Alyssa Palombo's "The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel"

Alyssa Palombo is a writer living and working in Buffalo, NY. She attended Canisius College in Buffalo, where she majored in English and creative writing with a minor in music. She is a classically trained mezzo-soprano who also dabbles in playing piano. When not writing, Palombo can usually be found reading, hanging out and laughing way too hard at nonsensical inside jokes with friends, traveling (or dreaming of her next travel destination), at a concert, or planning for next Halloween. She is a metalhead and a self-proclaimed French fry connoisseur. She also owns way too many hoodies, pairs of sunglasses, and pajamas, but never enough books.

Palombo is the author of three historical novels, The Violinist of Venice, The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence, and The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel:

I usually have a hard time picturing specific actors playing my characters – I’ll usually have a good pick for one or two of the main ones, but not all of them. However, with my most recent release, The Spellbook of Katrina Van Tassel, it just so happened that I “cast” the main players very early on. Below are who I would want to play my quartet of main characters should the book become a movie (or a TV series – looking at you, Netflix!).

Katrina Van Tassel – Holliday Grainger

I first saw Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia on Showtime’s The Borgias, and have seen her in a few things since – I think she’s a great actress. She is exactly how I pictured Katrina Van Tassel in my retelling in terms of physical features, and based on the roles she’s done in the past I know she would be perfect for the character!

Ichabod Crane – Tom Mison

This one miiiiight be cheating a little bit, because of course Tom Mison has already played Ichabod Crane – on FOX’s modern reimagining of the show, entitled simply Sleepy Hollow. I adored the first two seasons of that show, and as I wrote my novel I couldn’t help but picture my Ichabod as looking like Mison’s version – very handsome and gentlemanly!

Brom Van Brunt – Chris Hemsworth

So technically in Washington Irving’s original story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” Brom Van Brunt is described as having dark hair, but for whatever reason I just could not picture him as anything other than a handsome blonde. Chris Hemsworth fits my mental picture exactly, and I bet he would play a good villain!

Charlotte Jansen – Charlotte Wessels

This one is also probably cheating, since Charlotte Wessels isn’t an actress – she’s a singer, the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Delain. However, she is who my character of Charlotte Jansen is named after – as my character is of Dutch descent, I named her after my two favorite singers, who just both happen to be badass Dutch ladies, Charlotte Wessels and Floor Jansen – and so I couldn’t help but picture my Charlotte as looking like the real one.

Visit Alyssa Palombo's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Violinist of Venice.

The Page 69 Test: The Most Beautiful Woman in Florence.

--Marshal Zeringue