Meredith Cole's Lydia McKenzie novels

Meredith Cole started her career as a screenwriter and filmmaker. She was the winner of the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic competition. Posed for Murder (2009) was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Mystery Novel. Dead in the Water (2010) continues the adventures of photographer Lydia McKenzie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.Here she shares her casting ideas for a cinematic adaptation of the Lydia McKenzie novels:Since I started my career as a filmmaker and screenwriter, people often ask me when my books will be made into films or a television show. It seems natural to other people

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Cherish D'Angelo's "Lancelot's Lady"

Cherish D'Angelo launched her debut contemporary romantic suspense Lancelot's Lady on September 27, 2010. Her novel has already won an Editor's Choice Award from Textnovel.com and placed in the semi-finals of Dorchester Publishing's "Next Best Celler" contest. Though this is Cherish's first romance novel, she's no stranger to booklovers; she's best known as bestselling Canadian suspense author Cheryl Kaye Tardif.Here she shares some ideas for casting an adaptation for Lancelot's Lady: Lancelot's Lady was the first novel I've written where actors and actresses didn't immediately come to mind

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Mary Jane Maffini's "Closet Confidential"

Mary Jane Maffini is the author of three mystery series and a number of short stories. Her real life dogs are Daisy and Lily, both miniature dachshunds of "a princessy disposition." They look a lot like Sweet Marie and Truffle in the Charlotte Adams mysteries.Here Maffini shares her thinking on a few of the more important casting decisions should Closet Confidential, the latest Charlotte Adams mystery, be adapted for the big screen:A main character is like a beloved child. I think this is especially true in a mystery series where author and sleuth are yoked together for years. And as if wr

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Jodi Compton's "Hailey's War"

Jodi Compton is the author of the acclaimed novel The 37th Hour, which features Detective Sarah Pribek.Here she shares some ideas for cast and director of an adaptation of her latest novel, Hailey's War:On my website and in bookstore discussions about Hailey’s War, I’ve made a lot of the fact that no major character in this book is over the age of 24. The story grew out of the circumstances in which it was written -- I was living in a college town called San Luis Obispo, which is dominated by young people, and I was surrounded by their culture, music and slang.Unfortunately, the downside of a

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Nora McFarland's "A Bad Day's Work"

Nora McFarland has worked for CNN and is a former community relations manager for Barnes & Noble. She has an MFA from the University of Southern California's school of cinema and television.Here she shares some casting input should her debut novel, A Bad Day's Work--a funny, fast-paced mystery similar in tone to Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series--be adapted for the big screen:My main character is named Lilly Hawkins. Despite her physically demanding job as a TV news photographer, called a “shooter” in the industry, she’s actually fairly petite. She uses intelligence and a pit-bull p

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Matthew Dicks' "Unexpectedly, Milo"

Matthew Dicks is the author of the novels Something Missing and Unexpectedly, Milo. An elementary school teacher, he was named West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year in 2005 and was a finalist for Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year.Here he shares some casting options for a big screen adaptation of Unexpectedly, Milo:Since the film rights to Unexpectedly, Milo have already been optioned, the question of who should fill the role of Milo is one that I have been asked many times. It’s not a question that is easy for me to answer. Though I see a lot of movies, I tend to focus more upon plot

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Lisa Black's "Trail of Blood"

Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue, working as a forensic scientist in the trace evidence lab until her husband dragged her to southwest Florida. Now she toils as a certified latent print analyst and CSI at the local police department by day and writes forensic suspense by night. Her books have also been published in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain and Japan.Here she picks cast and director for a big screen adaptation of her latest novel, Trail of Blood: In Trail of Blood a series of real-life 1930s murders start over again in present

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Keir Graff's "The Price of Liberty"

Keir Graff is the author of the novels Cold Lessons (under the pseudonym Michael McCulloch), My Fellow Americans, One Nation, Under God, and The Price of Liberty.Here he shares some casting ideas for the main roles if The Price of Liberty is adapted for the big screen:If they made The Price of Liberty into a film, who would I like to play the lead roles? That's a tough question. When I write, I don't picture living people, so it's hard to imagine anyone personifying my characters onscreen. Not that I wouldn't want that to happen -- boy, would I love to see my book made into a film, even with

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Rebecca Cantrell's "A Trace of Smoke"

Rebecca Cantrell majored in German, Creative Writing, and History at the Freie Universitaet of Berlin and Carnegie Mellon University.Here she shares her ideas on casting an adaptation of A Trace of Smoke, her first book:I have to confess that I have an unfair advantage on this question. When A Trace of Smoke was released, Sara Colleton (the producer of Dexter, The Painted Veil, and Riding in Cars with Boys) became interested in it. She read it, liked it, and presented it to the decision-making VPs at both Showtime and HBO. It took them a few weeks, but they both passed.In the meantime, I had

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Tom Hinshelwood's "The Killer"

Tom Hinshelwood is a freelance video editor and scriptwriter. He was born in Staffordshire, England and now lives in London.Here he shares some thoughts on casting an adaptation of The Killer, his first novel:This is a tough one! Unlike many novelists, when I was writing my first book, I didn’t picture any of my characters played by actors, which in retrospect seems very odd as I wrote The Killer in a very cinematic style. Victor, the enigmatic professional assassin protagonist of my novel is a particularly difficult role to cast as leading men tend to be good looking guys who would stand out

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