From Screenplays to Novels: A Creative Journey with Christina and Anthony Adams

Foreign.

Welcome to the Thriller Zone.

Guess who?

Dave Teppel, your host.

How you been?

It has been a long time since we've chatted.

Actually, it's only been a couple of weeks, but it feels that way.

I got an email the other day, Dave, where's the.

Where's the Thriller Zone been?

What happened?

Here's a straight up.

Tammy and I went away for a nice little vacation to Europe, and we got so wrapped up in it that when I got back, I was so addicted to having time off that I just kind of stuck with it.

So we do have a number of shows coming at you in the next couple of months that are going to be quite interesting.

Lots of goodness straight ahead.

And I've got a couple of personal projects that I'm working on that I'm going to be telling you about in the coming weeks.

Not today, but soon.

Hey, let me tell you something.

There's a book written by a husband, wife, team, Christina and Anthony Adams.

A.C. adams, Chasing Shadows, a delightful read that is based on real events.

You're going to enjoy the show, I guarantee it.

So without any further ado, let me shut my yammering self and introduce you to Christina and Anthony Adams right here on the Thriller Zone.

Let's start the show here.

And I'm kind of.

I'm a little bit embarrassed by this, but maybe not because.

Mm.

We're.

We're neighbors.

We're gonna get that.

Yeah, that in a minute.

So I'm down in La Jolla.

My wife and I were having dinner at Eddie V's.

Yeah.

One of our favorites.

Good restaurant.

Yeah.

Best food in the world.

Great view, too.

Great view.

Probably can see your home for there.

So I pick up, pick up a copy of La Jolla Light.

This was in april, folks, of seven.

April 17th of this year.

Look who had this great big old spread.

I'm like, yeah, that's when the book.

Right before it came out.

Right before it came out.

So I looked at this and I put it aside and I said, note to self, David, sit down with these folks.

That was in April.

Few things happened between April and now, so we won't go into that.

But so I just want you to know I've had this sitting on my desk since April.

So then your people reached.

Your people, reached out to my people and said, hey, would you.

Would you love to chat with them?

I'm like, yes.

And I had a little technical, a little scheduling thing, and we finally got it together.

All that said, here it is, October.

I know, it's just Been like flying off the shelves.

Right?

It's been doing good.

Yeah.

Good, good.

We're lucky.

That's what I like to hear.

And we've had some very good reviews too.

Now here's a qu.

By the way, folks, of listening and watching at home.

AC Adams is Anthony and Christina Adams.

They're Nom de Bloom and the Chasing Shadows, of course, is the book.

Lovely book.

It feels very much.

I felt like.

It's funny when I was reading it.

I felt like I was reading a travelogue meets a mystery meets a little dash of memoir.

A dash.

I mean, it is a fiction based on true events, but it's the true events that.

Yeah.

Yes.

I'm like, wow.

Because as I was going back through this and I kept seeing this everywhere based on, you know, real life events.

And you don't get to see that happen very often in, in the thriller world.

Right, right, quick shout out to Warwicks there in lovely LA Hoya, because if I had had the presence of mind to come down there and see you guys, sue, my friend sue down at Warwicks, we would have.

We would have done it up.

Right, anyway, so let's do this.

I've got so many things I want to talk to you about, but I want to make sure that we cover this book because a lot of folks, folks will write in and go, david, why do you mention this, the book near the end of the show?

Because I gotta wait that long.

Then you have other people going, why, why, why do you play it at the beginning?

I want to get to know them.

So I'm always vacillating between which works best.

And I kind of tend to roll with whatever just feels right to me.

But let's go ahead and talk about the book a little bit because I got several juicy things.

Here's where I'm going to get my audience.

I've got several juicy things that you're going to want to stick around for because these folks are mega talented.

Let's talk about the book.

So we decided to write this book as a mystery thriller based on my father's secret life.

And because his life was like a Gordian knot that could not be unraveled, we ultimately made it a fiction, couldn't be a memoir, because there were things about his life we could never discover.

Try as we might, they were hidden.

And so, as you said, it is a combination of kind of inspired by true events.

We've been working in the television industry for decades and this felt like it should be a novel.

So this is Our debut novel, Chasing Shadows, it's the first time we've done a novel together.

When you find out everything that they've done up to this point, the fact that they are saying to you right now, and bear with me when I say this, because I'm older than you are, when you get to debut at our age, it's a really, I think, A, it's a cool thing.

B, it's a great message to the world that you don't have to be young, fresh face to debut at something.

You do it.

You start where you stand, as my sister will always say.

Right.

I agree.

I agree.

Yes.

It was incredibly rewarding.

We were thinking, why didn't we start with novelness?

Because after all the mediums we've worked in, it is so satisfying to have a big enough canvas.

For instance, this story, after we'd done all of our research, it covered 70 years from three points of view in multiple countries.

And in a screenplay, you'd only catch a piece of that, unless it was a series.

And we wanted to get deeply into the psyches of all of these characters, which we had the latitude to do with the novel form.

So we ended up really falling in.

Love with writing so much fun novels.

I mean, after years of writing for television, which is pretty generally thin, I mean, screenplays tend to be more thin.

This was really rich and fun to do.

We had a great time doing it.

And for my listeners, who.

And I have a wide variety of listeners, they're writers, they're screenplay writers.

They're just big fans.

So when you say thin, I think Christina, if I'm correct, thin, meaning a screenplay is generally on a film.

Like one.

10, 120, 130 pages.

Right.

So.

And a book.

It's your.

I don't have it off the top of my head, but I'm going to peek real quick.

So 314.

Yeah, yeah, 14.

Okay.

Enough to tell you your business, Darren.

We cut those last few pages, but.

The point being, as you can imagine, you have to consolidate a lot of the story in order to get it into screenplay form.

So I'm going to insert this story here.

So Christina's worked with the Amazing Race, one of the greatest television shows, maybe of the last.

Yeah.

I don't know, 20, 30 years.

And then, of course, Anthony is a musician now.

Secret little inside scoop.

They met at a beach club where he was strumming his guitar, and she was probably just swooning in the audience.

Would that be safe to say?

That would be safe to say, yes.

Sparks flew and we ended up getting married very quickly after that.

And you're celebrating how many we've been.

Together for 40 years.

That is an accomplishment, especially in this world.

People always ask us, how in the world can a married couple co write?

Because we've written songs together, we've written screenplays together, and we've written for the theater together.

And so now we've written.

And how can you possibly collaborate without killing each other?

Yeah.

And what is that answer, Anthony?

And her elbow is right near your ribs, so be careful.

Right.

Well, we started from day one.

We've developed a kind of collaborative style that is really seamless to start with.

We really welcome collaboration and it's all about the content of the story and the characters, not about who comes up with which part.

And what we do is if we ever come to a disagreement about a story point or a character, one of us loves something, the other one can't stand it, we throw it away and we come up with something new that we both like.

I mean, we'll defend our positions.

It's like I'll say I really like this because.

But if I can't convince him and he'll say he really likes that because we can't convince each other, we go, okay, let's find there's some things that gelling here.

And we always find a third solution that seems to work better than either solution separately, because we write separately, we come up with an outline, basically story structure, and then we split the work in half and he'll write one half, I'll write one half, and then we trade halves and we rewrite each other.

And so our guiding principle is check your ego at the door.

Because it's all about the work.

It's not about who came up with it or who thinks of this or who thinks of that.

And we try our best to always make the work first and not us.

In this case, we wanted to have the pacing of a thriller.

And many of the things in the story have.

Are automatically fit the thriller genre and mystery genre.

So we started out, we wrote a 62 page outline with short taught chapters, each one of which leaves you with a question that you want to learn the answer to.

And what happens is, so we get this outline together, like Christina said, we each write a separate half, but along the way we don't adhere slavishly to the outline.

One of us will come up with a new character, we'll come up with a new scene, we'll come up with a new story direction, and then when the other Person reads it.

That gets worked into notes, which then take a new outline, we keep flopping halves, and then we start reading everything out loud together, which is very useful for dialogue.

And ultimately those last few drafts, when we're really happy with the structure of the whole story, then that's all done with reading out loud and making tweaks.

And as we're tweaking, we're, you know, we're commenting and editing and just.

It kind of works really well for us.

Now you just mentioned that you did a 62 beat outline, and I see that it's actually 62 chapters.

So that structure didn't actually go away.

No, no, just the content.

Some of the content changed.

Like there were characters that needed to be discovered, that needed to be there that we didn't know when we were getting the outline.

Because it's a beat outline.

It's kind of an outline that's just rough.

Okay, this kind of shape of this chapter, shape of that chapter.

So they're very like few sentences.

But then as you're writing it, you go, okay, this character needs to exist and this character needs to go away.

And people change.

Your characters start dictating to you as you're working.

And that's a really fun thing.

Um, so we had, we had fun.

There's so much to unpack there.

First of all, I have never co written with anyone.

I've had a lot of co writers on this show and I've never really, and I'm going to admit this straight up to my listeners, I have never really fully understood it.

I mean, I understand it intellectually, but I've never understood the ability to.

So Anthony's writing his world.

He's going along, chugga, chugga, chugga.

Christina has her ideas, so Anthony hands it to her.

She may to you, Christina, you may or may not like it.

Or, you know, and then you, you pass it back off.

That to me is kind of wacky.

And maybe that's only because I've only written in solitude.

However, on the other side of the coin, as I was listening to you, I'm like, boy, think of the.

And correct me if I'm wrong.

Think about the amount of pressure that it takes off of you from the standpoint of if you go up.

Well, it's called going up on a line when you're on camera.

But if you, you know, you lose your train of conscious, you know, stream of consciousness, or you get caught up in something that doesn't really work, then your partner can go, you know, does that really Work for you, because let me show you what I think could help you work.

I mean, does this.

This is making sense.

That's exactly how we work.

Exactly.

And we also have a very wide frame of reference.

I have different life experiences.

He has different life experiences.

I'm a female, he's a male.

So it gives us a broader perspective, I think.

And because we respect each other, I think it works really well, because I respect what he thinks and he respects what I think.

And if something is just not working, he respects the fact that it's not working.

And surely there's another.

There's a solution that will work.

And as we discussed, the outline is literally a roadmap.

So we kind of know where we're going, but we don't know, you know, the branches and the twists and the turns along the way.

We just.

That happens spontaneously as we.

It's probably because we had the end completely formulated, that even if a chapter would go, it would get replaced by another chapter.

So the overall arc of the story, beginning, middle, and end, stayed the same, although there were many changes within it.

But the other thing, the wonderful thing about collaboration, and that's the same thing with songwriting as well, and is that each of our consciousnesses, if you see them a shape, they each have overlap things that we both know.

But then there's all of these things that Christina knows and experiences she's had that I don't, and I have some experiences and knowledge that she doesn't.

So we actually have a more bandwidth, more lived experience, and additional points of view to draw from.

So it's actually really fun to collaborate.

As I am listening to you both, and as I'm getting to know you, you remind me so much of my wife and I.

Now we have not your clock in 40 years.

We're coming up on 10.

But I was a confirmed bachelor for almost my entire life until I found Little Miss Princess, which is right behind door number one.

And I think the magic, you know, we.

We came.

You said something, Anthony, that triggered my mind.

We came to the world, to our worlds, cohesive worlds with a lot of life experiences and not having to prove a lot of stuff and its own set of maturity, so our rough edges can kind of smooth each other's out.

She has a.

She is.

Which one's Right Brain and left.

Right Brain is super creative.

Right, Anthony?

Is that right?

Yeah.

Okay, so I'm super creative.

She's not creative at all.

I couldn't balance a checkbook with a gun to my head.

She loves spreadsheets.

So we knew when we got together.

I'm like, well, this is kind of crazy, but I think this is gonna work.

And it's worked so well.

Kind of like you're talking about.

Exactly.

So when you can feed off of each other's strength.

And I noticed something, folks.

You're going to appreciate this.

Before we came on, there was a technical issue, which I probably secretly wanted to point a finger at my new two.

Two new friends.

However, it was my.

My fault.

And I love it when I can just say that, because I was an idiot in that particular moment.

But we're talking along and.

And Anthony was reacting like me.

Well, let's try this, like.

And Christine is like, hang on just a minute.

When I heard her say that, I heard my wife go.

Because I'll get like, Anthony, like, come on, come on.

And she'll like, hang on just a minute.

And it's that timber that says, I want to slap you right now and pull your hair out, but if you could just kindly move aside, I think I've got it.

Anyways, so close am I.

How close am I?

Very close.

Very close.

All right, let me go back to the book a second.

One of the things I loved about this book and is the massive dialogue.

Now, a lot of people go, well, Dave, I don't know if I like that too much.

It reads like a screenplay.

I'm like, well, maybe that's because I read, like, screenplays and I write, like, screenplays, and I like tons of dialogue.

Because guess what?

What do you go to a book for?

Characters.

And what do characters do?

They talk.

They talk, right?

Bravo, too.

We automatically.

We do love to include dialogue in all of our writing, and maybe it is all the years of screenwriting, but it felt.

It came across when we needed it.

We felt like the characters needed to talk to each other and they needed to express themselves.

And so we kept a lot of dialogue intentionally.

Um.

It's more like real life.

As you said, people do talk.

Well, look, you can.

You can paint the picture of the room that the characters are going to walk into.

You can paint the picture of the weather outside that window.

And you can tell me what they're wearing and what they're eating and drinking.

And that's all well and good.

It's funny.

The older I've gotten, which is coming on pretty fast.

And the more I read, which includes about two books a week, I realize that so much of that is really unnecessary.

And I go and I have this conversation with myself.

David, is that because your attention span is decreasing with every day with social media and you're just kind of brain dead.

Or is it because I just like the art of conversation?

Right.

Well, yeah, you're.

You're a talker.

Look at you, you're hosting a podcast.

As evidence, by the way, you're stepping all over me, David.

No, it's fantastic.

We love it.

Well, I, I have to split off to this because when I found this out, I nearly danced a jig.

Well, there's an old phrase.

There is a movie that I saw a couple years ago and when I saw it, I was mesmerized.

This is my tee up and I'm watching it on this and I'm like, oh my God, this is one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

And it's a simple little movie and I'm watching it and this is when I was really starting to get to know Paul Giamatti.

And of course, it's a story about wine country.

Who doesn't like wine?

And this, these two guys, these two pals are going to get in the car and they're going to go to wine country and have some wine.

And the movie, the book is called.

Oh, the movie is called Sideways.

And I, I've watched it maybe probably seven or eight times.

So I've got a really good idea.

And then I'm doing a little homework on my two new friends here.

Guess what they've done?

They've taken Sideways and turned it into a musical.

Tell me about that.

Well, this has been such a wonderful journey.

And this has been a collaboration between me and my old friend Rex Pickett, who wrote the novel that the movie was based on.

And Rex and I have known each other forever.

And of course, it's a great novel and he's a great writer.

And Rex called, this is in LA when we were up there, he said, look, I've got a play version of Sideways now.

Would you like to come see it?

Invited me and Christina to a little theater in Santa Monica.

It was absolutely hilarious and wonderful, but it expanded upon the book with some new scenes, so some, some new characters and was really fun.

And I said to Rex, hey, you know, this would make a great musical.

He said, really?

And I said, really?

Absolutely.

Because I was hearing songs and thinking of song placement while we were listening to the play because it just, there are moments that should just break into song, you know, like it has the, the basis for that.

So he said, great, let's collaborate.

So we worked on the book, we co wrote the lyrics, we turned a Little guest house we had into a recording studio, recorded all the songs there.

And then, to our wonderful surprise, Broadway Records, one of the top labels for musicals, wanted to release it.

And very unusual for an unstaged musical to get released by a major record label.

But they thought that the songs were incredibly catchy and that the piece had the chance to eventually, perhaps be fortunate enough to go to Broadway in the West End.

And they wanted to be in business with us and work together down the line.

Anthony wrote some amazing songs, really funny ones.

And one of them's called no Fucking Merlot, because of Paul Giamatti's line in the movie.

I remember exactly where that line inspired by that.

Yeah, it's very funny.

But there's all kinds of fun things.

And his record is available, by the way, on all the streaming platforms, Apple Music, Spotify, et cetera.

His little things that Rex had put in the book and put in the play that most people never notice.

For instance, there's a line from when Miles is meeting with his mother and he's gonna steal money for the road trip.

And she talks to him that you don't believe in God.

And he says, I believe in Dionysus.

That's my go God, the ancient Greek God of the grape and hedonism and ecstasy.

And so I thought, right.

So we talked about how about when Miles is really drunk or dreaming instead of a guy, the way the book opens, the movie opens, who's down on his luck.

His writing career is going nowhere.

He can't afford the rent.

He's recently been divorced, but in his dreams, he is Dionysus, God of the grape, with his harem of nymphs and satyrs.

He's an actual God.

Then he wakes up and he's in these horrendous circumstances.

So, like scene one of the movie God of the Grape, you know, the.

Musical opens with a really amazing number called God of the Grape.

You know, he's sleeping in bed in his apartment, but in his mind, he's this God.

And he wakes up to a phone call from the agent saying, hey, a small independent publisher is interested in your novel.

And he's buoyed with enthusiasm.

He has a noose there.

He was, you know, on the edge of suicide.

And that's when Jack shows up for the road trip.

And then he dips back into his inner life in other places.

So there were ways to enrich and come up with new things that work really well for scenes and musicals.

He also.

They also expanded the role of the two women in There, which I thought was really nice.

They have a really strong part now in the musical.

I don't want to geek out too much, but I'm going to because it's my show, first of all.

Now, I could have sworn I think I have seen the marquee of the musical.

So it tells me it's in the past.

So I can't currently see it.

Correct.

The musical has not been done yet.

It's in development now.

And we're in talks to premiere Sideways the Musical in concert next summer at a regional theater not far from Washington D.C. and hopefully I'll be able to announce those dates soon.

What we're doing, we're doing a two phase trip.

One is we have Sideways the musical in concert, which is all 19 songs with a smaller cast, three men, three women, a projection, rear screen projection behind the screen to set the scene, and some really fun and hilarious short narration that connects the song so you get the story context.

And so that's how it will work as a concert.

It will pair really well with food and wine.

Yeah.

Of course, we have a test version of this in Sonoma Buena Vista Winery, where we did 10 songs and it was so well received, we decided to develop the whole show that way.

And of course we have the full version of the musical.

And that's a nice stepping stone of to the full music with all the sets and costumes and the larger cast.

Okay, well, first of all, if you ever need any help researching whether it's words or wine or food or wine, please feel free to lean on your new buddy Dave.

I'd be happy.

And I cannot wait to see.

I have to have front row seats or close to.

I gotta get some good seats to the music.

You will have those.

Thank you.

Because I'm telling you, one of my all time favorite movies.

And if you've never seen this, folks, you gotta see the movie.

It's just, it's, it's poignant, it's powerful.

The little.

Oh, I could go on for hours.

I don't know why it affected me so well.

It's just great, great storytelling.

But I cannot wait to hear the musical.

And I.

And I. I must have just seen the sign in my head and thought it was already on Broadway.

But either way, uh, I cannot wait.

And that's next year, you're saying?

That's next year.

And once I have the details, we'll be announcing that on our website.

Cool.

Well, I'm telling you, there is so much talent sitting in front of me, it's crazy to Think we've got TV shows, Oprah, Amazing Race, musicals, now your debut novel.

I mean, there.

So it makes me wonder, it makes me ask.

And, and, and I love this idea, the fact that it's never too late to start.

It's never too late to have that dream.

I'm, I'm always saying this to my friends, like, oh, but I'm, I'm retired.

I'm getting close to retirement.

I'm like, so what?

You're, you still got years ahead.

Who cares?

Yeah, why not do the things that really matter to you while you're still.

And while you're still alive.

I mean, you're not dead yet, so do what you want to do.

I mean, the beauty of being at this age for some of us, thank God we're in that position, is we do what we want to do now because we're making money elsewhere.

So we decided to make, I mean, we hope this novel is a wild success and we anticipate turning it into a limited series.

But, you know, if it doesn't happen, that's okay because we're, it's, it was, it was a passion project, you know.

With you too, with your writing and all your work and podcasting.

I think that creativity is the only addiction that no 12 step program can cure.

And you do these things because you're compelled to do them.

No one could stop you.

Oh my God, my wife, when she hears this later, she's going to go, well, that's you.

Because, man, I'll tell you, I can sit down at this desk and I, I lie not to you.

We're up at 5, we go to the gym at 6.

I'm, I can come home, sit down at this desk at 7:30 and just create until it's 7:30 at night and even barely look up.

And it doesn't.

And it's, it's heaven to me.

It's like breathing and eating chocolate and drinking wine.

It's the most amazing thing in the world.

So I applaud you for your embracing the creativity.

And, you know, it's never too late.

And you know, it's, it's funny, we were just talking about this.

I mean, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, inside the last 30 days, two weeks, maybe even two of the greatest actors of all time who were at the top of their game right there at the end, doing exactly what they love.

And I, I think that's maybe what I'm trying to walk away this podcast with.

Besides, of course, shouting the praise for Chasing Shadows.

I just want to get this out to, like, chase your dreams and don't let a clock or wrinkles on your face or color of your hair stop you.

Yeah, well, it's.

The idea of retirement is a very perverse concept.

It is.

What are you going to do?

Be some just useless person on the couch?

And that's what you do.

You know, it's like, why don't you take it as an opportunity to be wild and crazy?

You're so old, you don't have to take any shit from anybody.

And you're saying that to me.

I get that.

Not you.

You're a spring chicken.

Oh, spring chicken.

Knocking on six, seven in a couple of weeks.

Well, there's.

So first of all, congratulations on this book.

Congratulations on the upcoming musical.

Christina.

Congratulations on your prolific career.

Writer, producer, on television.

I mean, talking about a tough gig.

I mean, how.

How long have you been doing that?

I.

And.

And how long you been doing it?

And.

And what's which.

Probably one of the pinnacle moments of your television creative world.

Well, I mean, we've been doing it since like, 1985.

Ish.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah, 85.

So a long time.

And we did.

I mean, we did a lot of different things.

We wrote for Disney.

Hanna Barbera wrote children's animation.

We then started doing TV movies.

And then I started.

That was just as writers.

And then we became producers and we did a lot of different shows.

One of my favorite series that I worked on was.

Is called Oprah's Masterclass.

And have you seen it?

It's really good.

Yes, yes, yes.

And I'm very proud of that because we interviewed the most interesting variety of people.

One of the most interesting ones was Barbara Walters.

And I'll just tell you that one, because she inspired me in several ways, she said, which most people won't admit.

She said, you know, I was very lucky and I was very hardworking.

And she said, but you have to have both.

You have to have luck and you have to work hard.

Most people think it's just the brilliance of their talent.

That happens.

She was the first to admit that it was actually she was fortunate.

And, you know, you have to count your blessings.

I was very fortunate.

I met people who then introduced me to other people who then introduced me to other people.

And I've been working for Oprah Winfrey now since 2011, still working.

I'm a producer on her newest show, which is the Oprah Podcast and Oprah's Book Club.

And so that's really fun.

I mean, we did interviews with Barack Obama, Michelle Obama.

We've done amazing.

She's done amazing work.

We did the special with Megan and Harry.

We did the special with Adele on cbs, which was great.

She's another inspiration, Oprah, because she took at what would be considered probably a most horrific childhood.

I mean, she had a very, very difficult childhood.

I mean, she's admitted to this publicly, so I'm not sharing something out of school here, but.

And turned her entire life into what is truly a magnificent body of work.

And so she was an inspiration, too, you know, and, of course, the Amazing Race is just a blast and a lot of fun.

I've been doing that since 2010.

I've been a producer on that show.

So that's just a fun show.

I just love doing it.

And I've done hundreds of different television series.

So, yeah, two things have popped in my head.

One.

One is I. I auditioned for the Amazing Race, and I. I got bumped on it, but I. I always thought it was such a great, fun show because it allowed the average bear to go compete on a huge level.

And about 15 minutes ago, I almost used the word when I was talking about.

When I was geeking out on how excited I was about all your work, I almost came out with the word manifestation because I'm a big fan of manifestation and how you can manifest what you want if you get clarity and focus and believe in it, of course.

And when you said Oprah, I was like, I remember one of the greatest episodes, one of my favorites, because I'm a big Wayne Dyer fan.

And when he was on talking to her, and I'm gonna hope I don't massacre this.

When you change the way you look at things.

The way you look at things change.

I think that's true.

One of the greatest quotes of all time.

It's in a book that I'm getting ready to release soon.

And it has to do with that.

And I wanted to get this point across that, you know, we look at life.

Oh, I sure would like to do that, but, you know, I can't do that because Hollywood's a tough place or they're not doing that anymore.

And I. I've never been that person.

And my wife will often say to me, you know, how do you.

How do you get the.

How do you get to where you've gotten?

I'm like, I never stopped to think about the how.

I just really focused on the what.

I just, like, I know what I wanted, and that's just what I aimed for.

And I figured the.

The world, the universe, whatever you want to call it.

I don't want to be too woo woo.

But it'll worry about the how you're.

Talking about woo woo to woo woo people.

So it's okay.

Okay, good.

It's woo then.

All right.

I agree.

You do have.

But.

But that's what I was saying, that Barbara Walters interview that inspired me.

You do have to have that determination and fearlessness and just go for it if that's what you want to do.

And it is a tough place.

It's a very tough business.

But if you believe in yourself, you believe what you can do, it's totally achievable.

But you also have to have luck.

You have to have doors open and you have to have a lot of kind people ushering in, you know, to get your foot in the door.

You have to have luck.

It's just.

It's a fact.

There's a lot of kindred spirits in the world.

So you have to be on the lookout for your tribe.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when you find your tribe, you.

They will help you succeed.

Yeah.

I think it's just.

It's a fact.

Well, yeah.

Find your tribe.

That's good.

Tammy and I have a.

A friend who lives in Canada, and he said something one day, Don Campbell, he said, you'll come to a point in your life when you realize that the people you surround yourself with will probably reflect.

And I'm massacring this, but this is the gist of it will probably reflect the level of success that you will find.

Gist of it being don't surround yourself with people who are naysayers or negative or, you know, choose to wallow in the unsuccess, but focus on the success or what you want in the dream.

And you made this comment, Christina, about being lucky.

I also think you have to create some of that luck.

And you use the word kind.

Finding kind people, and I would say be kind in the process because people are attracted to kindness.

That's all true.

I agree 100%.

Let us all take a moment and just namaste.

Yes.

And also, I'm sure you do this.

We're huge fans of movies, theater, concerts.

Always be going and seeing all the wonderful work that's around you and you stay perpetually inspired.

Yes.

When we're not at the Rady Shell or the San Diego Symphony, we're at the Old Globe or the La Jolla Playhouse or the Con and drinking in all this incredible creativity that's happening all around us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You all.

I was noticing.

Where did I see this?

Did I I either saw.

No, it had to be on your website where there's a picture of you guys sitting on a balcony and it said something about you're overlooking what you get to look at every day.

So I'm guessing that's La Hoya.

Actually, that picture is from Italy, from, from the island.

An island off of Tuscany.

Yeah, Elba.

We were on vacation on that one.

But it does look, it does remind me of La Jolla when you think.

Yeah, it is nice.

I mean, we, we moved here four years ago during the pandemic because we lived in la for over 30 years and every bit of my work, I would have to go in if, if the show was being shot on one of the sound stages at Warner Brothers or, you know, whatever, whatever studio, Sony, Paramount.

So I'd have to drive in every day.

And then the pandemic hit and every single show that I worked on became remote.

And so for almost two years, our cars sat and never moved.

And I worked and I said to Anthony, I don't have to go in anymore.

You know, let's.

We can move.

And I was born in San Diego, so I'm a native here.

My family's here and I thought, we can move back.

It's much prettier down there.

And LA is only two hours away.

So.

Yeah, we still go.

We were up there two weeks ago at the last bookstore doing an event.

We did one at the LA Times Festival of Books.

So every time we can.

We'd love to go out, hang out with our wonderful LA friends.

Sure.

And.

But they're so close.

That's another thing about San Diego.

You can have the strengths of both towns.

Yeah, yeah, I, it is nice.

We're going to go up in a couple of weekends to see a Smart List podcast.

Those three clowns on that podcast, we're going to see about the Hollywood Bowl.

So, you know, we, we grab any chance we can.

And you said something about music, absorbing music.

We were just in London a few weeks ago, which is part of the reason I wanted to say this, part of the reason that we couldn't sit down face to face.

I know somebody somewhere is going, Dave, you, you're always talking about how you love face to face and yet you're right down the street from them and you sitting there with them.

And I'm like, well, I just came off a three week vacation.

I'm getting ready to take off for a 10 day writing retreat, so I'm really scurrying.

So we're going to do it again in Person.

Okay, great.

Sounds good.

Yes.

But we got to see Cole play at Wembley Stadium.

Oh, my goodness, that sounds amazing.

Let me just say, if you ever get a chance to see them, you have to.

It is a love fest like nothing I've ever seen.

Of course, Wembley Stadium is nothing to.

It's pretty remarkable.

But my point is, and you made this so beautifully, you have to absorb your.

Absorb art and creativity and just feed the machine.

Because it really is, you know, creativity as a machine.

It's like working a muscle.

You gotta feed it.

Right.

Yes.

It's one of your important food groups.

Yes.

We'll come up with a new triangle.

Right, right, right.

Well, now, I always close the show because I gotta wrap.

I always close the show with asking for the best writing advice.

And I know that you're debut authors, so you wouldn't perhaps say, well, Dave, we haven't been writing long enough to come up with writing advice, except for the fact that you've been writing your whole life and a number of different mediums.

So if you were to bestow upon us common people the writing advice, be it, you know, screenplay, musical, books, now what would it be?

The best writing advice is write what you're passionate about, what you care about.

Write in a genre that you love to read yourself or that you love to, you know, watch a movie about, you know, we like mystery thrillers.

We love mystery thrillers.

So we decided to write in that.

And so I think write what you.

Love, you know, I agree.

And also use the repository of experiences of your decades on earth, your dreams, the horrible disappointments, all the pain, the pleasures.

And you've.

You've known thousands of people in your lives.

You've seen people come to horrible ends.

You've seen people have great endings.

Look at the human condition.

It's very fascinating.

And dig deep within yourself and all you've observed in your life and use that as material.

I think everything you experience in life is material if you're a writer.

I mean, you just.

All of our travels.

The reason there's so much richness in the book about the locations is all of those locations we've been to.

And that's one thing we didn't mention is in the true story of writing this.

It took a worldwide search by us to glean everything we could about Christino's father and why he left the family.

Being a super dad, left them, said he could never see them again.

And tracking down what we could, we had to go to Canada, England, Ireland.

We went to France, we met people, Italy Italy.

And so a lot in the book, you'll read about these scenes, and we were at all of these places, so, you know, you're.

That was an example of real life being melded into actual fiction.

So use your life with your art.

And that's the beauty of fiction.

You can make sense of things in life that sometimes don't make any sense.

You can create art and poetry out of the pain that you've gone through or the joys you've gone through, but you can always.

You can use this as material that I think feeds your soul.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, folks, it is a poignant, powerful story.

It's a debut of these two children, Chasing Shadows.

And it is.

It's rich and it's textured, and there are lots of sad moments, but at the end, you're hopeful, so it's.

It's something you gotta check out.

If you'd like to learn more, go to adams-entertainment.com.

correct.

Yes.

That would lead you to all of the booksellers.

And also, oh, one thing we did, we created a book trailer.

Because we're filmmakers, we had to just do that.

And it's had almost 300,000 views on YouTube.

So if you get a chance, go to Adam's Entertainment YouTube channel and check out the Chasing Shadows book trailer.

Whoa.

I did not even see.

See that.

Let me see.

Hang on one second, because I'm on which.

Which tab is it under?

I'm at about right on the.

Right on the main page.

There's something that says book trailer right.

There in front of me.

Yeah, it'll take you there.

When my father vanished, he left me a message that he had a new life and must never see me again.

I was devastated.

He was a wonderful dad.

I idolized him.

Why would he do such a cruel thing?

I had to find out.

Sophia embarks on a global search to learn the truth about her family and discovers a hidden world more shocking than she could have imagined.

A web of family secrets and lies that challenge everything she thought she knew.

After clues sent her to Italy, Sophia reconnects with her estranged mother, Ella.

Together, they uncover Aiden's ties to an elusive, powerful society operating in the shadows of world affairs.

The Brotherhood.

Sophia and Ella are trapped in ancient catacombs and must fight for their lives.

But one question remains.

Will Aiden choose his family or.

The Brotherhood.

Couldn'T resist trying to give a sense of the cinematic quality it would have.

Yeah.

And it's.

If you have a minute and a half, it'll tell you the story in a minute.

And a half.

This has been delightful.

Thank you for putting up with all the crazy tech issues with Idiot Box here at the beginning of the show.

That was all part of the fun.

It's been great.

It's been really great.

So great to meet you.

Yeah.

And thanks for inviting us.

It's been fun.

Absolutely.

And.

And I promise you, I promise you, I mean, literally, I bet you we are less than 15 minutes away from each other, probably.

So.

Yeah.

So we'll have to meet for lunch at Eddie V's and have some wine.

Are they open for lunch?

I forget.

Or dinner?

Early dinner?

Well, whatever.

We'll go somewhere and have wine.

Whatever it takes.

Yeah.

I love me some wine.

So who cares where or when?

Well, folks, once Again, it is adams-entertainment.com A.C. adams, Chasing Shadows.

And folks, just so delightful.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Your number one podcast for stories that.

Thrill the Thriller Zone.