So this morning I went to the book club discussion at my local library that I attend every month (http://www.crystallakelibrary.org/). Today we discussed the book from my last blog entry "The Kitchen Boy" by Robert Alexander (author pictured at the left). The extra special treat was he talked to us for about 30 minutes via Skype at the beginning of our meeting! He was really nice, personable, and intelligent! He answered a few things I was wondering about and cleared up a few issues I had with the book, like what I felt was the rushed ending in the epilogue. Apparently it was originally a bit longer (like 450 pp.) and the editor said it needed to be shorter. My guess is that is why the epilogue felt a little compact and too brief; they probably made him cut that portion of the novel down to size. He said the magic number for book clubs to use books is about three-hundred to three-hundred and fifty pages, so they tried to keep it around that length.
I also took a gander at the website for the book to prepare for the chat and see what I wanted to ask him (http://www.sitestories.com/robertalexander/). It is really good and includes some pictures related to the Romanovs and some of the events and places in his novel, like the infamous twenty-three steps mentioned throughout the book. He was very candid and interesting and revealed to us that it is going to be turned into a movie with filming beginning next summer and released sometime in 2013. He wouldn't tell us the name of the actress portraying Alexandra but, he did reveal she was very good and that people from The Pianist and award winning foreign films were involved (screenplay by Ronald Harwood [wrote the screenplays for The Pianist, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, etc.], producer Glenn Willaimson [Push, Sunshine Cleaning, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, etc.). The novel should make a great film and I just had to share what a treat it was to have a Q&A session with the author! Thanks Robert!
And so it goes...
