Dimensional Games... The movie.

One of the things that you can't help doing as a writer is coming up with a visual in your head of your main characters. It's really important I think, to have a real handle on the people that your characters are before writing about things like their hopes, fears desires and everything else that makes them real people. A lot of writing advice books are well aware of this, and advise you to picture a favorite actor in the role of your main character. When writing Rising Sun, Michael Crichton pictured Sean Connery as the protagonist for instance.

Me, I've done this to some extent in that all the characters in my books are based to some degree on people I know, rather than Hollywood type actors. My main characters however, are almost always based on some aspect of my personality. It's one of the reasons that if you read Dimensional Games carefully, you'll find I never really describe Jake Price's appearance... there is another reason for this, (in that it allows the reader to more readily identify with Jake) but mostly it's because Jake is my point of view on the story. When I write about him, I am very much looking at the world through Jakes eyes, and like me, the man doesn't look in the mirror very often.

A fun exercise that we writers like to do is cast the movie version of our novels. Crichton got really lucky when it was time to cast Rising Sun, in that the producers cast Sean Connery in the role. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have written the character based on an actor, and then have them play that character later on. I can only guess that it must be amazing.

The above movie poster is something I threw together last April, as an April Fools gag to my friends and fans. I have never seriously considered who would play my characters in a movie version of DG, (I guess it's just so astronomically improbable that it's never come up) but now that I'm putting some thought into it, Nicholas Cage is actually a pretty good pick for Jake Price. He's old enough, sufficiently snarky, and plays 'too old for this shit' really well. He also can show great empathy when needed, which is how I've always pictured Jake to be. He can be an asshole... but when it comes down to it, he wants to be the good guy.

Sandra is a much tougher call. I always picture her as much curvier than the average Hollywood actress, tough but capable of a great gentility. She would also need to have really great comedic timing. Mellisa McCarthy would be pretty good, but not quite right I think.

There are a few characters in Jake's world I have no doubt about though... Jake's boss, Adrian Mitchell, would have to be Ving Rhames. Doc Laporte I've always imagined as being played by Christopher Lloyd.

Miss Cheri is a really tough call, as I always imagine my wife when writing her. I would be forced defer to a casting agent's judgement to keep myself out of the doghouse if it's a call that my wife would take exception to. But seeing as how that's really a cop-out in this exercise, if I had to pick an actress that I feel captures my image of Miss Cheri as "tough, sexy, exotic and mischievous", I think it would have to be Gina Torres.

Those are the main characters... I would also insist on having a cameo as a Moderator of one of the really boring dimensions... Just 'cause.

Feel free to post your suggestions over on facebook!