Susan Mallery's "When We Found Home"

#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery writes heartwarming and humorous novels about the relationships that define women's lives—family, friendship, romance. She's best known for putting nuanced characters into emotionally complex, real-life situations with twists that surprise readers to laughter. Because Mallery is passionate about animal welfare, pets play a big role in her books. Beloved by millions of readers worldwide, her books have been translated into 28 languages.

Mallery lives in Washington state with her husband, two ragdoll cats, and a small poodle with delusions of grandeur.

Here she dreamcasts an adaptation of her latest novel, When We Found Home:

I don't usually picture actors when I'm writing but sometimes, especially with a large cast, it helps. In When We Found Home, Delaney, for me, looks like a young Dana Delaney. I love her. There's something really vulnerable about her as an actress that creates immediate empathy. In the book, Delaney lost her fiancé a year ago, and she's dealing with the loss and with guilt about the second thoughts she had been having before he died.

I see Malcolm as Chris Pine. What I love about him for the role is that he can so beautifully handle both drama and humor. There's a lot of humor in the book.

Santiago is Jesse Metcalfe and Callie is Jennette McCurdy. As the book starts, Callie doesn't feel very worthy of love. She went to prison for a youthful mistake, and she still feels the weight of that when she moves in with the family she never knew. So when her brother's best friend falls for her almost instantly, she has a hard time believing that his feelings are real.

Keira is a young actress named Mira Silverman. Keira's 12 years old, but because she's wise beyond her years, the adults in her life forget how young she is until something happens to remind them that she's just a child. Rallying for Keira is what will help them transition from strangers into family. It's a really beautiful journey that will warm your heart.

Visit Susan Mallery's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mary Carter Bishop's "Don't You Ever"

A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, Mary Carter Bishop was on the Philadelphia Inquirer team that won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of nuclear leaks at Three Mile Island. Her Roanoke Times & World-News series on poisonings and fraud by exterminators and other pesticide users won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer finalist.

Bishop's new book, Don't You Ever: My Mother and Her Secret Son, is

a moving and beautifully rendered memoir about the half-brother she didn’t know existed that hauntingly explores family, class, secrets, and fate.

Applying for a passport as an adult, Mary Carter Bishop made a shocking discovery. She had a secret half-brother. Her mother, a farm manager’s wife on a country estate, told Mary Carter the abandoned boy was a youthful "mistake" from an encounter with a married man. There’d been a home for unwed mothers; foster parents; an orphanage.

Nine years later, Mary Carter tracked Ronnie down at the barbershop where he worked, and found a near-broken man—someone kind, and happy to meet her, but someone also deeply and irreversibly damaged by a life of neglect and abuse at the hands of an uncaring system.

Here Bishop dreamacasts one of the lead roles in an adaptation of Don't You Ever:

I’ve long imagined Daniel Day-Lewis as Ronnie, but didn’t Day-Lewis annouce after Phantom Thread that he wouldn’t take any more roles? (I hope I imagined that.) The thing is, as a young man Ronnie developed acromegaly, a rare hormonal disorder. Over decades it slowly deformed his face, dramatically enlarging his brow bone, nose, tongue, lips and jaws. It separated his teeth and wrecked organs throughout his body. I don’t recall Day-Lewis ever relying on appliances and extreme makeup, but I can’t see how they could be avoided with Ronnie’s portrayal. His hands and feet never quit growing after he developed the benign pituitary tumor that eventually brought him down. After he died, in his bedroom I found a forlorn mound of size fourteens and other large shoes.

Learn more about Don't You Ever.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Hankins's "A Blood Thing"

James Hankins writes thrillers, mysteries, and novels of suspense, including The Inside Dark, The Prettiest One, Shady Cross, Brothers and Bones, Drawn, and Jack of Spades. He lives north of Boston with his wife and sons.

Here Hankins dreamcasts an adaptation of his new suspense novel, A Blood Thing:

A Blood Thing is a crime thriller about a powerful family targeted by a twisted, cunning blackmailer. The importance of family and the lengths to which we go to protect our loved ones is the central theme of the book, so if it were made into a movie, the casting of the actors who would play the family members would be critical to bringing that theme to life on the screen.

The story begins with the murder of a young woman, followed by a strange encounter. Andrew Kane, the youngest governor in Vermont’s history, is at yet another public meet-and-greet when a stranger slips him a cellphone and, before disappearing in the crowd, mysteriously instructs Andrew to hold onto the phone because he’ll need it “after the arrest.” Shortly thereafter, the obvious question is answered when Andrew’s youngest brother, Tyler, is arrested for murder. Rounding out the family members are Henry, an internal affairs detective, and Molly, Tyler’s twin sister and a decorated army veteran.

The two characters who would see the most screen time are Andrew and Henry. For Andrew, I see Gregory Peck in his To Kill A Mockingbird days (though perhaps a few years younger). Andrew is a former prosecutor and current governor of Vermont, who has built his entire career on a platform of honesty and integrity. His reputation means more to him than anything…except maybe his family. When the arrest of his intellectually-challenged brother Tyler tests the strength of his ethics and morals, Andrew is forced to confront what he will do and how far he will go to protect his family. In Mockingbird, Peck’s Atticus Finch gave us the ideal man of integrity, someone unwilling to compromise his ethics in the face of extreme pressure and vile prejudice. I see a lot of Atticus Finch in Andrew, and I have to wonder what Finch—as portrayed by Gregory Peck—would do in Andrew Kane’s shoes.

Henry, on the other hand, an internal affairs detective with the Vermont State Police, is generally an honest and upright man, but he has crossed the line in the past. An actor playing him would need to be able to be tough, sharp, but also sympathetic and believable in his more tender moments, as in when he is interacting with Tyler. Leonardo DiCaprio from The Departed could portray Henry well. A thirty-two-year-old Matt Damon (who was also in The Departed) could also nail this role.

Molly Kane is a decorated army veteran studying criminology in hopes of following Henry onto the state police force. She is strong and resourceful, but also kind and maternal to her twenty-nine-year-old twin brother Tyler, who suffered a tragic fall when they were both seven years old. She is the glue that holds the Kane family together. I see Jessica Chastain or Bryce Dallas Howard doing a wonderful job playing her role.

The final member of the Kane family is Tyler. He is twenty-nine years-old but a traumatic brain injury suffered in a fall twenty-two years ago has left him with the intellectual capacity of a seventh grader. He is sweet and innocent and commutes to his “job”—which is actually a volunteer position at an animal shelter—on an electric bicycle, which he calls his “motorcycle.” To play him, I would ask Leonardo DiCaprio to do double duty, handling the role of the older Henry, while also playing the younger Tyler. We all remember DiCaprio from his Oscar-nominated, virtuoso performance as Arnie, an autistic young man in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? In A Blood Thing, Tyler’s condition is different from, and would be less dramatic in its portrayal than, that of DiCaprio’s character in Gilbert Grape, but DiCaprio clearly has the acting chops to give a moving, sensitive performance in bringing to life innocent Tyler, who is the heart of A Blood Thing.

Finally, I suppose we should talk about the book’s bad guy, the twisted blackmailer who murders a woman and pins the crime on Tyler, kicking off a complex plan to bring the entire Kane family to ruin. The villain is brilliant and obsessed and any number of actors could play him extraordinarily well, but I’m going to choose Joel Edgerton, a terrific actor who plays good guys and bad guys with equal skill, and who would bring intensity, intelligence, and menace to the role.

Directing the film, I would love to see Martin Scorsese (The Departed), Sydney Pollock (The Firm), or Sydney Lumet (The Verdict).

Visit James Hankins's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Blood Thing.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eric Bernt's "The Speed of Sound"

Eric Bernt was born in Marion, Ohio, and raised in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, and Madison, Wisconsin. He attended Northwestern University, where he learned that journalism was not for him—but storytelling was. Upon graduation, he moved to Hollywood, where he wrote seven feature films including Virtuosity (starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe) and Surviving the Game (starring Rutger Hauer, Gary Busey, and F. Murray Abraham). He has also written for television (Z Nation). Bernt lives in Agoura Hills, California, with his wife and three children.

Here Bernt shares some thoughts about adapting his new novel, The Speed of Sound, for the screen:

Even when I'm writing a screenplay (I've had seven movies produced to date), I never think of a specific actor in a role unless an actor has been cast or is 'attached' to a project. I think about how I want the audience to feel during the journey, as well as afterward. In this regard, my hope is that an audience watching the movie (or television series) version of The Speed of Sound would feel the emotional honesty achieved in Call Me By Your Name with the excitement and intensity of technology-driven action in The Bourne Identity. I do recognize what a challenge it would be to achieve both in the same film, but I like to set my sights high.

Visit Eric Bernt's website.

Writers Read: Eric Bernt.

The Page 69 Test: The Speed of Sound.

--Marshal Zeringue

Demetra Brodsky's "Dive Smack"

Demetra Brodsky is an award-winning graphic designer & art director turned writer. She has a B.F.A. from The Massachusetts College of Art and Design and lives in Southern California with her family of four and two lovable rescue dogs where she is always trying to make more time for the beach. Her new novel Dive Smack is dedicated to Pumpkin, the monarch butterfly she once saved from the brink of death. Once you read the book, you'll understand why.

Here Brodsky dreamcasts an adaptation of Dive Smack:

This is such a fun question. I don’t think there’s a writer out there who hasn’t thought about this as they watch the scenes they’re writing play out in the heads. I spent a lot of time thinking about Theo Mackey and watching springboard diving videos, but at the end of the day Lucas Till is my perfect Theo Mackey - I feel like he has the perfect mix of athletic and kind.

The easiest one for me is Dylan O'Brien for Chip Langford. I seriously can't picture another person more Chip-like to pay Theo’s best friend.

For Iris Fiorello, Theo’s crush and love interest who has a similar tragic background, I’d pick Belarusian model Zhenya Katava. I know, I know, she’s not an actress, but her eastern European beauty is how I picture Iris who is a first generation Romanian.

Mads Mikkelson is the actor I've always seen as Dr. Phil Maddox while I was writing. His diction when he played Dr. Lecter on the TV show Hannibal was perfection and I tried to adopt some of those mannerisms for him in Dive Smack.

Alan Arkin would be supremely perfect as Theo's cranky, but loving Grandfather, Bruce Mackey.

And no one would be a better suited to play his grandfather’s best friend than James Brolin as Fire Chief Curtis Jacobs.

Visit Demetra Brodsky's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Demetra Brodsky & L.B. and Ponyboy Curtis.

The Page 69 Test: Dive Smack.

Writers Read: Demetra Brodsky.

--Marshal Zeringue

Yoon Ha Lee's "Ninefox Gambit"

A Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in math from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University, Yoon Ha Lee finds it a source of continual delight that math can be mined for story ideas.

Lee's new novel is Revenant Gun, book three in the Machineries of Empire series that begins with Ninefox Gambit.

Here Lee dreamcasts an adaptation of Ninefox Gambit:

While I certainly wouldn't say no if someone offered to make my book Ninefox Gambit into a film, I suspect the special effects budget would be prohibitive! One of the hazards of writing space opera, I guess. I had actually imagined the book in animation instead, like Voltron: Legendary Defender or Code Geass or Avatar: The Last Airbender. But it costs nothing to dream, either way.

The first of my two main characters is Shuos Jedao, an undead general known both for never losing a battle across four hundred years and for an infamous massacre in which he blew up two armies, one of them his own. I'd cast Daniel Dae Kim. I've enjoyed his range in the different roles I've seen him in (I was so sad when his Gavin the evil lawyer died in Angel!) and I'd be fascinated to see how he interpreted a treacherous ghost general.

The second is Jedao's unwilling protégée, Captain Kel Cheris. She's dedicated and brilliant in a completely different way--she's a mathematician--and although she starts out loyal to the Evil Empire, working with Jedao makes her start to question her beliefs. Watching Rinko Kikuchi as Mako Mori in Pacific Rim makes me think she'd be perfect for the role.

In case you haven't figured it out, my space opera is full of cockamamie Asians! Because why not. That being said, I'd be just as happy with generalized people of color, not specifically people of Asian descent, in my hypothetical film.

Visit Yoon Ha Lee's website.

The Page 69 Test: Revenant Gun.

Writers Read: Yoon Ha Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rebecca Makkai's "The Great Believers"

Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the short story collection Music for Wartime, which appeared in 2015, and of the novels The Hundred-Year House, winner of the Chicago Writers Association award, and The Borrower, a Booklist Top Ten Debut which has been translated into eight languages. Her short fiction won a 2017 Pushcart Prize, and was chosen for The Best American Short Stories for four consecutive years (2008-2011). The recipient of a 2014 NEA fellowship, Makkai is on the MFA faculty at Sierra Nevada college and has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Tin House, and Northwestern University.

Here Makkai dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Great Believers:

If I get to indulge in this lovely daydream, I’m going to start by changing the parameters: I think The Great Believers would work better as a limited TV series than as a movie. Ten episodes. Great thing about TV shows, you can have an intro montage each time. I’d want photos of actual groups of friends from Chicago at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Friends dancing, friends posing, people in wheelchairs at the Pride parade, people at candlelight vigils, people at protests, people sick, friends lounging on the Belmont Rocks. While my novel is fiction, it’s about an experience that many very real people lived through—or lived only partway through—and I want those people there.

I’ve made myself a promise—one I’m intentionally putting in writing here—that if I’m lucky enough to have film or TV interest in this book, I would sell the rights only with the stipulation that the story stay in Chicago. Everything out there already is about San Francisco or New York. The story of AIDS in Chicago is different, and important, and fascinating. I could hand them a big long list of consultants, people who’ll kick their butts on 1980s Boystown details as much as they kicked mine. And we’re filming in Chicago, not in frickin’ Vancouver.

Some casting:

For Yale Tishman, my central guy, the one whose life simultaneously falls apart and takes on greater meaning over the course of the book, I want a young, gay cross between Paul Reiser and David Eigenberg. But no New York accent, please.

For Fiona, the woman we know as a flighty but loyal friend in the 1980s, and as a mother full of regret in 2015 Paris, I want both Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn, but fifteen years ago.

For Charlie, Yale’s British partner, I want Russell Tovey. He looks nothing like Charlie as I imagined him, but he’s British, and he was fantastic in the late, great Looking—a perfect mix of charming and exasperating, which is just what we need.

Speaking of Looking, I want Jonathan Groff for Teddy, Yale’s cattiest friend. It’s more of an appearance thing, because I’ve mostly seen Jonathan Groff acting sweet, but I bet he could do bitchy if needed.

For Richard, Yale’s older friend who chronicles the epidemic through his photography, I want Victor Garber, a fantastic character actor. (If you don’t think you know who he is, Google him; you totally do.)

For Julian… Hmm, I just spent a very pleasant five minutes Googling images of young, gay, beautiful actors. End result: We’re going with a young Matt Bomer.

For Asher Glass, Yale’s great crush, I want a younger Mark Ruffalo. I’m cheating a bit here, because Ruffalo played the Larry Kramer character in the movie of The Normal Heart, and Asher is, in small part, a Larry Kramer character, but this is fantasy world so I don’t care.

For Nora, Fiona’s great aunt, who’d been an artist’s model in 1920s Paris, I want Ellen Burstyn. Or better yet, for the sake of theme: I want someone who was famous in her 20s, but who no one born after 1975 has ever heard of. One of those women who, you’re watching something with your mom, and your mom is like “Oh my goodness, that’s Doris Nightly!” and you’re like, “Who on earth is Doris Nightly?” Anyway, let's get Doris Nightly, who I just made up.

We’re left with a problem here, which is that for personal fandom reasons, I really want Neil Patrick Harris involved in this, and we have no part for him. So maybe he can just produce it. Call me, Neil.

Learn more about the author and her work at Rebecca Makkai's website, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Borrower.

My Book, The Movie: The Hundred-Year House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephanie Butland's "The Lost For Words Bookshop"

Stephanie Butland lives with her family near the sea in the North East of England. She writes in a studio at the bottom of her garden, and when she's not writing, she trains people to think more creatively. For fun, she reads, knits, sews, bakes, and spins. She is an occasional performance poet.

Here Butland dreamcasts an adaptation of her new novel, The Lost for Words Bookshop:

The first time I visited my UK publisher's offices there was quite a debate going about who would play the main characters in the movie of The Lost for Words Bookshop!

Archie was a toss-up between Simon Callow and Jim Broadbent. (I'd go with Jim Broadbent — no-one does avuncular quite like him.) Or maybe Kiefer Sutherland?

Nathan has, I think, the quality of a young Jonny Lee Miller, but a young James McAvoy was also in the frame from the editorial team. (I'd have cast McAvoy as Rob.) I'd also love to see the poet/rapper Akala in the role.

It all hangs on Loveday, though, doesn't it?! I think Carey Mulligan's ability to convey everything she's feeling in the flick of an eyelid or the tilt of a chin would serve Loveday well. Or maybe Florence Pugh, an up-and-coming British actor, could fill her shoes. Faye Marsay would be someone else who would do a great job. I'd ask Jane Campion to direct — I love the way her work gets every detail right, and makes the viewer feel as though they are there.

Follow Stephanie Butland on Twitter and Facebook.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeff Wheeler's "Storm Glass"

Jeff Wheeler took an early retirement from his career at Intel in 2014 to write full-time and is now a Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

Here he dreamcasts one major role in an adaptation of his new novel, Storm Glass (The Harbinger Series, Book 1):

I admit that I’m a bit of a nut for period dramas. I’ve seen nearly every Jane Austen and Charles Dickens adaptations, along with a healthy dose of Elizabeth Gaskill and Victor Hugo. When I decided to write the Harbinger series, I wanted to tap into that era but create something new in a fantasy world. I’ve always visualized my books inside my mind as I write then, so imagining it on the big screen is a big part of my process.

In the first book of the Harbinger series, Storm Glass, one of the main characters that both protagonists admire is Vice-Admiral Brant Fitzroy. This is a man, a father, who has made it through tragedy, a difficult relationship with his own father, and still held to his principles. Although he loves the “Mysteries” around the blossoming scientific age of his world and their sky ships and floating manors, he has fought in wars and dabbled in music. He’s a good leader, an understanding father, someone who has a reputation for integrity that must be upheld despite the penchant for corruption in his world. I pictured the actor-singer Dallin Vail Bayles as Fitzroy. Not only can he belt out tunes from Les Miz (he was Enjolras in a national production), but his CDs are in my car and I listen to them constantly. He’s a voice a compassion and understanding. The perfect Lord Fitzroy.

Visit Jeff Wheeler's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Queen's Poisoner.

--Marshal Zeringue

John M. Coggeshall's "Liberia, South Carolina"

John M. Coggeshall is professor of anthropology at Clemson University.

Here he dreamcasts an adaptation of his new book, Liberia, South Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community:

With her basket full of blackberries, the girl paused on the soapstone boulders, gazing on the corn fields in the valley below her, until her owner’s voice shattered her thoughts. “Katie,” the older white woman shouted, “bring those berries over here now! I need them for my party tonight, so I’ll whup you if you eat any!” Smiling slyly, the enslaved girl reluctantly complied, carefully wiping the juice from her mouth and whispering to herself the irreverent nickname her parents secretly called their owner. “Yes, ma’am,” she dutifully replied aloud, and wondered what it must feel like to obey only her own parents and to pick her own berries. “What must it feel like to be free?” Katie thought.

If my book, Liberia, South Carolina: an African-American Appalachian Community, were a movie, this scene might open the story. The book tells the oral history of “Liberia,” a freedom colony established by freed slaves in the Blue Ridge foothills of South Carolina in 1865; the story then chronicles the community’s struggles through decades of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. The book follows five generations of an extended family (and their neighbors and friends) in that community, a story told primarily (but not exclusively) through the perspectives of strong female characters. Despite the fact that their fortunes wax and wane with varied historical situations, the extended family persists into the present. Fictionalizing this story would be both easy and dramatic. I see the movie as a mash-up of The Waltons meets Roots.

The first documented family generation begins with a woman named “Aunt” Katie Owens, born a slave sometime around 1840. She had several children, some rumored to have been by a white father, and her son Will married Rosa Glenn (daughter of a former enslaved woman). Rosa had multiple children, some said to have been fathered by white men, and her oldest son Chris Owens married Lula McJunkin (granddaughter of a freed slave). The couple had eight children, including youngest daughter Mable Owens Clarke, who currently lives on family land and who (with her niece) manages a monthly fish fry to preserve the community and Soapstone Baptist Church.

While white-authored local histories describe a peaceful and harmonious relationship between the secluded Liberia Community and their surrounding white neighbors, black oral histories tell a more complex tale. Family stories of life under slavery describe strategies of resistance, from reluctant compliance to murder of oppressors. During Reconstruction, blacks established churches (like Soapstone Baptist) and schools, males held public office, and communities (such as Liberia) were established as black refuges from white control. Later, under the shadow of Jim Crow, blacks preserved their private thoughts and actions within the safety of Liberia, while publicly interacting with dominant whites under a carefully crafted mask of deference. After the decades following World War II, black public deference slowly dissolved, met with white resistance (e.g., violently attacking Mable’s childhood home) and the burning (by arsonists) of Soapstone Baptist Church in 1967. Rebuilt with both black and white labor and capital, the church and community survive today, supported by monthly fish fries and widespread public support.

I see Ava DuVernay directing, Oprah Winfrey producing, and Aja Naomi King (Aunt Katie as teen), Kerry Washington (Aunt Katie as adult), Octavia Spencer (Rosa Glenn Owens), Viola Davis (Lula McJunkin Owens), and Ruth Negga (Mable Owens Clarke).

Learn more about Liberia, South Carolina at The University of North Carolina Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue