So you may have noticed that Shifter Woods: Snarl isn’t out yet. There’s a good reason for that–I’ve been having the very devil of a time finishing it. For some reason (which we will get to in a moment) I haven’t been able to get the characters to talk to me and tell me why they’re doing what they’re doing. This means that I can’t write about them because I don’t know them; I’ve already trashed three chapters because they were going nowhere and doing nothing for the story.

And then it hit me last night–I didn’t cast Jack and Kate in my head. Because I think very cinematically (frustrated screenwriter here), I always mentally cast my characters because then I can set them loose the in the story, “watch” what they’re doing, and write it down. I thought that coming up with a cover for SW:S meant that I could just use the models for my mental casting, but since I’ve never seen them move, talk, or emote it simply was not working for me.

So, last night, I cast Jack and Kate (oddly enough I’d already cast Kate’s father and a lot of the supporting characters–I was being ridiculously stubborn about my leads, though). Et voila, I woke up this morning with a VERY important scene that broke my block and will lead to the rest of the storyline. Which is a freaking relief, let me tell you.

Oh, my casting? Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure Richard Armitage is either a wolf shifter or part elf in real life, judging from those points on his years, and he’s very good at playing conflicted yet dead sexy characters so he’s a great choice for my Alpha wolf without a pack. And while I know there’s been a lot of controversy around her for some of her tone-deaf role choices, Scarlett Johansson is really the best person to play Kate–she’s good at being snarky, she can handle action roles (there’s going to be a chapter where Jack and Kate team up to find a little girl lost in the mountains), and she looks enough like the cover model that I won’t have to change anything to make Kate and the cover coincide.

The new goal is to bring this out on 7/31. Let’s get ‘er done.