What was the inspiration for your most recent book?

My first Soviet-Jewish historical fiction, “The Nesting Dolls,” was set in 1930s USSR during Stalin’s Great Terror, 1970s USSR during the Soviet refusenik movement, and present-day Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Readers told me the first part was their favorite. Western Europe, for obvious reasons, gets the bulk of the historical lens for the 1930s, and readers told me they had no idea what was going on in Eastern Europe at the same time. (Spoiler: It was equally bad.) That’s why I set the bulk of my second book, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and that time that great friend of the Jews, Josef Stalin, gave a historically wandering people their very own homeland – under his loving auspices, of course. The feedback I received about “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” was that readers couldn’t believe any Americans, especially any Jewish Americans, would voluntarily leave the United States for the Soviet Union. Which made me speculate about who would, why they would do it, and what would happen to them there. Which is what the second section of “Go On Pretending” is about. But that’s only half the story….

Are there TV shows or films that have influenced your writing?

I have been enamored with soap operas since I was 10 years old (it was the summer of 1980, I wasn’t the only person in America obsessed with “General Hospital’s” Luke & Laura). I ended up watching all the daytime shows on the air at one time or another. I wrote the television talk show, “Pure Soap” for E! Entertainment, then worked for ABC Daytime and was a part of “Loving” transitioning to “The City.” Following that, I was at P&G Productions, where I produced the official websites for “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light,” wrote the NYT bestselling tie-in books and the official online continuation of “Another World.” My last foray into soaps was the Prospect Park reboot of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” All of this is to say: Soaps. My novel writing has been influenced by soaps. I like when things happen. I like when a lot of things happen. I like when a lot of things happen one after the other in order to keep my attention. I like cliff-hangers and melodrama and romance. Is it any wonder that my May 2025 historical fiction, “Go On Pretending” begins in the world of soap operas? With plenty of romantic things happening one after the other! And that’s even before they get to the Soviet Union… or the Soviet Union falls apart….

 What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you? 

Well, there was the time I was told that I don’t understand how immigrant families and interracial relationships work. (Fun fact: I’m an immigrant! I grew up in an immigrant family! I’m in an interracial relationship and have been married for 26 years!) When I told my cousin about it, she laughed about the immigrant family part, and then didn’t say anything about the interracial relationship part. She explained, “I’m sorry, I laughed so hard at the first one, I didn’t have anything left for the second.” Most of the people who tell me that I don’t understand how immigrant families work were certain that no immigrant family would be as chill about their nice, Jewish, Russian-speaking daughter dating an African-American man. (Anyone want to guess who I am? Who my husband is?) And the ones who told me I don’t understand how interracial relationships work also told me that the African-American characters I wrote, both in “The Nesting Dolls” and “Go On Pretending” weren’t realistic. They were too well-educated, they said. They were too well-spoken, they said. And they had interests and passions outside of being African-American. Everybody knows real African-Americans aren’t like that. (Anyone want to guess who I based my characters on? Although, as my oldest son said, “I don’t understand why people think ‘The Nesting Dolls’ Gideon was based on Dad. Gideon grew up in Harlem, went to private school, and then CalTech. Dad grew up in Harlem, went to private school, and then MIT. Obviously, they are completely different people!”)

Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome? How do you work through that?

In writing, no. I assume everything I write is fabulous. (Not that people don’t rush to tell me otherwise. See above.) But, in my other job, I write about education in New York City. I am always worrying that there’s some fact I missed, some detail I overlooked, something that I didn’t grasp or some question I didn’t know enough to ask. It was my African-American husband (oh, darn, now I’ve answered the riddle from Question #3) who set me straight. He asked me, “If a mediocre white man knew as much as you do about this, would he think he wasn’t qualified to write and talk on the subject?” That helped. A lot.

 Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?

Russian is my first language. I didn’t speak English until I was almost 8. While I am much more fluent in English now, there are still some words which are so perfect in Russian, that it takes an entire English paragraph to describe what can be captured in one word. Plus there are the expressions that are only pithy because they rhyme. For instance, “Love is not a potato. If it goes bad, you can’t throw it out the window.” Trust me, it’s much smoother in Russian. And then there are the poems. I realize there are people who study for decades to translate classic works by Pushkin, Akhmadulina, Blok, and Mayakovsky. But I, personally, am proud of my translating the following ditty:

When you’re first hit in the eye

You’ll let out a mighty cry

Hit you once

Hit you twice

You’ll learn to think it’s very nice

If that doesn’t describe the Soviet experience, I don’t know what does.

Alina Adams is the NYT best-selling author of soap opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. Her Regency romance, “The Fictitious Marquis” was named the first Own Voices Jewish historical by Romance Writers of America. In addition to 2020’s “The Nesting Dolls” and 2022’s “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region,” her May 2025 Soviet Jewish historical fiction, “Go On Pretending” is now available for pre-order at: Go On Pretending — History Through Fiction

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