Fun

Here's something fun--Storycasting.com. It's a site that lets you fantasy-cast your novel with actors, and argue the merits of your choices with other folks. People use it as part of their virtual book launches. Cheryl played around with the cast of her novel, Shiva's Arms, and came up with THIS.

If you'd like a turn, here's the backstory on Cheryl's characters:

1. Alice. Wife, daughter-in-law, and depressive, she's the perpetual unsuitable bride.
2. Ram. The quintessential man in the middle, caught between his wife and mother.He runs away from his Hindu culture as fast as Alice runs toward it.
3. Amma. Matriarch of a Brahmin joint-family, she must either reconcile herself to the culture clash with which her son has presented her or protect tradition, at any cost.
4.Sambashivan, Ram's free-thinking father. “You must marry soon,” he says when Ram goes off to graduate school in America. “Otherwise, marriage will be for companionship only.”
5. Sam, the only child of Ram and Alice, the favorite of Amma, who sees in him a new beginning, a chance to rewrite her son’s saga until history threatens to repeat itself.
6.Nela, the disgraced daughter, ostracized for a small romantic indiscretion.Her accidental freedom is threatened under the weight of family need.
7. Nigel, an aging self-absorbed musician with whom Nela is romantically linked. He stumbles upon a situation where it’s easier to betray Nela than to lose his daughter to her nephew Sam.