Sandra Parshall's "Disturbing the Dead," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Disturbing the Dead by Sandra Parshall.

Her entry opens:

I’m probably a rarity in that I have difficulty picturing actors playing my characters – with one exception. Meryl Streep would be a natural to play Judith, Rachel’s mother in The Heat of the Moon.

I often clip photos of models from catalogs to inspire me when I begin writing new characters, but along the way my mental images diverge from those in the photos, and the pictures are discarded. “Casting” my second book, Disturbing the Dead, with models proved impossible because many of the characters are Melungeon – mixed race with dark skin and hair and, in a few cases, blue eyes.

Some of my friends have no trouble naming actors to play my characters, and their choices remind me that writing long, detailed descriptions of the people in a novel is a waste of time, because regardless of what I write, every reader will see the characters in his or her own way. [read on]

Sandra Parshall's The Heat of the Moon won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel of 2006.

Learn more about the author and her writing at Sandra Parshall's website and at Poe's Deadly Daughters where she blogs on Wednesdays.

The Page 69 Test: Disturbing the Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Disturbing the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue