Tracy Richardson's "Indian Summer"

Tracy Richardson lives in the suburbs of Indianapolis with her family and a Jack Russell terrier named Ernie.

Here she shares some ideas for casting a film based on her novel, Indian Summer:

I wonder if every author imagines their book as a movie? When I write, I see the characters as fully formed people interacting in a very real world. I know the color of their hair and how they dress and what they would eat for lunch. That could partly be because I often use bits and pieces of real people and places to create my characters and settings. I usually combine several aspects of different people into a character, so no one is entirely based on a real person. The scenes begin in my imagination, but in some ways, the characters create the action themselves as the story evolves. It‘s exciting for me to see the book unfolding, almost like watching a movie.

Trying to imagine who would play the characters in Indian Summer – the movie proved to be difficult. I have such a definite picture in my mind of what the characters are like. The heroine is a twelve year old girl and there aren’t as many well known actresses that age. Then they grow up and become too old for the part. However, I think Elle Fanning, the younger sister of Dakota Fanning, would be a great choice to play Marcie Horton. She’s the right age and she has the kind of pixie look that Marcie has – small features and turned up nose, or ‘snub nose’, as Marcie calls it. Elle is blond and blue-eyed, whereas Marcie has strawberry blond hair and green eyes, but they are both fair and tall. Elle did a wonderful job as a creative girl with obsessive-compulsive disorder in Phoebe in Wonderland. She had a bit of the shy, hesitant quality that Marcie has at the start of the book.

If Jamie Lee Curtis were a bit older, she would be perfect for Mamaw. Her look is perfect; tall and angular, salt and pepper, close-cropped hair, and warm smile. I think she has the depth to play the sage grandmother really well. Two totally different actresses come to mind for Jill Horton, Marcie’s mother. I first thought of Julianne Moore possibly because of the red hair and because I really like her work. I also thought of Mel Harris even though she has dark hair. I identify a little bit with all my characters, but since I’m a mom of a certain age, I think I identify a lot with Mrs. Horton. I want an actress who can show her as a complex person who is not just Marcie’s mom, but an archeologist, wife and woman. I remember Mel from thirtysomething, and think she would bring all that to the role.

Al, Marcie’s elderly neighbor who helps her in her quest to save the forest from development, is a tough one because he’s in his eighties. Sean Connery has the right craggy-featured, balding look and has the talent to play a physically declining but mentally sharp octogenarian. Marcie’s brother Eric, is a few years older, and I always imagined him as a bit of a heart throb. Both Kaitlyn and Sara, Marcie’s friends, have crushes on him. I have to say that I couldn’t come up with a good choice for Eric. Being a casting director is an incredibly difficult job!

Read an excerpt from Indian Summer, and learn more about the book and author at Tracy Richardson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Jean Johnson's Sons of Destiny series

Jean Johnson's Sons of Destiny series is a romantic tale of magic, superstition, and a love that transcends dimensions. About the novels:

Eight brothers, born in four sets of twins, two years apart to the day-they fulfill the Curse of Eight Prophecy. To avoid tempting their destiny, the brothers are exiled to Nightfall Island, a land where women are strictly forbidden. But, when the youngest of the mage-brothers rescues a woman from another universe, their world is altered forever.

Here Johnson shares some thoughts about an adaptation of the series:

Oh, dear... People have already asked me this question, you know. What would I do if my Sons of Destiny novels were turned into a movie, and who would play what roles? Oh, dear...

My only reply is that, for any of the eight books in the Sons of Destiny series, there is so much plot, smut, comedy, and magic, that the only way to successfully pull it off would be in an Anime mini-series. You can get away with a lot more in an Anime version than you could in live-action, even with today's high quality special effects ... mainly because so much of my books are indeed romantic, even passionate in nature, and a good portion of that passion is quite central to some of their plots. Not to mention it's eight whole books of plot. Each is an individual romance, yes, but they all tie together in a massive overall fantasy plot which is eight books long. So, yeah, an Anime mini-series would be the best way to go.

As for voice actors and art studios ... I haven't gotten that far. Except maybe Patrick Stewart for the role of Consus of Kairides, Councillor of Sea Commerce for the Empire of Katan, a seemingly minor character who keeps cropping up from time to time throughout the series. Alan Rickman has a sexy voice, too, but it'd be hard to find a character for him ... the roll of Rydan, maybe? No? How about Orlando Bloom for one of the voices? Johnny Depp? Antonio Banderas has too sexy of an accent -- yes, it's possible to be too sexy -- though I'd try very hard to find something for him to recite all the same...

Oh, dear...I'll have to give this more thought. Mind if I have some chocolate while I contemplate? A lot of chocolate? This could take quite a while, you realize.

Of course, if you'd like to help, just mosey over to http://www.JeanJohnson.net, find the forum boards, and feel free to post your own ideas. I'll just sit here with a mouthful of chocolate and contemplate lots of sexy voices in the meantime...

Visit Jean Johnson's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Gail Dayton's "Heart's Blood"

Gail Dayton was born in Ohio, only because her dad was in the Air Force at the time. She got to Texas as soon as she could—at one year old. She was raised in Texas and Idaho, reading everything she could get her hands on, especially adventure stories. She was reading and loving fantasy and science fiction back when she still thought kissing was icky. Then she grew up.

Now, Dayton lives with her husband of 30-plus years on the Texas Gulf Coast two blocks from the beach, and writes fantasy romance for Tor Paranormal Romance. She reads in the back yard—the beach is too sandy for her Sony reader—but she still considers everything she reads a beach read.

Here she explains who she has in mind for the leads in a film adaptation of her new novel, Heart’s Blood:

Heart’s Blood is the second book in my blood magic universe, following New Blood, which was released March 2009. Grey Carteret is the main character in Heart’s Blood, but — since I cast my characters as I write them — the part was cast during the writing of the first book. I knew when I cast him that I would be giving him his own book. Secondary characters who have someone playing their part do tend to get uppity and demanding.

Grey is an aristocrat, the third or fourth son of a duke, with at least two older and two younger sisters as well. He’s the black-sheep member of the family, since magic is frowned upon by the nobility, and he is not only a conjurer associating with spirits, but he’s the magister of the conjurer’s guild. So I needed someone who could do both aristocratic and dissolute. Ralph Fiennes seemed to fill the bill perfectly.

Except during the writing of the story, Grey’s smart-ass side started coming out. He would just SAY these things ... and they wouldn’t be coming out of Ralph Fiennes’s mouth. Grey had decided for himself that Johnny Depp (as seen in From Hell or The Libertine, not Pirates of the Caribbean) was the actor he would inhabit. He just morphed from one into the other, all on his own. So Johnny Depp played the part during the writing of Heart’s Blood. He does smart-ass beautifully, as well as dissolute, with a core of honor beneath. Perfect for Grey Carteret.

(Yes, the hero on the cover of the book looks more like Doogie Howser — Neal Patrick Harris as he was then, not as he is now. Just paste a cut-out of Depp over it. Or use your imagination.)

Pearl was a little more difficult. She has the strength to blackmail Grey into taking her as his apprentice. She’s been living on the streets in London’s East End, but hasn’t always been there. She’s tough and tiny, able to disguise herself as a boy because she’s so small — and because she can use blood sorcery. And she’s only 20. Pearl is someone who thinks outside the box to accomplish what she thinks needs doing, because she’s too small to tackle things head on. She’s also wary of depending on anyone other than herself. I think I’d like to see Marcy Rylan (Guiding Light) take on the part. She’s small and delicate-looking, like Pearl, and she has to be tough to work on a soap. [grin]

Learn more about the book and author at Gail Dayton's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: New Blood by Gail Dayton.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Vonda McIntyre's "Starfarers"

Vonda N. McIntyre's publications include the Nebula and Hugo award winning novel Dreamsnake, which is based on the Nebula-winning story “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand.”

Here she shares the tale of the genesis of Starfarers, “the best SF TV series never made,” and the novels it spawned:

Starfarers didn’t start out as a novel quartet. It didn’t start out as a single novel, a short story, or prose.

It started out as a hoax.

Some years back, I was to be on a SF convention panel, “Science Fiction on Television.” This panel used to turn up at conventions with some regularity, and it always followed the same pattern: Somebody pulled out a list of all the SF television series of the recent past and read it aloud, inviting the audience to agree how terrible all the shows were. (Since then, things have changed, and some good SF has been on tv, but at that time aside from Twilight Zone and the original Star Trek, you had choices such as Time Tunnel and Lost in Space.)

This particular panel bores me to death, so, having promised to be on it, I had to do something different.

I had always thought the TV miniseries was the perfect form for SF — I wished Masterpiece Theater would produce one of our field’s classics — but at the time no one had tried it.

When the panelist next to me whipped out his list and started to read titles, to the audience’s groans, I let him get through a couple of lines before I raised an eyebrow.

“Hold on,” I said. “Haven’t you seen Starfarers? Hasn’t anybody seen Starfarers?”

Of course nobody had (because I made it up).

“It was a terrific miniseries. It was hard to find because CBS kept moving it around — isn’t that always what happens with good shows? It was about an O’Neill colony starship, a university town in space, preparing for its first research expedition. But there’s a political change, and the current administration decides the expedition should be cancelled and the starship turned into an orbiting spy station.

“So the faculty and staff of the starship do what any red-blooded space explorers would do.

“They steal the starship.”

I told the audience a little about the exploratory company:

J.D. Sauvage, alien contact specialist and long-distance swimmer, joining the alien contact team after a sojourn with a pod of killer whales and their genetically engineered human cousins, the divers (who live in Canada because they’re technically at war with the USA);

Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, Canadian physicist, inventor of the starship’s propulsion system, descendent of slaves who escaped via the Underground Railroad before the American Civil War;

Satoshi Lono, geographer, web-savvy nightowl and Marathon runner;

Stephen Thomas Gregory, geneticist, oversupplied with good looks and charm that mask his troubled family past.

Victoria, Satoshi, and Stephen Thomas are members of a family partnership, trying to recover from the loss of their fourth partner, Merit.

The story was part space adventure, part alien contact story, part family saga.

At the end of the panel, local filmmaker Ryan Johnson was about to set out on a quest for videotapes of the series. I had to confess that the series was a hoax, “the best SF TV series never made.” After a moment of disappointment, he said, “I’ll make you a trailer!”

And he did.

Several friends formed the Starfarers Fan Club, and we did a number of panels at sf conventions over the next couple of years. I fondly remember one in which the next panel was “Hollywood screenwriting,” and the panelists in the back of the room waiting for their panel to start were completely fooled by Ryan’s trailer, which was designed to look like it had been fortuitously snagged off a tv broadcast.

We always called Starfarers “the best SF TV series never made,” and the audience almost always failed to hear the “never made” part.

After a few panels, I realized it was a pretty good story and I wanted to write it, so I did. It ended up being a quartet, which I think of as one long novel that I couldn’t afford to write all at once: Starfarers, Transition, Metaphase, and Nautilus.

Over on the Book View Café blog, we were discussing casting possibilities, and the interesting idea came up of a vintage cast from 1940s movies. We kicked that around for a while.

It turned out to be impossible.

The problem with a vintage cast is that the faculty and staff of Starfarer is a diverse group. Satoshi is of Hawaiian and Japanese background, Victoria is Canadian. Stephen Thomas’ boss is the daughter of Cambodian refugees. J.D. has six biological and social parents, and Zev is from a family that has chosen genetic engineering to allow them to live in the sea. Stephen Thomas is one of the few people in the book who’s the default human being as far as movies are concerned: a white guy in his late twenties or early thirties. And even he isn’t quite “default,” not that you can tell by looking, because like most of the characters in Starfarers, Stephen Thomas chooses his lovers for other qualities than whether they’re of the opposite sex.

One hopes that if a miniseries were ever made of Starfarers, the producers would honor the diversity of the people in it, and not claim (as happens far too often) that because they were color-blind with casting, it really wasn’t important or significant that everybody turned out to be white. That claim is just plain ridiculous.

Aside from a diverse cast of human characters, the quartet includes biomechanical creatures (the silver slugs and the artificial stupids) and aliens who are alien physically as well as culturally. None of the aliens is remotely human. One group vaguely resembles six-limbed meerkats. One being is the size of an island, and another is as delicate and insubstantial as vacuum.

And then there is Nemo, the squidmoth.

As J.D. thinks, at the end of Transition: Squidmoths?

Those folks are going to require some serious CGI.

So who would be my ideal (human, or mostly human) cast? When I wrote the novels and when we were doing the Starfarers panels, we had a cast in mind, but some of the actors are no longer in the business. The vintage cast was a no-go, and while it was tempting to try for a time-travelling 1960s cast (mainly because Peter O’Toole in his Lawrence of Arabia days would have been perfect as Stephen Thomas, and Peter O’Toole is in all my favorite movies, and Lawrence of Arabia is my candidate for the best movie ever made), I decided to go with contemporary actors.

Alien Contact Specialist J.D. Sauvage is Camryn Manheim. She can be funny or serious, sexy or reserved. You can believe her as a long-distance swimmer and as a person who could make friends even with alien intelligences.

For Victoria Fraser MacKenzie, I want Tracy Heggins. Heggins would be perfect for the sophisticated and politically savvy head of the Alien Contact Team. Victoria is a physicist, but she’s no girl geek. Heggins is stunning; she projects intelligence and strength. She can also be vulnerable — an important quality for Victoria, who is still grieving over the loss of the fourth member of her family partnership, Merit.

For Stephen Thomas Gregory: Cillian Murphy. Stephen Thomas is the biologist of the team, preternaturally handsome, very smart, the newest partner and youngest of the family, the person knocked most off-center by the death of Merit, who proposed to him.

And for Satoshi Lono, the geographer of the Alien Contact Team, and the person whose good sense, intelligence, passion, and love keeps the family partnership from dissolving?

George Takei, of course.

There may be some truth to the suggestion that the Starfarers group developed Satoshi for Takei, to give him a part to play where he got to do a good deal more than navigate a starship. And if Satoshi is some years older than the rest of the Alien Contact Team, older than the other members of the family partnership?

That’s OK.

George Takei is timeless.

The Starfarers Quartet debuted at Book View Café on 20 December 2009. For more about Vonda N. McIntyre, please visit her website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Claudia Dain's "Courtesan Chronicles"

Claudia Dain is a two-time Rita finalist and a USA Today bestselling author.

Here she shares her thinking about the director and principal cast for a film adaptation of the Courtesan Chronicles:

This is so easy, the actor part of the equation, anyway. I always work from a photo to create and cement a character. I like to be able to stare at an intriguing face, to see the subtle and not so subtle differences between one brown-eyed brunette and another. Plus, then I don't forget the details, like the scar is on the left cheek and not the right.

I didn't use to need physical props to remember my characters, but now I do. I'd like to blame it on age but since I'm not 92, is age really the factor here?

Don't answer that.

I'm writing a long-running series (the fifth book out in July 2010) and the central heroine must be played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. She's that perfect blend of smart sophistication, sex appeal, and innate good humor; my Sophia Dalby character to a T.

Her hero should be played by Clive Owen. Dark haired and green eyed, tough, and yet still a gentleman, he's a man who is not intimidated by anything or anyone, yet doesn't make a big deal out of that fact.

In the director's chair, I'd love to see Bonnie Hunt. She has a light touch and can hit both the humor and romance button in the same instant. That's not easy to do well.

To produce? That's tougher. Someone who isn't afraid to take on the costs of filming a Regency historical. All those location shots! All those lavish costumes!

Learn more about the author and her novels at Claudia Dain's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Joel Shepherd's "Sasha"

Joel Shepherd was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1974. He has studied Film and Television, International Relations, has interned on Capitol Hill in Washington, and traveled widely in Asia. His first trilogy, the Cassandra Kresnov Series, consists of Crossover, Breakaway and Killswitch.

Here he shares some ideas about casting opportunities for a film adaptation of Sasha, the first book in the A Trial of Blood and Steel series:

One giant plus for any movie made of Sasha, is that unlike my previous ‘Cassandra Kresnov Series’, Sasha would be relatively cheap to film. Yes there are some quite big battle scenes at the end, but most of the story is character driven rather than action driven, so aside from the costs of shooting in some very pretty, wild terrain (New Zealand? Canada?), I can’t see any prohibitive expenses. There’s also no magic or dragons or other giant, flame spewing monsters, so special effects would barely be needed (and wouldn’t that be just wonderful, to see some character based fantasy that didn’t just rely on eye candy?).

Since characters drive the plot, by far the most important part of the film would be casting. And for my main character Sasha, I have exactly the same problem I had with the Cassandra Kresnov Series -- there’s very few actresses in Hollywood who have established themselves playing tough female roles. There are probably quite a few who could do it, but haven’t been given the opportunity. But I don’t know who they are.

As a character, Sasha is something of a force of nature. She was born a Princess, daughter of the King of Lenayin, and was a very wild kid. In any other circumstance she might have had it beaten out of her, but Lenayin loves individualists and Sasha’s older brother, Prince Kristoff, was a little wild himself and encouraged her, perhaps unwisely. But Kristoff was killed when Sasha was eight, Sasha was heartbroken, and went to live with Kristoff’s old mentor Kessligh, greatest warrior in Lenayin , to take Kristoff’s place as his student.

Any actress playing Sasha would have to get into the shape of her life, think Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. Swordfighting in my novels isn’t some magical gift -- talent perhaps is (as Tiger Woods or Roger Federer could tell you), but talent has to be worked at, and Sasha works hard. She’s only an average sized girl, twenty years old in the novel, but she’s got muscles all over. She’s not bulky at all, because she relies on speed more than power, but has technique to achieve both.

She fights with an exotic swordfighting style called the svaalverd, the like of which I’m not sure has ever actually existed with swords, so I’m not actually certain that it’s possible, I’m just presuming it is. It’s inspired by the Wing Chun style of Kung Fu, which was created by a woman (the story goes) named Yim Wing Chun a long time ago in China, and was designed specifically to enable a weaker fighter to beat a stronger one, using the power derived of form and technique to overwhelm the inferior power of size and muscle. Or in other words, it was designed in part to allow women to beat men, by using a man’s greater size and strength against him (the irony being that these days far more men practise it than women). To portray this in a movie would be fascinating, and would require a very good fight choreographer with an excellent imagination who grasped the concept. Sasha’s blindingly quick, has amazing footwork and balance, and parries often with an angled blade so she’s not meeting force with force, but deflects her opponent’s blade past its target, leaving him open for the next cut. The more power her opponent uses against her, the better she likes it, because a big swing that misses its target will leave him completely exposed on the follow through.

Another key character is Kessligh, Sasha’s mentor. I’ve always imagined him as a guy with a very rugged and memorable face. Michael Douglas comes to mind, though only in a general sort of way. Kessligh’s an even better fighter than Sasha, not quite as fast any longer (he’s about fifty) but deadly experienced. He’s a philosophical guy with a hard edge, whose emotion when you get it out of him is that much more valuable because it’s so rare.

Sasha’s most prominent brothers, Damon and Koenyg, could be played by any number of tough young Hollywood guys. Damon is taller, more cynical and less self confident. Koenyg is a brick wall, average height but built like you might see in the WWF, and with similar attitude.

And then there’s Sofy, Sasha’s younger sister, intelligent, sophisticated and ‘girly’, an utterly different personality to Sasha, yet somewhat worshipful of her all the same. She has no interest in being ‘just like’ Sasha, but has huge admiration for Sasha’s strength of character. Sofy is the peacemaker in a world filled with warriors, and it is a struggle for her to retain her youthful optimism in the face of all her world’s troubles. As a character type, I don’t think she’d be difficult to cast compared to Sasha, but again, her character’s surface simplicity becomes more and more complicated the further the story goes, so some real acting talent would be required.

Lastly, I think Sasha the movie would require some awesome cinematography. Lenayin is a very rugged, beautiful land, rather like its people in that it can be difficult, dangerous and wonderful all at once. The native Goeren-yai are animists who believe spirits live in all things, and beautiful photography could capture their sense of wonder at the land around them, and help to convey why it is that they are like they are.

Read an excerpt from Sasha and learn more about the land of Lenayin. Visit Joel Shepherd's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Crossover.

The Page 69 Test: Sasha.

--Marshal Zeringue

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Meg Gardiner's Evan Delaney series

Meg Gardiner's novels include the Jo Beckett series -- The Dirty Secrets Club and The Memory Collector -- and several Evan Delaney novels, which feature "a smart-aleck freelance journalist, deal with religious extremism, a high school reunion killer, and sex, drugs, and rock’n'roll. (They’re set in California. Of course they do.)"

China Lake (of the Evan Delaney series) won the 2009 Edgar award for Best Paperback Original; Stephen King calls the series “simply put, the finest crime-suspense series I’ve come across in the last twenty years.”

Here Gardiner explains some casting choices for a big screen adaptation of the novels:

Here I go, stepping into a bear trap.

I’ve always avoided being pinned down about who should play Evan Delaney. I write about her in the novels: She’s a tomboy who doesn’t know that she’s beautiful. She’s athletic, has a quick laugh, a quicker tongue, and a sharp sense of humor.

The books are fast-paced thrillers set in southern California. And when the Winnipeg Free Press reviewed Kill Chain, it said, “You just want to see what Rachel Weisz could do as Evan Delaney, a Santa Barbara freelance journalist whose father has gone missing.”

Rachel Weisz is fabulous. It’s a kick to hear that somebody sees her as Evan. Others have said they picture Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sarah Connor—meaning Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies. And not one of those actors is the Evan of my imagination.

Here’s the wonderful thing about fiction: After I write the book, readers do creative work of their own, and imagine the world of the novel fresh in their own minds.

But if I had to pick a big-screen actress to play Evan, I’d go with Hilary Swank. She’s feisty but vulnerable, has strong looks with an underlying tenderness, and can run like hell. Plus, in Kill Chain, Evan says she has a better chance of landing the space shuttle than of fixing her computer. In The Core, Hilary Swank actually does land the space shuttle. That’s good enough for me.

(And in the background, my husband calls: “But give Evan Sigourney Weaver’s voice.”)

Other characters also take some thought. Jesse Blackburn, Evan’s boyfriend, combines Jensen Ackles from Supernatural with Keanu Reeves in Speed—and maybe Matt Damon in Jason Bourne mode, if his dialogue were written by The West Wing writers. But casting Jesse’s tricky. He’s a smartass, drives too fast, is as brave as all get out, and once had the world at his feet as a world-class athlete. But he’s been disabled by a hit-and-run driver. He can’t walk. Any hot men out there who are paraplegics and first class actors, please grab for the role. Meanwhile, the guy who comes closest to looking like him is Brazilian actor Reynaldo Gianecchini.

Then there’s Evan’s family. Mark Harmon would be great as her dad, Phil Delaney. Jamie Lee Curtis — though she’s too young in real life — would be good as Evan’s mom, Angie. And let’s have Jon Hamm play Evan’s fighter-pilot brother, Brian. Oh, yeah.

As for Evan’s guardian demons — the spy couple, Jax Rivera and Tim North — Jada Pinkett Smith would play a fierce Jax, and Jason Isaacs a coolly threatening Tim.

What do you know—that wasn’t painful at all. I don’t even have to gnaw off my own foot to get out of the trap.

Learn more about the author and her work at Meg Gardiner's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

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