Amber Royer's "Pure Chocolate"

Amber Royer writes fun science fiction involving chocolate, aliens, lovesick AIs, time travel, and more. She teaches enrichment/continuing education creative writing classes for both teens and adults at UT Arlington.

Here Royer dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Pure Chocolate:

My friends and I did a book trailer for Pure Chocolate. You can see the Chocoverse books have potential for visual appeal. It is after all meant to be a telenovela-on-the-page, crossed with a space opera, so there’s tons of drama – and a goodly amount of action. (New to the Chocoverse? Here’s a trailer for the first book, Free Chocolate).

When we did the trailers, we intentionally kept faces fuzzed, so that the reader could imagine these characters any way they wanted. Which makes this whole “dreamcast your book” exercise feel a little counterintuitive. But you asked, so I brainstormed.

There would need to be a goodly bit of CGI because the cast of my books includes a cop who’s a 7-foot tall venomous reptilian humanoid, and a number of named characters who are lemon-yellow giants with double-rows of shark teeth and oversized whale-like eyes. But if you focus on the characters who are human (or human-ish) who are important to both books:

Bo’s an ex-actress in her mid twenties who has fled across the galaxy to get away from the paparazzi after scandal ruined her career. She’s enrolled in a culinary academy on a backwater planet at the beginning of the first book, but she’ll be traveling the galaxy before all this is over. In my mind Bo looks a lot like Angelique Boyer before she went blonde.

Brill is Bo’s boyfriend – from the planet Krom. From the outside, Krom look human – with the exception of their chromashifting irises, which let you read their emotions in their eyes. But Krom can move at flash speeds and have book lungs, so they can go extended periods without having to breathe. They also have significantly longer lifespans, so while Brill’s older than Bo, he should look eternally young. I pictured Brill looking a bit like James Franco circa Spiderman 1. Although Liam Hemsworth is a pretty good match for how the artists have rendered Brill on the covers of both books, and that image has kinda grown on me.

Eva Longoria would have enough “presence” to play Bo’s diva mamá. Mamá Lavonda’s the most popular celebrity chef on Earth in a future where chefs are bigger than rock stars. She’s used to getting what she wants – but she’s had to live through a lot, including the violent death of Bo’s father, to get there.

And Nathan Fillion would be able to pull off the air of danger combined with perfect comic timing needed for Frank, Mamá’s boyfriend and a man of hidden motives, whose true intentions and loyalties come clear pretty quickly in the first book, making his relationship with Mamá – and Bo – complex to say the least.

Bo meets Kaliel, a human transport pilot who’s been grounded after causing an incident that could spark war, in the first book when she goes to Rio to steal the source of chocolate – in the form of an unfermented cocoa pod. Sparks fly and much drama ensues. I picture Kaliel looking a bit like Dayo Okeniyi.

Lastly, there’s Chestla, who is an alpha predator on her home planet Evevron. But if she doesn’t smile and show off her predator’s teeth, and you slap a pair of sunglasses on her to hide the slit-pupil green eyes, she could be mistaken for human from a distance. Chestla’s both a warrior and a nurturer, and has an incredibly optimistic disposition in even the most dire of circumstances. I think Amanda Seyfried could play her admirably.

Visit Amber Royer's website.

The Page 69 Test: Free Chocolate.

--Marshal Zeringue