Brian Leung's "Take Me Home"

Brian Leung is the author of the acclaimed story collection World Famous Love Acts, and the novel Lost Me.Here he shares some suggestions for the above-the-line talent in an adaptation of his new novel, Take Me Home: While I’m writing I never think of my novels in terms of movies, but it’s hard to escape the issue once they are in print and readers make suggestions as to who they imagine playing the parts in a film.For Take Me Home people have been stuck as to who would play Wing Lee (sheesh folks, Jackie Chan is too old and not handsome enough). A list of questionable/dubious suggestions fo

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Keith Hollihan's "The Four Stages of Cruelty"

Keith Hollihan worked as a business analyst and ghostwriter before publishing his first novel. Born in Canada, he has traveled widely and lived in Japan and the Czech Republic. He now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.Hollihan's new novel is The Four Stages of Cruelty.Here he shares some author's input on casting a big screen adaptation of the novel:The Four Stages of Cruelty is set in a maximum security penitentiary, but its protagonist and first-person narrator is a female corrections officer. Kali Williams is as professional, efficient, jaded, and tough as any of her male co-workers but she als

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Gerry Bartlett's "Real Vampires Have More to Love"

Gerry Bartlett is a former teacher and now writes full time. She also owns an antique business on the historic strand in Galveston, Texas.Here she provides some casting ideas for an adaptation of her Glory St. Clair Real Vampires series, of which the latest installment, Real Vampires Have More to Love, is out now from Berkley:I actually have a group of fans who started a petition to have my Glory St. Clair books made into a movie or TV series. I can only dream. And it’s really fun to imagine actresses as Glory. She was bloating when she was turned vampire in 1604, but the voluptuous look so p

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Libby Hellmann's "Set the Night on Fire"

Libby Fischer Hellmann's crime fiction thrillers include An Eye For Murder, A Picture Of Guilt, An Image Of Death, A Shot To Die For, Easy Innocence, and Doubleback.Here she shares some casting ideas for an adaptation of her latest novel, Set the Night on Fire: As some of you may know, I studied film in graduate school, worked on a couple of features, and settled into the life of an industrial film/video producer before I started writing novels. So I’ve always approached novel writing like a film-maker. I can’t write a scene without imagining it edited and printed, complete with pans, dolly s

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Freda Warrington's "Midsummer Night"

Freda Warrington is the author of nineteen (and a half) novels including Elfland, A Blackbird in Silver Darkness, A Taste of Blood Wine and Dracula the Undead. Elfland won the Romantic Times Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2009, and her second novel for Tor, Midsummer Night, has just been published with another stunning cover by KY Craft.Here she sketches out some ideas for casting her characters in an adaptation of Midsummer Night:I suppose most authors indulge this fantasy – actually, I’ve shared moments of great hilarity with friends as we suggested the most inappropriate actors imaginable

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Allison Leotta's "Law of Attraction"

Allison Leotta is a federal sex-crimes prosecutor in Washington, D.C. She has been a federal prosecutor for ten years. Like the heroine in Law of Attraction, her debut legal thriller, Leotta started out in the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuting misdemeanor domestic violence cases. She now handles the most serious sex crimes in D.C. Leotta is a graduate of Michigan State University and Harvard Law School.Here she shares some ideas for casting an adaptation of Law of Attraction:This is a great exercise! Your blog spurred a very fun weekend for my mom and me, sitting down with stacks of

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Gary Corby's "The Pericles Commission"

Gary Corby is a first time novelist, former systems programmer at Microsoft, and lives in Australia with his wife and two daughters.His new book is The Pericles Commission.Here he sketches out some ideas about the talent who might bring the novel to life in a cinematic adaptation:My debut novel is The Pericles Commission, a murder mystery set in Classical Athens. Nicolaos, the ambitious son of a minor sculptor, walks the mean streets of Classical Athens as an agent for the promising young politician Pericles. Murder and mayhem don't faze Nico; what's really on his mind is how to get closer

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Jeri Westerson's "The Demon's Parchment"

Jeri Westerson is the author of Veil of Lies, Serpent in the Thorns, and The Demon's Parchment.Here she shares some ideas for casting adaptations of her Crispin Guest novels:  The first time I put the words “Crispin Guest” to paper was sometime in 2002. He was to be my first foray into medieval mystery where before I had written, apparently, unsellable historical novels. He was to be a true detective — not an amateur sleuth of the monk or nun variety that seemed to populate medieval mysteries. He was to be my cross-pollination of genres between hard-boiled detective fiction and the medie

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Ken Harmon's "The Fat Man"

Ken Harmon's new book is The Fat Man, "a satire of traditional Christmas stories and noir" in which "a hardboiled elf is framed for murder in a North Pole world that plays reindeer games for keeps, and where favorite holiday characters live complex lives beyond December."Here he shares his vision of some classic actors and a director to bring his story to life on the big screen:In The Fat Man – A Tale of North Pole Noir, Gumdrop Coal is a hard-boiled elf framed for murder in a Kringle Town that’s got more than its fair share of Naughty guys and dolls. In paying homage to the great detecti

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Roberta Gately's "Lipstick in Afghanistan"

A nurse, humanitarian aid worker, and writer, Roberta Gately has served in third-world war zones ranging from Africa to Afghanistan. She has written extensively on the subject of refugees for the Journal of Emergency Nursing, as well as a series of articles for the BBC Worlds News Online. She speaks regularly on the plight of the world's refugees and displaced.Booklist called her new novel Lipstick in Afghanistan an “[a]bsorbing debut… In this utterly engrossing read, Gately vividly evokes the beauty and tragedy of Afghanistan.”Here she shares some ideas for principal cast and director of

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Katia Lief's "Next Time You See Me"

Born in France to American parents, Katia Lief moved to the United States as a baby and was raised in Massachusetts and New York. She teaches fiction writing as a part-time faculty member at the New School in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn.Lief's latest novels are You Are Next and Next Time You See Me.Here she shares some ideas on who might bring her characters to life in a cinematic adaptation:Next Time You See Me is the second in a series of suspense novels beginning with You Are Next, in which two strong characters, Karin Schaeffer and Mac MacLeary, battle evil and also come together r

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Sheldon Russell's "The Insane Train"

A former Oklahoma public school English teacher, Sheldon Russell retired as a professor emeritus from the University of Central Oklahoma in 2000. With The Yard Dog (Minotaur Books, 2009), he introduced the Hook Runyon series. The first book finds Hook investigating a murder at an Oklahoma railroad yard near a German POW camp during WWII.Russell's second Hook Runyon novel, The Insane Train, is out this month.Here is Russell's choice to portray his main character when Hook hits the big screen:My protagonist in The Insane Train is Hook Runyon, a one-arm railroad bull who collects rare books a

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Keith Raffel's "Smasher"

Keith Raffel is the author of Dot Dead and Smasher.Here he shares some ideas for casting a cinematic adaptation of Smasher:A pair of award-winning scriptwriters have picked up an option on my Smasher: A Silicon Valley Thriller. I do know the chances of actually seeing it on the screen at the cineplex are about the same as a Wall Street banker turning down her bonus. Still, like Willy Loman, a man "is got to dream." So humor me, will you, and play along?Who should play the protoganist Ian Michaels? He's 37 or so, about six feet tall, dark hair. He's a Silicon Valley workaholic and a pretty go

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Miles Corwin's "Kind of Blue"

Miles Corwin, a former crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is the author of three nonfiction books: The Killing Season, a national bestseller; And Still We Rise, the winner of the PEN West award for nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; and Homicide Special, a Los Angeles Times bestseller.Here he shares his idea for the lead actor and director of an adaptation of Kind of Blue, his first novel:My main character, Ash Levine, is a Jewish LAPD homicide detective. The actor would not have to be Jewish, but I think I might help if he was Jewish or part-Jewish. I liked the

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Paul Grossman's"The Sleepwalkers"

Paul Grossman has been a freelance journalist for many years with published articles in major magazines such as Vanity Fair and Details. He had a highly successful Actor’s Equity reading of his first stage play, The Pariah, at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan—a drama about Hannah Arendt and the Adolf Eichmann war-crimes trial, which is currently in the hands of the Perry Street Theater Company for production development. Grossman is also a long time teacher of writing and literature at Hunter College.His new novel is The Sleepwalkers.Here he shares some thoughts about a big scr

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Mary Anna Evans' "Strangers"

Mary Anna Evans is the author of the award-winning Faye Longchamp archaeological mysteries: Artifacts, Relics, Effigies, Findings, Floodgates, and the recently released sixth novel in the series, Strangers.Should Faye Longchamp make the jump from page to screen, here's Evans' idea of the actors who should play the major roles: Ooh! I love this game!I'm not one of those writers who always has an actor or actress in mind when I write my characters. This makes it especially fun to pretend I'm a casting director, so I can select people I think would be believable in the roles. My imaginary peo

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Todd Ritter's "Death Notice"

An editor and journalist for more than 15 years, Todd Ritter began his career as a film critic while attending Penn State University. His favorite films are thrillers, although he has a soft spot for horror movies that scare the wits out of him. He considers Alfred Hitchcock to be the greatest director the world has ever seen. His debut mystery, Death Notice, was released in October by Minotaur Books.He thinks it would make a fantastic movie. With, he writes, the correct casting, of course:I know a lot of authors envision actors and actresses when writing their main characters. I’m guilty as

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Patricia Gussin's "And Then There Was One"

Patricia Gussin is the author of And Then There Was One, The Test, Twisted Justice, and Shadow of Death.Here she shares some observations about the challenges in casting an adaptation of And Then There Was One:One job that I’ll never have is that of casting director. No, you’ll never see my name scrolling across the big screen, at least not in that capacity. When I consider And Then There Was One as a movie I see it starting just as it did in the book. A nineteen year old and a nine year old, cousins, frantic, looking for nine year old Jackie’s two sisters, Sammie and Alex. Jackie and Ale

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Joseph Skibell's "A Curable Romantic"

Joseph Skibell is the author of the novels A Blessing on the Moon, The English Disease, and the recently released A Curable Romantic. He has received a Halls Fiction Fellowship, a Michener Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, among other awards. He teaches at Emory University and is the director of the Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature.Here he shares some ideas for writer, director and principal cast for an adaptation of  A Curable Romantic:A public confession: recently a colleague showed me a letter he’d received from Tom Stoppard. Kno

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Trish J. MacGregor's "Esperanza"

Trish J. MacGregor was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. She has always been interested in the hidden, the mysterious, the unseen, and in her latest novel, Esperanza, was able to combine this interest with her love of Ecuador.Here is MacGregor's take on the cast and director for the picture should Esperanza be adapted for the big screen:What a cool thing to write about! Good visualization, too.Okay, since Ian Ritter looks like George Clooney, he’s the ideal for that role. For Tess Livingston, an FBI agent whose near-death experience turns her life inside out, Scarlett Johansson is my

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Toby Ball's "The Vaults"

Toby Ball works at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. The Vaults, his first novel, was published in September by St. Martin's Press.Here he shares his preferences for the above-the-line talent for a cinematic adaptation of the novel:I definitely did not write The Vaults with any particular actors in mind, though the sensibility of gangster movies from the 1930s and 40s was very much an influence. That said, casting the film had become a popular conversation topic, generally over drinks.Here's my vision:Frank Frings would be played by Ed Norton of t

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Anna Elliott's "Dark Moon of Avalon"

Anna Elliott is the author of the Twilight of Avalon Trilogy from Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint. The trilogy comprises Twilight of Avalon, Dark Moon of Avalon, and the upcoming Sunrise of Avalon.Here she lays out her actor preferences for the lead roles in an adaptation of Dark Moon of Avalon:In Dark Moon of Avalon, the young former High Queen Isolde and her friend and protector Trystan are reunited in a new and dangerous quest to keep the usurper Lord Marche and his Saxon allies from the throne of Britain. Using Isolde's wit and talent for healing and Trystan's strength and brav

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Meg Gardiner's Jo Beckett series

Meg Gardiner's novels include the Jo Beckett series -- The Dirty Secrets Club, The Memory Collector, and The Liar's Lullaby.Here she shares her thinking about casting a big screen adaptation of the novels:I’m outside the box, thinking.The characters in the Jo Beckett series live vividly, and sometimes obstreperously, inside my head. I know what they look like. So do readers—when I asked them who should play the characters in the movie, I got twenty-five different answers.So, how can I pick a single cast? In this era of HD, 3D, avatars and performance capture, why collapse the possibilities

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Joan Frances Turner's "Dust"

Joan Frances Turner was born in Rhode Island and grew up in the Calumet Region of northwest Indiana. A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, she lives near the Indiana Dunes with her family and a garden full of spring onions and tiger lilies, weather permitting.Dust, her first novel, is a story of the undead from their own point of view, as they battle time, decay, the loved ones they left behind, encroaching humanity and each other. Or, think Watership Down with zombies instead of rabbits.Here she explains who ought to do the makeup on a cinematic adaptation of Dust...a

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