The NerdHerd Reads: Dream Boy

Hey guys! I am excited to be part of the blog tour for Dream Boy by Madelyn Rosenberg and Mary Crockett! Mary has been on the blog before (talking about Sherlock), so today, Madelyn will be sharing her dream cast with us! Let's see how she imagines her characters!

All actor photos are linked to their IMDB page, so you can, I don't know, stalk them better.

Dream Cast:

I always see things in pictures, so when I was looking for actors to fill out my dream cast, I was going more on physical appearance than acting ability.

For Will, I’m going with one of the Liams – either a slightly scruffy Liam James or a slightly scruffy Liam Aiken, and only because I can’t shave enough years off of James Franco.

Martin gets a Liam, too – Liam Hemsworth, though we’d have to golden him up just a bit.

For Annabelle, I’m going to go with Shailene Woodley, or possibly Homeland’s Morgan Saylor.

For Stephanie, a dark-haired Abigail Breslin

For Serena, a curly-haired Maia Mitchell

and for Paolo, maybe Aramis Knight?

For Daniel, Nathan Keyes. (I love the pic on the first page of IMDB because it looks like he just woke up, which seems appropriate for Daniel.)

For Talon, I think I’m going to go with Kiernan Shipka, because while I don’t make it to movies much, I do get TV, and Kiernan has Attitude in spades. Picture her with black hair and an asymmetrical cut. Check out this clip. Talon, too, is familiar with psychotherapy and I’ll bet she’d practice it just like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVOwKgMkRxA

Mary did a dream cast awhile ago, and I think we overlap maybe once. If you want to check hers out, go here… http://marycrockett.com/2013/09/20/the-next-big-thing-dream-boy-edition/

Thank you, Madelyn, for sharing your dream cast with us! Check back soon for my review of Dream Boy!

The Book:

Title: Dream Boy

Authors: Mary Crockett and Madelyn Rosenberg

Publishing: July 1, 2014

Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Annabelle Manning feels like she’s doing time at her high school in Chilton, Virginia. She has her friends at her lunchtime table of nobodies. What she doesn’t have are possibilities. Or a date for Homecoming. Things get more interesting at night, when she spends time with the boy of her dreams. But the blue-eyed boy with the fairytale smile is just that—a dream. Until the Friday afternoon he walks into her chemistry class.

One of friends suspects he’s an alien. Another is pretty sure it’s all one big case of deja vu. While Annabelle doesn’t know what to think, she’s willing to believe that the charming Martin Zirkle may just be her dream come true. But as Annabelle discovers the truth behind dreams—where they come from and what they mean—she is forced to face a dark reality she had not expected. More than just Martin has arrived in Chilton. As Annabelle learns, if dreams can come true, so can nightmares.

The Authors:

Madelyn: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Mary Crockett likes turtles, licorice, and the Yankees. Madelyn Rosenberg likes cats, avocados, and the Red Sox. Luckily they both like the weirdness of dreams (and each other) enough to write novels together. The friendship has survived 3 moves, 6 kids, and countless manuscript revisions. Madelyn (Canary in the Coal Mine) lives in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of D.C. Mary (A Theory of Everything: Poems) remains in the mountains near Salem, Virginia.

Hey guys! Today I am excited to bring you a guest post from Mary Crockett, talking about one of my favorite things(obsessions)...Sherlock! In fact, I too struggle with the very thing she discusses ;) So without further ado...

Torn Between Two Sherlocks: Confessions of an Addict

When RachelMarie invited me to do a guest post for The NerdHerd Reads, I was excited but also a bit at a loss. My debut novel DREAM BOY is coming out next summer – which is mega-thrilling for me and my coauthor Madelyn Rosenberg, but it's maybe not the timeliest of topics as we approach the doldrums of winter.

Write about your writing process, RachelMarie suggested.

Ok, I thought. I write. All the time. This should be easy.

At which point I sat down at my computer, typed “WRITING PROCESS,” stood up, wandered around the house, ate a piece of toast, sat back down at the computer, retweeted some random stuff, and traipsed off to check on the dog.

That pretty much IS my writing process. Which may explain why I'm not meeting my National Novel Writing Month goals. Ah well.

Several toasts and dogs later, I eventually found my way back to the NerdHerd site to see what there might rouse my muse. It was then that I noticed RachelMarie's Sherlock Challenge. The heavens parted, angels sang, and I knew my topic. Because while DREAM BOY is half a year away, what IS right around the corner? Come on, you know this....

That's right. Season Three of The Most Awesome of Awesomes. I'm speaking of course of the BBC's SHERLOCK, premiering in the US January 19.

So, here's the thing: Since Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock left us wondering how he faked his own death so he could go terrorize hobbits and the Starship Enterprise, another Sherlock—Jonny Lee Miller's tatted, terse-lipped incarnation—has swooped in and stolen my affections.

Call me fickle? Fair enough. If you'd told me two years ago that I'd be in love with TWO different big-headed Brits who go around poking at dead bodies, I'd... well, I'd probably have thought you were a figment of my imagination and just ignored you. But that doesn't change the fact that my whorish little heart is confused.

I never intended to fall for Miller. In fact, when I suggested to my thirteen-year-old daughter that we watch Elementary as a sort of stop-gap between seasons of Sherlock, she responded as if I'd told her we were going to eat the cardboard cereal box just because we ran out of Cheerios.

It's going to be a long time before we get another Sherlock, I said. Let's just try it and see what happens.

Huffing. Eye-rolling. Silence.

They have a female Watson, I said.

Huff.

Just one episode. Come on. It's not like one episode is going to kill anybody.

Even to my own ears I sounded like a drug dealer trying to reel in a new customer.

But as it turns out, Jonny Lee Miller is a gateway drug. And now we're hooked not only on him, but also on Lucy Liu as Watson and on the idea of Holmes as a recovering addict and person-in-progress.

I am, to quote really bad 70's pop music, “torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool.”

To aid in my confusion, here's a little something I ran across when I googled “Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch” to see if anyone else was suffering from Sherlock Disorientation Anxiety.

Check out this promo for Danny Boyle's 2011 stage version of Frankenstein in which Jonny Lee Miller's Creature (who morphs into Benedict Cumberbatch's Creature) is conversing with Benedict Cumberbatch's Victor Frankenstein (who morphs into Jonny Lee Miller's Victor Frankenstein).

Keep in mind as you watch this, that I'm not only a Sherlock fangirl, but I'm also obsessed with Mary Shelley's novel—and in fact tried to convince my coauthor on several occasions that DREAM BOY is really a loose retelling of Frankenstein.

AKKK!!! It's like I'm the junkie and this is a really, really bad trip. So, what to do? Come new year, do I abandon Jonny Lee and his doe-eyed care of bees? Do I schedule a Snuggie Pub Crawl on January 19 to keep me from the temptation that is Sherlock? Both of these questions I answer with a resounding HECK NO! I will instead seek to turn myself into (and this time I borrow from the country music cannon) “a two timin' woman with a heart of solid stone.” I will find out how Sherlock faked his death. I will know why Mycroft is scheming to lure Sherlock to London. In short, I will learn to live with my own whorish heart, and I will love it.

About the Author:

Mary Crockett:
Mary Crockett's debut young adult novel DREAM BOY, co-authored with Madelyn Rosenberg, is about the aftermath of dreams and the nightmare of figuring out how you fit into the puzzle of your own life. It's also about cute guys, epic kisses, and the mystical power of a really awesome pair of shoes. A native of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Mary grew up as the youngest of six children in a family of misfits. She has worked as everything from a history museum director to a toilet seat hand model. In her other life, she's an award-winning poet, professional eavesdropper, and the person who wipes runny noses. If you tweet at her, chances are she will tweet back.
Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | tumblr | Pinterest | Goodreads
Add DREAM BOY to your 'to-read' list on Goodreads!
Thank you Mary for this wonderful post! I was right there with your daughter on refusing to give it a shot until my friend pushed my to "just check it out". Now, I'm obsessed too, and will not apologize. Have not seen the Sherlock movie with RDJ yet though.
Who else here has a (more than) slight obsession with Sherlock?