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This transcript was generated with the help of AI and only got a quick once-over from a human. So if you spot a typo or something that doesn’t make sense… let’s just blame the robots. 🤖

[00:00:05.020] – Intro
This is Meet the Thriller author, the podcast hosted by thriller novelist, Alan Peterson. Each episode, Alan sits down with some of the most exciting voices in mystery and suspense, best-selling legends and rising stars alike, to talk writing, process, and the art of crafting a killer story. From Dean Kuntz and Walter Moseley to Freda McFadden and Lee Child, over 200 authors have joined Alan for deep, revealing conversations that every thriller fan and aspiring writer will love. You can find transcripts, show notes, and the full archive of episodes at thrillerauthors. Com. And don’t forget to check out Alan’s own heart-pounding thriller at thrillingreads. Com/books. Now, here’s the latest episode of Meet the Thriller author.

[00:00:53.680] – Alan Petersen
Hey, everybody. This is Alan with Meet the Thriller Author. Usually, I talk with writers who keep us turning pages, but today, my guest keeps us glued to our headphones. Mike Adamec is a writer, performer, and former journalist whose work has appeared in NPR, The New York Times, and Parade magazine. His podcast, Crime Adjacent, is a to show that overlays speculative storylines onto the world of true crime. Welcome to the podcast, Mike.

[00:01:20.840] – Mike Adamick
Thank you so much for having me, Alan. I appreciate it. I’m excited to chat.

[00:01:24.280] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I’m excited, too. This is the first time I’ve had a podcast, a thriller author on. So I thought it was interesting and cool to talk to you about that. I have to ask you right off the bat. Crime Adjacent is described as ticklessly reported true crime, overlays speculative story lines. So it seems like it really blurs the line between true crime and fiction. I have to ask, is it true crime or is it fiction or is it a little combo?

[00:01:48.180] – Mike Adamick
That’s so funny. I get that a lot. It’s actually a little combo. I love true crime. I mean, ever since I was a kid, I first got my hands on Robert Graceman Zodiac book. I’m a child of the ’80s. I grew up with stories of the Zodiac and the Night stalker. That book came out, and I was just obsessed with these true events that actually happened in my own backyard. Ever since then, I grew up in reading the Mind Hunter series from John Douglas, a former FBI Profiler. When True Crime Podcast got started, being pumped out in the 2015 or so with my favorite murder and the crime junkie, I was just hooked in serial, obviously. There was just something interesting to me about explaining a world filled with these horrible crimes and why we’re drawn to them and what we can learn from them. At the same time, I just didn’t feel as a writer that I could immerse myself fully in that world and tell only true crime stories and feel like I was making money in some way off of the worst moments in someone’s life. It’s this weird thing I can’t quite balance in my own life from being a listener and deeply intrigued by it, but also a writer and wanting to write readers in the true crime genre and cosmology of true crime, but not feel like I could.

[00:03:07.940] – Mike Adamick
Exploits is not the right word, but just feel a little… This is just something I couldn’t bring myself to do. I wanted to overlay fictional story lines, just completely made up on this world of true crime just to make me feel like I had more room to explore more issues without using someone’s real actual life as a venue to do that. That’s why I wanted to mix it up. I just thought it was interesting as well that there’s a podcast written by your favorite thriller character. That’s what I like to say. In your favorite book, what if the character is real and started a podcast and you get to follow along with your favorite character each week? I thought that was interesting. I wanted to explore that as well.

[00:03:45.560] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s Chase Patrick. Is that the…

[00:03:48.020] – Mike Adamick
Yeah, that’s Chase Patrick.

[00:03:50.020] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, that’s what’s so cool about your podcast, because even when I started to listen to it and then I’m like, wait a second, is this real or is it not? And I’m like, wait, there’s no rich way around here. I even googled it because I was confused, and I live in the Bay Area.

[00:04:05.900] – Mike Adamick
Oh, totally.

[00:04:06.650] – Alan Petersen
You did a great job.

[00:04:09.660] – Mike Adamick
Thank you so much. It’s good to hear. That’s actually been a really challenging part, to be honest, of this podcast. It just came out in June, and I’m telling basically a chapter a week every Wednesday. There’s a new episode, which basically takes the place of a chapter. And I do get questions every now and then. Wait a minute, I haven’t heard of this case. Who’s the rest stop killer? What is this about? Is this real true crime or is it fiction? So I’m still somewhat learning, to be honest, about how to balance that line and keep people immersed in a story that is fictional but does have true crime elements, and it’s playing on the outskirts of that. The podcast is in the fiction category. My website’s very clear. These are fictional story lines overlapped on the real true crime event. But it’s been interesting because I do think there are a certain number of people that for them, it’s like a true crime podcast. It’s just all real, and they don’t know the Bay Area maybe as well as we do. So it’s been an interesting challenge to try to keep up the immersive interesting characters alive and running a podcast with not wanting to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make them feel like they’ve been duped in any way.

[00:05:08.500] – Mike Adamick
I don’t want to do that.

[00:05:09.330] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s a little bit the recipe of the Coran Brothers, the movie Fargo, where it says, Basically, a Story, and it isn’t. So this day, people think it’s a true story.

[00:05:18.660] – Mike Adamick
Totally. That whole series. Yeah, yeah.

[00:05:20.450] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, the series, too. I think it’s pretty cool. So, yeah, so I wanted to ask you about that, too, because when you had the idea of this, what made you decide that the podcast podcast medium was going to be the way to go versus a documentary style or a book?

[00:05:36.040] – Mike Adamick
Yeah, I think it was an evolution, to be honest. I have a few non-fiction books that I published, everything from family craft books to a book called Raising and Powered Daughters, a dad-to-dad Guide for how to raise a daughter nowadays. I’d always been in a non-fiction realm, and I knew I had a thriller in me. Honestly, since I was a child and wrote The Case of the Missing Valentine in third grade. It was like a little folio that I put together. So I knew at some point I’d write a novel and wanted to do that full-time. And I did, in fact. This all started as a thriller that I cobbled together the outline and the whole cosmology of the characters and the world that they’re in. And spent maybe a year or two getting that right and getting the first draft right. And I gave it to my wife and my daughter, who are just my best readers. And they read the first chapter. They’re like, Well, this is really good. They read the second chapter, and they’re like, Okay, I’m hooked. And then it just went into a slow, silent death where I think they were afraid to tell me, I’m not sure it’s any good after the first and the second chapter.

[00:06:42.620] – Mike Adamick
I thought, Okay, I need to revise this. I shipped it out to my agent after a few revisions, and she basically had the same reaction. It’s written well, but I’m not sure this is quite the thing that’s going to do it. I started revising and revising and revising, and something just clicked, and I’m not sure what the idea was that I needed to turn this, and I wanted to turn this into a podcast. I think because I could lend my writing style of more narrative non-fiction to fiction, I think that maybe helped to blend that idea. I just love true crime podcasts, and I thought like, If I could create a character that basically runs a podcast and you get to follow along with the case each week, and it’s basically a mystery thriller that plays out like an audiobook in podcast form, I just thought I might want to play with that. And so I started tinkering and trying to figure out how to do the technical stuff, like the microphones and the recording software and the music, and how to make it all just sound good is something I never really thought about with writing a thriller.

[00:07:43.280] – Mike Adamick
But when it all started to come together, it just felt right with my love affair with True Crime podcast, my love affair with Thriller Writers. I just thought that it would be a match made in heaven. And so far, I feel like it’s doing okay. And I’m definitely leaving room for getting better as each new book or each new season advances.

[00:08:02.560] – Alan Petersen
And what was the process then for writing these? So you started writing it originally like a book. So did you have to change this? Is it like a screenplay or what scripting and writing is done for this type of narrative?

[00:08:17.840] – Mike Adamick
That’s a good question. I do all my writing in Apple Notes.

[00:08:22.400] – Alan Petersen
Okay, wow.

[00:08:23.380] – Mike Adamick
I’m constantly walking around or running or doing chores around the house or doing whatever. I just wanted to be able to instantly pull up wherever I had left off and jot down quick ideas. It’s all in Apple Notes. It’s not necessarily in script form. You might be able to find a final draft or a scrivener or something like that. I basically just write a narrative out. As I’m writing, it’s an interesting process. I used to do some radio essays for NPR and KQED. I got into the habit of being able to write for radio, which was slightly really different, where to put the he said, she said at the beginning of a sentence instead of in the middle or at the very end, just to let people know who’s talking, little quirks like that. So I write that all out in one long page and then read it all out several times before I actually start to record it just to make sure it sounds good. And I’m getting across all the… Where I want the heavy accents and things like that. And then I just turn on the microphone and give it a go.

[00:09:26.440] – Alan Petersen
Do you do all the editing yourself or do you have someone else to that?

[00:09:30.420] – Mike Adamick
I don’t. I have this fabulous, fabulous crew in Brooklyn called Multitude Productions, and they run a bunch of their own podcasts, and they take my horrible hour, hour and a half just raw reading aloud and coughing and clearing my throat and drinking water, and they turn it into something just absolutely glorious each week. I feel like I could have spent the time getting the technical craft of podcasting done right, but I just found that that was like, if I was going to do a chapter each week that I didn’t think I could keep up with the writing and the talking and then the marketing, as well as learning the deep background for editing in a really professional manner. I wanted to send that out to pros who knew what they were doing so I can really concentrate on the story and the characters. And oddly enough, getting the voice right for this has been a challenge as well. So I’m grateful for them and their work on this. I think each episode when I get it back and, Hey, Mike, is What do you think? It’s like, I basically have no notes. I’m like, You’ve done great.

[00:10:33.430] – Mike Adamick
It’s ready to go. It sounds wonderful. Thank you.

[00:10:35.800] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, it’s very good. It’s very well done, very professional. I was wondering if you… Because that would be a lot. You’re performing it, you’re writing it, and then the business side of it and then editing it. I don’t think it would be-I don’t know how you do it, but you do a fabulous job.

[00:10:52.100] – Mike Adamick
Is that something you do actually in your podcast? Because when I listen, it’s so wonderful. Each episode is this glorious interview, and everything just sounds great from my end. I wanted to keep it at that level like yours.

[00:11:04.480] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. Well, mine’s easier though, because it’s just two of us versus a whole story and the music. Yeah, that whole ambiance of mine is pretty more easy, so I could do it myself. That sounds good. For the listeners who haven’t listened to your podcast, can you tell us a little bit about it then? What’s it about? Just a little bit more about Crime Adjacent.

[00:11:28.780] – Mike Adamick
Sure. So Crime Adjacent, it basically looks exactly like a true crime podcast. It sounds exactly like a true crime podcast. You won’t be able to distinguish it upon first hearing it from your favorite episode of Going West or Crime Junkie. But the whole thing is fictional. The first season focuses on the rest stop killer who murdered three men in a small town called Ridgewood, California, which is somewhere amorphously between Vacabille and Fairfield, which is somewhere between halfway between San Francisco and Sacramento and Interstate 80. In the ’90s, the rest stop killer was taking men from the rest stop in Vileo that the Zodiac killer actually haunted, Hunter Hill Rest Stop, where the Zodiac actually had a confrontation with a CHP officer. You believe the CHP officer, I guess, who later wrote a book about this confrontation and thinks he has a Zodiac suspect, in fact, who lives in Fairfield. You’ve got all of that happening, real true crimes happening in the Bay Area, like the Golden State killer and the Zodiac. Then fit seamlessly within those narratives are the stories of people in Ridgewood who were unfortunately taken by the rest stop killer who killed three men in the ’90s and then just disappeared.

[00:12:38.920] – Mike Adamick
Then in 2023, one of the fans of the Crime Adjacent podcast actually came to Chase Patrick, the host, and said, I’m pretty sure the killer is back at Ridgewood. I think the police are covering up because I think it’s this powerful family who’s trying to get this huge housing development developed in a valley on the outskirts of town. Something’s going on there. People who are opposed to this development are dying, and the police aren’t saying anything about it. The town’s beginning to freak out, and the host of the podcast decides, Okay, I haven’t covered this story back in the ’90s. Something’s clearly happening in Ridgewood today. I should go back and check out what’s happening. I’m a true crime podcaster, the character says, and I need to go back there and figure this all out for this listener who came to me for help. That’s where the whole podcast starts with Chase Patrick. The host is going back to Ridgewood to figure out what’s going on. Right now, as we’re listening in August, he just returned to Ridgewood for the first time. It’s funny because I have episode 20, 21 written right now and ready to go, but I have to remember that only episode 13 has been published.

[00:13:46.520] – Mike Adamick
So it’s like, how much do I want to give away what’s in my brain versus what’s actually publicly available for the listener? So right now, the story is left off. Or if you’re up to date on the podcast, Chase just returns home. There’s just been another murder in Ridgewood. There’s been a missing woman who might be connected to this powerful family and the heir to that family. And more people, I believe I’ve said, have been taken as well. Chase is really just in the midst of it now, trying to figure out, is it the rest stop killer from the ’90s? Is it a copycat killer? Is it something else altogether? Ridgewood is losing its mind all over again as more and more people go missing. That’s where it is right now.

[00:14:24.020] – Alan Petersen
Looking at your background, you started out as a small town crime reporter, and you covered cases like the Zodiac killer. But then in your bio, you mentioned that you nearly collided with the co-head killer, and Ed Kamper was, what, seven feet tall? Can you tell us a little bit about that? I was so curious to see what was your connection there with the Ed Kamper.

[00:14:42.100] – Mike Adamick
Oh, that was just the weirdest experience that’s just stuck with me to this day, just literally almost bumping into him and having my little prison escort just bump my shoulder and say, Hey, watch out. That’s the COVID killer. You don’t want to run into that guy. I was 19, and I had dropped out of high school, and took one of the proficiency tests. I literally spent all of my time in the law library, which was nearby, reading John Steinbeck and John Grisham and everything I could get my hands on, and was checked out of school in favor of books at that time. So I dropped out and joined the community college, and I joined the newspaper at the community college and realized, Okay, this is my thing. I could get paid writing, which I wanted to do. And so I joined the college newspaper and then started an internship with the local newspaper in Vacaville, California, called the Vacaville Reporter. And this is a small town on the far outskirts of the Bay Area, which matches where Chase is investigating these crimes in Ridgewood. I started as a crime reporter there, pretty much then dropped out of community college to take this job as a crime reporter because at the time in the late ’90s, I figured, journalism will be a gig that’s around forever.

[00:15:55.380] – Mike Adamick
This will be great. I was covering crime, and whenever I had the chance, I covered the Zodiac case. They were doing DNA testing. There were still letters in the ’90s. This was before the David Pinscher’s movie started to come out in 2007 or so. And so he was still in the ethos of the Bay Area. And so I was covering the Zodiac, and I was also in charge of the prisons. That was part of my beat. What was going on at the Vacabal Prisons? There’s the California Medical Facility where Charles Manson was, Sirhunt Sirhunt, and the COVID killer, Ed Kemper, who I think any fan of mine, Hunter, would know was the first real interview for the FBI profiling. What became FBI profiling started in Vacabal with these interviews with Ed Kemper. As part of my beat, I needed to get to know What was the prison like? Who are the people? Who do I need to talk to? I did a bunch of tours and got to see inside California Medical Facility. I’m walking around. It’s incredibly noisy. I just did not understand how noisy it would be. Just yelling behind steel doors, pounding on doors, having to walk in a certain way along the path so we didn’t get urine or excrement thrown at us.

[00:17:09.740] – Mike Adamick
I’m just swirling around like, Where am I? Flotted with emotion. I want to get out of here. I’m just walking and literally hit a T intersection, and I’m walking and looking somewhere else, and here comes a camper and funk. My escort is like, Slow down, buddy. You need to pay attention. That’s the co-head. I’m not in any way whatsoever trying to say nice guy, but apparently after he killed his mother, turned into this person who volunteered to do reading for the blind, I think is what he was doing at the time, how he’s spending his days in prison. But it was still this incredibly eerie, weird theme that stuck with me. It’s like, this is a weird place to be for sure. But it also hit that weird true crime bug, which I think a lot of people have for some reason wanted to listen true crime to maybe whistle past the graveyard and slightly touch the darker parts of society. So maybe we can learn something about that, I guess.

[00:18:08.740] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I think it’s so interesting, too, especially in California and even the Bay Area. There’s so many serial killers at Kemper. There was another one in Santa Cruz area, too, at the same time. Was it Herbert or Herb? I can’t remember his name.

[00:18:23.800] – Mike Adamick
What’s funny there is Santa Cruz used to be known as the murder capital of the world at one point, and that’s actually talked in the podcast because there was at Kemper, and gosh, I’m blanking. When it’s at Kemp, I’m forgetting exactly, but then there was a family annihilator as well. Just a weird time to be in the Bay Area from the late ’60s through the ’80s, for sure.

[00:18:48.380] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. And then in San Francisco, too, there’s the Doodler, I guess. He’s still not… Nobody knows who that was. So it’s just so many cases. But it’s a lot of places for research here for you, huh?

[00:19:04.160] – Mike Adamick
Unfortunately, yeah. And the Doodler does, in fact, play a big role in the first season of this, because in the ’70s, while the Dutler was making the rounds in San Francisco, the gay community was trying to say, Hey, something’s going on here. There’s somebody killing our men. And not much is being done about it. And the police are like, We’re doing as best we can. Leave us alone. But there’s still this feeling that they didn’t get as much attention attention as someone who was not a gay man in the ’70s in San Francisco might have gotten. Like all the Zodiac victims certainly got more attention. Young heterosexual couples in lovers’ lanes got the majority of the attention at the time. Some of that’s playing a role in Ridgewood as well, because the rest stop killer, the first two men that he took were actually classed as gay men who went to the rest stop in Vallejo to maybe do a hookup like many of the doubler victims did as well in the ’70s. I wanted to draw parallels for sure between not just time between the ’70s and the ’90s in today and whether anything has changed, but also bring up which victims do in society and media get the most attention because I think that’s an interesting facet of some of these cases that we should be aware of.

[00:20:21.070] – Mike Adamick
I’d like to go deep on some of these broader sociological issues about which people get attention and why for sure.

[00:20:28.540] – Alan Petersen
Yes, that’s very fascinating Because, yeah, I was a similar background as yours growing up. I was fascinating with serial killers. I’m a little older, so everything was through books. I actually had to go to a library to check out books. It’s probably a five-minute-I remember those days. Probably a file on me. But anyway, so I thought I was pretty well-versed in them all. And I never, ever heard of the Doodleer until a few years ago when they started writing about it here. And I was like, well, I can’t remember, but it’s more than 10 victims. So, yeah, it’s fascinating. I think what you mentioned, too, I think in your background, too, because you mentioned your background includes sociology, gender studies, and forensic psychology. So can you tell us a little bit about that? I mean, that seems perfectly in your interest, you said, as to which victims get more attention. Can you tell us a little bit about that, too?

[00:21:18.900] – Mike Adamick
Sure. So I dropped out of school, as I said, in high school and did a little bit of community college and then just calmed down to the local newspaper and was a crime reporter for a long time and worked my way up to the chain of various Bay Area newspapers. And ultimately, my wife and I had a child in 2006, and we quickly figured that a lawyer made a lot more than a small town newspaper reporter at the time. So I would stay home, and I would be the primary caregiver for our daughter. And so that’s what I did. There’s this big resume gap, I guess, between 2006 and 2019 or so, when I was a stay-at-home parent with my daughter. And at some point, she needed me less and less following around to make sure she doesn’t fold out or trip over the slides or whatever. It needed more of a guidance counselor in life. She was off to high school and she was off to college. And I thought, It seemed like a perfect opportunity for me to segue into a second act in life. As she went off to high school, I went off to college and was able to commute, thankfully.

[00:22:26.760] – Mike Adamick
Miraculously, somehow, I still don’t know how this happened. I got into Berkeley, which was perfect because I live in San Francisco, so you could just commute via Bart or over the Bay Bridge. I was just keenly interested in wanting to write in some way about true crime. I just knew that I was headed toward a second act that included readers or maybe non-fiction journalism about true crime. I wanted to take sociology, and I wanted to take gender studies because, again, I wanted this focus on which stories get told and which don’t and why. So I just found that those two areas wedded together were the perfect way to talk about some of these broader issues. I learned quite a bit about bodies and representation in media and media theory, and I’m just so excited that I was able to go back and now feel like I can put a lot of that to use in my writing nowadays. I try to bring up a lot of these broader issues so it doesn’t read like just a true thriller audiobook look, but it allows people… The things that I find interesting in podcasts, digging a little more in-depth into not just what happened in the crime, but why.

[00:23:40.500] – Mike Adamick
I don’t want to make it pretty, and I don’t want to shy away from big issues. I’m trying to strike a balance between those two things, just letting people have a really interesting story. Also, I like to learn one or two things from each podcast that I listen to. I’m trying to weave that seamlessly into the narrative as well. If someone can go away like, I didn’t know that about Pierre Bordeaux, a theorist, and which spaces we feel comfortable in and which spaces we don’t feel comfortable in. If I can allow someone to learn just a tiny bit, something interesting in each episode, I’ll be super happy. So I try to infuse some of what I’ve learned into each of the stories just because I think it’s interesting. And those are the podcasts I like to listen to.

[00:24:22.720] – Alan Petersen
Your influences then, for authors or writers that have influenced you?

[00:24:28.100] – Mike Adamick
It’s so funny. I think one of the biggest Most influence as I have for a thriller writer would be Karen Slaater or Gillian Flynn. And it feels almost like torture to try to live up to that level. But if I feel like if I could get myself to that level, I feel like I’ll have accomplished something. But it also feels like a Sissipian cast to be able to do that. Just the way they’re able to tell characters so deeply and richly and get you invested in the story of what’s happening to these characters. Those are some of my bigger influences in mystery and thriller and suspense type writing that have a real character-driven feel. I’ve also really liked John Gersham’s Legal Thrillers or Michael Connolly. I’m really into Freda McFadden now, especially after your interview. I’m just lured by the ease with which you can read and think, wow, this is just flowing from one chapter to the next. This feels easy. But I know to accomplish that, the craft, and getting that done to make it sound easy is incredibly hard. I have a mix between fiction writers, but then also podcasts as well, and how podcasters tell real, actual stories.

[00:25:54.620] – Mike Adamick
The Crime Junkie podcast and Ashley flowers is just an incredible storyteller, incredible storyteller Teller. You’re just hooked from the very beginning. You have to remember, these are real cases with real people and real families behind, not just fictional stories for our own entertainment, which I think can be lost sometimes with the way that she’s able to weave together these stories that just sound so immersive. She’s a big influence as well. Then non-fiction writing, like Don Douglas’s Mind Hunter, that was influential, I think, from my early years about how to predict who is going to commit these crimes? Or is he making it up? How does he try to pinpoint who the actual killer is or the pool of suspects might be based on the evidence of the crime scene? I just find that deeply fascinating. I’m drawn to the idea of profiling and forensic criminology and trying to see and get our best estimate about who might be responsible from what available evidence is left behind at the crime scene or what happens with the crime itself.

[00:27:00.980] – Alan Petersen
You actually published non-conviction books on parenting, like reaching your daughter. I wanted to ask you about that. How different is it creatively to write a book about parenting versus these more darker subject matters?

[00:27:11.880] – Mike Adamick
That’s such a great question. It’s challenging. And at the same time, I think my style of non-conviction was very vignette-focused. Along the way, I also did a lot of parenting blogging, in the big blogging craze of the early 2000s. When that hit, it seemed like every parent had a blog, and I was certainly part of them, and I worked for… Disney had a blog, and I worked for them. I found it interesting to take one little vignette that happened and another seemingly disconnected vignette that happened, and then another, and then trying to find a through thread that linked them all together, that told a story that makes sense around all these tiny little moments in life that might seem disconnected, but actually, when you add them up, they make a narrative hole. That’s the non-fiction writing I did with parenting. Probably the best way I can explain it When it came to the parenting book is Marilyn Frey, a 1980s feminist writer, talks about the bird cage and the bird cage theory. That if you take one issue of women’s oppression in society and you look at one strand of that cage, and you get up really close and you examine that cage, you can debate it, and you can debate it away, and it’s no big deal.

[00:28:17.380] – Mike Adamick
But then you get up to another cage, another little strand, and you debate that issue. Is that oppression? Is that not oppression? Then you move over to the next strand. Is that oppression or is that not oppression? So all these little things that might seem like separate events. When you step back, you see that you’re debating an entire cage of points in the cage forms, the cage of oppression. That’s what I wanted to do with the parenting book, is take a look at one little issue and another little issue and another little issue and just ask, are they separate, discrete pieces, or do they add up into something and they tell us a slightly larger story that we as men might be able to help tackle? That type of writing, taking these disparate pieces and adding them up into a story, is something that I think I’m still doing, but in true crime form as opposed to parenting or social issues and gender issues.

[00:29:05.480] – Alan Petersen
Okay, I wanted to talk about your writing process, like your writing routine. Do you treat it like a strict job? Do you have set hours or are you more flexible? Just what’s your creative process like when you’re writing these?

[00:29:17.620] – Mike Adamick
It’s a straight job. It’s funny. As a newspaper reporter, you’re constantly writing. You’re out on an event and you’re talking to someone and you’re taking notes, but you’re also silently, Okay, well, that’s the first quote. And then maybe that’s the kicker quote at the very end, or, Gee, I need to talk to somebody else. A lot of my process is like that, just extraordinarily unfortunate for daily life because a lot of the time I am lost in the clouds just thinking like, That’s interesting. I wonder how I can work that into the narrative, which is also why I use Apple Notes. I can just quickly call it up on my phone and jot it down. So that’s taking place 24 hours a day, and it just won’t stop in the brain. But my daily actual sit down and write all that stuff out. It will be very early in the morning before anybody wakes up. I’ll get ready for the day. Then when people wake up and the house starts to feel like my concentration is blown and I just can’t until the house is empty again. Then after the house is empty again, I’ll go back down to my little writing room in the basement and probably spend four or five hours or so just deeply immersed in the story and getting as much as I can out.

[00:30:27.100] – Mike Adamick
Then I’ll always stop. I don’t remember who gave this advice voice, but it was always, Stop with the beginning of the next day’s work. It’s like when you feel like you’ve accomplished a lot and you know where it’s going, just write down exactly what you’re going to accomplish the next day. That’s when I know I put in a good day. I’ve done everything I wanted to do and then wrote the beginning for the next day so that I can sit down again for a few more hours the following day and do that. But then you have to add in the actual technical aspect, which I hadn’t counted on, of recording and how challenging that is. Which room has less ambient noise? Can I hear a car go by? Are there neighbors somewhere doing construction? All of that adds in. I found that I have to record not just in the evening when the thing’s quiet down, but sometimes after 9: 00 or 10: 00 when everything is really quiet, and then I can go into the room and hopefully have a solid hour to actually record what I’ve written that day.

[00:31:25.380] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, the technical part is people don’t realize. You said microphone and foam to like, yeah.

[00:31:32.480] – Mike Adamick
Yes, for sure.

[00:31:34.860] – Alan Petersen
I was curious, too, now. I just was thinking about this now because you’re striking a balance here of sounding like investigative journalism, but still trying to keep the fictional and the suspensful edge? How do you balance those two? Do you ever see yourself, Oh, I’m getting way too technical here. I’m being more of a reporter than a fiction writer?

[00:31:58.260] – Mike Adamick
That’s a fabulous question, and it’s a debate that just rages. Each time I sit down 100% and each time I start to record, I think, Oh, maybe I need to rework this real fast before I actually start recording. That’s a big challenge. That’s such a great question because that’s literally something that I’ve had to talk about. Is this an audiobook where you expect a certain form of suspense and there’s less, maybe bigger sociological issues woven into it, maybe less detailed, detailed forensic like you would get in a true crime podcast. There’s just always this debate about how in-depth do I need to go into what happened in the crime scene and what does that tell us about who the victim was and who the potential perpetrator could be? How much do I want to weave into there versus the overall suspense of something bad happened? How are we going to catch this person? To be perfectly upfront, I’m not sure I’m getting the mix right. It’s an interesting thing that I haven’t encountered in other podcasts yet because there’s straight, true non-fiction journalism podcasts about actual specific cases. Then when you click on the fiction side of podcasting, a lot of the times it’s very much dark and very clearly science fiction or very clearly a mystery or a romance.

[00:33:19.410] – Mike Adamick
Or sometimes I didn’t even notice they’re bringing back old-timey 1930s detective radio shows and just uploading those. But you get a sense right away. This is very clearly fiction and suspense, really good audiobook of sci-fi or mystery. And Crime Adjacent is literally somewhere in the middle between those two things. I wanted to sound like a true crime podcast, and at the same time, it’s all fiction. So getting that right is something I’m working with.

[00:33:45.080] – Alan Petersen
You’re still the only one that is very unique. I can’t think of any other podcast that takes the format that you’re taking. So it’s pretty cool. I think you have a trendsetter there.

[00:33:55.100] – Mike Adamick
Thank you so much. That actually means quite a bit because it’s one of those things where it is a risk in form. Will this resonate with people? Will they get it? Will they like it? All of those things are still for debate, to be honest. It is new. It started in June, and I’m midway through the first season, and the second season will start in November. I’m taking some feedback and incorporating it and taking some feedback and not, because it’s just not how I want it to go. But it is interesting, and I hope it resonates with enough people that enjoy true crime, enjoy readers, and just like the idea that it’s like, yeah, this character that you’ve fallen in love on the page, jumps off the page and starts a podcast and you get to follow along each week. There’s just something about that that I really enjoyed.

[00:34:44.380] – Alan Petersen
If every episode is like a chapter, is every season like a part in the book?

[00:34:50.500] – Mike Adamick
Every season will be a self-contained book, essentially.

[00:34:52.840] – Alan Petersen
Oh, okay. So it’s like a standalone within a series.

[00:34:57.780] – Mike Adamick
Correct. They’ll always be Chase, Chase Patrick and his sister, Nicky Freeman. They’ll always be the backbone. In the show, they’ve got this really big true crime podcast, and they have lots of staff. I wanted to be able to… Jack Reacher floats around the entire country. I wanted to be able to float around the entire country so I can change it up for my own enjoyment and entertainment. And so that each story can be, this one takes place in the Bay Area, the next one will be in Northern Michigan. And the one after that will be in Chicago and Arizona. I wanted to be able to move it around and have each season basically be one book with a through thread being the same characters. And they’re hunting for their own serial killer, actually took their mother. And so they’re trying to figure out through the whole narrative of the entire podcast, not just each season, but from season to season to season, they’re constantly hunting and trying to track down this person. So that’ll be the narrative through thread through the whole podcast.

[00:35:55.990] – Alan Petersen
Okay. And so right now, you’re working on the next season? Is that what working on now, or are you already working on the next one, next one?

[00:36:04.740] – Mike Adamick
Yeah, it’s interesting because we want to make sure the producers’ multitude are just still good at what they do. They need a certain amount of time, a week or so, to get each episode in in shape. So I never want to say, Hey, the episode’s coming out on Wednesday. It’s Tuesday. Here’s my garbage. Now, turn it into a wonderful thing. So I try to work at least five episodes ahead, so I know that there’s some wiggle room if I get sick or something happens, or there’s just always episodes in the bag. I’m actually seven or eight episodes ahead, which means I’m almost ready to begin writing Season 2, which is fully outlined. I actually wrote an entire book already, and so I just need to really turn that into read-aloud form or podcast form. Then Season 3 is fully outlined, Season 4 is fully outlined, and I just need to turn those into something that I can read aloud. But basically, each book will be about or each season will be about 25, 26 episodes, so half a year. So basically writing two books a year, which seems like a lot, but I’m really getting to exercise my journalism muscles again, which is really fun, remembering just how to write more daily and with intent to make sure I don’t miss my deadline because now I’ve got a new chapter coming out on Wednesday, and I can’t let people down.

[00:37:27.340] – Alan Petersen
Yeah. What’s your vision on the long term? Do you ever see maybe turning it into a book, or right now, you’re just too busy with the podcast?

[00:37:36.680] – Mike Adamick
No, for sure. That’s a great question. Yes, I definitely envision. There’s a big… I’m trying to debate whether I turn season one of the podcast into a book, like a companion book, or whether I just write a completely different mystery altogether. Then also be able to… There’s lots of true crime streaming shows, things that I enjoy, like Bosch or Reacher or The Rookey or even true crime documentaries about the Night stalker. There just seems to be an endless need for more true crime. I would, at some point, like to sell this for a series to see on Netflix or Amazon because I think that the storyline is interesting and there’s serial killers and kidnappers all over, unfortunately.

[00:38:19.300] – Alan Petersen
Where can the listeners find you online then?

[00:38:22.740] – Mike Adamick
The podcast is available on every podcast streaming service from Apple to Spotify to smaller ones as well. You just search in crime adjacent to find the actual podcast, or you can Google crime adjacent and find the website and enter it through there. I’m also on Patreon at patriot. Com/crimeadjacent, where people get behind-the-scenes information. What I really want to do is start a true crime reading group where we can dig into these. There’s lots of neat white papers and sociological papers in forensic sociology around crimes and criminals and profiling. I’m trying to start a reading group there where we can read one short little paper together and then just get online and chat about it like a reading group because I just think the topic is very interesting and I think a lot of people want to learn about it, and I want to learn about it with them as well. Then I’m on Instagram at Crime Adjacent as well.

[00:39:15.700] – Alan Petersen
Mike, before I let you go, the final question I always ask my guests for advice because I have aspiring writers that listen to this and you have a very unique background and experience. What’s your advice for an aspiring writer?

[00:39:26.660] – Mike Adamick
Find the process that works for you and Don’t let one person’s process be the way it has to be. I say that from your show, specifically, because when I listened to Lee Child and Freda McFadden, and then I think Gillian Flynn with a conversation with Ashley Power as a crime junkie, I was just astounded that they just jumped straight in with no outline, and we’re free for them, and we’re just going to see what happens with this character in this story. That wasn’t for me. I appreciated it, I’m definitely more of an outline type writer, and that works for me. But it’s not an outline where I see some people have the big cork board with the Post-its all over the board. I think I do more along the lines of what James Patterson does, which I’ll start with a sentence. Something happened, and that’s my scene for what this book is going to be about. Then each chapter is just basically one sentence. Then I go back, and then I revise that into a paragraph. Each chapter is now a paragraph, and then each chapter is now three paragraphs. Then I’m ready to write my first draft.

[00:40:29.620] – Mike Adamick
That just works for me. That’s what I found. I was thinking I needed to find how to write a book. If only I paid attention to how the really great writers do it, I’ll find the thing, the final point of advice that puts me over the top and allows me to write a book when really it was just a very personal thing that I needed to create my own system. So that’s the advice. Take as little bits of information as you can from people, but tink around and find the process for writing that is enjoyable and that actually works for you and your brain and what allows you to actually to get it done. That’s the advice that took me a while to figure out. I’m not going to find this is the golden ticket that will allow you to finally finish and write a book. It was an amalgamation of things that ultimately I just had to decide this is the way that I enjoy doing it and that works for me. So that’s my advice.

[00:41:20.960] – Alan Petersen
All right, Michael, thank you so much for coming in the show. It was a real pleasure talking to you.

[00:41:24.280] – Mike Adamick
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.