I’ve always been a big movie and TV fan. When I was a child, my mother was so worried about the hours I spent in front of the television, she sent me to nursery school. And this was way before preschool was the norm. Once I learned to read, books became an equal obsession, and poor mom would have to force me outside to play.

That ardor didn’t change as I grew into an adult. Until I started writing seriously, I was always a voracious reader. And once I worked as a broadcast producer for a local department store. Part of my job was to show buyers their commercials, so naturally I had a TV in my office. For some reason, it always
seemed to turn itself on around the time Days of Our Lives aired. When I left that job, the advertising department gave me a plaque inscribed with this: I Love Television. Without It Life Would Be An Endless Stream of Real Experiences.

Recently, I’ve had a chance to put my two loves together. I came across a fantastic site called Storycasting.com. It lets you take your favorite books and “cast” them as if you were turning them into a movie or TV show. I couldn’t wait to get in there and cast my books. For TWO LETHAL LIES, I chose Thorsten Kaye as the hero, Mitch Turner. Thorsten is a ruggedly handsome actor from All My Children. Christina Hendricks, from Mad Men, was the model for my heroine, Neesy Brown. And I cast John Hamm—also from Mad Men—as the gorgeously charming villain, Dutch.

You can do this with any book, so in addition to my own, I checked out some of my favorites to see how other people cast them. Sometimes, I found lots of controversy! Lots of people like Gerard Butler as Jamie Fraser in Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER. But many more point out that Butler is too old now. Personally, I think Sam Worthington (Avatar) would be great. People greeted the casting of Katherine Heigl as Stephanie Plum with howls. On Storycasting, the preference is for Sandra Bulluck.

I had so much fun! Among the stars I cast for my own books were Tom Cruise and Frances McDormand as the hero/heroine of BLIND CURVE; Ben Browder and Claudia Black as the H/H of BLACKOUT; and Sam Worthington and Lena Heady as the H/H of ONE DEADLY SIN.

So now it’s your turn. What are your favorite books and how would you cast them if you could?

Annie will be giving away a signed copy of her romantic suspense, ONE DEADLY SIN to someone who comments.

www.anniecolomon.com

Well, hello there everyone! I’m excited to be here for the first time. I probably should have waited until my next book, TWO LETHAL LIES, is out. But that won’t be until October and frankly that was too long to wait. So here I am now, inspired by the fact that when it IS released it will be my eighth book.

Compared to some, eight may not seem a lot, but back when I was dreaming about becoming a published writer, even one book seemed impossible.

Persistence in the face of great odds is not an easy thing to maintain. At least, not for me. I had many years where I didn’t believe I could ever finish a book, let alone get it published.

One day I saw an ad in my local paper for a group called “Music City Romance Writers.”  Bucking up my courage, I ventured forth. In those days, the group met at a local library, which should have given me a clue, but didn’t. I was so nervous going to my first meeting, I didn’t think about much of anything. Authors were like Olympian gods to me: larger than life and entirely unapproachable.

Imagine my surprise when I walked into the room and saw perfectly ordinary-looking people sitting there. No one wore a size 2 mini-skirt. No one looked like they’d stepped out Vogue. In fact, most looked as though they’d dashed home from work, threw some kind of dinner on the family table, left the dishes in the sink, and ran to the meeting.

Just like me.

That was the beginning of my seeing that writing and publishing a book was possible. If these women, these down-to-earth, smart, welcoming women could do it, maybe I could, too.

I met many of my closest friends at that meeting. Together we’ve journeyed through the ups and downs of our writing careers. Many us eventually realized our dream: seeing our book displayed in Borders or Barnes and Noble.

I still get a thrill when I see my books in the store. My seventh romantic suspense, One Deadly Sin, came out in 2008. It has a prickly tough-gal biker chick heroine with a secret heart of gold, and a sexy small-town cop whose world falls apart when her scheme for revenge goes wildly and horribly wrong. It’s still getting raves (here’s a recent review)--  so I hope you’ll check it out.

As mentioned at the start, my next romantic suspense, Two Lethal Lies comes out in October. It’s a tense story about a man carrying a secret so lethal, its discovery could put everyone he loves in the crosshairs of a maniacal killer. Can’t wait until the fall? It’s available for pre-order at Amazon.

If you want to know more about me or my books, stop by my website . You’ll find excerpts there from all of them.

And I hope you won’t give up on your dreams. You never know what’s waiting out there to help make them come true.

Two readers who comment on the blog could win signed Advanced Reader Copies of my upcoming October release, TWO LETHAL LIES.