.

I wouldn’t call it a thriller but it is crime fiction at its finest. It is what a crime novel should be.

Hamnet - book and film

It’s hard for me to adequately convey my dislike for the book - because it exploits Shakespeare’s name and fame - without having any Shakespeare in it. O’Farrell is a fine writer, but this book is such a crassly commercial ploy I am disgusted with myself for having bought the thing. I would happily have paid for a book about a practical witch of Shakespeare’s time without the hollow pretense that she is married to Shakespeare. Even then, the second half of the book disintegrating into a repetitive, unending abyss of grief with no action would’ve prevented me from finishing it.

HOWEVER.

The film adaptation is far superior, because obviously someone — Sam Mendes, Chloe Zhao, Steven Spielberg, or all three of them in concert — sat the author down and said, “Look, sweetie, great book, love it, but you cannot have a book or a film called Hamnet with Shakespeare as a main character WITHOUT HAVING ANY SHAKESPEARE IN IT. So let’s get to work.”

Somebody there, and I bet it was all three of them, actually understood the assignment.

And somebody there also took the book’s dud of a climax and transformed it into one of the greatest visually thematic Setpieces I’ve ever seen on film.

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That climax is far and away the best thing about the movie. I sobbed all the way through that scene, and I’m not a crier. The rest of the film, while worlds better than the book, isn’t exactly riveting. I would watch Jessie Buckley read the phone book, and of course she’s wonderful. Paul Mescal is really extraordinary. Still, even with that ending, I have a feeling there’s not enough to the rest of the movie for it to stand the test of time.

Wuthering Heights - 2026 film and novel

I’m a big fan of Emerald Ferrell and I finally got around to seeing this new movie of hers - by far her weakest work. I’m on the “this is not Wuthering Heights” side of the fence. If you are interested in this film you’ve probably heard most of what I can say about it - Margot Robbie is no teenager; Jacob Elordi is very white and very, very dull (surprisingly, because he’s usually a very good actor and much hotter); the sex is just embarrassing; the kids are by far the best thing about it.

Somebody said it’s a movie to have on while you’re scrolling through TikTok, which is about as brutally true as it gets.

HOWEVER.

Every version of Wuthering Heights does add in some way to the meta of the story, and this is no exception.

AND -

It did make me reread the book, which is quite an experience. I first read it so long ago that I wasn’t reading for structure, which now I can’t help myself doing, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a stunning and precise example of the Three-Act (but really FOUR Act) Structure or such splendid, devastating Act Climaxes. Each one just goes on and on, one depravity after another. There are so many dimensions to this book - but discovering that structural precision floored me.

My Screenwriting Tricks for Authors post this week is about recognizing and writing Act Climaxes to elevate your writing —and if you’re a fan of Wuthering Heights it would be a fantastic example to look at. I don’t usually use books to illustrate Act Climaxes because far more people are familiar with movie examples. But I would make an exception and break down the climaxes of Wuthering Heights if there was enough interest! Or possibly this is wildly exciting only to me.

But I guarantee those climaxes are a big reason this novel has been adapted for film and TV upward of three dozen times. That is what you call intellectual property!

While we’re on the subject of the Brontës, I must mention that the National Theatre production of Jane Eyre, directed by Sally Cookson, is one of the best theatrical adaptations I’ve seen of anything, ever, and you can see the haunting televised version on their National Theatre at Home channel.

And here’s some more theater:

John Proctor is the Villain

I missed the Broadway production, am impatiently waiting for it to come to London in Feb. 2027. But I love reading plays and this one is a cracker. Another one about women (the playwright, Kimberly Belflower) and teenage girls (the characters) taking the narrative back from the men!

A group of teenagers in a small Southern town are assigned The Crucible for English Lit and find life imitating and then transcending art. Of course John Proctor is the villain! It’s a brilliant premise and an electrifying play.

You can watch the uniquely powerful final scene on YouTube - but I really recommend reading it first - you can get the play script on Scribd with a free trial subscription.

Sense and Sensibility

The Emma Thompson-written, Ang Lee-directed film adaptation is my favorite of all the Austen adaptations and that’s saying a lot. It’s also a superb teaching film that I often use in my workshops, so I had to include a story breakdown for my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors subscribers - which Bookstackers might also find interesting for all kinds of reasons.

I recently read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility back-to-back in the same week and it really was remarkable to see the stylistic leap of P & P, just a few years after S & S. I feel Emma Thompson’s screenplay liberated the text and action of the book in much the same way Austen would’ve herself - if she’d written S & S after the narrative advances she’d made with P & P.

• Breakdown on Screenwriting Tricks for Authors.

I always love to hear - what’s your favorite film or TV adaptation of Austen?

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The Odyssey

Finally, this is one I fully intended to reread for this month’s Five on 5, but our own Odyssey (The Grapevine RV book tour) has sucked up all my attention and energy for the last few weeks! I will read it, though, not just because of Christopher Nolan’s film coming out soon but also because it’s the perfect chance to read the 2017 translation by Emily Wilson. Dr Wilson was the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English - and she found that many men before her had added their own sexist terms and whitewashed the misogyny of the domestic structure of the book. Knock me over with a feather…

So Wilson - right! - took back the narrative.

Will be reading soon.

Can’t wait to read all the other Five on 5s! What were your favorite reads of the month?

—Alex

I’ve turned on paid subscriptions because apparently it helps with the algorithm, but please subscribe for free, and buy one of my books if you’d like to support my cats. I mean my writing. Most of my books are also free on Kindle Unlimited!

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Newsletters are emailed monthly-ish; I post online more often. Newsletter subscribers are automatically entered in a monthly drawing for free books, gift cards and other prizes.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book, and Audible: more audiobook versions to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

The bathroom was mysteriously locked, thankfully with no one inside it, but still not exactly convenient. Not only that, but the power was off despite the RV being hooked up to shore power. It took some time, but we finally figured out the culprit for both was a sizeable earthquake north of San Francisco. It had shaken the RV enough to jam the door lock and trigger the circuit breakers. Thankfully no other damage had been done, and no one had been hurt. Inevitably, the quake had wakened Alex and Craig slept through it.

The whole palaver of fixing things set us back though, and the clock was ticking. Day three had been publication day so very much a big deal. Day four however was centred around something bigger – Scotland v Brazil. It was Craig’s only red line in the schedule. Bookshops and booksellers were secondary to him being in front of a television, preferably in a bar, by 3 in the afternoon in Half Moon Bay, just a 50 mile drive up Big Sur.

First, we had plans to see redwoods as part of research for book two in the series. We headed to Cathedral Redwoods high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a twisting climb that did nothing for my pre-match nerves. The trees were magnificent though; towering giants reaching for the sun, surrounded by springy trampolines of fallen branches.

Back on the road, we followed the coast north to Half Moon Bay. The drive was spectacular with plunging cliffs, crashing waves and golden sandy beaches. Time was short but the urge to pull over and take photographs was irresistible. The view was fabulous and it came with a bonus shot of a few hundred pelicans huddled together at the ocean’s edge a quarter mile or so back down the road. These incredible creatures are a staple of the Californian coast and seeing them take to the air is a joy.

Our two night home in Half Moon Bay is another fantastic, right on the beach location, with the charming, funky coastal town just a ten minute sea view walk away.

So anyway, yes we got there in time for the Scotland match. Let’s not talk about it. Ever again.

Craig has a Substack now!

The Grapevine is out in hardcover and e book versions and on Audible.

Audiobook on all platforms in September, and paperback soon!

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• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

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Craig takes over to give his journalistic take on our trip!

DAY ONE:

The premise was simple. Our road trip thriller, The Grapevine, is about a mom driving across California in the family RV in search of her missing teenage daughter. So we’d do the same, except for the missing daughter bit, and instead we’d visit bookshops to promote the novel and the places featured in it.

Our route would take us from SoCal to NoCal, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and it began in a parking lot 15 minutes from the airport. That was where we were to be united with our companion for the week, a 26-feet Class C motorhome.

It was big. Like too big to drive and not big enough to live in. But we were going to have to do both whether we liked it or not.

The staff member at Roadsurfers ran through a host of instructions on filling up with water, hooking up to shore power, using the generator, how not to drain the battery and a host of other things that I didn’t listen to but nodded at what was hopefully the appropriate times. All I could think of was steering 5 tonnes of metal on the wrong side of the road.

Taking a deep breath (a phrase I really have to learn to use less often when writing), I edged the RV into the LA traffic and hoped for the best. Or, at the very least, not the worst.

I was immediately aware of taking up the entire lane with the width of the rig, leaving little room for manoeuvre or error. However the lane wasn’t going to get any wider and the RV wasn’t going to get any smaller, so all I could was keep the thing between the lines.

First stop was Pages in Manhattan Beach, just 15 minutes from the airport and a nice, easy test run for what lay ahead. That was the plan. Manhattan’s narrow streets and even narrower parking bays proved to be a nightmare. Sorry, Pages: A Bookstore, maybe next time. It wasn’t you, it was us.

Instead, we got on the 405 north, the busiest highway in California (and therefore quite possibly the world) and headed, painstakingly slowly towards Santa Clarita. The slow pace might have been a bonus but for everyone else’s impatience and cars diving into the lane wasn’t what I needed. Let’s just say some people were treated to a few Scottish phrases they hadn’t heard before.

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In Santa Clarita, we achieved a bookstore visit by taking up two spaces in the parking lot. The store manager was happy to see us and we left Raquele a copy of The Grapevine to encourage them to spread the word. Suitably encouraged we pressed on north to Castaic Lake which plays a prominent role in the book, falling into the category of I Could Tell You But I’d Have To Kill You.

Next stop, the Grapevine. The 40-mile stretch of undulating hills and killer turns that give our book its name. We’d driven this road many times, but this one was very different. Partly because of its relation to the novel, but mainly because we drove it in a freaking RV. The traffic was ridiculously bad, the ear-popping climbs and the dizzying dips were hard work, and we got nowhere fast. On a clear day, the heart of Grapevine to LA might take an hour and a half – this time it took five long hours. The first thing you’re supposed to do when you arrive at a campsite is to hook up to water and electricity. The first thing I did was crack open a beer.

It had been a very long and tiring day, seven hours in all since we hit the road, but the pain of that was eased by a stunning desert sunset, the sound of crickets, the appearance of a dazzling meteor scorching through the night sky, and a second beer.

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DAY TWO:

Day two dawned desert hot and blindingly sunny. The drive to Bakersfield was much easier than the tests of the previous day and it took just 40 minutes to get to the Barnes & Noble where booksellers Sandra and Rosie loved that a large chunk of the book was set there and said they’d push it to their customers. Job done, we pushed on to the little town of Buttonwillow for a quick visit before taking the 5 and the 99 towards Avila Beach and San Luis Obispo. It was a 120-mile trip that started easy on quiet roads through oil fields populated by thousands of mini derricks pecking at the earth, but then became an endurance test of steep climbs, nosebleed descents and startling bends.

It turned out to be worth it though as the view from the site on Avila Beach was stunning. We backed in, hooked up, opened a couple of beers (recurring theme) and looked out on the vista that our protagonist Lou did as she parked on the same spot.

From Avila, Lou went into San Luis Obispo to investigate the action on Higuera Street, we so did the same, accompanied by our newly-arrived guides for this part of the adventure Siegrid Richenbach, her brother John and his wife Kim. We toured Bubblegum Alley, marvelled at the giant canopies of the ficus trees, and ticked off bars that Lou visited on the trail of a seemingly sinister predator. We also popped into Barnes & Noble where manager Brian was excited to hear about the book and set up plans to promote it.

It had been another long day, but a rewarding one. We fell asleep to the sounds of crashing waves and the constant attention-seeking of a noisy sea-lion that we’d christened Boris. Life on the road was pretty good after all.

Craig has a Substack now!

The Grapevine is out in hardcover and e book versions - audiobook to come in September, and paperback soon!

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

Subscribe to be entered in multiple book and gift card giveaways!

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We are in LA —but already behind schedule because of closures and strange hours for Father’s Day – fair enough! Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!

Craig is still basking in his Tartan Army experience in Boston – he has so many great stories I’m having trouble wrangling him back onto the same page, so to speak.

In our book, the tiny Southern California town of Grapevine and the 40-mile mountain pass collectively known as The Grapevine is where Lou Gomersall’s teenage daughter Abby was last seen. When I was in college I sometimes felt like I was living on that particular stretch of road between Nor Cal and So Cal, and lots of California readers have already been relating their own I-5 and Grapevine experiences.

So of course we’re starting there!

Read more the Grapevine (book and place) and Abby’s case:

Grapevine, CA

Population: tiny. Unincorporated community in Kern County on Interstate 5. Gateway to the Grapevine —Southern California’s famous freeway through the Tejon Pass to Los Angeles. Notorious for road closures in winter.

Lou’s last stop of the day was the town of Grapevine. Abby’s last known whereabouts. Ground Zero. Even if Lou hadn’t needed to get the new flyers up, the pull of the place was like a magnetic force.

The village of Grapevine itself was not much more than a cluster of travelers and roadside services, surrounded by golden rolling hills, with stretches of empty fields. A peaceful vista, easy on the eyes.

At an elevation of 1,499 feet, the community was located at the foot of a mountainous 40-mile stretch collectively known as the Grapevine; not named, as most people assumed, for its twisting curves, but for the actual grapevines that grew along the original canyon road. According to historians, it was one of the oldest roadside rest stops in California.

Now it was the bottleneck that most California travelers passed through going north to south.

Abby’s credit card records had shown she checked into the Grapevine Inn at 10:05 p.m., presumably because of road condition warnings that had shut the Tejon Pass that evening. She sent no texts, made no phone calls that night. Her phone had not pinged off any cell phone tower since she’d responded to that last text from a friend earlier in the evening on her drive. But she’d been there. The night manager had seen her, briefly. She had not been with anyone. She had not been coerced.

And then there was that last glimpse, the security camera footage of her Corolla driving out of the lot at four a.m.

They didn’t even know which way she had turned back onto the freeway. Did she continue south, or head back up north?

Lou had slept at the Inn at least a dozen times over the last year. Every time hoping that something would turn up, some clue, some witness, some staff recollection. But she kept returning, not just to ask questions. It made her feel close to Abby.

In those first few months, Lou made this drive almost every weekend or spare day off. Needing to be there. She’d worn her own track on the loop around the Los Padres National Forest from Santa Barbara to Grapevine. Two-hours-plus that should’ve taken an hour as the crow flies. But there were no public roads through the immense territory.

It was that forest, named after the Spanish missionary priests who imposed their dubious blessings on California long before it was a state, and these mountains that made the search for Abby so daunting for the police. Los Padres ranged over nearly two million acres. So vast it was divided into a north and south region across multiple counties.

And Abby could be anywhere out there. Anywhere.

The Grapevine is now out in hardcover, e book versions and on Audible- with more audiobook versions and paperback to come. Order here:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

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Yes, Craig & I wrote The Grapevine together and had many conversations about it between ourselves, but those were… “Fraught” is one word. “Bloody” is another. In fact, “conversation” is maybe not as accurate a word as—

Well, never mind that.

But now, even before publication, we are having conversations with early readers, podcasters, authors, librarians, radio hosts, managers, producers.

And every day so many great things are happening, giving us so much to think about and build on.

First, it’s clear that the book works. Everything we wanted to get into it, and get across with it, are all the things that people are saying to us about it, and loving about it. That is so miraculous and humbling.

Stephen King says this perfectly about books - they are telepathy between author and reader. We authors think, see, feel something and put it on the page, and the reader thinks, sees, feels the same thing in their head.

How magical is that??? It is one of the true miracles of human existence.

Of course there will be people who don’t like our book, and that’s fine and to be expected. There are a lot of people these days who don’t like what’s in my head. (Just wait till those people get a load of my next book!)

But we have already achieved something extraordinary: we wrote the book we wanted to write, the one we hoped we were writing — and there is a passionate audience for it.

That is already amazing on an existential level, as in “Why are we here?” and “What is my purpose?”

Beyond that, it means that we have enough of an audience to sustain our writing careers. Which is always pretty life-affirming.

These conversations with readers and the book world are so much a part of that sustenance.

It’s not just our book any more. And the author-reader conversation is especially important with a series. The reviews by, comments from and conversations with readers will shape the next books in the series. People we talk to ask questions that demand answers, in the form of new scenes, characters, subplots, locations. Readers tell us things we didn’t know about our characters and themes, which affect the next books, and inspire the short stories/novellas we’re planning in between book releases.

All this may seem like a faraway dream to writers who are just starting out. Which is why I make myself do these weekly Screenwriting Tricks for Authors newsletters. I know writing and publishing a book and making a writing career is not impossible, and I know the path, and I’m pretty good at helping people make it happen.

I also really, truly get why so many writers here on Substack are looking to serialize their work. It’s very hard to work in the vacuum that writing a book is. And with the rise of AI and the world situation so tenuous right now - mostly because of the horror show that the US has created - why wouldn’t you want to just skip ahead to starting the author-reader conversation RIGHT NOW? There might not be a tomorrow to do it in.

And yeah, I need to talk more about serialization but I’ve realized that deserves a whole post to itself. It’s on the list.

But I did want to say this. There are ways to start that author-reader conversation now — without putting unfinished work out for public consumption. Like these:

• Finding a CRITIQUE GROUP- is essential.

I was a highly paid professional screenwriter when I started writing my first novel (at night, sometimes just five minutes a night, driven by rage…). But I knew I needed feedback to pull off this medium we call books. I acknowledged I was a beginner who needed help. I found a great novel critique group run by another screenwriter-turned-novelist, and I went to that group every week to read my chapters aloud to the group and get that essential feedback about what was working and what wasn’t. Since I’ve been published I’ve had other invaluable critique groups.

And here’s the thing:

• Critiquing other writers’ work is every bit as essential to your writing as you getting their critique of yours.

You need to learn how to solve story problems. When you wrestle with someone else’s story problem, you are developing the priceless skill of how to solve your own.

• Joining a writers’ organization puts you in touch with other writers who can form your critique group.

In the US, Sisters in Crime is a fantastic resource, whether or not you write crime/mystery thrillers, whether or not you identify as female! Join a local chapter and find other committed writers to work with.

Romance Writers of America used to be exceptionally good at teaching the business and craft of writing. No one was more sorry than I was to see that organization implode due to a faction of racists.

I’ve made a note to myself to compile some resources, which I can’t get to before our tour. I would love suggestions in the Comments!

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But you know where else is a good place to find your critique group?

Right here on Substack.

There are so many passionate readers, writers, readers on this platform who are writing books, or thinking of writing a book. Read other writers’ posts. Follow them. Interact with them in their Comments. Find some kindred spirits (yes, I did just reference Anne of Green Gables) and ask them if they want to do a critique group with you.

And read and respond to what readers are writing about books! You need to have those conversations about books that you love, so you can write books that you love, that other people will love, too.

The writer-reader community here is a gift, and an opportunity. Revel in it!

Are you finding your own writer/reader tribe on Substack? Or elsewhere? I’d love to hear about it!

—Alex

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The Grapevine will release on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come.

If you can pre-order, that would be lovely! - you can do that in all formats on various platforms here:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

There’s also a Goodreads giveaway going on - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways by subscribing here:

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If you’re already subscribed, you’re automatically entered.

And if any of you Bookstackers are interested in an ARC of The Grapevine, message me - I’d love to get you a Netgalley invite or Kindle copy.

Lady is a 2006 Class C Lazy Daze. Ford E-450 chassis, 6.8-liter V-10 engine, four 160-amp solar panels on the roof. Twenty-six feet six inches. Front engine, rear wheel drive. Vehicle height ten feet six inches, width eight feet three inches.

Citing vehicle specs is the way people in vanlife greet each other. Like any experienced nomad, Lou can reel them off without thinking.

Her husband Brian grew up in Ventura, living the California dream: surfing, partying, summers spent dawn to dusk on the beach. When Lou met him in grad school, his vehicle was a 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia, a “surfmobile” he called Charlotte. From some of their first dates, Lou and Brian took Charlotte out on the road: beach camping, hiking, skiing, visiting national parks, down to Baja and up to Canada. Brian was a vanlifer long before the hashtag.

They graduated, got married, got hired at U.C. Santa Barbara.

As academics they had the summers off. Camping became part of their family life. They kept Charlotte for a while, but with a double income and a baby, it made sense to upgrade to a small RV, and Lady Luck became their vacation home on wheels.

The kitchen boasts butcher block countertops, a deep sink with a Berkey water filter, a black-and-white real tile backsplash, a small microwave above the sink, embossed copper tiles on the ceiling. The fridge/freezer works on propane with the option of electric.

There’s a pop-out trash can; the spice/coffee/tea drawer and the pots and pans drawer under the fridge both slide out on rollers. Hanging mesh bags hold onions, garlic, fruit, potatoes. A magnetic knife rack corrals some serious Japanese steel. Brian’s the cook, which is just fine with Lou. On her own she makes do with microwave meals more often than not.

The tiny entry hall has storage for shoes, and hooks for coats and keys. Family photos from happier times decorate the walls. The couch/table area is dressed with tribal blankets and pillows, and can fold out into a spare bed; the former above-cab bed is now storage for Lou’s office. The table is handmade, inlaid with different native woods to create a map of California.

The glazed-tile bathroom is kind of a masterpiece: The shower is separate and enclosed, with a sun dome for natural light. There’s a composting toilet, and the black tank is a sizable thirty gallons, so Lou can go a couple of weeks without finding some place to empty it. Partly because - even with a close to ideal bathroom setup, she’s adopted the nomad habit of not using her own toilet if she can help it. Shop for groceries? Use the bathroom. Stop for gas? Use the bathroom. Overnight camping? Use the toilet block.

The rear bedroom/lounge combo is its own room, painted white for light and dressed in purples and dark greens, with a sliding door partition. It can be arranged into a couch and a single bed, two single beds, two couches, or a full bed, and has three large windows.

Linda Yoshi has a great YouTube channel on her adventures in her renovated Lazy Daze

A few years ago, when Abby turned old enough to protest family camping trips, Lou put her foot down, insisting on the relative luxury of AirBnb’s bedrooms, bathrooms, a patio or deck— hell, a hot tub. She pointed out to Brian repeatedly that they weren’t getting any younger and they’d earned it. More to the point, she’d earned it. Abby still occasionally joined Brian in Lady Luck for a surf weekend, and sometimes she took Lady on her own weekends with friends —though mostly Lady languished in the carport.

But when the day came, and it did— six months after Abby went missing and Lou’d spent over twenty grand on hotel and travel bills, chasing leads all over California, Brian looked up from his morning matcha and said gently, “Babe, we can’t keep—”

Lou told him “I can.”

And she led him out to the side drive where the carport sheltered Lady Luck.

Lady pre-empted so much. Lou had been driving her and her previous incarnations for twenty-five years. The learning curve was basically non-existent. She could make and break camp like a pro. She knew California roads, she knew gray water tanks and black water hookups; propane tanks and generators.

And although the money had never been the issue, it was so much easier to make it the issue— instead of acknowledging the much stickier issue of basic sanity.

Laid back was a description invented for Brian. He was good for Lou that way, unfazed by her explosive temperament. But now - laid back was the last thing she needed. And she was secretly afraid of leveling Brian with her rage.

Her rage was all that was keeping her upright.

They’d mutually agreed they needed his teaching income. The truth was it was a relief that he didn’t offer to go on the road with her.

The first time Lou started Lady up and took her out had been like coming home.

It’d been years since she’d been behind the wheel of one of these mammoths, and she’d forgotten the sheer power of piloting six tons of steel, that Don’t-fuck-with-me feeling of barreling down the road, higher than cars, miles flying by, the whole world open to you.

For the first time since Abby vanished, Lou could breathe again.

Because they were going to find her. Lou and Lady, together. They would burn the roads down until they brought their baby home.

There are a lot of songs on our Lost Highway playlist, but this is the one that nails Lou and Lady’s relationship:

“Raw, wrenching, and totally compelling—The Grapevine hooked me from start to end.”

—Ruth Ware, internationally bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10

“Right from the first page, readers will be compelled to follow bull-headed and strangely loveable Lou Gommersall on a one woman (plus 1) quest to solve the mystery of her 19-year-old daughter’s disappearance a year ago…I can’t wait to see what Sokoloff and Robertson have in store for Lou and friends in this fantastic new series that’s packed with psychological thrills and propulsive momentum.”

—firstCLUE

“The plot is compelling, and the scenes involving the RV are particularly suspenseful. Fans of Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls will enjoy this first book in a new series.”

—Booklist

“A California road trip, a missing persons search, and a protagonist full of heart, hope, and sass combine to make for a unique and thrilling mystery. I raced through The Grapevine faster than an RV on the open road. I love Lou Gomersall. She may just be my new favorite series character.”

—Lisa Gray, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Thin Air

————————————————————————————————————

The Grapevine releases on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come. Preorder available now:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

I didn’t catch the theme of this Five on 5 until I’d read my books for the month! But inevitably some of them fit the Fractured Family trope anyway.

#1 - The Story Sisters - Alice Hoffman

I actually was book shopping looking to comfort reread Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic — but got intrigued by the storyline of Hoffman’s The Story Sisters instead – which I’d seen one of you Bookstackers recommend. I started reading… and let me tell you, it was quite the act of will to put it down to do my own writing this week!

The Story Sisters is very obviously influenced by the classic memoir of schizophrenia: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which also centers on a troubled teenager who creates her own seductive internal fantasy world and subsequently suffers mental collapse and institutionalization. Hoffman’s spin on the story includes three sisters, the two younger dominated by their charismatic, dangerously wild sibling. It begins with a horrific inciting incident of abduction and abuse that Elv can only survive by retreating into fantasy. Her mother fails to (refuses to) read any of the signs, and the father abandoned the family long ago, bringing on tragic consequences for all three sisters as Elv pulls them all into her imaginary world.

It’s a contemporary (ish) fairy tale with gorgeous imagery and three distinct sisters who feel completely like real people.

I have always had an obsession with books and film (TV, songs, poetry, plays) about the primal and witchy power of teenage girls: We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Witch, A Wrinkle in Time, The Craft, John Proctor is the Villain, etc . This archetypal feminine energy is the undercurrent of my Huntress Moon books and I’m steeped in it again as I write Book 7 in the series… I feel strongly that this feminine power and rage is rising to a tidal wave in response to the patriarchal takeover of our government.

The Story Sisters now joins that best-of list for me. Mild SPOILERS in this footnote - but please read it if you’re hesitant to pick up the book because of potential triggers. 1

#2 - The Trees - Percival Everett

This month my in-person book club read the Booker Prize-shortlisted The Trees, by the great Percival Everett. Not a fractured family story but close - a fractured nation story — with Everett’s signature blistering condemnation of the US’s still unmitigated racism. Two laconic, seen-it-all Black detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation wrestle with a bizarre serial killing case: racists are being murdered and mutilated in the exact manner that martyred Emmett Till was murdered and mutilated by racists in 1955. Also present at each scene is the abused corpse of a young Black man – a corpse that keeps mysteriously disappearing from the crime scenes.

Is it the ghost of Till? Is it an elaborate, multi-state campaign of vigilante justice? Is it magical realism? The answer is nothing you’ve ever seen before in a book, I bet.

This relatively short, page-turner of a crime novel is satirical and frequently hilarious – which makes the third- act gut punches that much more profound when they come. In one chapter a character writes all the names of known US lynching victims, including massacred Chinese. Pages and pages of the real names of real people. It stops the reader dead, and compels a slow reading of all names. THAT is writing.

I would love to see this story on the screen – Donald Glover (Atlanta) springs instantly to mind to adapt and direct because of the surrealism… then again I’d love to see what the brilliant Ava DuVernay (Selma) would do with it.

An important, immersive book – most highly recommended.

This is my book journal page for the book:

I saw someone had one of these book journals on one of my online book groups and I seized on the idea. And I see Simi Sidhu, our lovely hostess for Five on 5 today, has a free one to download for subscribers… just saying…

This kind of journaling is a natural for me. I’ve used a collage book to illustrate my writing since my early days as a screenwriter — before pitch decks became the thing we called them mood books or look books. It got me plenty of jobs, back in the day!

• How I use a collage book for World Building and Thematic Structure

Sometimes my collage books expand beyond the book, too – Craig and I are working on this board for our upcoming road trip thriller The Grapevine:

• More about The Grapevine

I don’t journal every book I read – that would be insane, not to mention career-ending. But with the ones I do, I’m really benefiting from the handwritten notes I’m taking. It completely activates active reading. And as with any project worth doing, the journal is taking on a life of its own. I think I’m gonna need a bigger book!

#3, 4, 5, 6, 7 - a whole bunch of Trad Wife books

After my bitter, bitter disappointment with Yesteryear, which I wrote about here and here and just about everywhere else, I also read or partially read a slew of other Trad Wife books.

I’ll go back to some of them, but for now - hands down the most suspenseful, most harrowing, most revelatory, most important one of them is -

A Well-Trained Wife: my escape from Christian patriarchy - Tia Levings

You want to talk about fractured families? This riveting and brutally honest memoir exposes how families are being fractured all over the country, but particularly in rural areas and the South. Levings plunges us into the real-life hell that high-control religion imposes on the families in its grip, and how entire systems work to keep wives submissive in the home, children stunted by fear and abuse, and whole families trapped in the poverty of too many children for a single income. Mental illness goes untreated; women are forced to sign contracts permitting their abuse to ensure they have no legal recourse for prosecuting their abusers; and hundreds of thousands of women and children in the US are being denied basic rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - not to mention the joy of a true spiritual life.

This is what the theocratic Heritage Foundation plans for the entire nation, and it’s already made great strides toward making The Handmaid’s Tale a legal reality. Tia Levings had to flee her house with her children to save all their lives.

There is so much to unpack about this book that Bookstacker Elle of Elle Reads Library Books and I are planning a deep dive buddy read. Stay tuned!

I’m really looking forward to all the Bookstack recs today. Please drop more in the Comments! And let me know if you keep a book journal…

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I’m going to get in as much reading as I can before Craig and I hit the road for our Grapevine launch tour. We’re renting an RV and following our slightly crazy heroine Lou Gomersall’s trip around California from the book, as she searches the highways and byways for her missing teenage daughter.

• Read about our book road trip here!

The Grapevine releases on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come. Pre-order available now:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

There’s also a Goodreads giveaway - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways by subscribing here or on our Abby Gomersall is MISSING page.

And if any of you Bookstackers are interested in an ARC of The Grapevine, message me - I’d love to get you a Netgalley invite or Kindle copy.

—Alex

(Cue panic…)

And Craig and I are busy plotting out our road trip book launch!

The Grapevine follows a take-no-prisoners middle-aged protagonist who takes an RV out onto the back roads of California to search for her missing teenage daughter.

So we thought we’d take an RV out on the road and trace her journey all over California. (Needless to say our publishers are thrilled…)

Watch our trip take shape on the Abby Gomersall is MISSING page!

If we’re coming to your California city/town, we’d love to see you!

So once again, I’m about to do that thing I do: the long drive. It’s funny, but I seem to be repeating a childhood pattern (as we all tend to do, right?). Which in my case was the full-out cross-country road trip once a year.

My father was 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 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, then saw more of the world in the Army, then traveled extensively with my Mom, and I never saw him happier than when he was behind the wheel of a car. “King of the Road” is one of our family songs, along with, of course, every version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.”

When he married and started a family he put down roots in California - but my parents were both educators, and at the time my siblings and I were growing up, schools still had those three-month long summer vacations. So like many US families, we spent those long summers on the road, driving all over the country, different routes every year, because Mom & Dad 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 highways, 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 ethereal fields of wildflowers. Geysers and glaciers and grizzly bears - all right, black bears - trying to claw their way into the car.

And while there are other life lessons generally associated with the back seats of cars, I really believe that the back seat was where I learned how to write.

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I don’t think it’s any surprise 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. I also love the synchronicities that abound on a long journey, and I think that’s contributed to the hints of mysticism in my books.

But as everyone knows, road trips aren’t necessarily a thrill a minute. Especially in portions of, say, 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. Like - 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. Now, bizarrely, our government is taking orders from the very government we used to understand was out to destroy us.)

• But what if that car full of CIA agents kidnapped us? What if I was the only one who could get free and had to save the others?

• What if those dinosaurs in Dinosaur World suddenly came to life? (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 “what if?” is the start of every story…

Well, 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 am forever partial to road trip stories, from the classics The Wizard of Oz and On the Road, to my own eerie road-set Huntress Moon thrillers.

I’m eternally grateful for the traveling because it’s made me completely unafraid about jumping in a car or on a plane and going wherever I have to go to research a story. Not just unafraid, but eager for it. Especially writing supernatural thrillers as I did when I started all this writing thing – the PLACE of a ghost story is sometimes the most important part of the whole deal. And I took that sensual sense of place into my crime thrillers. 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. As far as I’m concerned, The Road is a place, with its own rules and mysteries and dangers and synchronicities.

All that traveling also prepared me for the author’s life – although I never would’ve known that going in! I don’t think anyone can possibly realize how much traveling is required of an author: not just the research, but 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, the Public Library Association and American Library Association conferences, Thrillerfest, Malice Domestic, Harrogate, Bloody Scotland – 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 - a “moveable feast.”

And it helps me with dreaded book promotion that I have no problem driving all over the state – any state – to stop in at bookstores and sign stock, like Craig and I are going to be doing all over California for the launch of The Grapevine next month. 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. It don’t deny it will be a bit more of a challenge piloting an RV around! But there’s two of us, and we know California really well, and we’ll make it work.

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 I’ve got it – in spades.

Now it’s your turn. Are you a road tripper? Or was there something else in your childhood that you think prepped you or turned you out as writer?

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An amazing thing I have suddenly discovered about Substack is its potential for collating bonus content. Craig and I are putting together a lot of reels, posts, short videos, etc. for the The Grapevine — and it took me all of twenty minutes to create a section on this author Substack that we can now build as a landing page:

• Abby Gomersall is MISSING

We’ll be running our contests and giveaways there, and collating every post that we make during our book tour at the end of June, so that anyone who wants to follow along with the mystery can go to that central hub (and find clues to win prizes…)

Feel free to have a look - and subscribe if you want to be entered in subsequent drawings.

There’s also a Goodreads giveaway going on - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways on the Abby Gomersall is MISSING page.

And a couple of other plugs…

My feminist crime thriller Huntress Moon, Book 1 in the six (soon to be seven!) book series, is on sale this month from Thomas & Mercer.

• $2.49 to buy on Kindle, last two days!

• But all six in the series continue to be free on Kindle Unlimited

A haunted FBI agent is on the hunt for an elusive woman he believes is responsible for dozens of murders across the US.

And if any of you Bookstackers are interested in an ARC of The Grapevine, message me - I’d love to get you a Netgalley invite or Kindle copy.

The Grapevine will release on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come. Pre-order here:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

Subscribe to Writing Life for monthly-ish free posts on books, new release news, the author life, Scotland, how to write with your spouse without killing them (so far), our expat travels, and always - our entirely justified female rage.

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—Alex

The Grapevine follows Lou Gomersall, a take-no-prisoners, middle-aged mom who takes the family RV out onto the highways and byways of California to search for her missing teenage daughter.

No SPOILERS in post but watch out for SPOILERS in Comments.

So we’re going to do a Lou: take an RV out on the road and trace her journey all over California.

Needless to say our publishers are thrilled…

We’ll start in LA, and drive to various locations from the book, camping out, shooting videos and taking photos and posting about the trip.

We’ll also be hitting a bunch of bookstores along the way, doing signings, visiting with author and reader friends. If your city or town is along or near our route, come out and see us! Drop us a DM so we can coordinate.

Here’s a rough approximation of our plan, very much subject to change as it’s all coming together!

June 20-22

• Los Angeles

• Manhattan Beach

• Santa Monica

• Brentwood

• Calabasas

• Burbank

• Santa Clarita

• Castaic Lake

• The Grapevine

June 22-23

• Buttonwillow

• Bakersfield

• Avila Beach

• San Luis Obispo

• Salinas

• Sand City

• Monterey

• Santa Cruz

• Big Basin Redwoods State Park

June 24-25

• Big Basin Redwoods State Park

• Los Gatos

• San Mateo

• Palo Alto

• Mountain View

• Half Moon Bay

June 25-26

• Oakland

• Berkeley

• San Francisco

• San Jose

June 27-28

And then we’ll be flying off to the American Library Association Conference in Chicago, IL!

Crazy? Oh yeah. But like I said, we’re doing Lou. And crazy is something Lou lives with every day:

—————————————————————————————————————

She knew she had not been entirely sane since the day Abby disappeared. “Currently crazy,” was how she thought of it. No longer a “needs sedation to get through the day” or “random sobbing in the middle of Trader Joe’s” kind of crazy, but the “get out there and do something about it and get the hell out of my way if you’re not going to help” kind of crazy.

—————————————————————————————————————

Lou’s not going home until she finds Abby.

Or kills the man who took her.

The Grapevine will release on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come.

If you can pre-order, that would be lovely! - you can do that in all formats on various platforms here:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

There’s also a Goodreads giveaway going on - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways on this Abby Gomersall is MISSING page.

And if any of you Bookstackers are interested in an ARC of The Grapevine, message me - I’d love to get you a Netgalley invite or Kindle copy.

Just one more reminder -

My feminist crime thriller Huntress Moon, Book 1 in the six (soon to be seven!) book series, is on sale this month from Thomas & Mercer.

• $2.49 to buy on Kindle, last two days!

• But all six in the series continue to be free on Kindle Unlimited

A haunted FBI agent is on the hunt for an elusive woman he believes is responsible for dozens of murders across the US.

Subscribe to this newsletter to be automatically entered into monthly drawings for books, audiobooks, and monthly Bookshop.org gift cards!

Subscribe now

Not everyone agrees. The Berkeley Police Department doesn’t. Neither does the Santa Cruz PD, nor the police in Salinas, Lodi, or Redding. There’s a whole long list of law enforcement in multiple counties who think I’m just a crazy lady in an RV.

But look at these young women and tell me you don’t see some similarities there:

These guys — and yeah, it’s a guy, you know it’s a guy, because let’s get real — the people who make young women disappear aren’t women, are they? So spare me the “Not all Men” speech.

And these guys - tend to have a type.

I can look at every one of these young women and I see Abby. Abby is his type.

Look, don’t think I just put every missing woman in California up there on The Board. Do you know how many girls and women are missing in California at any given moment? Over fifteen thousand.

I’ve looked into all of them.

That’s right. I said all of them.

It’s all in here in my laptop. A database, you might call it, if I had any computer skills at all. But I’ve got it arranged in a way that makes sense to me. Every missing girl and young woman; every suspect; every town and city in California where someone’s run from or ran to, been taken from or taken to; every law enforcement official I’ve talked to, good and bad and indifferent; every True Crimer conspiracy theory (filed according to my personal labeling system: Credible, Long Shot, and Fucking Insane).

I’ve got newspaper clippings, website links, incidents and accidents, hints and allegations.

What I don’t have is him.

The man I think is responsible for the disappearance of five—now maybe six—young women.

The cops insist these cases are unrelated. They don’t think there’s a guy, one guy, one monster responsible for all this suffering.

And hey, maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m wrong. As my husband can tell you - it wouldn’t be the first time.

But if he is out there… I’m coming for him.

—Lou Gomersall

“Raw, wrenching, and totally compelling—The Grapevine hooked me from start to end.”

• —Ruth Ware, international bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10

“Right from the first page, readers will be compelled to follow bull-headed and strangely loveable Lou Gomersall on a one woman (plus 1) quest to solve the mystery of her 19-year-old daughter’s disappearance a year ago…I can’t wait to see what Sokoloff and Robertson have in store for Lou and friends in this fantastic new series that’s packed with psychological thrills and propulsive momentum.”

• firstCLUE

“The plot is compelling, and the scenes involving the RV are particularly suspenseful. Fans of Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls will enjoy this first book in a new series.”

• —Booklist

Available for pre-order now:

• Amazon

• Barnes & Noble

• Bookshop.org

• Blackstone Publishing

Subscribe to be entered in multiple drawings to win books, audiobooks and gift cards!

Subscribe now