Christine Cody is the author of the new postapocalyptic supernatural Western Bloodlands series. The first book, Bloodlands, launched this week and will be followed by Blood Rules (August 30) and In Blood We Trust (September 27).
Here she shares some ideas for casting a big screen adaptation of the Bloodlands story:
In the near-distant future, there is a place called the New Badlands. It’s a desolate area in the West forged by the terrible events that altered the entire country. A place where a few frightened citizens retreated underground to shelter from the brutal weather … and from a society gone terribly dangerous.
This is the story of a drifter, Gabriel, who comes to the New Badlands and is taken in by reluctant settlers after he’s wounded. If this is reminiscent of a bare-bones plot from one of many classic Westerns, you’d be right—but with a paranormal twist on all those Western tropes. One such trope is the lead character, Gabriel. He’s just like the “drifter/gunslinger” who’s searching for redemption and what’s left of his humanity, but instead of being a cowboy, he’s a fangslinging vampire, and he’s literally lost his soul. I wish we still had Gary Cooper around for this role—or a thirty-ish Russell Crowe. Whoever plays Gabriel would need a sort of bruised beauty about him, an edgy good-guy quality with a hint of tragedy lurking in his steady gaze.
I always have an idea of how I want my books to “feel.” Tone isn’t something your English 101 prof scribbles on the chalk board; I really believe in it. In fact, I take tone so seriously I rewrite only to create a kind of menacing hum beneath the story. I want my books to be creepy, harrowing freakfests that set readers on the edge of their seats. 
Years ago I saw Robert Duvall in The Apostle and you could say that, if we were to freeze time, he would be the ideal lead for any movie based on any of my novels. For Lola, California, however, maybe Ed Harris would be a good latterday descendant of Duvall, capable of playing Vic Mahler as he awaits his end on Death Row. Could, however, Laura Linney be his daughter and play one of the Lolas? Ever since I saw her in You Can Count on Me, I’ve been smitten: her actor’s modus operandi is to strip herself of all ego and plunge into a role, a feat to which we could all aspire. Could Sofia Coppola be the right director? Who knows? What a wonderful indulgence, all this imagining. When I lived in Los Angeles, every Jack and Jane at the Rose Cafe spoke, between long sips of their health elixirs, about who could play whom in their unsold screenplays, and I cannot help but feel their spirit shimmying within this paragraph.
