When you read a book, do you picture the characters in your head? Do you imagine your favorite actors playing the roles of the heroes and villains? I do.

Many are speculating these days about who will play the male lead in the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey movie. I confess (profess?) that I haven't read the Fifty Shades books, but People.com recently reported that E. L. James, author of the Fifty Shades series, was partying with Robert Pattinson, better known as the actor who portrayed Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies. And even more recently, I was pleased to read that Ben Affleck is in talks to play Nick Dunne in David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's bestselling thriller, Gone Girl. And Diana Gabaldon championed the selection of Scottish actor Sam Heughan to play Jamie Fraser in the Starz movie version of her Outlander series.

All of this talk of book couples becoming on-screen couples made me think of the last romance I "cast" in my head: Keowee Valley by Katherine Scott Crawford. I was in the throes of finals at school, but I couldn't stop reading Keowee Valley, mainly because I wanted to know what would happen next between the novel's main characters, Quinn and Jack. Unlike the couples in Fifty Shades and Gone Girl, Quinn and Jack have a very solid relationship and respect for each other. But Quinn and Jack do have an unlikely romance in this historical fiction set just before the American Revolutionary War. Quinn is a fair-haired maiden who grew up in colonial Charleston, South Carolina, and Jack is a half-breed tracker born to a Cherokee father and Irish mother in the untamed Blue Ridge Mountains.

Learn more in my Southern Spines podcast interview with the author of Keowee Valley, Katherine Scott Crawford. Listen to the podcast using the player below or download it from iTunes.

Who would Katherine Scott Crawford cast in the roles of Quinn and Jack in a film adaptation of Keowee Valley? When asked, Katie said she truly didn't have a good idea of who'd play Quinn and Jack in a movie version. "I could see maybe Rachel McAdams as Quinn. Jack is tougher--I can't think of anyone who looks quite like he does. The closest I could come is a young Paul Newman crossed with a young Viggo Mortensen. Newman's charm and humor with Mortensen's ruggedness."

To learn more about Katherine Scott Crawford, visit her website at katherinescottcrawford.com. Read her blog, The Writing Scott. Like her author page on Facebook here: facebook.com/KatherineScottCrawford. And follow @WritingScott on Twitter.