Craig Schaefer's books have taken readers to the seamy edge of a criminal underworld drenched in shadow (the Daniel Faust series), to a world torn by war, poison and witchcraft (the Revanche Cycle), and across a modern America mired in occult mysteries and a conspiracy of lies (the Harmony Black series).Despite this, people say he's strangely normal. Suspiciously normal, in fact. He practices sleight of hand in his spare time, though he's not very good at it.
Here Schaefer dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, Cold Spectrum:
Casting my own books is a trickier question than it sounds. I rarely envision my characters in terms of specific actors – I see them in a fuzzier, more mutable space – but it’s a fun challenge to try. Of course, when it comes to the Harmony Black series, one character casts herself; specifically, Nadine, one of Harmony’s most dangerous foes. Given that she canonically remodeled her human form to resemble Taylor Swift, that’s one role taken care of (and with it, half the movie’s casting budget, but this is all hypothetical so let’s go big or go home.)Visit Craig Schaefer's website.
As for Harmony’s other nemesis, the lime-sneaker-clad technophile billionaire Bobby Diehl, one perfect prospect jumps to mind: Tom Hanks. He hasn’t played a ton of villainous parts, but he absolutely has the acting chops to pull it off. And given that Diehl is a closet neo-Nazi and multiple murderer, seeing the nicest guy in Hollywood in the role would be deliciously jarring.
For Harmony’s partner Jessie Temple – gifted with sharp instincts and an acid wit (as well as occasional bouts of feral rage, thanks to the backwoods entity her serial-killer father handed her to as a child) – I can picture one perfect choice. Aisha Tyler does comedy and drama with a deft hand, and her ongoing role on television’s Archer proves she could hit Jessie’s mix of dry humor and general exasperation note-perfectly.
Harmony herself, that’s the tough one for me. I’m so close to her – deeper than the marrow, writing her adventures in first-person – that it’s hard for me to find the perfect actor to match the impression in my mind’s eye. It would have to be a performer who not only fits the physical look but (much more importantly), can hit that perfect blend of ferociously dedicated, driven to the point of self-destruction, and decidedly neurotic.
I polled my friends and got multiple suggestions for Rachael Taylor, and I could definitely see her in the part. That said, I think I’d actually go closer to home and cast someone from my own production team: Susannah Jones, stage actress and the narrator of the audiobook adaptation of my Revanche Cycle series. Susannah is more than a good friend, she’s a tremendous actress and ridiculously talented. I think she could nail the part, and since this is my head-casting, she gets the job.
The Page 69 Test: Cold Spectrum.
Writers Read: Craig Schaefer.
--Marshal Zeringue