every so often someone becomes more attuned to their elemental
leaning and develops true power. When an evil Elemental known as
Thanatos arrived in Olympus City, it saw the rise of its first
hero—Zeus. But the death toll caused by defeating Thanatos changed
Zeus, who by day is young detective Danny Grant.
Lovesick Gods. Danny should be used to his duty behind the mask, but
the recent past haunts him. His girlfriend left him, he snaps at the
barest provocation, his life feels empty—he needs an outlet, any
outlet to pull him out of his depression.
a time when Danny welcomed a fight with Cho, filled with colorful
banter and casual flirtations that were a relief compared to
Thanatos. Even as a criminal, Cho had recognized the threat Thanatos
posed and promised to help Danny stop him, but the day Danny needed
Cho, he never showed. Cho was the reason so many people died that
day—including Danny’s mother.
attraction into something more. At worst, he’ll get some
no-strings-attached sex out of the deal and finally blow off steam;
at best, he’ll get Cho to fall in love with him and then break his
heart to spite him.
can’t predict the much darker threat on the horizon.
Guest Post: Book to Movie? Let’s Hope!
If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
This is one of my favorite games to play when completing a novel – what is my dream cast? In this case, since I have two leads, the hero character, Danny Grant/Zeus, and his nemesis, Mal Cho/Prometheus, I’d like to share who my picks are for both.
I envisioned Mal’s actor first and landed on Daniel Henney without pause, which some people might be familiar with as the voice of the older brother Tadashi in Big Hero 6. He is also an accomplished live action actor and fits my vision of the character well. He’s the right age of mid-30s, Korean-American, tall, and gorgeous, if I’m being blunt. He also has this knack for giving a brilliant, endearing smile while also being able to play a cold and villainous character, which is important for both leads, since duality and moral ambiguity is a recurring theme.
For Danny, I waffled for a while, but I keep coming back to Domhnall Gleeson, who people will remember most recently as General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’s a few years younger than Henney, which is important, but about the same height, and while Irish, he can do an American accent flawlessly. He’s a natural redhead, which I wanted, and just like Henney again, he can play both a loveable heroic character and a cruel rogue with the flip of a switch—which at times is exactly how the story plays out.
The real question is whether they would have chemistry together, as that’s what casting comes down to, especially when romance and sexual tension is involved. I’m confident they’d work well though, and whenever I envision my dream cast for Lovesick Gods, they are the actors who spring to mind for the leads.
Do you have a favorite movie? Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
It’s hard for me to choose a single movie, so my top three would be:
• The Fifth Element
• Fight Club
• Interview with the Vampire
And boy are those different from each other! Fun hard sci-fi, cerebral commentary on the human condition, and supernatural drama. As you can tell, I like a little bit of everything.
The book I’m working on next, A Model Escort, is the best suited to be adapted into film, primarily because of length. I’ll be working on Escort during National Novel Writing Month this year (NaNoWriMo), which has writers dedicate the month of November to getting down 50k words toward their next novel.
50k is tiny compared to the length of the novels I usually write, but I challenged myself recently to see if I could tell a more concise story within 50-60k words, and somehow, I managed to go over by only about 3k. I will be using NaNo to edit down the story and clean it up for publisher submissions before the end of the year. Because it is a tighter story, it would fit a feature length film perfectly.
I have some experience with screenplay writing and script coverages, and when in script mode, a single page generally translates to a minute of screen time. Therefore, a more basic 50-60k word novel, or even a short story, lends itself more easily to be adapted than something longer, unless you don’t mind cutting large chunks of plot.
A Model Escort is a more traditional romance story, without the usual urban fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi elements I tend to focus on. It’s about a young man recently free from an emotionally abusive relationship who’s moved to a new city with very impressive work opportunities ahead of him. The problem is, he’s lonely and awkward about meeting new people. He decides to hire an escort to help ease him into this new phase of his life, but he doesn’t want anything more than company and a cuddle to replace the emptiness his ex-boyfriend left behind. The story splits its focus between this young man and the escort himself, who’s older and going through a period of listlessness wondering if he needs a change in his life. As it turns out, they’re the change each other needs. The very real look at emotional abuse and moving on from that is a personal topic for me, and I’m proud of how this story is taking shape for a standalone story that veers very differently from my usual work. If all goes well, A Model Escort will release some time in the Fall/Winter of 2018.
Nothing would give me greater joy than to see one of my stories adapted to film someday, or maybe one of my longer ones adapted for TV. I’ll certainly hold out hope that one day I’ll get to see that dream made a reality.
College in Creative Writing, and has been posting content online for
many years, including maintaining the blog for the digital marketing
company Outsell. She spent a summer writing screenplay script
coverages for a company in L.A., and is an avid consumer of fiction
through film, prose, and video games.
Helga and Sasha (no connection to the incubus of the same name).
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