Second Olympus: The Movie

Only in an author's fondest fantasies are their books actually made into movies.  But that doesn't mean that we can't dream. I mean, c'mon. Imagining stuff is what we get paid for!

So imagine with me, people!  In the comments below, leave your ideal cast list for the characters listed below.  They can be past or present, you can specify young or old (for example, young Marlon Brando is very different than older Marlon Brando).  If you need more inspiration, check out this earlier post featuring my Second Olympus Playlist!

I'm limiting everyone to ONE entry per person (yes, I know that there are a several married couples who may be competing, so it's up to you guys if you want to enter as one, or as individuals)  ((I may have just ruined a couple of marriages))

Because I know there are folk who are busy this weekend (*waves hi to the Malice Domestic crowd*), I will leave the contest open through next Wednesday (5/6).  I'll post the 1st and 2nd place winners that evening.

1st place winner gets a $25 Amazon gift card, and 2nd place gets $10!  Woohoo!

Remember, only the first 12 characters are must haves (and if you truly can't figure one out, it's okay to leave it blank. I've got a few I haven't cast yet, too).  If you want to put some names to the "Others" section, you can do that just for fun.

Olympus Tower:
Heracles
Artemis
Persephone
Demeter
Hades
Hephaestus

Deeptown:
Geoff
Lia
Ambert
Jon / Rik (they're twins, remember?)
Keras
Raffa

Others:
Art forger
Old Stan
Young Stan
Fons
Drones
Hunstmen

And....GO!  (Have fun, folk)

Your Mission

Should you choose to accept it, and I really hope you do, or this will be the lamest contest ever.

So, people often tell me (usually in reference to the JJD books), “Hey, this would make a great movie/TV show!”  Well, in all honesty, I’ve never believed that the JJD books would translate well to film.  There’s too much internal introspection in dear Jesse’s head that I think would be lost on the big (or little) screen.

However, I have always believed that Second Olympus would be my “movie book”.  I have a soundtrack picked out and everything.  And occasionally, I amuse myself by daydreaming about who would play who in that movie.

So here’s what we’re going to do!  I want YOU to cast my Second Olympus movie.  I’ve got a list of main characters below, and I’d love to know how YOU picture them.

Now, you’re thinking, “As fun as this is, this seems like it could take some time! What’s in it for me?”  I’m so glad you asked!  I will be awarding a $25 Amazon gift card to my favorite cast list.  Second place will get a $10 Amazon gift card!  To win, I want casting for the 12 “main” characters. (the “others” listed at the bottom are just for fun, if you have someone perfect in mind)

Since this kinda requires that you have READ the book, and not everyone reads super fast, I’m announcing this today, and then NEXT Friday (May 1st), I will put up a new post and THERE you will list your answers.  That gives you a week to read and ponder.

REMEMBER:  Don’t leave your answers on THIS post, wait til next Friday and we’ll do it then.

Now, you may have see me mention a few actors that I see in a couple of the roles, but don't feel like you're bound to that!  I want to know what YOU picture.  So get reading, and on May 1st, have your cast list ready!

Second Olympus Cast List

Olympus Tower:
Heracles
Artemis
Persephone
Demeter
Hades
Hephaestus

Deeptown:
Geoff
Lia
Ambert
Jon / Rik
Keras
Raffa

Others:
Art forger
Old Stan
Young Stan
Fons
Drones
Hunstmen

Tomorrow, Tomorrow!

Second Olympus releases tomorrow.  Hold on a second while I pause to truly take in that statement.  Part of me still hasn’t quite registered (despite the fact that I’ve had two early readers come back already and say they loved it).

For those who haven’t ordered yet, shame on you!   (I kid)  Here is the list of where to find the book:

Print copy:

Createspace

Amazon 

B&N

Ebook:

Kindle

Nook

iTunes

Kobo

Smashwords (for a variety of formats in one place!)

Remember, if you love the book (any book, really), or even if you don’t, PLEASE go out and leave a review at Amazon and/or B&N.  I can’t emphasize enough how important reviews on these sites are for authors.  And I don’t mean just glowing “OMG, I wanna have this book’s babies” kind of reviews.  They don’t have to be deep, in-depth literary analysis of each line of prose.  They can just be a “hey, this rocked my socks” or “It was just kinda ‘meh’ for me.”  All reviews are valuable, so please, take a few minutes of your time and drop a few lines.

Next week, I think I wanna play the “Cast the Movie” game with this book, so for those of you who will be reading this week, think about who you envision in these roles.  I will tell you right away that for Keras, I’m picturing Steve Buscemi, or maybe John Leguizamo.  Let me know how you see him!

Second Olympus - Cover Art!

Once again, Robin Ludwig Design has knocked it out of the park.

For those who want to read the back, you can click on the pic to make it bigger, or here's the text:

AND THEY WILL COME FROM BELOW

The war amongst the Greek gods lasted over three decades and when it was ended, the sun was snuffed from the sky, Artemis sat on the throne, and the muses were murdered.

Without the power to create or invent, the human race languished for generations, trapped within the walled city of Elysia, their lives governed by the steady tick of the great world clock and the watchful eye of their increasingly erratic goddess.

But in the lower wards, far from the shining beacon that is Olympus Tower, a crippled boy named Geoff has grown to manhood, unaware of the legacy contained in his own mysterious bloodline. When his loved ones are threatened, the world will finally wake under the power of the muse, and the insane goddess Artemis will remember the very dangerous power of human imagination.



And just another close up of the front, 'cause I lurve it!

Current plan is to try and have the preorder option processing by tonight, with an eye to an April 21st release date.  Most likely, I will release the print copy a few days prior to that, to make sure that everyone can READ it on the release date.

I'm so excited!

Gooey Sticky Syrup

I suppose by now that it’s pretty clear that I’m not gonna hit the March 24th release date for Second Olympus. Well, it was worth a shot.

The good news is, the cover art is still in progress, and that’s really the only thing I’m waiting on.  Once I get that, I can hit the button and get this ball rolling.  Still hoping to give it a “pre-order” period, even if just for a couple of week.  Still hoping to have this out in April, but no promises, and no set date.

Other than that, I’m just plodding along.  Got that feet stuck in thick syrup feeling, lately.  I’m making progress, but it’s slow and steady, rather than abrupt and thrilling/terrifying.  Truthfully, I’m not sure which is better.  Patience is not one of my favorite things, but neither is abject terror.

Folks are getting antsy about JJD5. Trust me, it’s coming. I pick at the outline now and then when I need a break from MMwD, and this morning, I actually wrote down the first few paragraphs of a chapter just so they’d quit taking up room in my head.  Goal is still to have this one out and available this year, though not sure just when.  Won’t be a summer release like the others, but I feel like that’s not so important in the big scheme of things.

Nothing else going on but life in general. As it happens to all of us.  (well, most of us, I guess. I don’t discriminate against the undead)

Second Olympus - The Playlist

As mentioned before, I had a playlist for this book.  Most of the music was sent to my by a friend, and while it wasn't for the purpose of connecting it to the writing I was doing at the time, it just worked out that way.  Perfectly, in fact.

I wanted to make a Spotify playlist to link here so that you could all listen to it as well, but unfortunately, some of this music is a little obscure, and therefore not available.  I DID manage to find them (most of them, anyway) on Youtube, and so I've made you a Youtube playlist instead.

Again unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get that playlist to display MY notes on the songs to you, so I'll be doing that below.

It's not my intention for you to sync listening to the songs to reading the book.  That would be silly, and impossible.  It is also worth it to note that I very rarely picked a song for its lyrics.  Some of them aren't even in English.  More, I picked it for the sound of it, the mood I felt it conveyed.  Also, don't bother looking at the videos themselves. They were chosen as the best example of the music I could find.



The name of the song & artist are available in the videos above, so down here, I'll just label them by number, and where I believe they fit in the book. I hope that I've left them suitably vague so as not to provide spoilers.  More one of those "when you've read the book, you'll understand" kind of things.  It's also worth noting that I've always believed this to be my "movie book", so it's only fitting that I have songs for the opening & closing credits.  Trust me, in my head, it's EPIC.

1 - Opening Credits
2 - Artemis' Theme
3 - Looking out on Elysia
4 - Heracles' Theme
5 - Taken
6 - Den of Iniquity
7- Hunt with the Black Hound
8 - Demeter's Theme
9 - Across the River
10 - Sanity Stretched Thin
11 - A History of Things Past
12 - Through the Dark
13 - The Airship
14 - Death in Olympus
15 - Closing Credits

More than all the music above, I'm hoping that if you find music that YOU like for this novel as you read, you can mention it in the comments below.  You'll notice that there are certain characters that I never found a theme for, so I'm always on the lookout to update my tunes.

Second Olympus

Yesterday, as I was working on my copy editing phase for Second Olympus, I Googled something involving the use of the possessive apostrophe on names ending in S. (I know, wild and crazy stuff, right?) The amusing thing was, the first hit that popped up was a thread on a writers’ forum from 2008. It was my thread, asking the same exact question for the same exact reason on the same exact book.

First off, let’s not talk about my powers of retention. Second, it made me realize that by the time Second Olympus actually releases, it will be 7 years old, and it will have a long road behind it already.

I started writing Second Olympus (then called Muse) back in 2008 after I’d finished the first JJD book (then called Third Strike, since we’re talking trivia). I was querying, trying to find an agent, and I knew I had to keep writing to get my mind off of it. A stray conversation late one night with a friend lead to the idea of Muse, and I got to work.

It was unlike anything I’d been writing, up to that point. I had a trunked epic fantasy under my belt, and JJD1 which was urban fantasy. Muse was…different, which was scary and exhilarating all at once. I stretched myself beyond my own literary box, and in the end, I was really proud of what I’d done. I think I finished it sometime in early 2009, about the same time we sold the JJD series.

Of course, from that point, I got busy with JJD stuff and new projects. Every so often, I’d go back to Muse and revise bits and pieces, send it to new readers, get their thoughts, add my own. My first agent wasn’t super gung-ho about it, I could tell, not because it was badly written, but because he just didn’t see a traditional market for it. And that’s their job, to know those things.

Time went on, years went by. I wound up with a new agent. When she asked about other projects I had, I of course sent her Muse, ‘cause I was still super proud of it. She had the same feelings about it, that traditional publishing probably wasn’t going to be interested. That was the point where I’d just had success getting JJD4 out on my own, and I knew that I could do this. So, with her permission, I moved forward with self-publishing Muse. That actual decision was made…probably July-ish, 2014? (Yes, looking at the date in the picture below, that was exactly when I made that decision)

I did another round of new beta readers, and their suggestions really made the book into what it is at this moment. I came up with a new title, and hopefully on March 24th, 2015, you will all get to read Second Olympus. (See what I did there? Slipped a release date right in like that. Ain’t I sneaky?)

I can’t even count how many rounds of revisions this thing went through. I probably have four different printed copies of this thing floating around my house, and at one point, I just quit printing it out and started making my editing notes on the same draft, just in different colors so I could tell the evolutions apart.

(This picture is the pile of previous drafts of everything. Muse, JJD1-JJD4, Peacemaker, MBG. I have no idea what to do with these. Do I throw them away?)

I should finish the copy edits this week on my lunch breaks, and then this weekend, I’ll get the print copy formatting done. Once I have a firm page count, I can commission the cover art and get this ball truly rolling.

My goal for release is March 24th, like I said above, contingent on cover art and zombie apocalypse, of course. I’ll try to get everything up for pre-order by March 1st if I can (the print copy won’t have a pre-order phase, but I’ll make it available a few days early, like I did with JJD4, so we can all read on the release date). I’ll also try to have limited print copies available for reviewers who want them, so folk definitely need to let me know. (kari.stewart21 (at) gmail.com)

I keep going through these deep highs and lows with this thing. The highs are where I’m SO FREAKIN’ EXCITED to have this book out and available. After all this time, it’s still one of my favorite stories. The lows are where I’m damn certain this is garbage, and that fans of my JJD books aren’t going to like something that’s so very different from what they’re used to from me.

I guess time will tell.