Beverle Graves Myers's "Whispers of Vivaldi"

Beverle Graves Myers is the author of Whispers of Vivaldi and five previous mystery novels featuring Tito Amato, the 18th-century sleuth with a stellar talent for sleuthing. A former psychiatrist, Myers divides her time between Louisville, Kentucky and southwest Florida.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of the series:

Tito Amato is a castrato soprano, a star of the 18th-century opera stage, who sings and sleuths in the last days of the Venetian Republic. The brutal surgery forced on him as a young boy could have easily made him a bitter man, but in Tito’s case, the physical violation led to empathy for anyone wronged by the decadent, repressive society around him. A carnival dwarf, the Jews of the Venetian ghetto, a wise woman of the Old Religion, a murdered servant whose master would like to simply to forget her—Tito seeks justice for all.

What actor would I cast as Tito? Who would be brave enough to accept the role?

There’s always been only one. Johnny Depp. He was my pick when I started the series and he still is. Depp can do any role with sensitivity, charm, and style. I would trust him to study the castrato phenomenon until he could do a pitch perfect rendition of this character who would be utterly foreign to most people of the 21st century. Depp could breathe life into Tito.

But what about the music? Tito’s story couldn’t be filmed without a display of his magnificent singing.

I’ve got that covered. Depp can sing—he proved it in the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He’s not particularly good, and certainly not a soprano, but he’s obviously a competent enough singer to act as if he is. For the actual sound, the filmmaker could use a technique employed in Farinelli, the story of another castrato, a real historical figure who is acknowledged as the greatest singer of the baroque era. To recreate the range and timbre of Farinelli’s stupendous voice, the performances of a female soprano, Ewa Malas-Godlewska, and a male counter-tenor, Derek Lee Ragin, were digitally merged. The result is a seamlessly perfect castrato voice—much like Tito’s.

Visit Beverle Graves Myers' website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Writers Read: Beverle Graves Myers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kim Fu's "For Today I Am a Boy"

Kim Fu is the author of the novel For Today I Am a Boy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. She has written for NPR, Maisonneuve, The Rumpus, Ms., The Tyee, The Stranger, Prairie Fire, Grain, Room, and Best Canadian Essays, among others. She is the news columns editor for This, a magazine of progressive politics now in its 47th year, and writes the advice column ASK FU! for the YourBoxClub.com blog. Fu lives in Seattle with her husband and their many computers.

Here Fu dreamcasts an adaptation of For Today I Am a Boy:

If I’m dreaming big, Wong Kar-wai would direct the movie version of my book. Several of his films have a similar relationship to time as For Today I Am a Boy: episodic, lots of small scenes and details that add up to a life. An avalanching effect.

While I was writing, I actually pictured a young Maggie Cheung for the eldest sister, Adele. She has the wounded elegance, the breezy big-sister authority, and the crushing, heart-stopping beauty.

The rest of the characters are harder for me to imagine. The scarcity of Asian actors in Hollywood is a limiting factor. Maybe Tony Leung Chui-Wai for the father—he’s great with characters who express big sentiments with small, brutal gestures. Brenda Song would make an interesting Bonnie, the youngest sister. She has the right kind of energy, sassy and fun and a little bit dangerous. I can see Emily Kuroda as the mother. Kuroda could play both phases of her life—the intense, silent force in the background and then the strong, loud-mouthed woman who comes into her own. Linda Park would suit Helen, the shrewd, smart, wary middle sister.

As for Peter, I would want someone fresh, someone new to the screen. Young and vulnerable and daring. And after their debut, everyone says, “Wow. Who was that?”

Visit Kim Fu's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michele Zackheim's "Last Train to Paris"

Michele Zackheim is the author of four books. Born in Reno, Nevada she grew up in Compton, California. For many years she worked in the visual arts as a fresco muralist, an installation artist, print-maker, and a painter. Her work has been widely exhibited and is included in the permanent collections of The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; The Albuquerque Museum; The Grey Art Gallery of New York University; The New York Public Library; The Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum, and The Carlsbad Museum of Art. She has been the recipient of two NEA awards, and teaches Creative Writing from a Visual Perspective at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Of her transition from visual artist to author she writes: “Over time, random words began to appear on my canvases…then poems…then elaborate fragments of narratives. I began to think more about writing and less about the visual world. Finally, I simply wrote myself off the canvas and onto the lavender quadrille pages of a bright orange notebook. This first book, Violette’s Embrace, was published by Riverhead Books.” That book is a fictional biography of the French writer Violette Leduc. Her second book, the acclaimed Einstein’s Daughter: The Search for Lieserl (Penguin Putnam, 1999), is a non-fiction account of the mystery of the lost illegitimate daughter of Mileva and Albert Einstein. Broken Colors (Europa Editions, 2007) is the story of an artist, whose life takes her to a place where life and art intersect. Her fourth novel, Last Train to Paris, was published in January 2014. Zackheim lives in New York City.

Here the author shares some ideas on casting an adaptation of the new novel:

When I begin to write a book, I look for photographs of my characters on the Internet and in photograph archives. It takes a long time to do this research. I’m particular about finding the right faces to fire my imagination for the years that it takes to write a book. Once I’ve settled on the faces, I print the images. Since I’ll be looking at them for a long time, I keep them behind glass in pretty frames and arrange them on my desk.

If a movie were to be made of my latest book, Last Train to Paris, I would want obscure actors—actors whom the viewers think they recognize, but can’t identify. I find that when I go to the movies, I can never get away from the real person—Brad Pitt is always Brad Pitt; Helen Mirren is always Helen Mirren. Sorry. Although they may be good actors, that’s just the way it is. For my movie, I want the viewer to travel back in time to Paris and Berlin just before the Second World War, knowing no one, having no preconceived ideas. New faces. New ideas. New understanding?

Visit Michele Zackheim's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alex Bledsoe's "He Drank, and Saw the Spider"

Alex Bledsoe grew up in west Tennessee an hour north of Graceland (home of Elvis) and twenty minutes from Nutbush (birthplace of Tina Turner). He has been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls.

Here Bledsoe dreamcasts an adaptation of his new novel, He Drank, and Saw the Spider:

In the past, I’ve mentioned that the ideal casting for Eddie LaCrosse, hero of He Drank, and Saw the Spider (and four preceding novels), would be Alien-era Tom Skerritt. Unfortunately, that isn’t possible. Over the years people have suggested many actors, from the obvious (Sean Bean, who doesn’t really seem to have the sense of humor for it) to the inexplicable (Keanu Reeves? Really?).

But as luck would have it, I recently stumbled across the perfect contemporary actor in an absolutely terrible movie.

I’d seen Jeffrey Dean Morgan before, most notably as The Comedian in Watchmen. But while watching the 2012 horror movie The Possession, I realized he would be perfect for Eddie. He looks to be about the right age, he’s got an easy-going manner, and most importantly he comes across as a grown man. So many actors today, even the ones in their 30s and 40s, seem to be mere boys. And there’s an innate intelligence to Morgan that shines through even when he’s mired in drek like The Possession.

But who to play his girlfriend, the level-headed and acid-tongued Liz Dumont? In this novel in particular, their banter is a big part of the fun. I’ve always depicted her as Eddie’s contemporary, which rules out any of the interchangeable “actresses” under 30 who currently dominate screens. It would need to be someone with great comic timing, mature yet sexy, and who could play straight through a fair bit of absurdity. In a perfect world, then, I’d cast Julie Bowen, Claire on the sitcom Modern Family.

Learn more about the book and author at Alex Bledsoe's website and blog.

Writers Read: Alex Bledsoe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Morton's "Netherworld"

Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert. Her work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening”, and Famous Monsters called her "one of the best writers in dark fiction today". Her novels include The Castle of Los Angeles and Malediction. A multiple Bram Stoker Award® winner, she lives in North Hollywood, California.

Here Morton dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, Netherworld:

Netherworld first came about when I was working on a short story that involved the character Van Helsing from Dracula, and I started to imagine how much fun a globe-trotting nineteenth-century female version of Van Helsing would be. I immediately thought, Aha – this character would be like a cross between Abraham Van Helsing and Emma Peel from The Avengers. For those of you who may either be too young to know or don’t remember, The Avengers was the 1960s British spy series that starred Diana Rigg (before knighthood) as a witty karate-chopping genius in one-piece jumpsuits, and she’s probably my all-time favorite fictitious character. Given that, I have to say that my vision of Diana Furnaval, my protagonist in Netherworld, will always involve ‘60s-era Diana Rigg.

In Netherworld, Lady Furnaval acquires a traveling companion who is a young Chinese sailor named Yi-kin. I’m a big fan of Asian cinema – I speak some Cantonese, and my first book was a study of the work of the influential Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark – and Yi-kin is really an homage to one of my favorite actors, superstar Cheng Yi-kin (also known as Ekin Cheng). Although Cheng is now in his forties (Yi-kin is less than half his age), he starred in his big breakout movie Young and Dangerous when he was young, and he usually portrays strong characters who are very devoted to their friends and loved ones.

The third major character in Netherworld is an enigmatic scholar and bookseller named Stephen Chappell. Diana, who is still mourning her late husband William, is nonetheless instantly attracted to Stephen, so he needs to be a charismatic performer who can suggest an ethereal quality. I’ve liked Ewan McGregor since Trainspotting (wherein he was, I’ll grant you, anything but ethereal!), so I think he’d make a fine Chappell.

The last character I’ll mention is Mina, Diana’s other dedicated companion…and a cat. Mina was absolutely based on my cat Roxie, who thought she was my protector (seriously, she growled whenever she heard strange noises outside, and I’d just look at her and say, “What do you think you’re going to do? You weigh nine pounds!”). Unfortunately Roxie passed away from a rare disease last October, but she would have been too impatient and imperious to endure a film set anyways.

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Morton's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Katzenbach's "Red 1-2-3"

Three of John Katzenbach's novels have been made into feature films: In the Heat of the Summer (adapted for the screen as The Mean Season), Hart's War starring Bruce Willis, and Just Cause starring Sean Connery. His other books include the New York Times bestseller The Traveler; Day of Reckoning and The Shadow Man. Katzenbach was a criminal court reporter for The Miami Herald and Miami News and a featured writer for the Herald’s Tropic magazine.

Here the author shares some thoughts on a big screen adaptation of his new novel, Red 1-2-3:

Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!

See, I’ve already had four of my books filmed and… well, let’s just say the results were, ah…. mixed. The trouble is, oftentimes one learns that this or that screenwriter has been hired and this or that actor is all set to play the lead role and it just seems totally dandy, great, fantastic, astonishingly prescient by the producers to pick out the absolute perfect team, who are completely devoted to both the plot of the book and the personality and the physical presence of the main character as I originally conceived him or her. Then, author excitement steadily building, hopes flourishing, Hollywood box office success dreams firing off like firecrackers on the Glorious 4th, the director shouts “Action!” cameras roll and…

Thud!

You know what occurs next:

Wait a second! Hey, what the hell? Where’s my book? Who are these odd people saying these strange things that have little or nothing to do with what I had in mind?

What just happened?

Sigh.

Here’s the deal with books into movies: Somewhere between optioning the material, investing in a screenwriter, hiring a director, cinematographer and a bevy of talented performers, and spending a whole lot of money – all the solid reasons for thinking the book would make a good movie get lost in the proverbial shuffle. In the process of dealing with all these disparate entities and personalities (all movies are a well-known series of compromises) the essence of the book gets, well, compromised. And there’s the rub.

Bippity-bobbity-boo. Put it together and what have you got?

With apologies to Cinderella, it’s usually not a magic coach drawn by white horses, but a rancid pumpkin. Maybe, if one is fortunate, a stew – but a steaming often over-cooked stew, with some pretty tough to chew slices of mystery meat.

But – enough of this childish whining – because there are cinematic moments where one sees their creation transformed into images and it’s simply wondrous. Even if these moments seem more or less accidental, they’re still memorable, and thrilling not just for me, but I suspect for any author.

The trick is not to let it go to one’s head. As a writer, you are totally responsible for those words on the pages of your novel – and little else. And even if the whole damn world prefers to remember the cinematic representation of these things (no matter how close or how distant it is from what you first intended) what you have to keep in mind is what you did and how you did it. That’s where the true satisfaction lies.

Sort of.

I might be lying.

Or maybe stretching the truth some.

Regardless: So endeth the lesson for today.

And, deep in my dark, blackened, psychopathic heart, I love the movies. I like movies where things blow up. I like movies where people talk and talk. I like movies about the road and about home fires. I like love stories and war stories and even animal stories.

And, if I had the choice for the main character in Red 1-2-3…

Kevin Spacey.

Damn, he’s a fine actor. Filled with subtlety, nuance and a definite style. Who could forget Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects and when that limp disappears? He’d be A-OK in my eyes.

And probably it would be someone else completely who would utterly screw everything all up.

Learn more about the book and author at John Katzenbach's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Larry Witham's "Piero's Light"

Larry Alan Witham is a veteran journalist and author in the Washington D.C. area who has covered current events, history, religion and society, science, philosophy, and the visual arts. After twenty-one years in a newsroom, he now writes and edits books full time. He is the author of over one dozen books.

Here Witham dreamcasts an adaptation of his new book, Piero's Light: In Search of Piero della Francesca: A Renaissance Painter and the Revolution in Art, Science, and Religion:

Historians who pursue the life of the Italian Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca have a visual dilemma, and the same would go for a Hollywood screen writer and casting agent. Piero scholars have no valid description of what he looked like. What they have is folklore. Piero’s supposed self-portrait in a fresco shows a square-jawed man with dark curly hair, for example. A fanciful woodcut of Piero from the sixteenth century presents him wide-eyed. During the 1990s, rumor had it that archeologists found his burial site, and the skeleton was tall.

Measured against the Hollywood blockbusters done on Michelangelo and Van Gogh, a treatment of Piero della Francesca, a relatively cerebral artisan for his time, would face cinematic challenges. Charleton Heston as the volcanic Michelangelo, and Kirk Douglas’s Van Gogh in Lust for Life, are hard acts to follow (not to mention the demonstrative Ed Harris in Pollock). Short of using the entire cast of the Sopranos as a pool for characters—since Piero’s story is distinctly Italian—a “Piero: The Movie” must select widely.

Casting Piero’s historical environment will be important. This would be the outsized autocrats whose colorful Renaissance courts Piero had painted for. For the humanist Pope Pius II we could imagine Anthony Hopkins. For the two warlord princes, Federico Montefeltro of Urbino and Sigismundo Malatesta of Rimini, we could draft, respectively, Javier Bardem and Robert De Niro. At the dramatic center, this leaves Piero and the humanist architect Leon Battista Alberti to personify. I would cast Geoffrey Rush (or Antonio Banderas) as the erudite Alberti and Christian Bale (or Alfred Molina) as Piero—physically strong but introverted, a man of few words, dogged determination, and consummate visual and mathematical talent. What producer could afford to pay for all these superstars is anyone’s guess.

We know almost nothing about Piero’s personal life. So a plot would have to be invented. It could simplify his biography by adding an invented twist or crescendo to a life that, otherwise, lasted eighty years. Fictionally, we might put him in rivalry with Alberti or the dominant Florentine painters: Piero as outsider. I would also draw on the unrequited love theme found in the Italian writers Dante and Petrarch. Have Piero lose his early love interest to plague (or a forced marriage to another), thus setting Piero on his self-reliant path. By the necessities of a broken heart, Piero’s art, adventures, and geometry become his mistress. Who will be Piero’s lost Beatrice (a la Dante) or Petrarch’s Laura? Why not the comely, yet demure, Nicoletta Braschi (Life is Beautiful).

No spaghetti Western here. Picture the kind of backdrop seen in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, or in recent films that harp on the Renaissance splendors of Venice. The Piero movie can be shot in Tuscany, Rome, and cities where he worked, and where architecture of that period still stands. The Hollywood title? Piero’s Light of course.

Learn more about the book and author at Larry Witham's website.

The Page 99 Test: Piero's Light.

--Marshal Zeringue

Artis Henderson's "Unremarried Widow"

Artis Henderson is an award-winning journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Florida Weekly, and the online literary journal Common Ties. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism.

On November 6, 2006, the Apache helicopter carrying her husband Miles crashed in Iraq, leaving twenty-six-year-old Artis—in official military terms—an “unremarried widow.”

“In her memoir Artis recounts not only the unlikely love story she shared with Miles and her unfathomable recovery in the wake of his death— from the dark hours following the military notification to the first fumbling attempts at new love—but also reveals how Miles’s death mirrored her father’s death in a plane crash, which Artis survived when she was five years old and which left her own mother a young widow.”

Here Henderson deamcasts an adaptation of Unremarried Widow:

Being asked to cast a memoir is a tricky proposition—it's like one of those man-on-the-street interviews they used to do where they'd ask random people what celebrities they resembled. Then they'd plaster the random person's photo on the screen next to the celebrity and everyone at home would get a good chuckle because of course they looked nothing alike.

But this is my fantasy, so I might as well cast the movie however I damn well please.

To play me, I'd pick Jennifer Lawrence. Not only is she a fantastic actress, but she's the right age, the right build, and I think we both have these round cheeks. Also, the woman at the nail salon I go to when I'm visiting my mom's house in Florida said that Jennifer Lawrence's grandparents live down the street. So, we're practically the same person.

For Miles, I'd cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt. They're both handsome in a boyish, charming way. I also get this vibe from Gordon-Levitt of an essential goodness in his nature. Miles had it, too. It's something that can't be faked.

Learn more about the book and author at Artis Henderson's website and Facebook page.

The Page 99 Test: Unremarried Widow.

--Marshal Zeringue

Irene Radford's "The Broken Dragon"

Irene Radford is the author of the Dragon Nimbus (The Glass Dragon, The Perfect Princess, The Loneliest Magician, The Wizard's Treasure) and the Dragon Nimbus History (The Dragon's Touchstone, The Last Battlemage, The Renegade Dragon) series. She is the author of the Stargods and Merlin's Descendants series as well, and is also one of the founders of the Book View Cafe.

Here Radford dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, The Broken Dragon:

If I had to cast The Broken Dragon, Children of the Dragon Nimbus #2 today, I’d have to look both forward and backward in time as this is the middle book of a trilogy and the twelfth book in the world of The Glass Dragon.

This volume of the epic series belongs to Lily, daughter of master magicians Jaylor and Brevelan. Lily is the broken dragon, the only person in a family of formidable magicians who has no magical talent. However, Lily’s twin Valeria has been frail and sickly all her life. The two are inseparable, so no one notices that Val throws all of the magic for both of them at the University of Magicians. Lily gives her the strength to do so. Now that they are teens, approaching full adulthood, they must learn to live separately and find solutions to problems separately. Val must devise spells that conserve her strength. Lily must look for answers that don’t require magic.

So I have chosen Molly Quinn, who plays Alexis on the TV series Castle to take on the roles of both twins. She has the right delicate strawberry hair and fair coloring. I’ve seen her portray strong, organized, and nurturing as well as fragile almost to the breaking point. I don’t know if Ms Quinn can sing or not. If she can’t provide a strong and clear soprano, then we need Carrie Underwood—with the command of music she exhibited in recent The Sound of Music, Live—for the voice over.

Skeller the bard and Lily’s love interest could be played by almost any 24ish actor in Hollywood as long as Josh Groban sings his songs. No compromise there. Gotta be Josh.
As for Jaylor their father and the anchor character in most of these books, Nathan Fillion, as he is now in the series Castle, would suit admirably. The Nathan of the Firefly years, skinny and arrogant, can play his son Lukan.

There are other characters who help move this story along, all of them broken in some way. The strong actors who change every year or two in Hollywood will have to convince me they are right for the parts. Except I want Julia Louis-Dreyfus for Rejiia. A delicious villainess.

Visit Irene Radford's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

M. A. Lawson's "Rosarito Beach"

M. A. Lawson is the author of nine novels in the Joe DeMarco thriller series (writing as Mike Lawson) and the newly released Rosarito Beach.

Here Lawson dreamcasts an adaptation of Rosarito Beach:

Who would I pick to play Kay Hamilton, the tough, sexy, somewhat abrasive protagonist in Rosarito Beach? I didn’t have a specific actress in mind when I was writing the book and choosing one isn’t easy because in this case, age and looks matter. To match the character in the book, the actress has to be about thirty years old – that’s really important – tall and blond. She has to look good in the scenes when she’s taking on the bad guys, but in one particular scene, she has to be an absolute knockout when she’s all dressed up. And she has to project attitude. Jennifer Lawrence would be ideal in that she’s tall and blond like Kay Hamilton, but Jennifer is only twenty-three. Amy Adams might work. She thirty-nine – just a bit too old (no offense Amy) – but the bigger problem is she comes across as too sweet (again, no offense Amy). Katherine Heigl could do it – has the looks – is about the right age - but she’d have to “toughen-up” for the role as she’s too associated with comedies. In other words, she’d have to be edgier than when she played Stephanie Plum in Janet Evanovich’s One for the Money. I think I’m going to have to leave the final decision on who plays Kay Hamilton to Hollywood.

Learn more about the author and his work at Mike Lawson's website.

Writers Read: M. A. Lawson.

The Page 69 Test: Rosarito Beach.

--Marshal Zeringue