If Kaleidocide Was A Movie (Secondary Characters)

Kaleidocide, the second Peacer novel and a sequel to Silhouette, will be released on December 10, 2013.  In anticipation of it, I wanted to share what some of the characters and places look like in my imagination (or close to it, anyway), and what a movie might look like if Macmillan Films is able to develop one for production.

Here are some characters that I hesitate to call "minor," because they're all so important to the story, but they are not as central as some others I'll get to in a future post.  First, Korcz and Stephenson would look something like this (Stephenson especially, because I based him, visually and in some other ways, on my friend Paul, who is in the picture below with his wife Trish).

 

 

And here's what Tyra (the "cupbearer" in the story) and Tara (Michael's ex) might look like.  For Tara it was hard to find a picture, other than one of Vanessa Williams, because she is African American with blue eyes (and incomparably beautiful, of course).

 

Stanford Glenn is a high-ranking American leader who lobbies for access to the Sabon antigravity technology and seems to know more about Michael's predicament than he is letting on.  Idris Elba is great in everything he does, so he would be great in this role too...

Next, what would Saul Rabin's "ghost" look like?  How about these "almost real" photos of Clint Eastwood, who would fit the role so well, to capture the artificial intelligence construct that keeps alive the dead man's memories and knowledge (and some of his political machinations)...

 

 

Finally (for this post), the seven-foot Chinese cyborg Min is very difficult to find a visual representation of, because there are no seven-foot Chinese cyborgs in reality, of course, but also surprisingly there are none in comics or movies either.  This was the only picture I could find that somewhat approximated the way I imagine him.  He wouldn't wear a heavy leather coat in the climate of the Bay Area, but he does have two swords similar to this one that he can pull out of his back to wreak havoc on enemies when the ammo for built-in guns is depleted.  (Like it says in the novel, this gives new meaning to the term "shoulder blades.")

 

 

If Kaleidocide Was A Movie (Oakland and Marin)

Kaleidocide, the second Peacer novel and a sequel to Silhouette, will be released on December 10, 2013.  In anticipation of it, I wanted to share what some of the characters and places look like in my imagination (or close to it, anyway), and what a movie might look like if Macmillan Films is able to develop one for production.

In this series of posts, I'll start with more minor characters and settings, and work my way up to the main ones.  So here is what the ruins of Oakland might look like, in an early scene where the Japanese cyborg triplets fly some Firehawk helicopters into the city to smoke out an assault team waiting to ambush Michael Ares...

Here is one of the Firehawk helicopters that the cyborg triplets fly into the ruins to take out an enemy assault team.  And below it is what the enemy helicopters they encounter might look like.  They are called "Sikorsky Primes" and are painted a teal color to channel the ancient spirits of the xing lu cai se, or kaleidocide, initiated by a militaristic ruler of China named Zhang Sun.

Finally (for this post), here are some views of the Marin Center (including the entrance to the jail that is built into a hill) where a later action scene occurs, and a picture that is something like the huge car carrier that Michael's double and Lynn make their escape in by using the cars like remote-controlled missiles (you have to read it!:).  The carrier in the novel would be a more futuristic version, of course, and even bigger.

One Helluva Day! (Review of Day One, by Nate Kenyon)

Talk about a bad day! (And a good book) John Hawke never had a worse one, what with the killer AI sending every machine in sight, and even the cops and the military, to kill him (and a large percentage of the rest of the population). But the worst part is he's separated from his family, and doesn't know whether they've survived some very human evil. And this is the best part of the story, in my opinion, very much like the movie version of World War Z where the danger to the main character's family is the "macguffin" that drives the plot, and rather effectively. I'm sure Kenyon plotted and started this novel before he saw that movie, so it isn't a ripoff, but another effective version of the same hook. And the action is good, too. As a writer myself I especially liked how he introduced us to the characters' pasts while the disaster was starting and escalating, to keep our attention early. A few flaws, I thought, but definitely a certified page-turner. [Parental Info: Some R-rated profanity and gore, but no significant sexual content.]