Joyce and Jim Lavene's "Ghastly Glass"

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Joyce and Jim Lavene are really two people who write together, not just one disguising herself with two names. They live in North Carolina (southern USA) with their family that is too terrified to eat dinner at their home because they kill people for a living (sometimes with poison).

Here they play casting director for a film adaptation of their Renaissance Faire Mystery series:

Ghastly Glass is the second book in our Renaissance Faire Mystery series (Wicked Weaves is the first). The stories revolve around an associate history professor from South Carolina whose passion is visiting the Ren Faire in Myrtle Beach (no, there isn’t really one at the old Air Force base). She happens upon murder mysteries while indulging her passion and working on her doctorate in Renaissance crafts.

We have to admit that, yes; we do see Jessie Morton, our Renaissance Faire sleuth, as a younger Meg Ryan. She’s got that flyaway hair and can be a little useless though she always ends up doing the right thing in the end. She’s pretty and smart though she can be a little thick sometimes. We see her as a normal type person who gets caught up in weird things that happen.

Really, He-Man (cartoon, not Dolph Lundgren) would be the perfect Chase Manhattan (named by his rich parents for their favorite financial institution). He’s kind, considerate, large, strong, just, gorgeous and sexy. He’s the bailiff for Renaissance Faire Village and Marketplace. He’s actually a constable and has some police training but mostly he uses stocks and squishy vegetables to administer justice to bad guys. He’s Jessie’s boyfriend and a perfect foil for her.

Other characters we consciously placed in the series are André the Giant from The Princess Bride (might be hard to get him now). He plays the Grim Reaper in Ghastly Glass (which is set at Halloween). We liked him so much that we put him in the next book, Deadly Daggers, too. Great character!

We’d love to see Stiller and Meara (20 years ago) play King Harold and Queen Olivia at the Village. And Tim (the toolman) Allen would be great right now as the Village glass smith.

As far as producers/directors, we don’t know much about them but we know movies we enjoy that would be like filming one of the Renaissance Faire books – The Princess Bride (Mandy Patinkin would be a fantastic Black Knight), Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (We’re sure we could find somewhere to put Kevin and Mary Elizabeth), January Man, and Night at the Museum. Maybe we could get all of these talented people to work together!

So that’s our summary of how we think you could make Ghastly Glass into a movie. It could be filmed at any Ren Faire in the world, though we’d prefer England, if possible. We think it would be fairly low budget since storybook characters, animals and monks come pretty cheap these days. If anyone is interested in the project, please contact our agent who is always hoping we’ll make some money for her one day.

View the Ghastly Glass trailer, and learn more about the authors and their work at Joyce and Jim Lavene's website.

--Marshal Zeringue