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Richard Armitage Shirtless (again)

Okay, that was a tease. But today I'm blogging about why I'd cast the lovely Mr A in The Untied Kingdom (heck, in just about anything) over at the Choc Lit Author's Corner.

Oh, all right. Have a little picture of him.

A little bit hectic

It's come to my attention that I haven't blogged in, like, ages. There's a reason for this: I've been super-busy with all kinds of non-writing-related things (I know. I'd forgotten they existed) like taxes and going on holiday. And in less than a week's time--gulp!--I'll be off again, this time to New York City for the RWA National Conference. Okay, for a little holiday too. We'll call it research.

But before I disappear again, let me share with you a revelation and a connected chance to win lots of chocolate.

The Revelation:

I went to see X-Men: First Class the other day. Okay, I saw it twice. a) it was brilliant and b) I've renewed my crush on Michael Fassbender, who I fancied even when he was being all hairy and intense in The Devil's Whore. In X-Men he's very smooth and elegant and deadly and muscular and, basically, delicious. I'm absolutely in love with the way he smiles.

I need sunglasses to look at that smile

If only he were blond, I thought, he'd make a perfect Luke from the Sophie Green books.  Then I saw this:

With James McAvoy, who is also very pleasant to look at

Ysee? Y'see? He's Luke, right? And if you're not sure who Luke is, then you can get him for FREE on Kindle and Nook until the end of the month!

And, speaking of bringing heroes to life...

The Chance to Win Chocolate:

My fellow choc-liteer, Sue Moorcroft, needs your help. She's looking for the Face of Martyn Mayfair, the hero of her latest book, Love & Freedom. Do you know someone who matches this description?

MARTYN IS BOTH SMOOTH AND HOT WITH A FLAVOUR THAT STAYS WITH YOU – LIKE A MONTEZUMA’S CULTURE SHOCK BAR!

 

Then send in his photo to Sue! There's money in it for you--and him, if you're generously inclined--plus books, plus chocolate!

The fantasy movie casting game

I've blogged before about the Fantasy Movie Casting Game, and how I occasionally like to while away idle hours, like when I ought to be cleaning stuff or tidying the house, scripting my public reaction to the news that Richard Armitage would be delighted to play Major Harker in the movie of The Untied Kingdom, and how in fact he called me in advance to beg my assistance in securing the role.

Ahem. Okay, that's another fantasy. Today I'm going to extend the question Sue Marchant asked me in my radio interview the other day, about who, if The Untied Kingdom was made into a movie, I'd choose to play the main parts.

Well, Harker is easy. I may have mentioned this before, but I even had Richard Armitage in mind for Harker while I was writing it, especially his role in BBC's Robin Hood. Harker is dark, tempestuous, smart, strong, brave, and loyal, all of which I've seen Richard handle with aplomb. Plus, well, have you seen him?

Eve was considerably harder. She's a former teen popstar who has fallen on hard times and has been existing in a twilight state of depression for three years, whereupon she falls into an alternate universe full of mud and blood, thinks she's going insane, recovers her attitude, loses her vanity, and falls for a soldier.

I knew what she looked like in her teenage popstar years--Hannah from S Club 7 actually--but for some reason she doesn't look like her as an adult. I know. Weird. My mum suggested Billie Piper but she's not right either. Sue Marchant suggested P!nk, who's not bad but a little hard-looking for Eve. I continued to have no idea, until I rewatched the Doctor Who episode Blink with Carey Mulligan and thought, "That's Eve!"

 Either her, or Emma Watson, although she's a little young.

There are various other characters with parts to play, such as Harker's ex-wife Saskia. Someone with grace and poise is required for Saskia, like Kristen Scott Thomas, although I'm not sure if there's too much of an age gap between actress and character (although I don't specify her age, there's also no mention of Harker's wife being much older than himself).

Saskia has a little sister, Tallulah, who I can see quite well as Keira Knightley. Tallulah is young and fresh and pretty, but has a steely aristocratic core and could shoot a man point blank if she had to. And, in fact, she does.

General Wheeler is an elegant, intelligent, and frightening woman. She's Judi Dench, hands down.

Captain Haran, or Daz the doctor, is Burn Gorman. Funny how some characters just swim into your head fully formed.

Private Banks, the joker and crack shot of the group, I haven't cast yet. He's from somewhere undefined in the south of England, talks like a Cockney but he's a game poacher, a ducker and diver, a wheeler and dealer. He's young, and neither attractive nor unattractive. He can turn his hand to most things, whether it's driving a car or preparing a tasty stew from what he finds lying around in the forest. Well, I say lying around. Growing in someone's garden is probably a more accurate way to put it.

And then there's our villain, Captain Sholt. Someone who can be obsequious, with lizard-flat eyes and a sly, chilling, nasty intelligence. Someone you can't trust right from the first second you see him. There's a lot of the late Pete Postlethwaite's Sergeant Hakeswill in him, but I see Sholt as smaller and darker. A nasty piece of work. Answers on a postcard please.

So that's my fantasy cast for The Untied Kingdom. What do you think?  Do you have other suggestions? Would you disagree with mine?

That's it from me for now, as I've got a book launch to prepare for tomorrow. Forget the wine and the books, do I have the right shoes?

Constructing a hero, part 2: Luke Sharpe

This is a post that's much more speculative than the last. Partly because it's talking about a hero who's still being written, and partly because it's someone who has had much less direct influence than Harker.

Today I'm going to be talking about Luke Sharpe, who you may know as the some-time hero of the Sophie Green Mysteries. I'm currently working on rewrites for the fifth novel in the series, Run Rabbit Run, in which we get to see Luke's point of view for the first time (incidentally, for some really excellent posts on point of view, check out Julie Cohen's recent blog posts). In this book, without giving too much away, Luke and Sophie spend a lot of time apart, although I'll add that it's not willingly. With the book written entirely from Sophie's 1st person POV, Luke was just a voice on the end of the phone for most of the book, and apparently all he did was sit around waiting for her to call. No. That's not Luke at all.

But if that isn't Luke, what is? Who is he? Well, all right. You'll have to bear with me as I first started writing Luke seven years ago, so my initial influences might have faded a bit, and as I've continued to write him, more inspirations have popped up. He's gone from being a sexy love interest to being a very complex man.

I first wrote him as a love interest. Not as a romantic hero. I'd been reading a lot of Stephanie Plum, and I think my idea was to write a love interest for Sophie the way Morelli is for Stephanie, at least to begin with. In most of the Sophie books, there are other...shall we call them temptations, but Luke is always her number one guy. In my heart of hearts, I know they're meant for each other, but to ever actually give them a Happy Ever After is to kill the series stone dead.

Jason O'Mara, who'll be playing Morelli in the upcoming fim of One For The Money

So, what kind of love interest was he going to be? He was going to be a spy, and he was going to be the opposite of Sophie. As one of the characters tells her in the first book, "The British spy is suave, sophisticated and elegant. The British spy is not blonde, built, and confused." So, suave, sophisticated and elegant, eh?

I'm not sure I made a conscious decision to make Luke upper-class, although I knew he was going to be much posher than Sophie. He knows all the right people, has had an impeccable education, is never at a loss which knife or fork to use, and could give those Strictly stars a run for their money at a waltz. Bit by bit, throwaway lines about going to Eton or having a trust fund ("It's only for emergencies!") filled out his background. I wanted him to highlight all the deficiencies Sophie sees in herself, having come from a lower middle-class background, with only a state secondary education and whatever social graces she's managed to figure out for herself. Sophie is intended to be an everywoman, but she aspires to much more. Luke already has everything, but he aspires to make his own way.

James Bond is an obvious influence on this character. He's referenced all through the books (and if Richard Curtis hadn't already used the line "James Bond never has to put up with this shit," I'd so have given it to Sophie). Interestingly, at the original time of writing Pierce Brosnan was playing 007, but by the time I sold and edited the first four books, it was Daniel Craig. Now, while I may have borrowed some of Brosnan's sophisticated elegance for Luke, they don't have a lot in common. It's Craig's "blunt instrument" who Luke resembles much more. Yes, he's got the impeccable background, but he's also a thug in nice clothes.

Luke isn't a thug exactly, but deep down he knows he could be. He could kill a man coldly, if he was ordered to or if it was deserved. He's rather institutionalised--Eton, RAF, SAS--but fighting against it. He's been raised in a social class and environment where conspicuous emotionality is quietly despised, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have emotions. He'd just prefer not to.

From Casino Royale there's a telling moment when Bond is watching the body of his lover being carried away, and M asks, "I would ask you if you could remain emotionally detached, but that's not your problem, is it, Bond?" and Bond gives her a look so devoid of emotion he might be made from stone. When he replies, "No," his voice has less expression than Stephen Hawking's.

This is the way Luke has been for years, how he wants to be, how he would like to continue being. He has elegant affairs with sophisticated women who aren't even looking for someone to wake up with in the morning, let alone a wedding ring. It suits them both. His colleague warns Sophie in the first book that the only thing Luke has an emotional attachment to is his gun. Luke, at the time, sees nothing wrong with this.

Of course, both Luke and Bond find their composure cracked by one woman. For Bond, it doesn't end well. For Luke...well, we're still seeing.

Fans of the series (there must be one or two, else it's just the same person emailing me. Scary thought) will know that Buffy is a common theme in the books, and that on one occasion Maria compares Spike to Luke. Well, both are blond, British and sarcastic, and they both have terrific bone structure, but Luke isn't as emotional as my favourite vampire.

Or is he? The thing about Spike is that he's supposed to be a soulless killer. He gets his name from his habit of killing people with railroad spikes. The very nature of the demon inside him means he has no soul, and yet he demonstrates repeatedly that he's quite capable of love, grief, and loyalty. When he falls for a woman, he falls hard. Hard enough to nearly end the world for Drusilla, and hard enough to die for Buffy.

While Luke is fully in possession of his soul, it's not apparent to a lot of people around him (there's more than one reason I called the fourth book Still Waters). It wouldn't take much of a leap of imagination to assume that a demon, in the form of the Secret Intelligence Service, stole his soul a long time ago. It takes a strong, brave and reckless woman to beat that demon back. For Spike, the woman is Buffy; for Luke, it's Sophie.

One of my favourite things about writing this series has always been the continuing relationship between Luke and Sophie. They've never had a Happy Ever After, only a Happy For Now. Neither of them are fully emotionally formed enough to appreciate or deserve a Happy Ever After (when they get there, I reckon it's the end of the series).

A more recent comparison might be Lucas North from Spooks (a very recent comparison, since his character arc took place entirely after the book was written, and is only now influencing the rewrite). Lucas is (or seems to be) devoted body and soul to the British Service, but when he encounters the only woman he ever loved, everything goes to pieces and his loyalty to the Service is tested. For Lucas, it fails. For Luke...hmm, I'm not sure.

(yes! I can even get a picture of Richard Armitage in this post! It's like a bet or something!)

Luke is an elastic band, wound round and round a pencil. Wind him tight enough, and he'll snap. Take the pencil away, and he'll unravel.

(There, that's poetic, isn't it? Plus, Sophie just loves being compared to a pencil.)

Have you read any of the Sophie Green books? Who do you think Luke is like? Where do you think his character will go? Do you think he'll ever mature enough to get his Happy Ever After?

The Fantasy Movie Casting Game

I love this game. I can while away hour after hour giving imaginary interviews to camera about how wonderful it is to have the perfect cast for the movie of my book. Don't pretend you don't do it too.


A fan emailed me the other day about my Sophie Green books and mentioned that her perfect Luke would be Alex Pettyfer. I looked at him and thought: she's right, except for one detail: Pettyfer is 20 years old, and Luke has at least a dozen years on that (I never quite specified either his or Sophie's ages, but he's in his early thirties).

Alex Pettyfer

So I tried to reply with my ideal casting for Luke. And I still haven't come up with him yet. The best I've got is the guy from the Dunhill Pursuit magazine ad (I tore this out of the magazine and stuck it up by my computer. For, you know, inspiration). I especially love the way this guy looks as if he was immaculate about ten hours ago, but he's had rather a lot of adventures since then and could do with a shave and maybe a fresh (handmade) shirt. That's Luke all over.

Except Luke probably wouldn't wander about with a damn orange bottle in front of his face.

I've also considered Rupert Penry-Jones and Paul Bettany for the role, but I feel both of them ought to attend personal castings with me first.

Rupert Penry-Jones

Sophie? Well, I've never quite cast her either. She has a girl-next-door quality, and needs to be played by someone like Kate Winslet or Sophia Myles. I'd be heartbroken if a flat-chested girl played my Sophie. She needs those curves.

Sophia Myles

Then there are other books. Much has been mentioned by me of my enormous crush on Richard Armitage. He first came to my attention in Robin Hood as the deliciously evil but heartbreakingly vulnerable Guy of Gisborne. It didn't hurt that he strode around in black leather, scowling at people, desperately in need of a shave and a haircut. Swap the leather for a WWII army uniform and you've got Harker from the Untied Kingdom (only less inclined to brutalise innocents, of course).

Like I needed an excuse to post another Richard Armitage picture

 His heroine, Eve, is harder to pin down. I visualise her as a teenage popstar gone to seed a bit. Maybe if you took Hannah from S Club 7, added a few pounds and let her pixie crop grow out, you might be on the right track. I also thought of Miranda Raison while she was in Spooks (her earlier episodes, before she got too hard), but I've still never cast her definitively.

Miranda Raison

As for my Cat Marsters books, leaving aside the interesting question of what sort of movie would be made from an erotic romance, I have some easy casting and some impossible. Aidan from Hardest of Hearts was even named after my fantasy casting: Aidan Turner, best known for Being Human. Dark from Almost Human is Hugh Jackman, preferably in his growly X-Men guise. Bael from Mad, Bad & Dangerous started out as Colin Farrell, but God only knows who he ended up as. But as for the heroines belonging (hah!) to those heroes? I have no idea who could play Emma, Chance or Kett.

Aidan Turner. Again: as if I needed an excuse!

Weirdly, it's often the secondary characters who are very clear to me. Kett's stepmother Nuala is and always will be Reese Witherspoon. Sophie's CIA agent friend Harvey is Marc Blucas. Harker's medical officer and engineer, Daz, is Burn Gorman.

What about you? Do you play this game? Do you have any suggestions for my characters? I'll totally credit you when Hollywood comes calling.

Richard Armitage with a big gun

I was going to post something intelligent about heroes and heroines with physical and emotional flaws, but instead I'm posting a picture of Richard Armitage with a big gun.

There. Thought you'd like that.

Well, maybe I'm a bit odd

It's been suggested that my crush on The Master from Doctor Who, as portrayed by John Simm, is a bit odd. Why odd? Because he's a nihilistic psychopathic cipher for a bunch of megalomaniacal time travellers and he wants to destroy, let's face it, David Tennant's Doctor? Is that odd?

Well, if you put it that way.

But we may have established that I have a slight problem with psychopaths. I mean look at Spike. I named my cat after him. And when James Marsters (the actor behind Spike) turned up in Torchwood as Captain Jack's former 'partner in every way', with his inability to decide if he wanted to kill Jack or snog him, well, my Crushometer went up to eleven.

Of course, this isn't the sort of guy I'd like to meet in real life. But to write about, he's fascinating. That's why I keep coming back to Striker in the Realms universe. Charming, smart, very sexy, able and liable to kill you with very little notice and for equally little reason, he's absolutely fascinating.

Oddly, I've just realised what these men all have in common is the same colour hair. Peroxide as an indicator of psychopathy? Hmm...

My new baby

I haven't posted about this yet, but just less than two weeks ago, look what I got:

It's a brand new iMac with a giganticus screen and a very clever mouse (which only slightly aggravates my wrist, but we're working on that). It's also a picture taken from my phone, since a) I don't know what I've done with my camera batteries (we're having an extension built and I don't know where ANYTHING is) and b) there's no CF slot on the Mac, so I need to either find the cable (see above re batteries) or buy a card reader.

But I keep getting sidetracked, especially when the big shiny 21" screen is showing a picture of Aidan Turner.

Nothin' to do, not much to say

I'm writing about a rockstar, trying not to think about how much fish and chips I ate at the weekend in Southwold, having very lovely flashbacks to a dream involving David Tennant, and looking forward to the RNA summer party tomorrow.

How about you?

Inspiration

I have this picture open on my desktop while I work on The Untied Kingdom. For, you know, inspirational purposes.

Plus, it's just been a while--two weeks at least!--since I posted a picture of Richard Armitage.

Sexiest thing on two legs

It's official:

Romantic Novelists vote Richard Armitage Sexiest Thing On Two Legs


British actor Richard Armitage has leapt from last year’s 4th place to this year topping the ratings in the Romantic Novelists’ Association 2009 Valentine’s poll, to take the title of Sexiest Thing on Two Legs, beating top Hollywood stars to the number one spot.

Johnny Depp, who topped last year’s poll, was pushed firmly into second place, with Hugh Jackman and George Clooney mere also-rans. “Richard Armitage took 20% of the vote, more than double the count of any other male on the list,” said the RNA pollster. “He was a clear winner from the off.”

The RNA is not alone in admiration of the actor, as numerous online Richard Armitage fan sites will testify. The ardency began with North and South, grew by leaps and bounds with the leather-clad baddie in Robin Hood, and shows no sign of diminishing as Spooks takes to the airwaves.

‘It’s a coup for Britain,’ said one starstruck writer, ‘not just for sexy Richard.’

According to romantic novelists, the sexiest male celebrities of 2009 are:

1 Richard Armitage
2 Johnny Depp
3 Hugh Jackman
4 George Clooney
5 Daniel Craig
6 Sean Bean
7 Alan Rickman
8 David Tennant
9 Pierce Brosnan
10 Gerard Butler



I am in wholehearted agreement. I count myself very lucky in being able to indulge in daydreams about doing very naughty things to the delicious Mr Armitage, and yet still consider it work.