Faerie Blood Casting Call

I’d previously tossed this around trying to brainstorm ideas for the Drollerie blog tour posts, and I’m probably jumping the gun to post it now… but what the hey. I can’t resist. Herein is my current dream cast for the movie version of Faerie Blood that plays in my brain. It is of course subject to alteration at whim:

Kendis: I’ve waffled back and forth on who should play her. Right now I’m leaning to Freema Agyeman, only with redder hair and an American accent.

Christopher: Russell Crowe, aged 32, and looking as much like Cort in The Quick and the Dead as possible, only with a Newfoundland accent. And a bouzouki.

Jude: Ooh, tough call. In no small part because Jude in my brain is sort of a cross between two awesome actual people I know. I’d need somebody short and stocky and no-nonsense.

Elessir: Also hard to cast! But should be able to pull off not only looking like an elf, but looking like an elf who looks like Elvis, and most importantly, has enough sublime and lofty arrogance that he makes it look good. Black hair and blue eyes are a must.

Millie: K Callan, the actress who played Martha Kent in Lois and Clark.

Aggie: Honestly, if she weren’t too young for the role, I’d say Gina Torres. Maybe drop another thirty years on her. She’s got the sort of determined strength about her that seems right for Aggie, and plus, I think Aggie was absolutely that gorgeous when she was a young woman.

Carson: Despite this character’s name inevitably reminding me of Queer Eye for the Straight Eye, my Carson is a lot rougher and craggier-looking. He’s kind of Harrison-Ford-y, circa Clear and Present Danger, maybe.

Jake: Jet Li, minus about ten years.

Malandor: Hugo Weaving, only with red hair.

Melisanda: Nicole Kidman.

Tarrant: I think this is the only character I don’t have any real idea for; when I think of him, what comes to mind honestly is the fair-haired male of the High Ones in Elfquest, way back in the first graphic novel. This is what he gets for being a bit part.

Amelialoren: Cate Blanchett.

Luciriel: Michelle Pfeiffer.

I think that’s everybody of interest. It’ll be amusing to see how this changes as I work on Book 2.

Faerie Blood sequel underway

Out of the general hope of kicking my muse in the head until it starts producing work consistently for me again, I have decided as of this week to add Faerie Bones, the first planned sequel to Faerie Blood, to the list of works in progress.

And as of tonight, I have a couple hundred words in it. It will probably surprise no one reading this that the first line of Chapter 1 is “A HA ME BOYS A RIDDLE AYE DAY!” If you recognize that line, you’ll figure out pretty quickly where Christopher and Kendis are at the start of the chapter. If you don’t, go listen to “Lukey” by Great Big Sea, preferably the cut off their fine concert album Road Rage.

I don’t know how long it’ll take me to actually write this story, though. It has to stay pretty far down on the queue for the time being, just because Lament is under active editing and impending re-querying, and Queen of Souls is in its second draft. Plus, I need to get some serious outline notes going to figure out exactly what’s going on in this book.

But hey. This is a start.

Lament of the Dove status check

The last several months have been shaky for me on getting new writing done, in no small part to all the medical crap I’ve had to deal with. So I’ve been focusing on getting editing done instead–and in particular, in carrying out the recommendation of two different agents to edit Lament of the Dove down hard.

Those of you who’ve followed the progress of this book on either of my LJs know that the first draft of this thing was a monster, weighing in around 167K in the word count. By the time I started seriously querying it to agents last year, I’d managed to beat the tally down to 137K.

Now, the target is 117K. If I get there, I’ll have killed 50,000 words out of it. That’s half a book right there. The whole process is teaching me a lot about how to make sure that every last word in a novel absolutely, irrefutably needs to be there–because in Lament, with three different POVs, I’ve got a lot going on. And I can’t waste words describing it.

As of this writing, I’m 4,500 words away from hitting the mark, and I’m finishing up Chapter 18 out of a total of 24 chapters and an epilogue. I think I can get there, hopefully by the time of my (hopefully final) surgery later this month.

Wish me luck.

*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

So yeah, if you’re reading this, you’re either visiting my shiny new official writer-type page at angelakorrati.com, or else you’re seeing a mirrored post over to my Livejournal and JournalFen accounts. Either way, hiya. This is the inaugural post to break in my actual writer site.

Not too much to report here yet and probably won’t be until Faerie Blood comes out. I’m still awaiting the proposed cover art and requested edits from my editor, which will hopefully come in soon. We’re tentatively aiming to have FB ready to come out by March.

In the meantime, for those of you who haven’t already, I invite you to go around to Drollerie Press in general, and in particular, check out the first official Drollerie Authors Blog Tour.

If you’re already reading my LJ, you don’t also have to follow angelakorrati.com; I’ll be mirroring its posts over to Livejournal. Angelakorrati.com’s posts will be exclusively about writing news and interesting things happening with the books.

But regardless of how you read me, glad to see you doing so. Watch this space, whatever space that might be, for more!

Site update

For giggles and grins and because I was curious about the status of his descendants on NC these days, I have reinstated F’hlan and Mehlani’s family tree on my page for my old MUSH characters.