Lou Anders's "Nightborn"

Lou Anders drew on a recent visit to Norway, along with his adventures traveling across Europe in his teens and twenties, to write Frostborn and Nightborn, combining those experiences with his love of globe-trotting adventure fiction and games (both tabletop and role-playing). However, he has yet to ride a wyvern. With the addition of characters Desstra and Tanthal, Anders hopes that his second book in the Thrones and Bones series will continue to appeal to boys and girls equally. He is the recipient of a Hugo Award for editing and a Chesley Award for art direction. He has published over five hundred articles and stories on science fiction and fantasy television and literature.

Here Anders dreamcasts an adaptation of Nightborn:

When I write a book, I tend to think of the main characters as if I were casting a film. Sometimes I’ll have more than one actor in mind, using two or three to triangulate a type. I write in Scrivener, so it’s easy to snag photos and have them open when I need to remind myself of the sort of person I’m penning.

For the Thrones and Bones series, I had a number of people in mind for my major characters.

For Karn Korlundsson, a young farm boy in the Norse-inspired land of Norrøngard, I imagined Nathan O’Toole, who played the part of Bjorn Ironside on the first two seasons of Vikings. For Thianna Frostborn, the half-giant girl, I imagined what Lucy Lawless might have been like as a seven-foot-tall twelve-year-old. For the villain Sydia, I envisioned Skyfall’s Tonia Sotiropoulou, maybe mixed with a hint of Charlize Theron or Nicole Kidman. And for the great dragon Orm, the largest of all linnorms, I envisioned none other than David Bowie. In fact, I found old interview footage from early in Bowie’s career, and I studied how he coolly deflected the often-snide comments of older interviewers. Before starting each scene with the dragon, I would watch these to get the tone down, merging them with my memories of his performance as Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth.

Visit the official Thrones & Bones website, Lou Anders's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: Nightborn.

--Marshal Zeringue