Mundie Moms

Thursday, July 19, 2012

TMI Casting News; We Have MAGNUS!

For the love of everything that's TMI, MAGNUS has been cast and holy hot warlock! Feast your eyes on MAGNUS.... aka Godfrey Gao! Can we say PERFECT casting choice!?! (nods head)


Let me close my mouth and stop drooling so I can say he is the PERFECT Magnus! Seriously, he has the Magnus look down! *imagines him in a peacoat & top hat* oh wait, wrong era. I have finally say he is by far my favorite and most exciting casting news! I mean, yes I was excited for Jace, but there's just something about Magnus that I love and I've been waiting to find who was the lucky actor to get this coveted role. I am one happy Shadowhunter over this news! 

Oh wait, you probably want to know what Cassie said about him don't you... It seems we both agree about his casting choice *evil laugh*


Per Cassie:

yes it is MAGNUS!!!
So after an exhaustive search during which many, many hot Asian men were considered by the casting director (her job, so painful), the director, and the seventy-odd other dudes who have to sign off on this kind of thing, I can confidently tell you that our Magnus may be …
THE HOTTEST MAN IN THE WORLD.
Which is only fitting for Magnus, of course.
Our Magnus is:
Godfrey Gao.
*said of picture posted above*
You cannot take a bad picture of this guy. It is impossible. That is probably why he is a supermodel as well as being an actor.

Godfrey is, in addition to being all gorgeous and stuff, super-talented (his audition was awesome), loves the books, and is, like Magnus, ridiculously tall.

He is also super-nice — we emailed briefly and he said “I’m half Southeast Asian, because my mom is Peranakan Malaysian And my dad is Shanghainese - Soo hopefully the fans will like me playing Magnus!”
Oh, I don’t think there’s any worry about that! But if you are as happy and excited as I am, tell Godfrey! He’s on twitter at http://twitter.com/godfreygao and he’d love to hear from you.


Meanwhile, I am off to compose a letter to whosoever may be playing Alec.
Dear So and So,
Here are some pictures of Magnus. Please feel free to send me a fruit basket. My address is …

Sooo.... what are your thoughts on Magnus? I seriously LOVE this supporting casting for the TMI Movie! I don't think they could have gotten a better cast. 

TMI Casting News: Jocelyn & Hodge are Cast

I am seriously LOVING all this TMI Movie casting news today! Cassie announced casting news for both Jocelyn and Hodges. 

Jocelyn's announcement is here, and she'll be played by the lovely Lena Headey. It's funny, because I never really had a certain image in my mind for Jocelyn, but seeing Lena I think she'll be a great fit for Jocelyn. Of her casting Cassie said

Jocelyn is a really fun character to write. She’s overprotective (but for a reason) and often really unyielding and unsympathetic, but she’s also a heroine who saved the world from Valentine, endured a lot of loss, and can execute some pretty badass moves. Moral ambiguity is always fun to play and who does it better than



the gorgeous and talented Lena Headey. You probably know her best as Cersei from Game of Thrones.




I have had an actress crush on Lena for years so when they told me she was cast I did a happy dance and hit Sarah Rees Brennan on the head with a spoon. Actually I would have done that last bit anyway. Lena is amazing and I think she will be amazing as Jocelyn. I 
am super psyched.


What do you guys think? I'm loving this casting choice!


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Cassie reported that Jared Harris has been cast as Hodges! On his casting Cassie said, 


Hodge is also a really complicated character. He’s not entirely bad, not entirely good. He’s a brilliant man led down a bad path a long time ago and he can’t turn back, but he does love those kids he tutored. So if you’ve seen either Mad Men or Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (in which he was Moriarty), you know this guy, and you know he’s fantastic at moral ambiguity.  





He’s got SAG awards and Emmys all over the place and I think he’ll really nail Hodge’s moral dilemma. Welcome, Jared!


I told you it wasn’t going to be a boring day!

WOW, another fabulous casting choice! What do you guys think?

Anastasia Forever Blog Tour: Deleted Scene & Guest Post w/ author Joy Preble

I'm thrilled to be the next stop in Source Books's Anastasia Forever Deleted Scene Blog Tour. If you've not yet picked up this series, I highly recommend it. It's a well written series full of Russian folklore, romance and a bit of mystery. Anastasia Forever is the third book in Joy's series and is about to hit book store shelves (on 8/7/12). Today I have a treat for you guys, a deleted scene from the series's first book, DREAMING ANASTASIA. 

The deleted scene & Joy's thoughts on it:


“It occurs after Anne and Ethan have found Professor Olensky murdered in his office. They are desperately trying to figure out what to do and being chased by Viktor's henchman Dimitri. And my initial impulse was that I very much wanted them to share their first kiss on that El train platform. It felt like the perfect moment -- the classic 'everything is going crazy and this is the person I've been running from but really he's exactly the right person for me' passionate kiss... followed by danger looming and breaking them apart.”

And then, we’re alone.
The wind’s whipping our hair and Ethan’s still holding my hand, our fingers lacing together. Neither of us says a word. The wind swirls a piece of newspaper around on the track and a couple of pigeons peck at the platform across the tracks, looking for bits of food.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan says as a twenty-something guy wearing an unzipped grey hoodie over his green scrubs plops himself down on the bench across the tracks and the pigeons, startled, fly off to search for other crumbs. He lets go of my hand and thrusts both his hands in his jacket pockets.
“You’re right. It is your battle. Probably as much as it is mine.” He blows out a breath.
“We were all so certain after the assassination that at any moment we could find a way to fulfill the prophecy. Get Anastasia back. Restore the Romanovs to power through her. But we didn’t. Ten years passed, then another ten. Then – well, it’s easier than you think for the years to slip by. Each time I though I’d found the girl who could do this, it turned out I was wrong. And each time, I think I just slipped a little farther from the person I used to be. The person who was so clear of his purpose. I never gave up, but I think I stopped trying as hard.”
Ethan stops. Looks down the track for a bit. There’s no train in sight. Across the way, a tall girl in a denim mini and black leggings joins scrub suit guy on his bench. She’s bobbing along to whatever is playing in her headphones. Everywhere I look, it seems, the world is going on like normal. Except I know it’s not.
Ethan’s gaze holds mine, his blue eyes so tired and sad that I feel like crying except I think I’ve used up my quota of tears today. “If Viktor’s betrayed us,” Ethan says, “it’s because I let him. Because I just stopped paying attention. And that part, I do have to bear alone.”
I’m not sure what to say to him. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is one of those times where I probably don’t need to say anything. But he’s standing there in such pain that I start talking.
“We’ll find her, Ethan,” I say, even though I’m not at all sure that’s ever really going to happen. “I mean, you found me, didn’t you?”
And then we just stand there. The wind dies down for a bit, although I can tell from the clouds that it’s going to pick up again soon. Underneath my feet I can feel a slight vibration. Far down the track, our train is coming. Ethan steps closer to me. My heart beats harder: thump, thump, hop in my chest.
I study his face. Those blue eyes. That shaggy chestnut hair all tousled from the wind. 
He’s going to kiss me. And I guess it should be weird or whatever. But it’s not. It’s just me and him – and okay, the two strangers across the way – and all the other stuff just sort of drops away. Because when you’re going to kiss someone – really kiss someone – it’s got to be just about that and not anything else.
And then he does. Kiss me, I mean.
He bends down a little, cause he’s taller, and presses his lips to mine. And it’s way better than the kiss on the forehead. And way, way better than the dream kiss since this time he’s just kissing me, not trying to suck the life out of me. His lips are warm and full and sweet, and they feel good against mine.
So I kiss him back.
 “I almost lost you, too,” Ethan whispers against my lips. His breath tickles and little sparks tingle their way down my spine. “Here, I’ve just found you, and I almost lost you.” We kiss some more. I reach up and wrap my arms around his neck. I rest one hand on his shoulder – right where he’s got that lion tattoo etched into his skin.
In novels, you always read phrases like ‘they kissed and time stood still.’ And until now, I’ve always thought what a load of crap that was. Cause even when I was making out with Adam Greene, time was marching right along.
And maybe it’s because Adam was a sort of slurpy kisser. And that’s why my mind kept wandering to images of Buster lapping water from his dish. 
Or maybe he just wasn’t the right one.
But right now, time is still. And Ethan’s lips, and his hands that are resting against the small of my back, are filling my head so completely there’s no room for anything else.
But then our train pulls up to the platform. The doors open, and I let Ethan take my hand and lead me inside. We settle into our seats as the train gives a lurch and starts up again, headed downtown. I’m sitting next to the window. Ethan’s looking at me like I’d always hope someone who’d just kissed me would look at me.
And then he’s not. Looking at me, that is.
Because he’s looking out the window beyond me. Back over, I realize as I turn my head, to the staircase that leads up the platform we just left. Watching as the familiar figure of Dimitri rushes into view, just as the train picks up speed and carries us away.

*********
Well that was a hot little scene. Now let's talk about Anne and Ethan's romance. If you've read the series you know there's a little complex as there's a lot at stake and against them in this series. Joy's stopped by today to talk about their relationship a little more in detail. 

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What’s Love Got to Do with It?: The Anne/Ethan Romance
Joy Preble

The guiding force of the DREAMING ANASTASIA series is the relationship between Anne and Ethan. Anne knows from the second she catches blue-eyed Ethan stalking her at the ballet that there is just something about him. And in fact, he proceeds to turn her life upside and sideways because it is Ethan who peels back Anne’s normal world and reveals a world of Russian fairy tales brought to life, of a hidden princess and an illegitimate royal son driven by vengeance. When they touch – and I always knew that their story would begin with a physical touch setting things in motion—everything changes.

Anne is no longer just the girl who dances ballet and goes to school and mourns the death of her brother to cancer. She is a girl with power to save a princess, power to right ancient wrongs and ultimately, the power to break a curse that is holding her birth grandmother captive. But power comes with a steep price. And when Anne accepts Baba Yaga’s bargain so she can save Ethan in book 2, she steps into the witch’s forest in a way she has up until then refused to do. Of course, I wanted her to do this for love, even if she has trouble admitting that’s what it is.

This is problem for Anne and Ethan: they do not come easily to loving each other. Or rather, Ethan comes easily to loving Anne, even if he feels that he does not deserve her or a second chance at life. Which is exactly what she gives him when she rides out of the witch’s forest with Anastasia, allowing Ethan to regain his mortality. While Viktor yearns to live forever, Ethan wants only to have what he lost for a cause that was never what he believed it to be: to live and die in the proper time. That he has found the love of his life makes him both deliriously happy as well as guilty as hell.

And Anne, well, she’s a smart girl. Even when she’s not, she has Tess watching her back, making sure she sees things as they are. Anne sees loving Ethan as an impossibility. He is too old even if he looks young. He has secrets and a long, long past. She is only sixteen. And yet I think she loves him from the moment he tells her his story. But she holds back; she is indecisive. In fact, these traits hurt her in all aspects of her life. She has trouble committing. Ethan, on the other hand, is an all-in kind of guy.

So what did I do to these two? I made them inhabit a reverse fairy tale. It is Anne who ends up saving Ethan over and over. It is Anne who is the hero. And ultimately, it is Ethan (no spoilers for book 3 quite yet) who needs redemption and forgiveness before he and Anne can be together. A happily ever after, but hard won. And not without suffering and sacrifice. This is after all, a Russian fairy tale. No one knows endurance like the Russians.

And so it goes: Ethan and Anne, circling and circling love, each running from the other, each doing the hero’s job. The question becomes, will they figure out that they belong together before it’s too late?

Of course they will!

But with these two, love isn’t simple. I think that makes them equal parts of smart and stupid. Not forbidden love. Not crazy love where the passion burns out everything else—and I think we all need some of that in our lives.

When Anne and Ethan finally figure out that they belong together, it will be a love that entwines them like two puzzle pieces, marveling at how perfectly and easily they fit. And how foolish they were not to know it.

************
Thank you Joy for stopping by Mundie Moms today! Thank you to Source Books for putting this tour together. Be sure to stop back by the blog on August 7th for my tour stop in the Anastasia Forever Blog Tour.

Cold Fury Blog Tour: Guest Post & Giveaway



I'm thrilled to be the next stop in Jean BookNerd's Cold Fury blog. Today along with the tour's awesome giveaway, I've got author T.M. Goeglein's on the blog to talk about his debut. 

My Journey as a Writer: 3 Reasons I Write Fiction

1.) I hate talking about myself.
I hate it so much that I hate writing that I hate talking about myself.
That’s partly why I write fiction.
I’m in the things I write, in some form, but mostly I’m not.  What I write is based on real life, events, and other people – their crimes, lies, tragedies, heroics – which I then contort, twist, add to, subtract from, often multiply, shake, stir, and serve.  It’s impossible not to add myself to that mix but only the ticks and feelings that serve a story.  Make no mistake.  In the end, everything I write is completely made up.
2.) The truth is usually as boring as hell.
I once made the mistake of attending a well-regarded journalism school.  It took half a semester to realize that, not only was I naturally awful at the craft, but to put it mildly, didn’t give a rat’s ass about what everyone else held in such high regard: facts.  To me, they were cumbersome to work with, always having to check, recheck, and verify once more, and then and only then could a person begin writing.  It was a total buzz kill.  Who really cared if the international bank robbers used ten AK-47’s or eleven?  They’re robbing international-freaking-banks, for ef’s sake!  
But, people did care.  They still do.  And I do too, as a citizen of the world.
I just couldn’t give a crap less as a writer of fiction.
From my standpoint, why triple-check the population of the fourth largest city in Latvia when you can just make it up to fit the story?
3) Because it’s all about me, and that’s a fact.
Recently, a writer I admire, John McPhee, wrote a piece in the The New Yorker about the editing habits of some of that magazines’ editors-in-chief, and about his relationship with his literary agent.  Toward the end of the article, he discussed how he’d landed on his genre of writing, long form nonfiction.  Speaking of his own career, he noted that the desire to be a writer was always alive within him, but that becoming the type he is today required attempts at other forms.  
His point, I think, was that a writer’s journey is as much about the work he or she produces as figuring what type of writer a person is.
For me, the trail led to fiction.
It fits.


Thank you T.M. for stopping by Mundie Moms!! Here's a little bit about Cold Fury:


About the book:

Having just turned sixteen, Sara Jane Rispoli’s birthday is anything but sweet.

Returning from her first high school dance, Sara Jane walks into a ransacked home and finds her family missing, the dog maimed and a psychopath in a ski mask who won’t rest until she’s dead. With nothing to go on but a clue hidden in a bust of Frank Sinatra, Sara Jane jumps into her dad’s 1965 Lincoln Continental and drives into the night.

The clues lead her to an ancient, worn notebook that contains a guide to a Chicago hiding in plain sight— safe houses, secret doors, mysterious phone numbers are all suddenly at Sara Jane’s disposal. But it also contains darker, more troubling secrets concerning the Rispoli family, including the revelation that a rare and powerful hereditary trait passed down from the time of Alexander the Great enabled certain male members of the Rispoli clan to become major figures in the Outfit, Chicago’s storied crime syndicate.

Sara Jane realizes the secret-filled notebook is the reason why her family was taken, and why she’s being pursued by three different factions: her turncoat uncle, Police Detective Dotty Smelt, and the huge, shambling freak in the ski mask. Learning of the gift awakens a realization in Sara Jane that she, too, possesses the powerful phenomenon.


With the help of a weight-challenged sidekick, an angry Italian greyhound, and a legion of guardian angel sewer rats, Sara Jane is chased, attacked, and fights back with cold fury, staying one step ahead of her pursuers and circumnavigating the male-centric Outfit while also keeping a growing romance.

Published by: Putnam/Penguin
To Be Released on: July 24th, 2012
Purchase from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository  

About the Author:



T.M. Goeglein began his career as a writer of print and television ads for a host of advertising and media companies. As a screenwriter, he created both original scripts and worked as a script doctor for several production companies in Los Angeles. He was an original contributor to the Huffington Post 'Living' section, and continues to write for both the national edition and Huffington Post Chicago. Read T.M. Goeglein's stories on the Huffington Post.


His debut young adult novel, COLD FURY, will be published by Penguin/Putnam in 2012 and is the first in a trilogy; he’s currently working on the second book. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Laura, and two young children.


Visit TM via his: Website | Facebook | Twitter

The Giveaway:


Please be sure to follow the entire blog tour here.

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