Stephen Blackmoore's "City of the Lost"

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Stephen Blackmoore is a Los Angeles-based writer of crime and horror.

Here he dreamcasts an adaptation of City of the Lost, his first novel:

I've been wracking my brains for a while now wondering who would make a good Joe Sunday, the protagonist of my urban fantasy, City of the Lost. He's not a nice man. He's a thug. He's brutal. He's borderline psychopath, if not already well over the top.

He's not the one you call to rough up some guy who owes you money. He's the one you call when you need to stick that guy's hand down a garbage disposal until he tells you where the money is then light him on fire after sticking him to the wall with a nailgun.

Like I said, he's not a nice man.

It gets worse in that he's killed and brought back as an undead monster. Because, you know, a regular human monster just isn't scary enough.

So, yeah, I've been having trouble figuring out who would make a good Joe Sunday.

Until a few days ago when I saw this short video.

That's the Punisher fan film Dirty Laundry starring Thomas Jane who had the role in the 2004 Punisher movie. I didn't much care for that film, but this one? Yeah. This one works.

And that's totally Joe Sunday. Well, maybe if he were meaner. Particularly around the 6:30 mark.

Some of the other characters are harder than others. Samantha, sort of a femme fatale of the book, is easy. That's Veronica Lake hands down. That's who I had in mind when I wrote her. She's got a vibe of someone who doesn't quite fit in the modern day. She's a little too classy, a little too practiced. And there's a reason for that. But you'll have to read the book to find out what that is.

The tough one is the main antagonist, Sandro Giavetti, an old Chicago mobster who turns out to be a lot more than he looks. A lot older, too.

When I wrote him he had a John Huston vibe in my head. Like in Chinatown, then he was a little more Pacino, then Robert Duvall, then maybe Christopher Walken in twenty years.

I think Walken would probably make the best Giavetti. Or maybe Willem Dafoe. Somebody who can do crazy and monstrous one second and then look like he's your best buddy the next.

I think Jessica Alba during her Dark Angel days might make a good Gabriela, a witch who's running a downtown flophouse for homeless vampires.

A couple of odd thugs, Archie, a roid-rage slab of muscle in a suit and his twisted, midget companion, Jughead, are echoes of each other. I see someone like Dwayne Johnson in the role of Archie, but Jughead would probably have to be CGI, because he looks like Archie's half-formed twin.

Get those people together and a director who can do some decent grindhouse like Robert Rodriguez and I think it'd be pretty kick-ass.

Visit Stephen Blackmoore's website.

--Marshal Zeringue