Alina Adams
Alina Adams is the NYT best-selling author of soap-opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. She was born in Odessa, USSR and immigrated to the US with her family in 1977. Her historical fiction, "The Nesting Dolls" is set in Odessa and in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, while "My Mother's Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region" shines a light on a little known aspect of Jewish history. Her Regency romance, "The Fictitious Marquis" was named the first #OwnVoices Jewish Historical by The Romance Writers of America. Alina and her daughter review post-Soviet literature on their YouTube channel, "Explaining the USSR To My Kid - Through Books." Visit her at alinaadams.com.
Marina Raydun: Your love of soap operas runs deep. And, what’s more amazing is that you turned a childhood love into a career. What is it about soap operas that brings about such inspiration?
Alina Adams: You're in luck! To answer that question, I am giving you an exclusive sneak peek at my next historical fiction novel, currently entitled "Go On Pretending" and tentatively set for a May 1, 2025 release from History Through Fiction. In this excerpt, Rose is interviewing for a job with Irna Phillips, the woman who nearly singlehandedly invented the soap-opera genre:
“Why serials?” Irna asked her questions the same way she wrote her scripts, a stream of consciousness that she expected the listener to make sense of on their own time. “Why not Baby Snooks or Ozzie and Harriet or Life Of Riley? Why not films?” The obvious answer was that they weren’t hiring. Irna was. But Rose suspected she knew what answer the doyenne of daytime was looking for. Luckily, it was even true. “Films end. Situation comedies are once a week. If you make a bad decision in a film and don’t rectify it by the conclusion, that’s how it stays forever. If you make a mistake in a primetime comedy, you have to wait seven days to fix it. Serials offer chance after chance to get life right daily. You can keep trying, over and over.”
MR: You came to America as a seven-year-old. Do you remember when English became comfortable for you?
AA: I don't remember the exact moment when everything clicked into place, but I do know that we arrived in January of 1977, and I spoke no English at all, sitting in class - this was pre-ESL, it was learn English or else - and writing stories in Russian on the paper I'd been given, but, by the time my brother was born in June of 1977, I was standing in front of the class, announcing that he was so pink that he looked like a little pig. So I assume English kicked in at some point between those two dates. See, total immersion works!
MR: How do you find bilingualism affects your creativity?
AA: I always said that if I were to study linguistics, my interests lie not in what words a language has, but in what words a language doesn't have. What is left out is more interesting for me than what is left in. There are some words that exist in Russian that just don't exist in English. But, because I have them, I am able to know that there can be such a feeling and look for appropriate English words to describe them.
MR: Was learning how to figure skate a prerequisite for all the work you’ve done in that world?
AA: Absolutely not! I do not enjoy being cold or falling down. My brother - the one who looked like a little pig at birth - was the competitive ice dancer, a national and collegiate champion. In the tradition of all good, immigrant children, I was in charge of him, which meant driving him to the rink, sitting through his practices, taking him to competitions, etc... That's where I got enough skating knowledge to get a job as a researcher at ABC Sports in their figure skating department. I also worked for TNT, ESPN, Lifetime and NBC. I've covered the national championships, the world championships, and the Olympics. That experience is what led to the writing of my figure skating murder mystery series.
MR: What was the transition to writing romance novels like? And what inspired the said transition?
AA: Romance novels were where I started. You know how they say write what you know? Well, in the early 1990s, I wrote about what I knew. I wrote family sagas set in the Soviet Union. In the 1990s, nobody cared. An editor at Avon told me that she usually bought new writers in the genre of Regency romance. So I wrote a Regency romance. (I basically call myself a whore, I will write anything for money.) But, I am proud to say that I snuck some Jews into my first ever Regency romance, "The Fictitious Marquis." Much to my surprise, years later, I found out that it was the first Regency to incorporate Jewish characters written by a Jewish writer. Who knew?
MR: It wasn’t until later in your career that you wrote Nesting Dolls and My Mother’s Secret. What inspired you to explore topics more intimately related to your background?
AA: Unlike the 1990s, in 2018 I was advised that, "Russia is really hot right now." I can't imagine why! When told that Russia was really hot right now, I wrote a book... kind of set in Russia. Odessa, USSR wasn't Russia, but it fit the bill. And then the characters in "The Nesting Dolls" get deported to Siberia. So there you have it - Russia! "My Mother's Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region" is actually set in Russia. About as far East in Russia as you can go, right on the border with China. There, twenty years before the establishment of the State of Israel, that great friend of the Jews, Josef Stalin, granted them a homeland. Find out how that went in the book!
MR: What is your writing routine like? Do you outline everything ahead of time or do your characters take the lead?
AA: I am definitely a plotter. But with a quirk. The first three chapters, I free write, letting the characters tell me who they are, what they want, and what their story will be. I then outline the rest of the book, chapter by chapter, scene by scene. This completely eliminates writers block. If you know what the next thing to happen is, just write it down as if you're watching a movie. You can go back and fix it later. My favorite quote, which has been attributed to so many writers that I don't know who said it originally is, "It's easier to fix a bad page than a blank page."
MR: Does your family read your work? What has that been like?
AA: Every one of my books that my husband has read he assumes is about him - even the ones I wrote before I met him. Sure, why not? Let's call it manifesting, as the young people say. My teen daughter read my figure skating mysteries and liked those well enough. She thinks my historical fiction is "too sad." I am trying to get her to read my romances, but she says that would be icky. My parents read my books. They like to point out the mistakes in the Soviet set ones. So everybody enjoys them! (I also have two sons. They... presumably have better things to do.)
MR: What is your favorite genre to read?
AA: Domestic thrillers. I love twisted family dynamics and am a sucker for long-buried secrets. I also read a lot of non-fiction. Mary Roach is an author whose books I always pick up, even if I'm not interested in the subject, because she is that great of a writer. Otherwise, I read a lot about happiness research, education policy, and movie and television analysis. My husband teases that I "turned TV watching into reading!"
MR: What’s next?
AA: A couple of projects are in the pipeline. It looks like I will be expanding a soap-opera book I wrote about daytime's greatest moments with more up to date scenes and as a paperback, this time. I just finished the editor's notes on "Go On Pretending" and am waiting for his feedback, and my agent is shopping around "Admit None: An NYC Schools Mystery." In my non-TV, non-novelist life, I write about education in NYC and in the United States. I have many, many stories that I can't share in non-fiction... but I can in fiction. So stay tuned!