Black Bladeby Alexander Charalambides
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Release Date: June 11th 2017
Summary:
Lance is a hero.
With his friend Megan, he does his best to survive high school in a world that doesn't always make sense, and is almost never fair.
When their school receives a donation from an anonymous millionaire, Lance and Megan find themselves on an international field trip to England, where the two receive an irresistible call to a supernatural adventure that could change their destinies, and the destiny of the country, forever.
Together with three mysterious adults who all claim to be wizards, Lance must safe-guard the legendary Excalibur. Traveling into a strange parallel world and keeping his friends, new and old, safe from harm at the hands of a malevolent army of magical soldiers, Lance discovers the truth about heroism and the content of his character.
About the Author
Alexander Charalambides was born in London and grew up in
Berkshire.
He studied Creative Writing, and graduated from the Open
University.
In 2008 he moved to the United States, and now lives in New
Hampshire.
As a freelance writer Alexander enjoys
storytelling just as much as editing and analysis, but often takes time off to
enjoy wind surfing, do the sickest of motorcycle flips, wrestle with deadly
animals and lie about his hobbies.
Author Links:
MY
DREAM CAST FOR BLACK BLADE
Books are
amazing things because you don’t need to
cast anyone. It’s one of
the things that’s always
stood out to me as important about the medium. Because of that, I don’t usually
detail my characters or “cast” them, and
when details about their personal appearances come up it’s always because they’re
relevant to what’s
happening in the story. I want to preserve the freedom of anyone to imagine any
of my characters to be as much like or unlike them as they want.
That said,
I understand why people like to talk about their “dream casts”. It’s a
fantasy probably every author has shared at one point or another, sitting down
and talking to a casting director about who they can get for the movie
adaption, why you want who you want and why they’d be perfect.
Unfortunately,
because of the approach I take to how characters look, and because I want my
readers to have as much freedom as possible imagining them, I never “cast” anyone I
write about, but I can talk about some influences particular performances have
had on my decisions about those characters.
The
clearest influence I can trace is for Lance, an adolescent malcontent and Black
Blade’s “hero”. He
whines, he judges, and he is a haver of wrong opinions. I’m sure you’re picturing
him already, but I drew a lot on Shia Labeouf for this character, particularly
his roles in all the Transformers movies. Please forgive me.
Next are
the wizards (spoiler warning: there are wizards in this book), and they’re much
harder to pin down to any specific actors. It’s essential that they are
aloof, condescending (and in one case very angry), but I have a heard time
narrowing their casting beyond the traditional stable of Very Serious British
actors.
Last is
Megan. Black Blade is driven by an obligation that forces the characters on a
supernatural journey. If you think of the story of the book as the story of
this quest, Megan is peripheral, or even irrelevant.
She’s really
small, almost never confrontational, and almost never takes the initiative. She
is (as far as I’m
concerned) by far the most important character. Why haven’t I mentioned a cast yet,
you might be asking?
The
answer is the most important reason that we keep writing books: I’ve never
seen an actress cast that would be appropriate for her, and there probably isn’t one for
the simple reason that no executive or casting director would employ someone so
“ordinary”.
We can
write about whoever we want, people who could never be represented by any
actor. Without that willingness to write about ugly, strange, ordinary people,
we cripple ourselves creatively, so when you think about your “dream
cast” while
writing, please don’t forget
that not all people are actors.
Blog Tour Organized by:
YA Bound Book Tours
Love that cover, so attention grabbing :)
ReplyDelete