Dolls, Dolls, Dolls!!!

My assignment this month is to blog every Wednesday, but I'm either very late with last week's post or very early with this week's. I have no excuse except that my birthday was on Friday and I started celebrating early.

I recently guest-blogged on Alison Kent’s site about a concept known as spontaneous generation—i.e. people exposed to the same mass media stimuli are likely to come up with the same idea. This theory can explain why two movies with the same premise can be released by two different studios at virtually the same time. Armageddon and Deep Impact, for example.

I’ve recently experienced this phenomenon firsthand with my new thriller, The Dollmaker. The idea was inspired by a ‘twin’ doll catalog and by the old Vincent Price horror classic House of Wax (not to be confused with the Paris Hilton version). I had the premise in my head for years before I actually wrote and sold the book.

It’s out right now, along with two horror movies featuring dolls—The Abandoned and Dead Silence. And I recently learned that Jeffrey Deaver’s next thriller is entitled The Sleeping Doll.

So I ask you...what is it with all these dolls lately? Spontaneous generation or just some weird coincidence? And has this ever happened to you?

Amanda Stevens