Meet The Writer Who Doesn’t Know Who She Wants To Be When She Grows Up
Hello. My name is Alina Adams.
And I don’t know who I want to be when I grow up.
Oh, I know I want to be a writer. I’ve known I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was two. My parents claim my first words were “pencil” and “paper” (though in Russian, and very garbled.)
Alina Adams’ first published novel was a Regency Romance.
The big question is: What kind of writer do I want to be now that I am actually all grown up?
The first two books I published were Regency Romance novels. Why? Because the editor at AVON Books said she was only publishing new writers in Regency Romance novels.
My next two books were contemporary romance novels. Why? Because I, honestly, don’t believe that anything romantic ever happened prior to the invention of indoor plumbing.
Then I wrote a non-fiction book on figure skating, a biography of Olympic champion Sarah Hughes, and five figure skating murder mysteries. Why? Because the editor at Berkley Prime Crime was a huge figure skating fan. And she wanted to publish some figure skating murder mysteries. (I’d worked as a producer for ABC Sports, ESPN, TNT, and NBC, so I knew the world pretty well.)
Next? Soap opera tie-ins, including two New York Times best-sellers. This time around, I was working for “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light,” and I pitched the idea to them, as well as to Simon & Schuster who were owned by the same people who owned CBS, which broadcast the two daytime dramas.
I loved writing all of the above books. A) Because I love figure skating and soaps and, well, love. But also because B) I just love writing.
You know how Dorothy Parker said she doesn’t love writing, she loves having had written? Yeah, not me. I actually love the writing process. I even kind of like the editing process. Though not as much.
It wasn’t until 2018, however, that I actually wrote the book I wanted to write… just because I happened to want to write it.
Family sagas have always been my favorite genre to read, and so I finally thought I’d give a shot at writing one. I set it in Odessa, USSR, where my family is from and where I was born, and in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, where so many Soviet Jews ended up.
That book became The Nesting Dolls, published by HarperCollins in 2020.
Now I’ve written My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region. It will be out on November 15, 2022.
It takes place (no spoilers here) in the Jewish Autonomous Region. Which, would you believe, actually existed in the Soviet Union, on the border between Russia and China, 20 years before the establishment of the state of Israel?
My Mother’s Secret is Alina Adams’ eighteenth book and her second historical novel.
My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region is my 18th published book. (A Jewish lucky number, no less!)
When people see all the titles I’ve written over the past almost thirty years (these also include guides on how to get into Kindergarten and High School in New York City), they are… confused.
I do quite a bit of genre hopping.
Why? Isn’t the key to a successful career in anything, much less writing, specialization?
It probably is. I wouldn’t know. I never had a grand plan. I just wrote what I wanted to write.
As long as someone was willing to pay me for it.
I’m kind of a Writing Hustler.
But, you know what? I really, really like being one. It gives me the chance to explore different settings, different characters, different plots, and different lives.
It’s why I read in multiple genres. So why shouldn’t I write in them, too?
About the Author
Alina Adams is the NYT-bestselling author of soap-opera tie-ins, figure-skating mysteries, and romance novels. Born in Odessa, USSR, Adams immigrated to the United States at age seven and learned to speak English by watching American Soap Operas. After receiving her B.A. and M.A. in broadcast communications at San Francisco State University, Adams worked in television as a writer and researcher. Years later she penned the As The World Turns book tie-in, Oakdale Confidential, which became a New York Times bestseller. Adams continued writing and is now a prolific and innovative writer who has authored more than a dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction. Her latest release, The Nesting Dolls, is a Soviet-Jewish historical novel published by HarperCollins in July 2020. Her upcoming novel, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, a follow-up to her previous historical novel, was released by History Through Fiction in November 2022. Adams lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.