Constance Sayers's "A Witch in Time"

Constance Sayers’ debut novel, A Witch in Time, is out now from Redhook (Hachette Book Group).

A finalist for Alternating Current’s 2016 Luminaire Award for Best Prose, her short stories have appeared in Souvenir and Amazing Graces: Yet Another Collection of Fiction by Washington Area Women as well as The Sky is a Free Country. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

She received her master of arts in English from George Mason University and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor of arts in writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She attended The Bread Loaf Writers Conference where she studied with Charles Baxter and Lauren Groff. Currently, she’s a media executive at Atlantic Media and she’s twice been named one of the “Top 100 Media People in America” by Folio and included in their list of “Top Women in Media.”

She lives outside of Washington DC and is the co-founder of the Thoughtful Dog literary magazine.

Here Sayers's dreamcasts an adaptation of A Witch in Time:

I love this exercise! In college, I took a bunch of film and screenwriting classes. I’ve heard that A Witch in Time has a distinctly cinematic feel, which probably is something I did intentionally from all the years of writing scripts. I tend to always “see” my books as films as I write them.

When I’m writing, I have an idea of someone inhabiting the character—usually an actor. For the character of Luke Varner, it was always, always Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie circa his Lew Ashby portrayal on Californication. He has that gritty appeal that I think any actor playing Luke needs. Another actor who I think could be a fabulous Luke is Tim Rozon who plays Doc Holliday on Syfy’s Wynonna Earp.

Now, the Juliet/Nora/Sandra/Helen character is a very interesting casting problem. For the audio book, there are four different actresses reading the different roles and I think that works well for the audio version. For the film/tv version, I think that one actress should play all four characters. Visually, I think one actress with multiple transformations (hair and make-up) illustrates the continuity that they are really one essence. I also think this actress needs to have a timeless quality, so that she’s as believable as a modern-day media executive as she is a 1930s film star. Genevieve Angelson from Good Girls Revolt would be my first choice if I were casting. I also love Emma Bell from Different Flowers, Perry Mattfeld from In the Dark, or Kennedy McMann who plays Nancy Drew in the CW reboot.

Visit Constance Sayers's website.

--Marshal Zeringue