StoryTellerMary is the winner of the DVD! Look for an email from Dana! I’m so happy that multi-talented author Dana Cameron could stop by to talk about visiting the set of third movie adapted from her books! She is giving away a DVD of the first “Emma Fielding Mysteries” installment, “Site Unseen.” (US only.)
Dana: Remember the scene in “Wayne’s World” when Wayne and Garth get all-access passes for the Alice Cooper concert? And they over-enthusiastically showed their badges to all and sundry? That’s how it kinda how it felt when I got to visit the set of “Emma Fielding Mysteries: More Bitter Than Death” last August. It’s the third movie in the series on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries is based on my fifth novel of the same name, starring Courtney Thorne-Smith as Emma Fielding, James Tupper as FBI Special Agent Connor, and Mark Valley as Duncan Thatcher. The premiere is scheduled for February 10, 2019 at 9pm Eastern—just a few days away!—and I’ll be live tweeting, so join me!
One of the neatest things I got to see was how the crew are constantly editing their work—and mine—to tell the story to their audience. It was a little strange at first, to see how the screenplay differed from my book. Then, it was really cool to watch and understand, because knowing who your audience is, and how to communicate with them, is an important part of being a professional artist.
I’m a fan of the current trend of retelling stories from different points of view or set in different historical periods. They show how a story that rings true in one time or place, still works when it’s set today (or even in the future). That it’s useful to look at another character’s take on a familiar story; take BBC’s “Sherlock” episode, “The Abominable Bride,” for example, where we see very different sides of Mary Watson and Emelia Ricoletti. Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver is a wonderful example of retelling “Rumplestiltskin” in a realistic historical context.
Probably what I like best about different versions of the same story is that it starts out with the ultimate writer’s question, “What if?” And there’s always room for creative speculation.
So what’s your favorite book-to-film adaptation, or favorite retelling of a familiar story?