The elements touch everyone on Earth—Fire, Water, even Light—but every so often someone becomes more attuned to their elemental leaning and develops true power. When an evil Elemental known as Thanatos arrived in Olympus City, it saw the rise of its first hero—Zeus. But the death toll caused by defeating Thanatos changed Zeus, who by day is young detective Danny Grant.
It’s been six months since Thanatos terrorized the city at the start of Lovesick Gods. Danny should be used to his duty behind the mask, but the recent past haunts him. His girlfriend left him, he snaps at the barest provocation, his life feels empty—he needs an outlet, any outlet to pull him out of his depression.
Enter notorious thief Malcolm Cho, the Ice Elemental Prometheus. There was a time when Danny welcomed a fight with Cho, filled with colorful banter and casual flirtations that were a relief compared to Thanatos. Even as a criminal, Cho had recognized the threat Thanatos posed and promised to help Danny stop him, but the day Danny needed Cho, he never showed. Cho was the reason so many people died that day—including Danny’s mother.
Danny decides to teach the man a lesson and fan the fire of their attraction into something more. At worst, he’ll get some no-strings-attached sex out of the deal and finally blow off steam; at best, he’ll get Cho to fall in love with him and then break his heart to spite him.
Danny doesn’t expect to fall for Cho in the process, and he certainly can’t predict the much darker threat on the horizon.
If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
This is one of my favorite games to play when completing a novel – what is my dream cast? In this case, since I have two leads, the hero character, Danny Grant/Zeus, and his nemesis, Mal Cho/Prometheus, I’d like to share who my picks are for both.
I envisioned Mal’s actor first and landed on Daniel Henney without pause, which some people might be familiar with as the voice of the older brother Tadashi in Big Hero 6. He is also an accomplished live action actor and fits my vision of the character well. He’s the right age of mid-30s, Korean-American, tall, and gorgeous, if I’m being blunt. He also has this knack for giving a brilliant, endearing smile while also being able to play a cold and villainous character, which is important for both leads, since duality and moral ambiguity is a recurring theme.
For Danny, I waffled for a while, but I keep coming back to Domhnall Gleeson, who people will remember most recently as General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’s a few years younger than Henney, which is important, but about the same height, and while Irish, he can do an American accent flawlessly. He’s a natural redhead, which I wanted, and just like Henney again, he can play both a loveable heroic character and a cruel rogue with the flip of a switch—which at times is exactly how the story plays out.
The real question is whether they would have chemistry together, as that’s what casting comes down to, especially when romance and sexual tension is involved. I’m confident they’d work well though, and whenever I envision my dream cast for Lovesick Gods, they are the actors who spring to mind for the leads.
Do you have a favorite movie? which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
It’s hard for me to choose a single movie, so my top three would be:
The Fifth Element
Fight Club
Interview with the Vampire
And boy are those different from each other! Fun hard sci-fi, cerebral commentary on the human condition, and supernatural drama. As you can tell, I like a little bit of everything.
The book I’m working on next, A Model Escort, is the best suited to be adapted into film, primarily because of length. I’ll be working on Escort during National Novel Writing Month this year (NaNoWriMo), which has writers dedicate the month of November to getting down 50k words toward their next novel.
50k is tiny compared to the length of the novels I usually write, but I challenged myself recently to see if I could tell a more concise story within 50-60k words, and somehow, I managed to go over by only about 3k. I will be using NaNo to edit down the story and clean it up for publisher submissions before the end of the year. Because it is a tighter story, it would fit a feature length film perfectly.
I have some experience with screenplay writing and script coverages, and when in script mode, a single page generally translates to a minute of screen time. Therefore, a more basic 50-60k word novel, or even a short story, lends itself more easily to be adapted than something longer, unless you don’t mind cutting large chunks of plot.
A Model Escort is a more traditional romance story, without the usual urban fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi elements I tend to focus on. It’s about a young man recently free from an emotionally abusive relationship who’s moved to a new city with very impressive work opportunities ahead of him. The problem is, he’s lonely and awkward about meeting new people. He decides to hire an escort to help ease him into this new phase of his life, but he doesn’t want anything more than company and a cuddle to replace the emptiness his ex-boyfriend left behind. The story splits its focus between this young man and the escort himself, who’s older and going through a period of listlessness wondering if he needs a change in his life. As it turns out, they’re the change each other needs. The very real look at emotional abuse and moving on from that is a personal topic for me, and I’m proud of how this story is taking shape for a standalone story that veers very differently from my usual work. If all goes well, A Model Escort will release some time in the Fall/Winter of 2018.
Nothing would give me greater joy than to see one of my stories adapted to film someday, or maybe one of my longer ones adapted for TV. I’ll certainly hold out hope that one day I’ll get to see that dream made a reality.
This is one of my favorite games to play when completing a novel – what is my dream cast? In this case, since I have two leads, the hero character, Danny Grant/Zeus, and his nemesis, Mal Cho/Prometheus, I’d like to share who my picks are for both.
I envisioned Mal’s actor first and landed on Daniel Henney without pause, which some people might be familiar with as the voice of the older brother Tadashi in Big Hero 6. He is also an accomplished live action actor and fits my vision of the character well. He’s the right age of mid-30s, Korean-American, tall, and gorgeous, if I’m being blunt. He also has this knack for giving a brilliant, endearing smile while also being able to play a cold and villainous character, which is important for both leads, since duality and moral ambiguity is a recurring theme.
For Danny, I waffled for a while, but I keep coming back to Domhnall Gleeson, who people will remember most recently as General Hux in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’s a few years younger than Henney, which is important, but about the same height, and while Irish, he can do an American accent flawlessly. He’s a natural redhead, which I wanted, and just like Henney again, he can play both a loveable heroic character and a cruel rogue with the flip of a switch—which at times is exactly how the story plays out.
The real question is whether they would have chemistry together, as that’s what casting comes down to, especially when romance and sexual tension is involved. I’m confident they’d work well though, and whenever I envision my dream cast for Lovesick Gods, they are the actors who spring to mind for the leads.
Do you have a favorite movie? which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
It’s hard for me to choose a single movie, so my top three would be:
The Fifth Element
Fight Club
Interview with the Vampire
And boy are those different from each other! Fun hard sci-fi, cerebral commentary on the human condition, and supernatural drama. As you can tell, I like a little bit of everything.
The book I’m working on next, A Model Escort, is the best suited to be adapted into film, primarily because of length. I’ll be working on Escort during National Novel Writing Month this year (NaNoWriMo), which has writers dedicate the month of November to getting down 50k words toward their next novel.
50k is tiny compared to the length of the novels I usually write, but I challenged myself recently to see if I could tell a more concise story within 50-60k words, and somehow, I managed to go over by only about 3k. I will be using NaNo to edit down the story and clean it up for publisher submissions before the end of the year. Because it is a tighter story, it would fit a feature length film perfectly.
I have some experience with screenplay writing and script coverages, and when in script mode, a single page generally translates to a minute of screen time. Therefore, a more basic 50-60k word novel, or even a short story, lends itself more easily to be adapted than something longer, unless you don’t mind cutting large chunks of plot.
A Model Escort is a more traditional romance story, without the usual urban fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi elements I tend to focus on. It’s about a young man recently free from an emotionally abusive relationship who’s moved to a new city with very impressive work opportunities ahead of him. The problem is, he’s lonely and awkward about meeting new people. He decides to hire an escort to help ease him into this new phase of his life, but he doesn’t want anything more than company and a cuddle to replace the emptiness his ex-boyfriend left behind. The story splits its focus between this young man and the escort himself, who’s older and going through a period of listlessness wondering if he needs a change in his life. As it turns out, they’re the change each other needs. The very real look at emotional abuse and moving on from that is a personal topic for me, and I’m proud of how this story is taking shape for a standalone story that veers very differently from my usual work. If all goes well, A Model Escort will release some time in the Fall/Winter of 2018.
Nothing would give me greater joy than to see one of my stories adapted to film someday, or maybe one of my longer ones adapted for TV. I’ll certainly hold out hope that one day I’ll get to see that dream made a reality.
The sound of the bar door caught Mal’s attention. It was late for the lunch rush, so a new patron was curious. Craning his ears, he realized he recognized the approaching gait, the particular pattern of breathing. He gave credit to his element for his ability to observe his surroundings without a single ripple of unease to disturb his calm, but when the person breached the corner of the booth and slid in across from him, Mal couldn’t place why he should know the man so well.
He made a point of knowing most of the cops in the city who might give him trouble, so he recognized the clean-shaven face and sunset colored hair. The man was one of two detectives who’d run the Elemental Task Force when it formed after Thanatos’s arrival, but Mal had never met him.
“Detective Grant,” Mal nodded, not bothering to pause in devouring a French fry even as his free hand slid beneath the table and started to frost over in case Grant tried anything foolish.
“Quite the dive you got here, Ice Man,” the detective said.
Mal sat up straighter. Only one man dared greet him with that nickname, especially with such a familiar voice.
“Sparky?” he drawled with a slow grin, letting his powers dwindle as he returned his hand to the table. “My, my, so this is what Zeus looks like under that mask.” After more than half a year sparring on the streets, he thought he knew his nemesis well, but he’d expected someone older. Although, he had a feeling this kid wasn’t quite as young as his boyish looks implied. “Playing vigilante by night, Detective? What is the world coming to?”
“It’s Danny,” he said with a shift of his eyes around the mostly empty bar, which admittedly wasn’t the best place to be throwing around words like ‘detective’ or ‘Zeus’, “and I didn’t come here for banter.”
Mal downed another fry, more at ease now that he knew his nemesis sat across from him instead of some badge. Zeus made the game so much more fun. He wasn’t hard on the eyes either. “Pity. We’ve gotten so good at our banter. So…” Mal trailed a fresh French fry into his ketchup, “why are you here? Hoping I’d treat you to lunch to make up for that last bank heist?”
Danny folded his hands on top of the table, a serious expression filling his lightning-yellow eyes. “I want to make a deal.”
He made a point of knowing most of the cops in the city who might give him trouble, so he recognized the clean-shaven face and sunset colored hair. The man was one of two detectives who’d run the Elemental Task Force when it formed after Thanatos’s arrival, but Mal had never met him.
“Detective Grant,” Mal nodded, not bothering to pause in devouring a French fry even as his free hand slid beneath the table and started to frost over in case Grant tried anything foolish.
“Quite the dive you got here, Ice Man,” the detective said.
Mal sat up straighter. Only one man dared greet him with that nickname, especially with such a familiar voice.
“Sparky?” he drawled with a slow grin, letting his powers dwindle as he returned his hand to the table. “My, my, so this is what Zeus looks like under that mask.” After more than half a year sparring on the streets, he thought he knew his nemesis well, but he’d expected someone older. Although, he had a feeling this kid wasn’t quite as young as his boyish looks implied. “Playing vigilante by night, Detective? What is the world coming to?”
“It’s Danny,” he said with a shift of his eyes around the mostly empty bar, which admittedly wasn’t the best place to be throwing around words like ‘detective’ or ‘Zeus’, “and I didn’t come here for banter.”
Mal downed another fry, more at ease now that he knew his nemesis sat across from him instead of some badge. Zeus made the game so much more fun. He wasn’t hard on the eyes either. “Pity. We’ve gotten so good at our banter. So…” Mal trailed a fresh French fry into his ketchup, “why are you here? Hoping I’d treat you to lunch to make up for that last bank heist?”
Danny folded his hands on top of the table, a serious expression filling his lightning-yellow eyes. “I want to make a deal.”
Amanda lives in Minneapolis, MN, with her husband, John, and their cats, Helga and Sasha (no connection to the incubus of the same name).
Win an eCopy of Incubus!
Nathan only ever wanted a normal life, but for him, life, family, and love are anything but normal.
On the other side of the Veil, dark and light fae exist outside the knowledge of most humans. Nathan Grier was born human, but his twin brother Jim is a changeling. On the run since they were children, time for both of them is running out. Turning to fae hunter Sasha Kelly for help, Nathan must soon face his growing feelings for the other man while trying to save himself and his brother from a fate worse than death.
Thank you so much for sharing this excerpt and guest post today as part of my tour. This book release is dear to my heart, and I encourage new readers to give it a chance.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the new book release! Thank you for the excerpt =)
ReplyDeleteCongrats, Amanda, and thanks for the excerpt. This sounds great - disguised gods in an urban fantasy, oh yeah. - Purple Reader,
ReplyDeleteTheWrote [at] aol [dot] com