by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While it’s definitely not a one-to-one, the heroine of the first novel in my series leading up to my “Female James Bond” getting her “00,” if you will, is greatly influenced by Kate Winslet’s character in “Mare of Easttown.”
The two characters are dramatically different in some respects, but Mare is the vibe I’m looking for. Or, maybe if Mare was younger, a lot less bitter, brunette and a lot more fit. But the vibes of the two women are very similar.
I like how writing four novels at once allows me to see the macro arch of the series in my mind. It’s a lot easier to plant things here and there in the novel as needed to give it a cohesive unity.
At the moment, Alexa Chung (sorta) is what imagine the character looking like, for no other reason than she’s Amerasian in ethnic background. But I think Phoebe Waller-Bridge could probably play the character if somehow, I manage to not only get the novels published, don’t die of a heart attack like Stieg Larsson and they’re miraculously enough popular enough that Hollywood grows interested.
But I’m still in the very delusional stage of all of this. I have to allow myself to be delusional because that’s the only way any of this will get done. I will note, again, that it’s interesting that other people read the Millennium series and saw a totally different set of books than I did.
It’s pretty wild how different my take on Stieg Larsson’s stuff is relative to at least one book I’ve read. The first book, especially, is far more character driven than this one book I’ve been reading that wants to be a successor to Larsson.
I’ve given myself a few days for something of a reset on all of this. I really need to do some reading, especially about character building. Seeing Mare of Easttown was a swift kick in the creative ass — I saw it and realized I needed to up my game.
