Interviews from the world of film and television!

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

To underestimate Michael Fairman is to do so at your own risk.

Drop him on a red carpet and he outshines the cabal of nervous journalists fidgeting around him; throw a high-profile tribute package his way and he turns it into high art; give him a show to produce and he gives you an experience worthy of the 16 Daytime Emmy broadcasts that include his fingerprints. Clearly, Michael Fairman has built a standout career on daytime television, his name synonymous with soap operas, his brand the gold standard for celebrity journalism, but it’s the way that he’s gone about his business that sets him apart. The multihyphenate comes at you from all angles – writer, producer, content consultant, content creator, editorial director, and now, singer/songwriter – infusing his work with passion while refusing to wallow in the muck.

“I hope, my reputation is one of the things that sets me apart,” Fairman says from his home in Los Angeles. “I’ve worked hard to earn the trust of the stars that I interview, and they know that I’m going to treat them with respect. At the end of the day, you’ve got to be able to live with yourself. This isn’t about making a quick buck.”

Fairman’s do-it-the-right-way approach has served him well. He’s on a first-name basis with some of the biggest names in daytime television, from Eric Braeden to Dr. Oz, and he’s as equally at home on a soap opera set as he is in his own living room.

“At least until COVID happened,” he says with a laugh. “That changed everything.”

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

The pandemic, which shut down production across daytime programming, also cost Fairman his job as Digital Content Producer for the Days of Our Lives’ groundbreaking DOOL app, a project he helped to bring to life for over four-and-a-half years. The DOOL app provided weekly updated content with the cast, and Fairman had been a driving force behind its success. The news was a gut punch. Knocked down but not knocked out, he regrouped and poured even more of his energy into YouTube Channel, aptly called “The Michael Fairman Channel,” which contains his music videos (original songs and covers), celebrity interviews, a clever new game show (more on that below), red carpet and backstage coverage from award shows and events, and segments that he’s produced for the Daytime Emmys. He’s also continued his long-running entertainment news and celebrity features website, Michael Fairman TV and has been developing a few top-secrets projects. It’s the kind of pivot that speaks to Fairman’s evolutionary mutability – the quicksilver ability to grow and change and live spectacular multiple lives in the public eye – and guarantees that his is a brand that can’t be pigeonholed.

“The pandemic forced content creators to come up with a unique approach to engage their audience,” Fairman says. “It gave me the chance to expand my celebrity interviews and give fans even more video content in exciting, fun, and interactive ways.”

Fairman has done that and more with his new game show, Soap Opera Know-it-All. Online and interactive, Soap Opera Know-it-All is the first-ever virtual game show for diehard soap fans, pitting contestants from all over the country in a battle over the soaps and the trivia they love. This latest addition to the Michael Fairman digital universe is already a huge hit with fans.

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

“I’ve received so many submissions from people wanting to be on the show,” he says of the eight-episode series. “The graphics are cool, as we riff on Jeopardy! We’ve got buzzers and music and everything else you’d want in a game show. Stars from The Young & the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful even appeared on the second episode, and the stars of Days of Our Lives are appearing in the third, asking questions about their characters and their shows. If you’re a diehard soap fan, what more could you ask?”

Available on the Michael Fairman YouTube Channel, Soap Opera Know-it-All has already generated considerable buzz.

Soap Opera Know-It-All!

“It’s so funny, I had an epiphany to put this show out, and everybody – the soap community, the pundits, the journalists – seemed to embrace it. More than one person has wondered why this hasn’t been done before. It was truly an untapped experience.”

Adding to the intrigue, contestants compete for the ultimate prize: A virtual meeting with their favorite soap star.

“The winner will get to have a Zoom or Facetime conversation with the star of their choice,” Fairman says. “If the star isn’t available for some reason, then we’ll go with choice number two. Along the way, the contestants are winning swag bags and other fun things from different shows. Soap Opera Know-it-All is another fresh way to connect with fans. You have to stay relevant and ever-changing, given the digital climate that content creators live in today.”

Reinvention comes naturally for Michael Fairman. He’s the ultimate showbiz chameleon, a celeb-connected force-of-nature who, as a child, worshipped his favorite characters and devoured their storylines, an itch that’s never let up. It’s unsurprising then that soaps turned into a career, even though he didn’t set out to make it so. His love of music has reemerged, surprising many; Fairman, at an age when most others are winding down, has launched a music career with a string of infectious singles. Up next: Better Late Than Never, a follow-up to his deeply personal – and insanely danceable – Other Side.

Other Side (Official Music Video)

“Putting together Better Late Than Never was an interesting experience, because the pandemic made it impossible to record in the studio. Everybody recorded from home. I used an SM7B mic, which is the kind that Michael Jackson used to record Thriller. We had to do everything virtually with my engineer, to track all the vocals and all of that, but you can’t tell if it was produced in a studio or not. The quality is that good. It really speaks to the technology available today, and the creative ways to get product out during a pandemic. I was in awe of so many top artists and unknown acts, who dropped new albums and singles during the past year when touring and playing live was impossible to do.”

Better Late Than Never stays true to Fairman’s roots, a pop-and-R&B-infused track that’s at once Spotify-fresh and decidedly old school, in that infectious, groove sort-of-way.

“It’s Tinashe meets Stevie Wonder meets, perhaps, Nick Jonas,” Fairman says. “I wanted a really cool vibe that was both current and throwback at the same time. I’m really excited for this song to drop.” Look for Michael’s new single to debut just in time for summer.

Fairman’s honeyed voice on Better Late Than Never proves that he’s more than a soap wunderkind. There’s a playful seriousness to his music; he’s not Katy Perry, who made an art of excess – maximalist pop, bras squirting whipped cream, carnivalesque live shows – but his songs compel you to have fun, even if the lyrics are rooted in adversity.

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

“Everyone goes through dark times in their lives,” Fairman says. “For me, it’s about overcoming them. You can either give up or fight back. My music is about hope.”

While Michael Fairman’s music career is better late than never, it underscores the success he’s had doing everything else with his career; producing the Agnes Nixon and General Hospital 55th Anniversary tributes, creating SoapCity for Sony, hosting and co-producing the Inside Salem: Days of our Lives Podcast launching Michael Fairman TV, and so much more. Most of us realize, as we age, that we can’t make the puzzle pieces of our lives fit and we make peace with that. Michael Fairman keeps reaching into his past to discover more and more about himself. The experiences act as rocket fuel for his art, with moments big and small serving as inspiration for the next chapter in an already amazing career. The world may have changed, but Michael Fairman is going to keep doing his thing, with no regret for yesterday and no fear of tomorrow.

Read the entire Q&A with Michael Fairman, below:


FOLLOW MICHAEL FAIRMAN



You grew up in the Midwest. Please tell me a little about your childhood.

I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I was growing up, I felt unsafe to go to school. I was bullied by the other kids. So, I took solace with my mom at home, and there was a period of time where I wouldn’t go to school at all. So, I would watch soap operas with her. I would watch One Life to Live, which was my favorite show, but I’d also watch All My Children, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless to name a few. I became a sponge; I soaked up every character, every important date, and every storyline. When it came to soaps, I knew it all. I loved the genre because I felt like these people were my family. These were the friends I didn’t have at school. So, the bullying that I experienced as a kid proved to be invaluable to me later in my life and career. That’s really how it all started. Nowadays, when I hear and read about young people who have been on the receiving end of cyber-bulling or attacks for just being there authentic selves and who they are, or whatever makes them different than the “norm”, it always strikes a chord in me. We all have to do better, and pay attention, to what we say and how we say it, as it can leave a lasting impression on a young person’s life.


You originally had dreams of being a singer.

As a very young kid, I knew that I wanted to do music. I wanted to sing, I wanted to have an album out, I wanted to do pop, soul, and R&B. I had no interest in Broadway. My dream was to be on top of the music charts. There just wasn’t much opportunity to do that in Milwaukee. There was Chicago, which was geographically close, but it wasn’t Los Angeles or New York. So, I left Milwaukee at age 17, moved to L.A. I struggled to connect with the L.A. music scene at that time. I thought, “I don’t know if I’m in the right place for the kind of music I want to do.” Back then, in the early ‘80s, New York was amazing. You had Studio 54 and all of that. I was like, “You know what? I think I’m gonna go to New York.” I moved cross-country and played a lot of nightclubs in Manhattan, like Sweetwater’s, which was primarily an R&B club. That’s the kind of music that I gravitated towards.

Michael Fairman’s virtual interview with virtual interview with
Y&R‘s Sharon Case, Mark Grossman and Jordi Vilasuso

How did you end up getting into the world of soaps?

As a young kid, I loved producing things. I loved the aspect of taking all these different elements and putting them together into something entertaining. I would make my mother and my sister sit through my little shows, but I never thought, “This will be a career.” Fast forward. I’d moved to New York, and there was a popular nightclub called Tatou. The Daytime Emmy Awards were held in New York City at the time, and I started doing a benefit called ‘Night of the Daytime Stars’ the evening before the actual Emmy ceremonies, which featured the casts, nominees, and presenters from daytime television. We did it to raise money for AIDS research, and it became a staple event. That’s how I got into the soap opera world, professionally.


When did you put your singing career on hold?

I had reached a point in New York where the grind of doing the showcases became too much. Back then, there was no Digital Age like we have now. You had to play live, and if the A&R rep from the record label didn’t come down to that venue, you were screwed. Let’s say you hired a band, you did all the promotion, and you put out the leaflets or whatever you did to promote it…and then nobody on the A&R side shows up. It had nothing to do with how good you were. You’d fronted this money, had done all of this work, and gotten your hopes up that you might get signed to a deal. They RSVP, and then the A&R rep doesn’t make it because he had another commitment that suddenly came up. It was an emotional rollercoaster, and I got burned out.


At one point, you started splitting your time between L.A. and New York. How come?

I flew out to L.A. in 1991 and worked for Dick Clark Productions on the Daytime Emmys. They needed somebody who knew the soaps, so I was brought in to help the head writer craft the script for the Daytime Emmy Awards Show. I was living in L.A. and doing TV production half of the time; I was living in New York and working in the music business the other half. Ultimately, I decided to move back to L.A. permanently, and started getting a lot of production gigs for television. It was a fun time. I did the Soap Opera Digest Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, and the American Music Awards. Then, I got a job at E! working as a writer/producer for a talk show called Pure Soap. So, that’s kind of how my involvement in TV production evolved.

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

You worked for E! from 1994-97.

E! was very different back then. I was a writer/producer working on several shows, including one called Celebrity Close-Up. I might get a Nicole Kidman assignment, so I would have to put together footage of Nicole Kidman and then write the story around that. You don’t actually have Nicole Kidman there. You’re just writing around the footage. It was a great boot camp, a great place for learning. And then, with Pure Soap, we were the first talk show in soap operas. It was great, because I would do all the segment packages, interview most of the people, and then put it all together. E! was a great place to learn things that would help me later on in my career.


In 1997, you left E! and moved over to Sony, where you executive-produced the soap opera website, SoapCity.

Sony had Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy in an interactive gaming environment on the Internet. They wanted to do something with The Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives, because they owned these properties. Since I had all of the expertise and knowledge when it came to these shows, I was made the executive producer of SoapCity.

There was nothing like this at the time on the web. Soaps were still a big deal – there were 13 or 14 shows at that time – so we literally created the individual show sites for Y&R and Days, and also created the brand SoapCity to market them. Our content included news and exclusive interviews. We then built show sites for The Guiding Light and As the World Turns, and expanded our coverage to include ABC’s shows, even though we didn’t have their official sites. I had a four-year contract and a team of 10 people, and am so proud of how much content we produced within that time.


SoapCity ended up going defunct. What happened?

The business executives wanted to monetize it, which I get, but this was the early 2000’s timeframe and they were so far ahead of the game in terms of trying to make money on downloads. That was the beginning of the end for SoapCity. Up until that point, it was this amazing platform that soap fans could just enjoy and eat up. Still, I look back on it as an amazing experience. We were pioneers in the respect that it was something that hadn’t been done before, and I’m very proud of what we created.

Dr. Oz Interview – Dr. Oz Show – 45th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards Winner

Is it true that you produced a special for Prince?

I worked for ABC in Concert when I lived in New York, and one of our specials was The Ryde Dyvine by Prince. We flew to Paisley Park to shoot it during the dead of winter in Minneapolis, there was snow all around, and it was freezing cold. At one point, I’m standing there as a producer, still in disbelief that I’m at Paisley Park. Prince was, and is, a huge idol of mine. I remember turning around at one point, and Prince was right there in front of me!  He smiled at me and said, “Hi, friend,” and that was it [laughs]. He just stood there, not talking, because Prince didn’t talk much at that time to anyone! It was a bit of an awkward moment, but in the most beautiful way possible. It was Prince for God sakes!


As a producer of the Daytime Emmy Awards, what are some of your favorite moments?

I have been fortunate that on several of the years I have been involved in the production that some major soap opera milestones happened, and some, of course, have remained my favorites. I produced the General Hospital 55th Anniversary Tribute, the Guiding Light tribute when it took its final bow, and Days of Our Lives’ Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes Lifetime Achievement Award package. I’m very thankful that so many of these have landed in my lap. Over the years, depending on the structure of the production, I’ve also created many nominee packages, where I’ve had to pick that one moment to showcase that nominee in their category. I’ve also been a frequent advisor to the executive producers, providing them insight on what happened during the year in soaps or daytime television as a whole.

However, the one segment I’m most proud of is the Agnes Nixon tribute. Unfortunately, when you’re doing an award show on a network or cable channel, all you have is two, maybe two-and-a-half minutes to tell the story. So, you have to make cuts. It’s very difficult to do, because the powers-that-be often force your hand and you have to cut people out. On my “Michael Fairman Channel,” I extended the Agnes Nixon tribute to a 20-minute version. I feel it’s such a great piece, because I was able to interview former One Life to Live and All My Children stars for it, including:  Cameron Mathison, Erika Slezak, Kim Delaney, Robert S. Woods, Peter Bergman, Michael E. Knight, Thorsten Kaye, Andrea Evans, and so many more, and all of these people gave it its full life and impact, and showed the power of Agnes’ storytelling, and the legacy she has left behind.


Tribute packages are highly visible. There must be a tremendous amount of pressure to get them done on time, and to get them right.

That’s where the producing skills come in. I really do like the challenge of putting it all together. What’s the look and feel going to be? What are the clips going to be? Who needs to be represented? How do we tell this story? How do we do it in an effective way that’s done in a short amount of time? So, that’s basically what I’ve done on most of the shows.

Chloe Lanier Interview – General Hospital – 45th Annual Daytime Emmys – Younger Actress Winner

I’m sure that this type of work challenges both sides of your brain.

I think one of the things I’ve had to learn about producing, is that you need both the left and the right side of your brain to succeed. Your product comes from the creative side, and but then you have to be able to organize it. A lot of time is spent putting the pieces together. It’s not necessarily the most fun, but the key is being able to put it all together from a practical standpoint and also still be creative with it.

Being independent as my own brand and not aligned with a known media entity has been a double-edged sword, because a lot of the time I’m a lone wolf. I’m one of only a few reporters that has their own website, Michael Fairman TV, while most soap opera sites are ran by the networks or media companies and conglomerates. It was a conscious decision to go that route. I do my own thing because I felt I had to make my own space. It gave me much more freedom to create what I feel is relevant and important. The downside is that we’re in a difficult economy. I don’t have a marketing team behind me like a Soap Opera Digest may have. So, it’s always been this yin-yang for me. There are always questions running around in the back of my mind: Can I keep doing this independently? Does it make sense being my own guy? Should I do something else as part of a bigger organization? I wrestle with that constantly.


What ranks as your biggest soap moment?

My all-time favorite performance ever was Judith Light as Karen Wolek in One Live to Live, when Karen takes the stand and admits that she’s a prostitute. It was the most amazing performance I’ve ever seen, and to this day it holds up well. It was such a transcendent, captivating moment. In terms of pure talent, I think Judith is one of the greatest actresses ever. Period. She’s amazing.

Coincidental story; I was an extra on a film when I was an actor in L.A., and she was dating Robert Desiderio at the time, who eventually became her husband. She was on the set that day, and I was like, “Oh, my God, Judith Light is here! I’ve got to meet Judith!” So, I get my chance to introduce myself, and I explained that I was torn between living in New York and living in L.A. At the time, she herself was living in New York doing One Life to Live. I nervously asked her what she thought, and what she would suggest…should I go to New York? Should I stay in L.A.? All the while, she’s looking at me like I’m probably certifiably insane [laughs]. But I made a friend that day, and when I came to New York, Judith got me a part as an under-five on One Life to Live. I am very fortunate, because Judith has been in my life in some way for many years.

Camila Banus Interview – Days of Days 2019

Biggest soap thrill?

Fast forward. Outfest is an LGBTQ film festival here in Los Angeles, and I got hired to produce a 25-year retrospective of HIV/AIDS in film and television. We’re talking Philadelphia, Angels in America, the whole gamut, and I had to put together this nine-minute tribute for the event. Then they told me that the presenter of my retrospective was going to be Judith Light. My mouth dropped! That was a thrill of a lifetime!


What is the greatest misperception when it comes to daytime TV?

There is something to be said about daytime television. These are some of the hardest working people in the industry. They always figure out a way to get their scenes and episodes done with no time to spare. I never like it when they get a bad rap. I don’t think people understand how hard it is to do these shows. I’ve seen it firsthand. I know how hard it is to do eight shows a week. It’s a grind. The actors are doing an obscene number of pages of a script on a daily basis. It’s not like it used to be in the ‘70s, ‘80s, or even the 1990s, when the actors had time to rehearse. The day was blocked and structured so much differently back then. Now, they hardly have any time to rehearse. Think about it; they get all of this dialogue thrown at them, they barely have time to look at it, and then they go do it with only one take. That’s what goes on.


You make interviews look easy. Are you naturally introverted or extroverted?

That’s a great question. In my personal life, I think I’m more of an introvert, but when the camera is on and it’s time to go, then I’m able to turn it on and become an extrovert. When I was doing my Soap Nation Live! podcast, or when I hosted the NBC Days of Our Lives podcast, I knew that I had to be on my game when we went live. The same is true today; whenever I do a show or conduct an interview, something in me clicks. Interestingly, many of the actors that I interview are the same way. They aren’t showy and flashy in real life as fans might expect. They’re not out there trying to be the life of the party. But they can turn it on for an interview or a PR event.

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

What’s your secret to a great interview?

The number one rule is that you’ve got to make the subject feel comfortable. Whether you’re a journalist, a reporter, or a host, it is absolutely critical that you earn the trust of the subject. They have to feel comfortable with you, otherwise you’re not going to produce a great interview. It’s not always easy, but you have to win them over so they feel at ease. I have been very fortunate, because the people that I’ve built relationships with know that I’m not going to do anything to them that is going to harm them. I’m not going for the jugular. My reputation makes it easier for me to earn the trust of someone new, but I still have to back it up when we start talking.

The second rule is to be authentic. I don’t know how to be anything other than my authentic self. I’m probably the worst person to have on your poker team because you see everything in my face [laughs]. The only way that I can live with myself and get through each day is to be me. I don’t know how to do it any other way.

Lastly, I think you also have to have fun with people. Nobody wants to go into an interview feeling like, “Am I going to hate this?” You want them to want to talk to you, and not feel like it’s drudgery. Imagine being an actor, and you’ve just done 20 interviews, and then Michael Fairman comes in for the final interview of the day. You’re exhausted, but you’ve still got to do this interview. Well, I think it helps if Michael Fairman is on point, keeps it light, injects a little humor, and helps make the experience as painless as possible…and, maybe even a little fun.


What are some of your biggest interview pet peeves?

As someone who’s interviewed people for many years, you know when you’re in the hands of a good interviewer. There’s nothing that I hate more than watching somebody interview someone, and they’re not listening to what the other person is saying. The subject has just said something meaningful, and the interviewer isn’t responding to it in real time. A lot of interviewers are so focused on running through their list of questions that they won’t deviate from the script. I’m like, “Get off the paper, know who you’re talking to, and act like a human being. Have a real conversation.” I guarantee you, the piece that you’re doing is going to be great if you choose to have a real conversation with your subject.

The other thing that drives me nuts is when someone doesn’t do their homework. I might be standing on my spot on the red carpet at the Daytime Emmy Awards, and there might be someone from a fashion magazine standing next to me. They might know fashion, but they don’t have a clue who many of the soap stars are, and they’re asking me to give them the details. I’ve got a job to do, too. So, do some preliminary research before you show up.


Journalism is not for the faint of heart.

I’m sure we all have those moments of like, “Am I a glutton for punishment?” And you wonder if you’re making a difference. There are times when I don’t know. I could write a story, and I’m convinced that it’s going to get so much traction, and that people are going to love it…and then nobody reads it. And then I’ll write something that I think isn’t going to command attention, and then I get this incredible feedback. It makes you wonder if you’re barometer is off [laughs]. Journalism can be a thankless job. It’s very hard, and I don’t think people even understand the amount of work it takes. At the end of the day, you want people to read or see your work. That’s why you do it in the first place.

It’s same thing with my music. As I’ve said, a big reason for getting back into music is because I don’t want to regret anything. Making music is fulfilling, but I still want people to hear it. I would love to get one of my songs on any of the pop, R&B, A/C or dance charts. People say it’ll never happen, but that’s something that I aspire to. You have to keep challenging yourself. I keep challenging myself to write another catchy song from my heart and my experiences, and to make sure when my voice comes on listeners streaming platforms (and hopefully one day the radio), that they know its identifiably me with my own distinct vocals and sound. At the end of the day, you don’t want to look back at your life and have regrets.

Photo courtesy Brian Kaminski

COVID impacted every corner of our economy, including Hollywood.

There was so much at stake, as I’m sure is the case in every industry, so there was a lot of pressure to figure out ways to get back to work while staying safe. A lot of money has been put into these productions just for the safety protocols that didn’t exist pre-COVID. They’re getting tested at all times of the day, there’s Plexiglas put in between the stations, and they’re shooting a whole different way. Each show’s doing it a little bit differently, but that’s just what they’ve had to do. And congratulations to them for getting up and running. And I want to say that daytime did it first. The Bold and the Beautiful was the very first American network show back in production, not just the first soap opera. The other shows were quick to follow their lead. Because of COVID, I still can’t go to the set and interview the stars, but I can bring the stars to the fans by doing Zoom interviews virtually.


COVID also changed the way actors connect with their fans.

When I first started in the digital space, there were only a few outlets out there. With social media, anything is possible. COVID helped change the landscape as well; actors are interviewing other actors. They’ve launched their own shows on YouTube. They’ve launched their own podcasts. The space also has become more saturated and it forces you to up your game. I don’t want to be the eighth person to interview someone – by then everyone is already sick of seeing and hearing the same thing [laughs].


Please tell me about the Michael Fairman YouTube channel.

I really want my Michael Fairman YouTube channel to be all things, Michael Fairman. I want it to be the place to go when you want those in-depth celebrity interviews. The content runs the gamut from short clips to longer interviews that range from 30-to-60 minutes. The short clips are from interviews that I’ve done on the red carpet at award shows. I hope that the channel connects with those avid fans out there; I try to maintain a balance of being the voice of the fan, being a subject matter expert, and helping promote shows. There are other people out there that are much snarkier in their stance and brand, but that’s not the way I’ve chosen to go. Not saying I’m right, either. They have been extremely successful.


You started out pursuing music before moving into TV production. Now, you’ve coming full circle.

The really hard part is that I buried the singing to focus on TV production, and I didn’t let anybody know about my secret passion until a few years ago. Getting back into singing has been the greatest. Interestingly enough, part of the problem is that people see celebrities – or anyone with an audience, for that matter – as single-faceted. They associate them with one thing. Fans associate me with soap operas, so they want to know if Genie Francis is going to be on General Hospital. It’s been a little difficult with that audience to say, “I’m singing, download my single, check out my music video.” Some people in the soap universe have been supportive, but others just don’t want any part of it. That’s why I’m trying to develop a separate audience for my music career.


Were people surprised when you started making music again?

Most people in that world were shocked. We live in an interesting time – there was a day when motion picture actors were only in motion pictures. They weren’t on TV. We’re not in that time anymore. It’s liberating. I like seeing the actors that I love on daytime television doing something else. The soap fans support over the years to my work in that field does not go unnoticed by me. They have been amazing, So, I hope they will come around, and welcome the fact that I’m also doing other things now.

Eric Martsolf and Stacy Haiduk Interview – Day of Days 2019

Other Side is a fantastic song. How did it come to be?

Interestingly, the song was very easy for me to write. That isn’t always the case, but this one was different because a couple of things happened in my life. First, my mother had passed away of Alzheimer’s, which was devastating. There’s something to be said about a mother and son bond. She was the one in the family that loved the soaps, and she was a very big champion of my music. Then, I was at a Christmas party when I learned that George Michael had passed. He was my absolute favorite singer-songwriter. He had those amazing, beautiful, soulful lyrics, and he was a master at the delivery of those songs. When I heard the news, I was so upset that I couldn’t breathe. To this day, I am not sure I have fully recovered from it.

My point being, those losses gave me pause. I thought, “Why am I wasting whatever time I have left? Why am I not writing and singing?” I was blessed with this natural gift to sing, but I had been neglecting it to focus on other things. So, that was the impetus to write Other Side.


What’s the meaning behind Other Side?

The song is really about facing your darkest times. How do you find hope amidst whatever is in front of you? How to you rise above? For me, I had suffered from chronic back pain for many years and I had already been through multiple spinal surgeries. Suddenly, I was facing the prospect of another surgery. At that time, I also didn’t feel like I had the support of people around me. It was cause for reflection; when you step back and look at the big picture, you only have yourself at the end of the day. The message of the song is simple: If you can find one thing to hold onto during the darkest, most horrific times in your life, regardless of how small it may seem to others, it can get you through to the other side.


Please tell me about the video for Other Side.

I released the song on Spotify and Apple Music on March 5, 2020, and then COVID hit and everything shut down. The timing wasn’t good; we were going to shoot the music video in March, but we were suddenly locked down in L.A. and production stopped, so I had to keep rejiggering the concept of the video and how it would go with the song. It was the end of summer before I was able to get a crew together in a place that would let us shoot. The video wasn’t originally going to be shot in a boxing ring, but it was such a perfect analogy of fighting the fight, and of getting back up no matter what life throws in your way.

Then, to have what happened with COVID and racial injustice and everything else that transpired, it made perfect sense to include imagery associated with the pandemic and Black Lives Matter and equality. It also shows some of the struggles that our war veterans go through, as well the struggles of those suffer from domestic violence. The message being, whoever you are, whatever you’re going through, you can persevere and get through to the other side.

Can’t Let You Go (Official Music Video)

Your song, Can’t Let You Go, has a great dance groove.

First of all, I love Dua Lipa, I think she’s amazing artist. I was inspired to write Can’t Let You Go based on what Dua Lipa had been doing before the release of her most recent album, Future Nostalgia. I actually did a cover of Dua Lipa’s song, Electricity, on the Michael Fairman YouTube channel. I wanted to have something that you could dance to, so I wrote Can’t Let You Go with her in mind.


I’ve read where your song, Thing About Me is a response to some Twitter trash-talk.

I remember being in the recording studio and someone said, “What do you want to write about?” And I was like, “You know, I’m really sick of the way people are coming at me on Twitter.” There was just a lot of negative stuff. Fans were convinced that I was favoring one soap star over another, and I was getting trash-talked all over Twitter. There were so many haters. I was like, “Alright, here’s the deal. I’m going to come out with my first single, and you’re going to be surprised that I even sing. You don’t know a thing about me.” It was really a strong stance to come out with; you hate on me, but you don’t know a thing about me. It’s easy to sit behind a keyboard, faceless, and tear somebody down. It’s really an act of cowardice played out on social media.


Can’t Let You Go is another song with a great dance vibe. The lyrics sound deeply personal.

I wanted to write a dance/pop/R&B song. I wanted it to be something really cool. Can’t Let You Go has been used on The Doctors syndicated talk show. As far as the lyrics go, it’s really about what you do when a relationship ends and you’re trying to move on, trying to move yourself forward, but you just can’t let go. You’re stuck. So, this song is about breaking free in order to move forward and love again.


Is ageism a factor in what you do as an artist?

I am so inspired by the young artists of today. There are so many amazing singer-songwriters and pop artists out there. I listen to their stuff all the time, and when I try to converse with people my age, they’re like, “I don’t know who that is.” My point is, age is a number because in your mind, you’ve got to keep up, keep young mentally, and stay involved with what’s going on with pop culture. I want to know what’s going on. I think a curious mind and a desire to be on top of what’s happening keeps you young.


Final Question: If you had one piece of advice for other aspiring journalists, what would that be?

I would say that I think the key to success in this kind of field is to remain relevant and find a topic or niche that perhaps no one is doing or approach it in a new way. We’re at a time where there are so many people pushing into this space. If they’ve got a ring light, a camera, a computer, and a microphone, and they’ve set up shop in their homes, they can create content.  So, constantly evolve and hone your craft and find your voice – the thing that makes your work distinctly you is what ultimately will make people take notice whether in print, online, or on video.

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

Write what you know.

That shopworn idiom has served many an author well, launching the prolific careers of modern-day novelists such as John Grisham, who pivoted from law and legislature to pen The Firm, and Agatha Christie, who grew up hooked on Sherlock Holmes, and whose 78 crime novels have sold 2 billion copies. It’s also a formula that John DeDakis has used to great effect, the journalist-turned-novelist drawing inspiration from time spent in Washington’s political orbit to craft a series of critically-acclaimed books that feature his strong-minded protagonist, Lark Chadwick. DeDakis also plumbs the unimaginable pain in his personal life – the suicide of his sister, and the loss of a son to an accidental heroin overdose – to infuse both plot and character with the kind of rocket fuel that makes putting down his books damned near impossible.

Scholarly in wire-rimmed spectacles, with a kind face and tufts of thinning gray hair, DeDakis’ 44 years as a journalist represent the foundation stone on which his literary career is built. His most recent novel, Fake, is a reflection of our nation’s politically-polarized zeitgeist, an America cut into two distinct halves, the news that we consume dismissed by the other side with immediate and overwhelming skepticism. If Trump’s four years in office did anything, it accelerated the growing divide between us, weaponizing social media to tear at the very fabric of our democracy. DeDakis cleverly taps into this mistrust. Fake opens with popular First Lady Rose Gannon dying suddenly (and mysteriously) during an interview with White House correspondent Lark Chadwick, thrusting Lark into a media-bashing frenzy fueled by fake news. As she works to uncover the truth, she soon finds herself the target of personal attacks. The book’s premise shines a spotlight on the disruptive power of fake news, and DeDakis proves himself up to the task: Fake is the rare thriller that lives up to the billing, a tension-filled page-turner that ups the ante in a genre overrun with hype.


Despite his literary success, John DeDakis is anything but an overnight sensation. He’s a grinder who got his start working in radio and television newsrooms in Wisconsin, Germany, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. He’s interviewed the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, covered President Ronald Reagan, and worked closely with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. His career as a journalist came first, an opening act that spanned four decades before transitioning into his current gig as an award-winning novelist. It took him 10 years to publish his first book, Fast Track, which would serve as the connective tissue between one career based on facts, and another steeped in fiction. Surprisingly, the neophyte novelist chose to write from a female’s point-of-view, even though he’d never attempted anything like that before.

“To my astonishment – and relief – I discovered that writing in a female voice wasn’t as hard as I expected,” DeDakis says. “Beginning with my mother, I’ve always found it easier to talk with women than with men because, in my experience, women are much more open and nuanced about expressing their emotions. I’m fascinated by the stories they tell, and the way they tell them. Lark Chadwick came to me naturally, which was a pleasant surprise.”

DeDakis is from Wisconsin. His father was a lawyer, and DeDakis cut an incongruous figure against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, dreaming of a political career despite his generation’s strong antigovernment sentiment. The investigative journalist in him was also apparent early on: DeDakis was equally comfortable debating how to remedy the forlorn landscape of Detroit’s drug-infested, decaying East Side, with its houses charred by arson, sagging porches, and front lawns turned to thickets of brown weeds, as he was weighing whether to send American soldiers to fight and die in the jungles of Vietnam. He took this curiosity with him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he volunteered at a campus radio station. Not only did he get his first taste of reporting, he also tasted tear gas while covering an anti-war riot in the wake of the Kent State massacre. Vietnam, it seemed, was everywhere. With the prospect of being drafted looming, DeDakis decided to enlist in the Army.

“I figured it gave me more control over my future,” he says. “I might still end up in Vietnam, but there might be options available other than combat.”

Photo by Lisa Strickland

Surprisingly, DeDakis found himself shipped off to Germany at the eleventh hour. His time as a campus reporter paved the way for him to spend the next two-plus years working for the military’s radio and television wing in Frankfurt. It was here that he interviewed Alfred Hitchcock. The 40-minute one-on-one with the five-time Academy Award nominee sealed the deal on a career path. Returning stateside in 1974, DeDakis resumed his pursuit of a BA in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, earning the degree three years later. From 1976 to 1983, DeDakis was a reporter at WMTV (NBC-15) in Madison, a just-the-facts-ma’am journalist covering energy and transportation issues. Then, from 1983 to 1988, DeDakis was a General Assignment correspondent with CBN News in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Fortuitously, DeDakis was CBN’s White House correspondent during the last three years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. In addition to interviewing Reagan, he also interviewed former president Jimmy Carter.

“I might not have known it at the time, but that period in my life really set the stage for the fiction writing that I would do later,” DeDakis reflects. “Because I’d spent time in the White House, I knew some of the challenges that Lark would face in her own career.”

In 1988, DeDakis jumped at the chance to work as a writer at CNN, the network then in its eighth year of existence. He moved to Atlanta, and nine months later was promoted to editor. It was the start of a long and distinguished career at the news channel, one that would provide fertile ground for the development of Lark Chadwick.

“My time at CNN was invaluable when it came to character development,” DeDakis says. “Lark expects the truth, although she rarely gets it. There were so many things I learned at CNN that really fed into who Lark is. I started writing Fast Track in 1995 while I was at CNN, Atlanta. It took 10 years get that first book published.”

DeDakis moved to D.C. in 2005, taking the job of editor for Carol Costello’s show, CNN Daybreak. Daybreak was cancelled almost as soon as he arrived in town, and DeDakis was reassigned to a new show, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, which began airing around the time that Hurricane Katrina hit. The Situation Room found an immediate audience, and DeDakis found his groove. He worked his way up to Senior Copy Editor for the unflappable Blitzer, working on a daily basis with the man who’d reported on everything from the withdrawal of PLO and Syrian forces in Beirut, to the first Israeli-Egyptian peace conference in Egypt.

“It was a great experience,” DeDakis says. “Wolf was a well-respected name in the industry, and someone with a reputation for doing things the right way. He’s someone that I’m sure Lark would admire greatly.”

Write what you know.

When John DeDakis’ sister, Georgia, committed suicide in 1980, she was just 38-years-old. Bright and articulate, Georgia could have been a concert pianist or a surgeon. Instead, she decided to take her own life. This isn’t the sort of pain that DeDakis had expected to plumb when he started to write Fast Track, but he soon found himself drawn back to the Georgia’s death, revisiting that dark day and its aftermath.

Fast Track introduces the world to Lark Chadwick, a young woman searching for purpose as she solves the mystery surrounding the car-train collision that orphaned her as an infant. Because the novel deals redemptively with issues of suicide, DeDakis had no choice but to follow the breadcrumbs back to his past. Part of what makes Fast Track so compelling is DeDakis’ willingness to meet these demons head-on. Reading Fast Track, we’re reminded that suicide doesn’t discriminate: Fashion designer Kate Spade appeared to have it everything – worldwide appeal, a successful brand, and, most of all, a beautiful, 13-year-old daughter. She hanged herself anyway. That DeDakis would venture back to such a horrific event in his own life is at once brave and ambitious.

Photo courtesy John DeDakis

“It was an emotional journey,” DeDakis says. “Survivors of someone who commits suicide go through the trauma, which is overwhelming, and then are left to deal with the stigma, shame, and isolation that comes next. Once I got to the place where I was ready to tackle the material, the process of writing Fast Track became cathartic for me.”

The car-train collision in Fast Track also pulls directly from DeDakis’ past. In 1959, he witnessed a car-train collision in Chadwick, Illinois. The crash killed three people, including 11-year-old Raymond Stage, two years older than DeDakis at the time. DeDakis named his protagonist after the town.

“That first book really set the stage for everything that’s followed,” he says. “Lark has been at the center of the other books I’ve written. It’s been quite the journey so far.”

Write what you know.

In 2016, John DeDakis released his fourth book, Bullet in the Chamber, which draws heavily on his own experience as a White House correspondent covering the last three years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It also draws upon his grief following the fatal heroin overdose of his youngest son, Stephen, in 2011.

“The book’s title and the cover image of a bullet in a syringe reflect my belief that a pusher who sells a fatal dose of heroin should be charged with second-degree murder, because it’s like selling a pistol with one bullet in the chamber to a person who will use it to play Russian roulette.”

John DeDakis and his son, Stephen
Photo courtesy John DeDakis

In Bullet, Lark once again finds herself at the wrong place at the right time: Front-row center when the White House press briefing room is suddenly attacked. The president is missing, the first lady’s life is at risk, and Lark’s personal life is falling apart when the man she loves disappears. What unfolds is a story about journalistic integrity – and skullduggery – at the highest level. The tightly-written page-turner has received wide acclaim, winning numerous awards.

“In this book, I fictionalize Stephen’s story and pour it into a thriller about drugs, drones, and journalism told from the point of view of my long-time protagonist” DeDakis says. “It wasn’t something that I took lightly.”

Bullet reminds us that the opioid epidemic in the United States is no longer relegated to places like Atlanta’s Bluff neighborhood, notorious for its gangs and its open-air heroin market, where dealers swarm unfamiliar cars looking for new customers. Opioids have rolled through Middle America, decimating entire towns and snuffing out some of our best and brightest, killer drugs omnipotent in their reach and godlike in their sway over the addicted.

“Stephen had an emergency room experience that revealed he’d been using heroin, DeDakis says. “Up until then he’d hidden it very well.”

When Stephen borrowed his dad’s car and went missing in 2011, a parent’s worst fear was realized.

“When he disappeared, it was out of character for him, so I was pretty sure heroin was a factor,” DeDakis says. “As a parent, part of you goes into denial mode when something like that happens, but as each day passed it became harder to hold onto hope.”

Stephen’s body was found a week later, leaving DeDakis devastated. After years of grief therapy, DeDakis decided to incorporate the traumatic experience into Bullet.

“Part of the reason I wrote Bullet was for the catharsis of it. I found a way to take Stephen’s story and imbue it into the ongoing series that I’d written.”

Write what you know.

John DeDakis retired from CNN in 2013. He’s won an Emmy for his role in CNN’s coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks. He’s published 5 novels, teaches writing, edits manuscripts, and is currently working on his memoir. Oh, and Fake likely won’t be the last we see of Lark Chadwick. There are ideas rolling around, characters being developed, plot twists calling his name.

Wolf Blitzer and John DeDakis
Photo courtesy John DeDakis

The journalist-turned-novelist is a natural-born storyteller, and his female protagonist is itching for more adventure.

That’s good news for the rest of us.

Let’s go back to your roots. What was life like in Wisconsin?

Life doesn’t always turn out the way you expect, and that’s what I tell all my writing students. In journalism, we call it a story. In real life, it’s usually a crisis. In fiction, it’s a plot twist. We all have those plot twists that cause our life to go in new and unexpected directions.

In my case, the plan was to go into politics. My dad was a lawyer, he and I were going to go into practice together, and I was going to use law as a stepping stone to a political career. And, if my career trajectory had turned out the way I had intended, I would have been the guy sworn in on the Capitol steps in 2008 instead of that guy from Kenya – or whatever country Trump falsely accused President Obama of coming from. But, for the good of the country, I changed direction and didn’t become our nation’s 44th president [laughs].


You came of age just as the Vietnam War was heating up.

In 1968, I went to the University of Wisconsin. The Vietnam War was a big deal. It was in an all the papers. Whenever I’d go to class, I was bombarded with viewpoints from both the left and the right, and I was pressured to take a position, either for or against the war. What annoyed me was that the rhetoric was so overheated. I just knew that whoever was trying to spin me was leaving out something salient that would undermine their position. So, I was always suspicious of both the left and the right.

I was in a lot of bull sessions about the war, and I always walked away with more questions than answers. I’d argue the right-wing line of my Nixon republican parents, and when I was at home on Thanksgiving, I’d argue the left-wing line I was hearing in school. When I was alone, I was confused. I volunteered at a campus radio station, because it seemed to me journalism was a good perch to sit on to sort it out. I covered an anti-war riot after Kent State and got tear gassed. When my parents learned that their little boy had gotten gassed, they encouraged me to transfer to a smaller school.


Did you fight in the war?

There was a draft back then, which was one of the reasons that the Vietnam War was so controversial. If your draft number was below 150, then you could get plucked from campus and thrown into the jungles of Vietnam. My number was 14, but I had a student deferment, which meant that I was okay for a while at least.

I transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Playboy magazine had voted it the No. 1 party school in the country, and I saw it as my personal mission to be the No. 1 partier [laughs]. I didn’t succeed, but I did such a good job of trying. My GPA was so low that I lost 20 credits and my student deferment when I transferred. That’s when I decided to enlist in the Army to avoid the draft and have more control over what I could do.

Two weeks before I was to be shipped out to Vietnam, my orders were changed to Germany. I spent the next two-and-a-half years at the headquarters of the American forces’ radio and television network in Frankfurt, Germany, doing interviews for a special events radio unit. One of the first interviews I did was with this guy named Alfred Hitchcock. I discovered what I was good at and what I loved, so when I got out of the Army and went back to journalism school.


You worked as a White House correspondent. How did that help you in writing your most recent book, Fake?

Well, it helps to have been there. You understand how much of a bubble the president is really in, and how tightly controlled the access is to the president. I mean, not every reporter can get into the Oval Office. When there’s a presidential event, it’s handled by a pool of reporters that rotate. I don’t think a lot of people realize that. There’s someone from a wire service, someone from a television network, someone from a radio network, and a still photographer. It’s a very tightly held group of people, and it rotates on a daily basis. Access to certain things is tightly controlled and extremely limited.

There are other things I observed from having been there. For example, the briefing room is very small. It only seats 50 people, and anything else is standing room only. If you spend any time there, you learn that the briefing room was built over the old White House swimming pool. FDR had the pool built when he was president because he had polio, and he swam in the pool as a means of therapy. Then, when Kennedy came along, he would swim in the pool fairly regularly, but he would also cohort with some of his paramours. Then, when Nixon came along, he built the press room over the pool. Reagan was president when I covered the White House, and videotape was only beginning to be used. Over the years it’s evolved. Instead of just being a big living room with chairs and a microphone, they’ve incorporated theater seating and wired it for radio, television, and the Internet, so now it’s really high tech. A big part of writing Fake was updating my knowledge of the technology that’s changed over time. I had to rely on some of my friends who still cover the White House, or who did at the time I was writing the book, to get an update on how it’s done now.


Your next big career move was to CNN.

I was pretty much behind-the-scenes at CNN. In 1988, I started as a writer at the CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Within nine months after I got there, they made me an editor, and editing is what I did for the rest of my career. It’s analogous to being a hockey goalie. Nobody ever sees the great saves in journalism. They’re only aware of you when something bad makes it on the air – factual errors, bad writing, misspelled words, bias, that kind of stuff. My job was to protect the anchor from saying anything bad.


How did you end up in Washington?

I transferred to D.C. in 2005 while working with Carol Costello, who was the anchor for the early morning show, CNN Daybreak. They canceled the show right after got there, and that’s when they reassigned me to a new show called The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, which started airing around the time of Hurricane Katrina. My schedule flipflopped completely. It changed from working overnights to prepare for a show that went on the air at five in the morning, to working through the morning and afternoon to prepare for a show that started at 4PM. The environment was interesting. This was before they remodeled the newsroom, so you had all these people were crammed into this tiny space – it felt like the engine room of the Titanic – people on top of each other [laughs]. Then, they built a new newsroom a couple of floors above the D.C. Bureau, which allowed us to spread out.

Photo by Lisa Strickland

You were one of Wolf Blitzer’s editors at CNN. What’s it like working with Wolf?

Wolf is smart enough that he can anchor the whole show without any script, but we had a stable of writers that was probably the best in the business. It was amazing to see how fast they wrote, and how clearly – all I usually had to do was look it over and turn it in.

It was very fast-paced, because the basic premise of the show is that it’s happening now. Even though we had an idea of what the day was going to look like, things would always change. As a result, there was always writing that was going on during the show, and updates that would be happening a nanosecond before Wolf would get the script. It was nerve-racking. Wolf is amazing – he’s unflappable. They throw changes at him all the time, and he just rolls with it. He’s not a diva. It was amazing to watch.


The Persian Gulf War made Wolf a household name.

A lot of people seem to think that Wolf was overseas and reporting from under a table, but that’s not actually true. Wolf was the Pentagon correspondent at the time, had been on the job for a few months, and had commented to his wife that this CNN thing wasn’t working out. She said, ‘Just give it a little more time, Wolf.’ And then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Wolf was on the air hour after hour after hour. He’s said that he owes his career to Saddam Hussein.


Let’s talk about your first book, Fast Track.

When I first started experimenting with writing outside of broadcast journalism, I was doing research for a biography of a friend of mine who had been murdered. I had access to his widow, his mistress, his writings, and some very interesting tape recordings. During the course of my reporting, I was digging up information about him that even the family didn’t know, which prompted his widow to request that I put it on hold. I respected her wishes, but eventually took a lot of the things that I learned in my research and poured those details into my first novel.


Where did the idea for Fast Track come from?

I was teaching myself the craft, and one of my exercises was to write a story about a personal experience. I started out with recounting of a car-train collision I’d witnessed when I was nine years old. I was in the dome car that was near the front of the train. It was the middle of the night, and I had a vantage point where I could look down past the engine to see the tracks ahead. Out of the corner of my eye, this automobile came out of nowhere and didn’t stop for the crossing. It just drove right in front of the train. We hit it. In my mind, I can still see the impact. All this debris came down on the dome, and we came to a stop. The collision killed everybody in the car.

Well, as I was writing about this during my exercise, I remembered back to a radio news report about a similar car-train collision in which an infant survived. I thought: What if that kid grew up and wanted to find out more about her past? This was about 15 years after my sister had killed herself, and I suddenly found myself revisiting what had happened to her. Those kinds of things don’t just leave you, so the thoughts and emotions just came flooding back. I ended up taking elements of her story and combining them with some of these other things from the collision. That really became the beginning of the story.


How long did it take you to get Fast Track published?

I started writing Fast Track in 1995, while I was still an editor at CNN in Atlanta. It took 10 years to get the agent that I have now – I was passed up by 38 others – and the manuscript went through 14 major revisions along the way. So, it really took a long time to figure it out, hone my craft, and find someone who felt that it was something they could make money on. Fast Track finally came out in 2005, right as I made the transition to D.C. I didn’t leave CNN until Troubled Water came up.


Lark Chadwick is the lead protagonist. Why write in a female voice?

There are really two reasons that I write as a female. One is a superficial reason; when I was starting to write this character, someone suggested that I should write in a way that stretches who I am, and since I’ve never been a woman before – at least in this life [laughs] – I thought I’d give it a try.


Did you find it difficult?

It wasn’t as hard as I expected, because emotions aren’t gender specific. We all have the same emotions. While I discovered that I could still draw from my own life, it also helped that there were a lot of women in my life at CNN – young women who worked as interns, young women in their mid-20s – who would tell me stories about their boyfriends, careers, families, and things like that. I would just listen to their stories, to the point where their voices became embedded in my subconscious. It also helped to have beta readers who would read early drafts of the story. A lot of these young women would give me their feedback on what was working, and, more importantly, what wasn’t working. That became invaluable to me.

I didn’t realize the deeper reason until I went through grief counseling after my son died of an accidental heroin overdose. I worked through things with my grief counselor for nearly two-and-a-half years, and then the grief counseling center invited me back a year later to give a speech at a fundraising banquet. As I was writing the speech, I discovered that I write as a woman because I’m trying to create a character that I wish my sister had allowed herself to become. Lark does not let a guy define her. She’s not a victim. She still falls for the bad boys, but she’s going to figure it out and not get trapped by her circumstances. That’s the spookiness of the subconscious. The deeper reason for writing Lark was hidden from me until I wrote Bullet in the Chamber.


Let’s talk about your second novel, Bluff. Did you know that you were going to write a second book with the same protagonist?

No, because I didn’t know I was going to be successful writing the first book. I can’t even remember when I thought about writing a second book, but I’m sure it was right around the time when Fast Track was published.


Bluff is set in Wisconsin, but Peru plays a big part in this novel.

One of the women I used to work with at CNN was an anchor, and we would play tennis after work. She told me about how she and her boyfriend went hiking along the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, in Peru. In Fast Track, one of the characters is Lionel Stone, a newspaper editor who becomes Lark’s mentor. As part of his backstory, his daughter dies in a mountain climbing accident, so I embellished that and created a mountain climbing accident in Peru. I just went with it from there.


Why did you visit Peru?

I’d written about seven drafts of the novel, and I was working from online pictures of the Inca Trail. I realized that I couldn’t fake this, that I really needed to go there and see it for myself. So, I booked a trip and spent 10 days in Peru. It was a great experience. I came back with so much material that could be used in the rewrite…anecdotes, texture, descriptions, things like that. The trail had been hidden from the Western world for centuries – it’s only been discovered in the last 100 years – so, I think just having gone to Peru and walked the Inca Trail made the book so much better.


Your third novel, Troubled Water, is set in Georgia. Why there?

My second son, James, was a student at Columbus State University in Georgia. We visited the school and the setting just seemed perfect for a book.


Tell me about Troubled Water.

In the first two books, Lark is a reporter at a weekly newspaper in southern Wisconsin. In Troubled Water, she becomes the cops-and-courts reporter in southern Georgia. It’s a daily newspaper, but it’s a troubled newspaper, so she’s getting into a bad situation – she just doesn’t know it.

As she is heading to this new job, she stops by the side of the road to relieve herself, and she discovers the body of a young woman who’s been strangled. It turns out to be the first victim of a serial killer who later strikes again. Lark has the inside track because she discovered the body, so she thinks she knows things about the crime that no one else knows.


Does Lark get in over her head?

The story explores the dynamic of working with the cops while she’s also navigating her new journalism job. The photographer that she has to work with is a little manic, but she’s also attracted to him, so there’s a little romantic flirtation going on. And then there’s the presidential race that she gets in touch with as well. So, there are a lot of things going on at the same time.


A Bullet in the Chamber has received critical praise. It’s also a very personal story for you in many ways.

Bullet is another book that came to me in a way that I didn’t expect. My son was missing for over a week, and I knew that heroin was likely going to be a factor in my son’s disappearance. I woke up from a dream with an image of a bullet in a syringe. That stayed with me, and eventually became the idea for the title.


The bullet being a metaphor for a lethal drug overdose.

I felt that if the cops could make the connection between the sale of the hit that killed my son, then they could charge the pusher with second-degree murder. In my opinion, it’s like selling a pistol with one bullet in the chamber, knowing that the buyer is going to play Russian roulette. The pusher doesn’t care about the consequences, he only cares about making the sale. It’s not first-degree murder. He doesn’t intend to kill anybody, but he still knows that it’s a distinct possibility.

As I was writing the book, I soon realized that it wasn’t as clear cut as that. I talked with everyone from prosecutors to cops, and I realized that it’s not so simple for the police to make that kind of connection. That’s something that Lark struggles with in the book, because a person who’s close to her is addicted and dies of a heroin overdose.


Was writing this book a form of catharsis for you?

I had Lark as a character, but it’s still based on the collateral damage that surrounded my life when Stephen went missing, and then was found dead. So, a lot of those scenes are ripped from reality, and yes, I was writing them as a catharsis. They’re also subplots to the bigger picture; I was also trying to create a story that was entertaining, and something that someone would want to read, even if they didn’t know me or cared about my personal story.

Since publication, it’s provided me with opportunities to talk with people about things like addiction and suicide. These are still stigmatized issues. The saving grace for me is that I’m able to write and talk about them. I think that it helps people realize they’re not alone. Grief is so isolating. You feel like you’re the only person who feels this way, that the world is going on without you and you’re stuck in this moment that will never go away. So, I try to help people understand that it’s possible to get through it, learn from it, and heal.


Let’s talk about Fake. Lark finds herself in D.C.

Since Fake is part of a series, you have to live with the characters that you’ve already created. In my third novel, Troubled Water, Lark is working as a cops-and-courts reporter in a fictitious Georgia town. She’s covering Will Gannon, the Governor of Georgia, who’s running for president. The dynamic continues in Bullet in the Chamber, where he’s become the new president and she’s started covering the White House.


Where’d you get the idea?

I was actually going in a different direction, but then Trump was elected president in 2016. The reason I wrote it this way is that I was troubled by Trump’s criticism of journalists, his portrayal of them as the enemy of the American people, and his assertion that they make up stories. I know from having been behind the scenes for nearly 50 years, making up stories is a firing offense at any reputable news organization. Although I resented Trump’s criticism and felt it was gratuitous, I didn’t set out to write an anti-Trump polemic. What I’ve always tried to do in all of my novels, is to give people a behind-the-scenes glimpse as to how journalism really does operate. Sure, there are some scoundrels. But there are also plenty of people who really try to play it straight.


Lark herself is a victim of fake news.

As journalism has evolved, social media has become much more front and center, and there’s a downside to that. We’re all journalists now because we have a smartphone and a social media account. Anytime you post something you’re a publisher – and yet, there is no editorial oversight. There’s no one saying, “Where’d you get that? How do you know that’s true?” People can post anything they want as ‘the truth,’ and in some cases it reaches millions of followers. There are real consequences to false information. So, one of the things that I tried to depict in Fake is the downside of being the victim of fake news.

John DeDakis

Let’s talk about your creative process. Do you set daily quotas on how many words or pages you want to write?

I’m really good at procrastination. I mean, that’s part of the process [laughs]. The thing I tell my students is that if you’re ruminating about your story, you’re still writing it, even if you’re not banging out 1,000 words a day. I try to help them realize that it can be a trap to set some of these goals. As a writer, how do you feel about yourself if you only do 800 words a day, or 250, or even zero? If you’re not careful, you can begin to feel that you have no business being a writer because you don’t have the discipline it takes to meet a self-imposed quota. You are human, so you need to allow for that. I share that advice with my students.


What is your creative process like?

One of the things that I really try to do is turn off my internal editor and write the first draft all the way through. I found that I can write a first draft in about nine months. I may not always know where I’m going, and I may not know exactly how I’m going to get to Point K, for example, but I know that I need to get to Point C first. Along the way, I allow for serendipity. I allow for not knowing where I’m going and just writing by the seat of my pants, to see what shows up. And I don’t look back; the story is going to keep going forward, and I’ll fix things during the rewrite.

There are times when I’ll compromise with my internal editor. I’ll sit with a chapter for a day or two, proofread and copyedit it, and then rough it in so that it’s decent. Then I’ll lock it in and move on, as opposed to constantly looping back to the first chapter. I’m a firm believer that if you keep going back to the beginning, you never make any forward momentum. Finishing that first draft is a real psychological hurdle, but you have to trust that you’ll get there. At that point the manuscript is this steaming pile of clay, but at least you’ve got something that you can really start to shape.


How do you deal with writer’s block?

I’ve learned that writer’s block is basically fear; fear of making a mistake, fear of getting it wrong, fear of not being good enough. This may sound counterintuitive, but the cure for writer’s block is to write. It’s not gonna be perfect the first time. There are times when it’s gonna suck. At least you’ll have something that you can look at objectively, and then you can make it better.

Being stuck in a rut is hard to escape, especially if you allow yourself to keep digging. I learned that as a radio reporter; when you’re on a deadline, you’ve got to write.

I was working at a radio station in Madison, Wisconsin, and the studio and transmitter was in a cornfield. I remember going outside and getting down on my knees and saying, ‘Lord, help me to write fast.’ It was almost as if the prayer itself needed editing, because it sounded like I was telling God to make me write fast, and that I was demanding it right now [laughs]. Well, I got up and went inside, and I never really looked back. I was able to write pretty fast after that, and since then I don’t usually get hung up.

Lisa Strickland and John DeDakis
Photo courtesy John DeDakis

When you’re working on a novel, do you have self-imposed deadlines?

I didn’t impose deadlines on myself when I wrote the first four novels. That’s probably because there were so many other things going on in my life that took priority. Writing fiction was gravy – it was what I did when all of the dad-stuff was done.

The only time I really imposed a deadline on myself was when I was writing Fake. That’s because, as I was writing it, Trump was president and he was just doing crazier and crazier things. I realized that in order for this book to really be effective, it needed to come out before the 2020 election.

Around November, 2019, I said to my agent, “I need to have this book come out in 2019. When do you need the manuscript?” She said, “Two months.” I hadn’t even finished the first draft yet. November to the end of January was a mad dash to finish the first draft, get it to my beta readers, and then make revisions. I got it to my agent by the end of January, so that it could come out in September, 2019.


How did you handle working under a deadline?

That was a real rush for me to get it done, but I already knew how to write under deadline. To put it in perspective, my normal writing day when I’m working on a novel is between two-to-four hours. Anything beyond that and I become less effective. During that two-month period, I was writing much longer than that. It wasn’t frantic, it was just intense.


Are you an introvert or an extrovert, and do you enjoy promoting your work?

I am a shy extrovert, with introvert tendencies. One of the things I discovered is that I liked marketing more than I thought I would. I think I always pictured marketing as analogous to being an obnoxious used car salesman. The idea of shameless self-promotion is anathema. I just really cringe at it. And yet I discovered that marketing isn’t selling, it’s telling. All you have to do is just tell someone that you’ve written a book, and then tell them a little bit about it. If they’re interested, great. If they’re not, they’re not. You’re not responsible for the outcome, you’re just responsible for letting them know. I’ve also discovered that there are endless ways to connect with people, even more so now with the Internet. It can be a tremendous time suck, so you’ve got to have a good marketing team. That’s when I decided to hire Lisa Strickland, the founder of Brava Creative Group. We make a good team. She does a lot of the stuff that I don’t want to do. And she’s able to do it extremely well.


How long have you been working with Lisa?

We met when I was still at CNN. I was taking the Metro one day, and she got on and sat next to me. Nobody talks on the Metro. The train came to a stop and the door opened, and it looked like she was getting ready to lunge out the door. I said to her, “Do you know where you’re going?” She told me the stop, and I said, “That’s the next one.” That broke the ice. So, between that stop and the next one we started talking. My stop was her stop, so we got off together, grabbed a drink, and have been talking ever since. It’s cause and effect. That’s how life is lived.


What are you working on now?

The working title of my memoir – and it could change – is Pivot Points – A Life of Plot Twists. The basic premise is that life doesn’t turn out the way you expect. The book will highlight the plot twists in my own life, and the lessons that I’ve learned from the choices that I’ve made and have been forced to make. It will tell the story of my journey: Covering the presidency, then moving into journalism, and then getting into fiction after my sister committed suicide – which is something that deepened after my son’s death. I hope to tell it in a way that inspires others who’ve had to cope with grief and overcome their own struggles. There is always hope.


You’re enjoying retired life. What else keeps you busy?

I was still at CNN when I started editing people’s manuscripts. So, over the course of having written several novels, I now teach people how to write novels. My career has taken another twist to where I am now, as a manuscript editor and a writing teacher and a writing coach. That’s what I do in my retirement right now.

Photo by Lisa Strickland

Last Question: If you had one piece of advice for others, what would that be?

Don’t give up. There is always a reason to hope. That’s true when it comes to writing, and it’s also true in living, too. I think that there are certainly times when things seem hopeless, but it’s important to see the bigger picture, the bigger possibilities. There are many types of advice out there, but I really feel that refusing to give up is the best advice I can give.

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

Ciaran Byrne has travelled a great distance from the Northern Ireland of his childhood to New York City, where he lives today, but that doesn’t mean the builder-turned-actor has forgotten his homeland, or dismissed the tanks and guns and bloodshed as a dreamlike series of unfortunate events, or chalked it all up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Troubles were at a fever pitch on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on peaceful protesters marching against a British internment policy. Thirteen innocent civilians died outright. A fourteenth would succumb to his injuries four months later. Byrne, born eleven months after what came to be known as the Bogside Massacre – or, more infamously, Bloody Sunday – spent his formative years being shaped by its aftermath.

“I was born into that,” Byrne says. “We lived in a terraced house in Newry, a border town between the North and the South. I remember men in camouflage fatigues walking the streets with rifles and guns. There were jeeps and tank-type vehicles everywhere. We were surrounded by British soldiers on our way to school and back again. It wasn’t normal. Even as children, we knew it wasn’t normal. But children are resilient. Children are masters at adapting to their circumstances.”

Bloody Sunday.
About 15,000 people gathered in the Creggan area of Derry on the morning of 30 January 1972 to take part in a civil rights march.

If it’s true that actors piece together characters from what they’ve experienced in real life, then it’s hardly a stretch to see some of Byrne’s childhood in his riveting star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, the private investigator hired to track down a mysterious stalker in the 2020 thriller, DieRy. Angus’s straight-line intensity is felt in every scene, Byrne walking the fine line between restrained and untamed, the edginess of his performance something to behold. It’s more than a little disorienting to those who know him best, because Ciaran Byrne is, above all else, a warm and friendly soul.

“To be honest, I was quite intimidated by the role when I read it,” Byrne says. “I’d be lying if I said that I thought Angus was in my skillset. I’ve made a career out of nice guy characters, the loveable loafer types, the sort that deliver comedic relief. DieRy marked a diversion into another land entirely.”

Produced by Mailer Tuchman Media, DieRy stars Claudia Maree Mailer as Marie Clark, who is using her influencer status to pay for her Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion, while moving on from an abusive past. Marie’s life finally appears to be on the right track, but everything changes when an obsessive fan steals her diary. The unknown antagonist sends Marie a series of twisted love letters, promising to kill anyone who is a danger to her. Mailer sizzles and Byrne smoulders, a powerful one-two punch that director Jennifer Gelfer maximizes to great effect, the film hooking you from the opening scene and loosening its grip only after the final credits roll. To see Byrne, as easygoing as they come, transform into Angus, begs the question: How did he get there?

DieRy promotional poster
Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media

“It started to come together when I shaved my head,” he says quickly. “Angus isn’t the nicest guy in the world. I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ I was having a big crisis of confidence, and then I got out of the shower one night and I looked in the mirror, and that’s when I saw him. I immediately shaved my head. I had a big, bushy beard, and I shaved it to this [mustache and goatee]. It made sense to me in that moment. Actors often work from the inside out, which is more method-type stuff, but, in this case, I worked from the outside in. Once I saw my face and my head in the mirror, that started to inform the rest of the character.

“I was 45 years old when I made DieRy,” Byrne continues, “so there were scars that I didn’t have to play. I let all of that feed into Angus. When I put on his clothes and I slipped on that leather jacket, I became him. The validation came when my family watched DieRy in Northern Ireland. They’ve seen me in everything I’ve done, but they didn’t see me in Angus. I felt really good about that. I knew I’d done something right.”

The Troubles may have played a part in shaping Angus, but Byrne’s love affair with Newry burns bright. His parents still live in that same terraced house from his youth. There are plenty of fond memories from his time spent at St. Colman’s Abbey Primary School, and then, later, St. Joseph’s Boys Secondary School. He was obsessed with sports, dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, and is still a soccer fan today.

Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media

“I had a happy childhood. We weren’t rich, at least not in terms of material things, but we had happiness. My parents worked hard their whole lives. My dad was a bread delivery man. He had a little truck filled with loaves of bread, and he would deliver all around the country. He would go into places where Catholics weren’t supposed to go, whatever it took to do the job. Later, he became a bus driver for young children with special physical and emotional needs. He would drive them to school, and there were times when I got to see firsthand how much they all loved him.

“My mom worked in a sewing factory. She also worked as the hostess at my uncle’s restaurant, The Boulevard, where everyone in town would pop in to see her. So, she also set a good example. She was faced with great adversity in her life the day that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but she leaned into love during that time, and ultimately beat it. She is a very compassionate person, and deeply loved. I learned how to love from my mom.”

Byrne pauses. In many ways, he’s still that boy from the streets of Northern Ireland in the 1980’s.

“We were an occupied country,” he says at last. “There were shootings and bombings daily. There were over 3,500 people killed over a 25-year period. As an adolescent you struggle to comprehend it at times, but my mom had a way of keeping things in perspective. The Royal Ulster Constabulary were the Northern Irish police force – or, as we would call them, the anti-Catholic police force. People despised them, and the British Army, who patrolled our streets. My mom would say that all of those young boys in uniform were some mother’s son. ‘Have compassion,’ she would say. ‘They were recruited and promised to see the world, and the next thing you know, they’re stuck in a bog in Crossmaglen.’”

Ciaran Byrne is just getting started.

DieRy, in many ways, represents both the endpoint in his circuitous journey to becoming an actor, and the launching pad for things to come. He’s clearly found a home at Mailer Tuchman Media, where John Buffalo Mailer – the son of the legendary Norman Mailer – serves as the creative compass, leveraging MTM’s roster of artists, directors, screenwriters and producers to deliver thought-provoking content. It’s a formula that has quickly set Mailer Tuchman Media apart from other independent movie/television studios.

“Everyone at Mailer Tuchman Media is great to work with,” Byrne says. “They’re a family of artists that want to make movies with up-and-coming actors. They don’t want to raise huge chunks of money for big stars, and then not have any money left to tell the story. They work with up-and-comers, and they take wonderful care of us. Claudia and I have several movies in the works with Mailer Tuchman Media. I’m very grateful for them.”

Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media

MTM has released a series of impressive films, including Blind, starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and Dylan McDermott. Keeping things in the family, the film was written by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by his brother, Michael Mailer.

“They’re really good people,” Byrne continues. “Martin Tuchman is the Executive Producer. He’s also a big fan and patron of the arts. Jennifer Gelfer – it really doesn’t get any better than Jennifer Gelfer. She’s the Executive Director at Mailer Tuchman Media, a brilliant director, and a trailblazing woman. John Buffalo is the kindest soul and an exemplary artist. It really makes it easy to be a part of the team.”

DieRy is a reflection of that teamwork. From Buffalo’s crisp screenwriting to Gelfer’s deft touch behind the camera, every aspect of this film is on point. Together, Claudia and Ciaran deliver breakout performances, feeding off of each other to ratchet up the tension. For Byrne, the moment was a lifetime in the making.

“Angus was the biggest role in my career, so it didn’t land lightly on my shoulders,” Byrne says. “My wife is a great acting coach. She teaches voice at Juilliard Drama, and has coached actors from all over the world. I remember her saying quite early in my career that there will come a day when I realize that I’m enough for the roles that I play. That happened with Angus. I really felt there was no other Angus – I had not seen an Angus on TV, in a movie, or in the theater. At that point of discovery, other people’s interpretations of a private investigator were completely irrelevant to me. I knew that I was enough.”

Ciaran Patrick Byrne may have been born to act, but his isn’t the story of a childhood prodigy who started life in front of the camera. Byrne came to his craft almost accidentally, and only years after working with his hands as a builder in Northern Ireland. As hard as it is to imagine – especially for a man who grew up during the Troubles – it was an act of terrorism on foreign soil that led him to the stage.

“I was plastering a house in Belfast on the day the planes crashed in the World Trade Center towers,” Byrne says. “I remember the foreman calling me in from the job site to see it on the television. All of my friends who lived in New York started to leave and come back home to Northern Ireland after 9/11, because no one felt safe anymore. Well, I’ve always been the kind of person who’s done the opposite of most everybody else. I’d tried many times to get my green card but had been unsuccessful. The rejection was always the same – I didn’t have a specific skill that was needed in the States. That didn’t stop me this time around. I moved to the U.S. in June, 2002.”

Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne

Byrne had a hometown friend on Nantucket who offered to put him up for a couple of weeks. Having a roof over his head provided a safety net, but he struggled to land a job.

“I made some friends who gave me money as money was running out. I spent my days going to the lumber yards on Nantucket to see if anybody coming in for supplies needed someone to give them a day’s labor. I would also go to construction sites, asking the foremen if they needed extra labor to do physical work of any kind. Nobody was biting. It was all dead ends.”

Nearly broke, Byrne’s persistence paid off.

“I eventually got a job as a plasterer,” Byrne says. “There was a foreman who wouldn’t answer my phone calls, so I decided to show up on the job site and introduce myself in person. We talked for 10 minutes and he hired me on the spot. I started the next day. I’m very thankful for that gentlemen. I worked for him the entire time that I lived on Nantucket. The work sustained me.”

Byrne made friends and established a name for himself in the community. He quickly grew to love his new island home, but the specter of deportation was always there, lurking in the back of his mind.

“I entered the country the right way,” he says. “I was documented. I just didn’t have a green card. I’d been in the States for six years, but I was actually only allowed to stay for 90 days. That was considered an unlawful stay, so there was always the chance that Homeland Security was going to swoop in and send me back to Northern Ireland. The hardest part was that I couldn’t travel back home to see my family. I missed spending six Christmases with them, along with the final years and funerals of all three of my remaining grandparents. That was hard. I loved my grandparents to pieces, and that was a hard one.”

Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne

Homesick and looking for something to fill his free time, Ciaran Byrne came across a poster for acting classes, which were being held at the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. Intrigued, he jotted down the number and gave them a call.

“I hesitated, and almost didn’t call,” Byrne says. “The poster stated that the workshop was for experienced actors with resumés only. This wonderful woman by the name of Meredith Martin answered the phone. She wanted to know if I had any experience. I said that I loved movies, and that I was a really enthusiastic guy [laughs]. To this day I don’t know what possessed her to take a chance on me, but she told me to come on down to the workshop. It changed my life.”

The Theatre Workshop of Nantucket was located in the basement of the Methodist Church. Byrne showed up that first day and was immediately hooked, fascinated by Martin’s class on the Uta Hagen technique. He eventually started acting, taking small parts in plays before working his way up to meatier roles, eventually being cast as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol.

“Growing up in Ireland, nobody shares their feelings. Nobody says, ‘I love you.’ Suddenly, I’m in a 30-person cast. Everybody is sharing their feelings. Everybody’s loving everybody. I’m still just this builder guy from Newry. When the production was over, I went to stay with a friend of mine in New York City. She was an usher in a Broadway theatre. She was asking me what I thought of acting in the play. I said, ‘I don’t think acting’s for me. There’s too much love. There’s too much sharing.’ She gave me a ticket to see a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and asked me to tell her what I thought about it when I came out.

“I’ll never forget it. The play was called Doubt: A Parable, and it changed my life on a dime. Philip Seymour Hoffman did the movie a few years later. John Patrick Shanley was the playwright, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for it. An Irish actor named Brían F. O’Byrne played Father Flynn. When it was over, I remember ejecting out of my seat, covered in tears, and applauding like a maniac. On that day – December 23, 2005, I knew that I wanted to be an actor, and I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”

Once a month, Ciaran Byrne would finish his workweek and travel by boat from Nantucket to Hyannis on the Cape Cod peninsula, a two-hour crossing, where he’d take an eight-hour bus ride to Manhattan. He’d crash at a friend’s place, and then beat a path to HB Studios for the acting classes early on Saturday morning. This went on for a year, and then it became a twice-a-month journey, a serious commitment from a man working long hours making things with his hands. Little did he know that these trips would not only open doors for him as an actor, but that they would also lead him to his soulmate.

“I’d convinced the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket to put on a production of Doubt, and I was playing Father Flynn,” Byrne says. “I was in a video shop one day, looking for videos with characters who spoke with a Bronx dialect. The shop manager behind the counter recognized me. Her name was Wendy, and she explained that her sister was the Head of Voice and Dialects at Juilliard. Even more ironically, she said her sister was also coaching the dialect for the cast of Doubt on Broadway. She thought Kate would be happy to help me, so I gave her my number. The next day, Kate called.”

Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne

Byrne nailed his performance. He was so grateful for the help that he offered to take Kate and her four-year-old daughter, Ella, to lunch on his next trip to Manhattan. There were no romantic notions. He simply wanted to thank her for helping him nail his performance as Father Flynn.

“It was Saturday, April 5th, 2008,” he says without missing a beat. “We were meeting at a restaurant in New York City called Vinyl. I’d gotten out of my taxi, it was two in the afternoon, and I kid you not, I knew that I was going to marry her as soon as I clapped eyes on her.”

The lunch date ran eight hours and included a trip to Central Park. Sparks flew. Their courtship continued over the phone and through the computer, and Byrne proposed two months later. They were married two months after that, on his mother’s birthday.

“Catherine Zeta-Jones helped me propose. Kate was working at Silvercup Studios, where Catherine Zeta-Jones was doing a movie called The Rebound. Kate was her dialect coach. I’d never been to a movie set in my life. I was a community theatre actor who worked in construction to pay the bills. I showed up in my builder clothes and explained that I wanted to propose to Kate Wilson. They looked at me like I was from outer space. Nobody does that. Nobody stops production on a feature film.

“Well, calls were made, and this woman takes me to Catherine Zeta-Jones’ dressing room. Catherine stops production for half a day. Director Bart Freundlich wasn’t one bit happy about it [laughs]. Catherine called Kate and told her that she needed her on the set right way. So, Kate came, and I’m standing there on the set when she arrived. They’d set the whole thing up with lighting and beautiful scenery, and I proposed right there. They even recorded it for us, too. It was incredibly generous, and like something out of a fairytale. It was a moment that neither of us will ever forget.”

Ciaran and Kate were married in August, 2008. By then he’d moved to Manhattan. There was Ella to support, a future to build, and a child on the way. Kate needed to take maternity leave, and Byrne needed a job. He tried Craigslist. He hit the lumberyards. He walked the streets of Manhattan, canvassing the West Side Highway for construction jobs. He was offered $11 an hour if he could do electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. It was a cold shot of reality for a lifelong master plasterer who knew how to do one thing really well.

“Times were tough,” Byrne says. “The financial crisis hit, and nobody was hiring. I eventually found a drywalling company where this young American guy was willing to pay me $25 bucks an hour. I had to learn to drywall. It worked out well in the beginning. Unfortunately, he’d made some bad business decisions and didn’t pay me all I was owed. I ended up about $6,000 short. Still, there were no hard feelings. That job sustained us until my wife could go back to work.”

Byrne started bartending in the Greek restaurant Kefi on the Upper West Side, a trade learned on the job in order to help provide for his family.

“I worked my way up from never having pulled a pint to becoming the head bartender. This was one of the busiest restaurants in the Upper West Side, so I was learning a brand-new trade in an extremely high-pressure environment.”

Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin
Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media

He worked there three years and made countless friends. The owner even threw a citizenship party for him. He also continued to act, landing a juicy part in The Freedom of the City at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Before long he’d developed a reputation as a respected journeyman actor who was not only nice to work with, but who could also be counted on.

“I was known as an actor who worked hard and who was dependable. Everyone knew me as a team player. I was very proud of that. When someone hired me, I used to joke that they weren’t getting Marlon Brando, but they weren’t getting the headaches, either.”

Byrne’s agents at New York City’s highly regarded Harden Curtis Kirsten Riley Agency then scored him an audition in an upcoming Ed Burns / Steven Spielberg series called Public Morals. He read for the part of a mid-50s, off-the-boat sergeant-type guy, catching the eye of casting directors Maribeth Fox and Laura Rosenthal. Even though he didn’t get the role, he stood out.

“It was 2012. I went off to Pittsburgh to do a play called Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was being put on by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre. I’d heard through the grapevine that Public Morals was scheduled to film in New York City in the fall, so I reached out to Maribeth and Laura. They asked me to read for another role, and then sent the script to me in Pittsburgh. I found a professional videographer and taped my audition, and sent it back. Ed Burns loved it. They wanted me to come to New York to meet the producers, but I was doing the play in Pittsburgh six days a week. I thought I’d lost the job, and then my agent called. I’ll never forget that moment. Mary Harden said, ‘It’s official. Edward Burns has approved you. Steven Spielberg has watched your tape and personally approved you. And, TNT’s management have approved you.’ I hung up the phone, and you could have knocked me down with a pillow.”

Ciaran Byrne is on a roll.

Fresh off his star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, Byrne’s set to play District Attorney Ian Kerns in the upcoming Mailer Tuchman Media thriller The Madness Inside Me, currently in post-production. He’s also slated to play Jebediah in MTM’s The Best Friend, a film that’s in the early stages of development. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted timelines, but hasn’t dampened Byrne’s spirit.

“I’m very blessed to work with the fine folks at Mailer Tuchman. Funnily enough, Jen [Jennifer Gelfer] was my acting teacher from 2010 to 2013. I’d met her at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in New York. Then she formed her own company, Haymarket Annex, so I’ve always been a big fan of Jennifer’s. Every Monday night for three years, an eclectic group of people – some of whom are in DieRy, such as Nick Mathews, Chase Coleman, Samantha Strelitz, and Danielle Guldin – would come together and act in Jennifer’s class. In fact, that’s how she came to offer me the role of the bartender in the Mailer Tuchman film, The Second Sun. I attribute a large part of my success to her continued guidance and support.”

Actors Danielle Guldin and Ciaran Byrne at the premiere of The Second Sun
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne

Byrne pauses.

“It hasn’t been an easy road, coming to acting so late in the game, but I think that my work ethic has served me well. Back in 2010, Jennifer asked me why she should take me on as a student, I told her that no one would work harder or come more prepared. Then, years later, Jen offers me the role of Joe in The Second Sun. I think that speaks to my work ethic, to my commitment, and to the reputation that I’ve developed along the way. I’m thankful to be an actor that people want to work with. I’m very proud of that.”

Above all else, Ciaran Byrne is a family man.

The massacre on the streets of Derry on January 30, 1972, still haunts many in Northern Ireland, and is never far from the collective consciousness of those who lived through the country’s darkest days. Byrne often thinks about his homeland, but not like you might expect; rather, his mind goes to the good times that he shared with his parents, his brother, his friends. He grew up in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, heard the stories of soldiers pursuing civilians into Glenfada Park, and still visibly hurts at the thought of the unarmed being shot in the back. Through violence, Byrne learned compassion. From hate bloomed love. Byrne has his parents and younger brother to thank for setting a good example, for showing him that he could rise above the most trying of times. They taught him to keep a level head, and to value the things that are truly important.

Kate, Mabel, Ciaran, and Ella
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne

“I love acting, but I have to tell you, my wife and my daughters will always come first,” Byrne says. “Since I was something of a late bloomer, I think I avoided a lot of stuff that can consume young actors. I was able to keep things in perspective. I appreciate the roles that I get and the work that I do, but the most important thing to me is my wife, Kate, my beautiful daughters, Ella and Mabel, and my family back home. All of the other stuff can come and go. Family, my friend, is everything.”

Written By: Michael D. McClellan |

The creative team at Mailer Tuchman Media is on a roll.

Fresh off the success of its 2020 psychological thriller DieRy, starring the resplendent Claudia Maree Mailer as social media influencer Marie Clark, MTM continues tapping into the post-Millennial zeitgeist with a series of projects that are at once timely and timeless. Case in point: In A Pickle, written by Martinko – aka Martin Tuchman – with illustrations by Maggie Mailer, brings to life the classic tale of schoolyard bullying, which is especially relevant today, given the invasive, cloud-connected world in which Gen Z live. Based on the author’s life, In A Pickle is beautifully told, its narrative complimented by the richness of Mailer’s watercolor illustrations. We immediately identify with the precocious little boy who finds himself in a worrisome schoolyard predicament – who among us hasn’t found ourselves in a pickle of our own at that age – and we celebrate when brains and creativity trump insults and intimidation. The book, available for pre-order at Hat & Beard Press, is a reflection of the creative genius behind Mailer Tuchman Media: Artists with a deep appreciation for the classic storytelling of yesteryear, yet who are equally fearless in their pursuit of the cutting edge.


“This book is good example of that,” Maggie Mailer says, in an exclusive interview with FifteenMinutesWith. “There’s a certain nostalgia to Marty’s story, but it’s really very modern when you consider the world in which we live today.”

In A Pickle also illustrates the collaborative, forward-thinking culture that permeates MTM. The book is at the center of its own universe, orbited by various entry points into this compelling intellectual property. John Buffalo Mailer, the Creative Director at Mailer Tuchman Media, has laid out a clear vision for this IP and its audience. While In A Pickle will be released on February 16, 2021, an animated short has already blazed the trail, winning two Independent Short Awards. Voiced by legendary actor Peter Coyote, and directed by MTM’s talented Jennifer Gelfer (The Second Sun, DieRy), In A Pickle casts a wide net when it comes to charming readers. For her part, Maggie Mailer was thrilled to be part of the team.

“It was an interesting journey,” she says. “John Buffalo handed me the text and said, ‘I’m thinking this might make a great children’s story. We’d love to know what you think.’  So, I did a couple of sketches. I had done one other children’s book, which was in black and white, so this was really brand new for me. And they came back and said, ‘We love it. Let’s do it.’ And then they really left it open to me. I think Marty just wanted to see what I would do with it, which was kind of incredible, and so much fun. So, it really was an adventure right from the start. Their approach was: ‘Here you go. Come up with something. We’re gonna leave it to you for the most part.’ I thought that was amazing of Marty to do that with a story from his childhood. I was really honored.”

John Buffalo Mailer
Creative Director – Mailer Tuchman Media

The universal theme of bullying was also something that Mailer could appreciate.

“I imagine that everyone can relate to bullying on some level,” she says. “I didn’t even realize the degree to which I related to it until I was well into working on the book. That was when I actually started to remember the time when I was in school and I had to deal with bullying. It was quite powerful to relive that. It was also one of the things that pulled me into working on the book. I just thought it was such a compelling situation and such an unusual story, so much so that the storyline felt almost in the realm of mythology – part fairytale, part myth, as if it were imbued with a kind of mystical solution.”

The world in which we live today is much more complicated than the one which Martin Tuchman experienced, yet his story is easily relatable to children today. While bullying still takes place on the playgrounds, the new battlefield is the smartphone, where social media shaming causes anger and anxiety in equal doses. The ability to fight back in more sophisticated, intelligent ways has never been more important, making Tuchman’s story more relevant than ever.

“In this day and age, social media really places a premium on using your wits,” Mailer says. “I think that children today can read this book and immediately draw that parallel. They can relate.”

In A Pickle
By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer

When the bully repeatedly takes the little boy’s lunch, it’s garden snakes that cleverly end the intimidation once and for all.

“Aside from the bully, the thing that grabbed me was his solution – that, and the image of the snakes,” Mailer says. “I just thought, ‘This is going to be a children’s book, can we pull this off?’ On the one hand, the story was so charming. On the other hand, it was really startling. Being an English major, I read and analyzed the text as an English major. I thought about the symbolism of the snake as the hero in nature. Looking at it through that lens, I felt like the book had this underlying message of responding to a human interaction that’s negative, and doing so with a really novel approach – by inserting nature into the situation to make everything okay.”

Martin Tuchman, aka Martinko
Executive Producer – Mailer Tuchman Media

With a slithering solution at the heart of Martinko’s story, the key was balancing this imagery with illustrations that projected softness and warmth. Mailer, an artist who has been featured in Art New England, and with cover stories in The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times, proved to be a revelation.

“I was interested in how to take this story, which is startling, and soften it so that it’s palatable and can work as a children’s book,” she says. “Then, giving it enough of an edge so that the adults reading it will relate to it and find some deeper meaning in it as well.”

Maggie Mailer, the daughter of famed Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Norman Mailer, drew inspiration from a number of places.

“I’m really interested in the work of contemporary artists like Marcel Dzama, who is one of my favorite painters. Arthur Conan Doyle’s father was an illustrator, diarist, and watercolorist. I had a lot of his drawings that I lived with and looked at as a child, so I think that his style also wound up in the book. As a result, the illustrations have a Victorian, old school, vintage quality to them. I think it works.”

Indeed.

Mailer’s illustrations work in concert with Tuchman’s narrative, the sum greater than its parts. Together they lift the story above others in its genre, delivering a classic children’s book for children of all ages.

In A Pickle
By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer

“Gauguin is a big one for me to go against color,” Mailer says, when asked to name some of her biggest influences for this book. “I did a show in like 2016 that was based on combining the palates of Gauguin and the Japanese artist Hiroshige, who’s one of my favorites, and who is known for his woodblock prints. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is another big influence. Those are my core painters that I go to for inspiration.

“There’s something about the boldness of Gauguin’s color – there’s a wildness of it – and then you have Hiroshige’s softness and transitions. There’s a lot of that in the book with the backgrounds that are very soft and moving from one color to another. It doesn’t show up so much in the book, but I spent a lot of years making landscape paintings based off of Corot. I think that there are moments in the book where that feeling for me, when I look at it, comes through.”

With 47 pages of illustrations, what was Mailer’s approach to the creative process?

“Non-linear,” she says quickly. “I started and just went to town. That’s how I paint. I don’t have a beginning and a middle and an end, I just dive in. With this book, I didn’t start out at the beginning and go from there, I think I started on page 13. I was really happy that the production team was able to fly with that way of working, because I don’t think it’s a standard way of illustrating a book. There was really a lot intuition throughout the process.”

In A Pickle
By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer

The year 2020 will forever be connected to the coronavirus pandemic, which changed, well…everything. For this project, that meant Mailer and Tuchman would need to find another way to collaborate.

“Our collaboration was virtual. My family and I moved into another house in a neighboring town around the same time the book became a reality, which was the fall of 2019, and then COVID happened. Marty and I worked together remotely through Zoom, which is also how we would check in with Jennifer Gelfer, who is Marty’s creative partner at Mailer Tuchman Media. In fact, most of my work was done with Jennifer. She would give me cues, or she would give me feedback about what was working, or provide me with some of the of literal facts about Marty’s life, like how his father looked and that sort of thing. They would also supply me with photographs of Marty as a child. Then, they would step back and allow me to work. For me, it was fun surprising them.”

With Gelfer’s keen eye serving as the compass, both the book and the animated short began to take shape.

Jennifer Gelfer
Executive Director – Mailer Tuchman Media

“What was great working with Jennifer, was that she kept pushing the color. She encouraged me to make it as colorful as possible, which was something that I was really happy to do. It was such a joy, and really fun. Not only had I never made a fully illustrated children’s book before, but I’d also never worked on an animation project – and we did them at the same time.”

The animated short, winner of two Independent Shorts Awards (Best Animation Short and Best Children’s Short), added an extra layer of complexity to project.

“As I was working on a given illustration, I knew that it would be going to the animator, and it would also be going to the graphic designer. The animator needed everything in layers. So, because of that, it actually changed the way that I made the illustrations. I feel like the animated short became a hidden character in the book. There’s sort of a living quality to the way the book was made. I was getting to see it in motion – I would see the dailies as they were being made – and then I would go back to the still image. That was one of the most exciting and fun parts of working on it. It was super exciting to see my see my still images come to life like that. I had to do was put the illustrations into layers and then hand them over to the animator. But I did have to think a certain way. I had to change the way I thought about making the images.”

The presence of an accomplished actor like Peter Coyote brought an added dimension to the project. Known for his work in various films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Patch Adams, and Erin Brockovich, Coyote certainly left an impression.

Peter Coyote

“I’m just so thrilled. Peter Coyote is one of my favorite actors and such a great person. I don’t know him personally, but I know about him. He’s done everything in his career – he’s an actor, author, screenwriter, director…he’s even a Zen Buddhist priest. To me, he’s just such a rock star. To have him as the narrator of this short film is so very exciting.”

With the release of In A Pickle on the horizon, it’s only fitting that Mailer Tuchman Media is partnering with Horizons National, an organization whose mission is to transform the way underserved students see themselves and their future. In A Pickle takes place in New York City, and with Horizons National expanding its programs there, MTM is donating a portion of the proceeds towards Horizon National’s goal: To grow capacity to provide at least 1,000 New York City public school students the Horizons experience.

“I was so glad when I realized that the book was going to be working with Horizons National in a way that would connect to underserved children,” Mailer says. “I started a project in in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, many years ago, where we set up artists working in storefront studios. The concept was to bring artists to an underserved community that doesn’t really have access to art. So, the fact that we’re working with Horizons National is really special. It’s something that’s near and dear to my heart.”

In A Pickle
By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer

The creative team at Mailer Tuchman Media has much to celebrate: The success of DieRy, with breakout performances by Claudia Maree Mailer and Ciaran Byrne; the release of Martinko’s timeless tale, beautifully imagined by Maggie Mailer; Jennifer Gelfer’s deft touch in producing the award-winning animated short; and a host of upcoming projects, including Mailer, a dramatic narrative series that brings to life the second half of the 20th Century as seen through the lens of the incomparable Norman Mailer.

“It’s an exciting time for Mailer Tuchman Media,” Maggie Mailer says, as the interview wraps. “I’m elated to be a part of such an interesting project as In A Pickle. To see it come alive is a success in itself.”


Mailer Tuchman Media

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