She has written an amazing 80+ books for Harlequin and been nominated for a RITA 4 times!
Last week the wonderful Liz Fielding had me as a guest on her blog to talk about "Saving Gerda", and somehow even though the blog post itself was a fairly serious musing on how I researched the book, in the comments section we drifted onto the rather more frivolous - and yet still critically important in every author's fantasy world - topic of who would play the characters from the book when they make it into a movie.
You can see why this is important, right?
Oh, excuse me, that's the phone. Better get it in case it's Hollywood
It wasn't. Oh, well, never mind, I can still have all the fun of casting my book, without inconvenient reality stepping in. I mean, could my mythical producers really afford Johnny Depp?
In my fantasy world, absolutely!
I can see him very clearly in the role of Johannes, the shy, awkward and poverty-stricken artist who somehow doesn't know how good-looking he is.
Now, who do we pair him with, in the role of Sophie, who sees past the awkwardness?
Maybe Talulah Riley, who played Mary Bennet in the film version of "Pride and Prejudice" that featured Keira Knightley. She's looking a little older, now, than she does in this picture, otherwise she'd be too young for Johnny and too young for the role.
Then there's Kitty, who is really the main character in the book - beautiful, blonde, English and very well-bred.
How about Jessica Brown-Findlay from Downton Abbey? She could easily become a blonde.
Kitty's husband Christian is an important character in the story, although in many scenes he's a presence in the background. I like Hugh Bonneville for the role, but he'll need to be made to look a little younger than he does in Downton Abbey.
I like this picture of him, even though it's in black and white.
Finally, there's Gerda, the title character, and she's the hardest of all. I really struggle to go past the gorgeous photo of the girl on the cover of the book, but that was an old photo, and I suspect the model for it would be in her seventies by now. There is something haunting about her face, and yet she's clearly inherited her mother's beauty.
No, I really can't think of someone to play Gerda. She turns thirteen in the book, and children grow and change so fast, anyone who's out there now would be too old by the time filming took place.
Oh, there goes the phone again. Excuse me, I can't afford to miss that important trans-Pacific call...
Sigh. Still wasn't that big-time producer I'm waiting for. Never mind. The story is probably stronger in my own head... and maybe even on the page... than it could ever be on the screen.
Women's fiction and romance author Lilian Darcy has written more than eighty novels for Harlequin, Silhouette, MiraAustralia
