Will McIntosh's "Soft Apocalypse"

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and Nebula finalist whose short stories have appeared in Asimov’s (where he won the 2010 Reader's Award for short story), Strange Horizons, and Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and others. His debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was published by Night Shade Books in 2011, and his second novel, Hitchers, will be out in February, 2012. A New Yorker transplanted to the rural south, McIntosh is a psychology professor at Georgia Southern University. In 2008 he became the father of twins.Here he writes about the actors he could see playing his cha

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Mignon Ballard's "Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause"

Mignon F. Ballard grew up in a small town in Georgia, and now lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina.Here she shares some ideas about casting the leads in adaptations of two of her series, including her latest release, Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause:I always knew who I’d like to play the part of the guardian angel in my Augusta Goodnight mystery series, and that would have been the late actress, Eve Arden. I even pictured Augusta as looking a bit like Eve, and her character also shared Augusta’s sometimes-tart tongue and practical way of looking at life.I had to think a bit to decide on an actr

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Tom Lowe's "The Butterfly Forest"

Tom Lowe's Sean O'Brien mystery/thriller series includes A False Dawn, The 24th Letter, and The Butterfly Forest.Here he shares some casting ideas for the lead of an adaptation of the Sean O'Brien books:A very successful novelist friend of mine doesn't want to sell filmmakers the right to adapt his books on screen. And he's had plenty of offers. He feels that would taint or certainly influence the personal image readers form of his characters, especially his two popular protagonists. That's a fair assumption.But I disagree.Apparently, so do readers. I often get readers suggesting who coul

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Matt Rees's "Mozart's Last Aria"

Matt Rees is an award-winning crime novelist and foreign correspondent. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed Omar Yussef crime series, including The Collaborator of Bethlehem. He is also the author of Cain’s Field, a nonfiction account of Israeli and Palestinian society. Rees lives in Jerusalem.Here he shares some suggestions about who should play the lead in an adaptation of his new novel, Mozart's Last Aria:American actresses ought to be climbing over each other to option the film rights for Mozart's Last Aria. Why? Because the main character is a woman just over forty years ol

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Craig McDonald's "El Gavilan"

Edgar®-nominee Craig McDonald is an award-winning journalist, editor and fiction writer. His short fiction has appeared in literary magazines, anthologies and several online crime fiction sites.Here he writes about the actors he could see playing his characters in an adaptation of El Gavilan, his new novel:El Gavilan is my first standalone novel following four entries in the Hector Lassiter series.The Lassiter books are historical thrillers. El Gavilan is a novel about illegal immigration and a single murder committed in an Ohio town grappling with waves of undocumented workers.The time is no

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Charles Lemert's "Why Niebuhr Matters"

Charles Lemert is Senior Fellow at Yale's Center for Comparative Research. His recent books include The Structural Lie: Small Clues to Globalization (Paradigm, 2011) as well as Why Niebuhr Matters (Yale University Press, 2011).Here he shares some casting ideas for an adaptation of Why Niebuhr Matters:If Hollywood could do wonderful movies on, among others, the mathematical genius, John Nash (A Beautiful Mind) or Tolstoy (The Last Station), it could certainly make a popular, perhaps a hit, film out the life of Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr's mind wove in and out of political controversy and very h

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Matthue Roth's "Losers"

Matthue Roth is the author of the novels Never Mind the Goldbergs and Candy in Action, and the memoir Yom Kippur a Go-Go.Here he shares some ideas for cast and director of an adaptation of his novel Losers: Two years ago I was in an uncomfortable situation. A production company wanted to put out my movie -- which is awesome, right? It's what every author dreams of, more or less. Everyday people, people like my parents' friends, don't read books. They hear about books. But movies, they actually see. Instead of being a rumor, I could control two entire hours of their lives."Cool," I said. "Whic

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Nancy Jensen's "The Sisters"

Nancy Jensen, who received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College, has published stories and essays in numerous literary journals, including The Louisville Review, Other Voices, and Northwest Review. She was awarded an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and an Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and teaches English at Eastern Kentucky University.Here she shares some insights on her difficulty of naming a dream cast for an adaptation of The Sisters, her first novel:The first words out of my stepfather’s mouth when I called to tell him and my mother t

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Gary Corby's "The Ionia Sanction"

Gary Corby is a novelist and former systems programmer at Microsoft. He lives in Australia with his wife and two daughters.Corby's debut novel is The Pericles Commission.Here he writes about the actors he could see playing his characters in an adaptation of his new novel, The Ionia Sanction:The Ionia Sanction is the story of Nicolaos, the only investigating agent in classical Athens, as he searches for stolen information that threatens the safety of Athens. One man has already died trying to protect the secret, another died trying to recover it. Now it's up to Nico to hunt it down, wherev

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B. Kent Anderson's "Cold Glory"

B. Kent Anderson is a journalist and broadcaster. A graduate of the University of Central Oklahoma, he is currently a features writer for the Southwestern Publishing group of magazines. He lives with his three sons in Oklahoma City.Here Anderson shares some suggestions about who should play the leads in an adaptation of his new novel, Cold Glory: Now that Cold Glory has finally hit bookshelves, I’ve been asked at least a dozen times in the last two weeks about actors for the ever-elusive (and at this point, hypothetical) film of the story.I honestly don’t write novels with an actor or actress

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Paul Doiron’s "Trespasser"

Paul Doiron’s first novel, The Poacher’s Son, won the Barry Award and the Strand Critics Award for Best First Mystery of 2010. His second book in his Mike Bowditch series of rural crime novels is Trespasser, which was called “a masterpiece of high-octane narrative” by Booklist and was an Independent Booksellers Association bestseller.Here he writes about the actors he could imagine playing Maine Game Warden Mike Bowditch and some of the other principal characters in Trespasser:The first thing I should do is quote my film agent who says that, in his experience, novelists are poor casting agent

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Stephen Beachy's "boneyard"

Stephen Beachy is the author of the novels The Whistling Song and Distortion, as well as the twinned novellas Some Phantom/No Time Flat. His writing has appeared in BOMB, The New York Times Magazine, Chicago Review, Best Gay American Fiction, New York magazine and elsewhere. Raised by an ex-Amish father in Iowa, he now lives in California and teaches at the University of San Francisco.Here he shares some casting ideas for an adaptation of his new novel, boneyard:If they make boneyard into a movie, Justin Bieber would probably have to play the disturbed Amish boy at its center, Jake Yoder. He

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Alan Lazar's "Roam"

Alan Lazar is a platinum-selling musician/composer whose career began in his native South Africa. He lives in Los Angeles, where he has composed music for more than 30 films and TV shows.Here he shares some ideas for casting an adaptation of Roam, his first novel:The hero of Roam is a dog, half-beagle and half-poodle. So, no conventional movie stars need apply. In Marley and Me, I believe the dog was an incredible composite of fourteen real dogs and some CGI. If Roam is a live-action film I guess it would be something similar. Alternatively Roam might be a fully animated film. I’m a huge fan

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D. E. Meredith's "The Devil's Ribbon"

D.E. Meredith read English at Cambridge, then ran the press office and the land mines campaign for the Red Cross, travelling extensively to Bosnia, Afghanistan and Rwanda during the conflicts. She worked as a consultant on media relations for Greenpeace and other worthy causes before embarking on "The Hatton and Roumande Mysteries" series for St Martin's Press (Devoured, October 2010, The Devil's Ribbon, October 2011).For an adaptation of Hatton and Roumande’s latest adventure, here's who Meredith would cast:Professor Adolphus Hatton. Ed Norton is the right look to play Hatton in that he’

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Tyler McMahon's "How the Mistakes Were Made"

Tyler McMahon received his MFA in fiction from Boise State University. His stories have appeared in Threepenny Review, Sycamore Review, and Surfer’s Journal, among others, and he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is a professor of fiction at Hawaii Pacific University. If an adaptation were produced of How the Mistakes Were Made, McMahon's debut novel, here are his ideas for cast and director:How the Mistakes Were Made is primarily the story of Laura Loss—a veteran punk rocker who is now blamed for the demise of the grunge band that she helped to form. The book is kind of a fake memo

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