My good buddy, Leta Blake posted this today about the casting of her latest book, Smoky Mountain Dreams, and it reminded me that I’ve been asked about casting by several of my readers on occasion, both for my novels and for a couple of my fanfics.

Yes,  you read that right – my fanfics. I only write fanfic for Once Upon A Time, and I put together a trilogy beginning with The Memory Keeper that started during the mid-season hiatus last year. It began with Killian and Emma, then branched out to their children, Meriel and Finn. And for those of you who actively read my fanfic, I’ll tell you now who I cast mentally in those roles:

Meriel was Audrey Hepburn. Straight up, spunky Audrey Hepburn. Finn was a chip off the old block, so of course he was the spitting image of his father. Meriel’s man Kai should have been easy to figure out – he’s Chris Hemsworth down to the bone (if you’ll forgive the pun). Finn’s lady Bryony was very Jennifer Lawrence-ish with a dash of Emma Stone for fierceness.

As for my novels – yes, I’ve cast them all in my head. It helps me stay true to the character as we move through the story. And I’ve found that when I share my inspiration with my beta readers, they’ve either already figured it out for themselves, or my revealing the source of my inspiration was a total turn-off to them because they were seeing someone else in their mind’s eye.

So really, I hesitate to share my inspiration with the masses and I’d rather let you form your own opinion. The only novel I’ll ‘fess up about would be “Eight Nights At Sea,” because that was a former fanfic that I tweaked and expanded into a stand-alone novel, so of course, Zephyr Jamieson was firmly inspired by Killian Jones of Once Upon A Time. I even had a rough time finding a good cover because I needed him to kind of look like his inspiration but not a dead-on copy. I finally ended up with a cover that hinted at him beautifully:

That cover makes me tingle. Seriously.

If you’re interested in tingling, too, you can download Eight Nights at Sea here!