As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.

The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Teresa Lin join me as my guest for Part 3 of our deep dive into our creative process! Read on to explore our conversation and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.

Frank Beddor 
Hey, everybody, welcome back to All Things Alice. Today I'm with my savant, creative wife, Teresa Beddor Lin. Today we're going to use Alice as a muse, as a metaphor for creativity as it relates to a separate project, Static, which is a book project I'm very proud of. I had nothing to do with the writing of this book but I did have something to do with the publishing of this book. I'll give you a little background. 

I have a friend, Eric Laster, who's written a number of books. His first book was published through Simon and Schuster and he had about 90 pages of a young adult paranormal mystery manuscript. I read the pages and I fell in love with the concept. I kept asking him, “Hey, when can I read more pages?” Over time, he would share pages as he felt confident in the work, and at the end of the day, when he finished the novel, I blurted out, “I would like to help you publish this book.” I was working on Hatter Madigan: Ghost in the H.A.T.B.O.X., at the time and I wanted to start a small publishing company called Automatic Publishing. I decided that Eric's book would be the first that we would publish under the new imprint. 

It was an amazing creative experience. But at the same time I was working with Eric on the book, I was also thinking about adapting the novel as a television show. That's what Theresa and I are here to talk about, the process of adapting a literary work and what choices you make when turning it into a viable TV property. The name of Eric Lester's book is Static. It's a coming-of-age, murder mystery, young adult novel. Here’s the book jacket description: 

“When Curtis Brooks starts receiving phone calls from his older brother Wilt, who’s been dead a week, he’s sure it’s to help him find evidence that will lead to a murderer’s arrest. But Wilt claims he wasn’t murdered; his calling, meant to help him adjust, is standard protocol for newly deceased at the Aftermart—a kind of inescapable, ever-expanding Walmart filled with discontinued products.

Wilt’s death ruled a homicide, Curtis embarks on a dangerous plan to find the killer, which soon has him scheming against a billionaire and floundering toward love with his brother’s ex-girlfriend Suzy, all while struggling through high school and his single mom’s poor choices.

Why does Wilt help Curtis win over Suzy, even as he organizes a rebellion at the Aftermart? Who’d wanted him dead? Curtis risks his life to answer these questions, in the process forging a bond with his brother unlike any they’ve ever had.”

One of the things that I really fell in love with was the relationship between the two brothers. At the beginning of the book, they're estranged, and by the end of the book they've come to really appreciate and love each other in a much deeper way. Having said all of that, I'm going to let Teresa read you the pitch for the television show. Then we're going to get into some of the reasons why we made these choices and changes.

TL
In terms of the brother story, Static the TV show has evolved into a brother-sister story. We wanted to drop in on the point of view of an unreliable narrator, who was Curtis and is now Danni. Danni is 16-years-old and investigates her brother Wilt’s murder so his soul can move on in the Aftermart. We had to really hone in on what the Aftermart was and for the purposes of the show, the Aftermart became a retail way station where souls shop until they find the item that resolves their death. With Danni and Wilt, there are a series of calls that only they can hear and they must work together through absurd comedic and dangerous circumstances to catch the bad guys, bringing the family back together and learning the most challenging lessons about love. When we're conceptualizing a show, we're always thinking about the engine. What’s driving the show forward? What are the characters going through that would create an arc for them? How do they change? How are they tested throughout the show? In the book, there were souls were shopping in the Aftermart but then they went to counseling. There wasn't a way in which the shopping connected to the character’s sense of resolution. 

FB
What you're talking about is there is a particular item that has a deep resident meaning for each character, which is a clue to why they haven't left this way station. Resolving that mystery helps them transition to wherever they're going to transition. One of the big things about the book and the show is setting up the mystery. 

TL
The mystery in both places. When Danni, the 16-year-old sister, digs into her brother's story, she finds out this whole world and this whole life that her brother had that she didn't know about.

FB
One of the things that's not in the book that you introduced, separate from having a brother-sister story, was that Danni is really into murder mystery TV shows.

TL
We really had fun setting up and coloring Danni's character. In creating the tone for the show, we really wanted to make her an unreliable narrator. Somebody obsessed with solving murder mysteries. Somebody who had been on medication her whole life, and then suddenly decides that she's going to come off of her meds and she's gonna take life by the horns and do this one thing for her brother. So through her lens, you have her enthusiastic deep dive into creating a case out of her brother's death that may or not be real, but as we follow her into the story, the details of what her brother was involved in become larger than life.

FB
What’s really fun is her two friends who are really supporting her because she's grieving and they think she's going through these many different levels of grief.

TL
The seven steps of grieving. They're trying to name it for her and, of course, she has these severe mood swings and they're playing along in support of her while they're on this murder mystery investigation, digging into places digitally and going behind the scenes.

FB
At first, they don't believe her and it's really amusing because they're speculating on what's going on with her. These are two boys who have a lot of hormones and are not that interested in exactly what she's interested in. But eventually, they come around to believe that what's happening is real for her.

TL
There’s a whimsical and mischievous element to the tone of the show. Then on the flip side, with the supernatural or the paranormal, you have the Aftermart that feels as grounded as going into a Target today. It’s a mirror of our world. There's a hierarchy in the afterlife, with people who are obeying or are working for the Wu, which is the organizing power of the Aftermart.

FB
One of the pieces of feedback that Eric and I would often get when promoting his book at Comic-Cons or school events, was readers were really interested in the Aftermart. They were interested in how it works and the characters in the Aftermart. So in the television show, we decided to explore that and give equal weight to Danni in our world and Wilt in the Aftermart.

TL
In the novel, the Aftermart started as just a place for discontinued items. One of the ways we thought it would make a good engine is if the things in the Aftermart resonated with these characters and had sentimental value to wherever the soul is stuck. It could be an egg timer. It could be an action figure. Something that’s connected to an unresolved memory. So when you find your item, you're able to flash back into that memory. Then you can check out, essentially.

FB
I still want to find a character whose item is a toilet with a clear back and the tank is an aquarium. 

TL
We had a lot of fun doing research for the show because we got to look up a lot of discontinued items from the 70s and 80s.

FB
There are things that young adults wouldn't even know about. Certainly, my kids don't know what an 8-track was. But there are all sorts of funny toys and concepts. That’s been fun, finding shelves for some of our favorite nostalgic items.

TL
It was fun thinking about how the Aftermart would be organized. We came up with the idea that it would be organized by era. I certainly enjoy thinking about the difference between our experience in the analog world versus the digital world and how that's changed because the only way Wilt and Danni are communicating with each other is through a smartphone. 

FB
Only Danni can hear him.

TL
And everybody else only hears static. 

FB
Hence the title. 

Why don't you talk about why you thought it would be better to have a brother-sister story versus two brothers? How different might that dynamic be? It sort of plays itself out in the beginning when Wilt is with Suzy, his girlfriend. They're a couple years older than Danni and they're completely ignoring her and they have a sexual life together. Danny is coming in and interrupting. It gives it a different flavor. 

TL
Danni has always been on the outside of love. Her obsession in the beginning with solving murder mysteries and reading science fiction and fantasy shows that she's always been curious about what life feels like for the people on the other side. Even though her brother is one of the most popular kids at school, Danni's always lived on the fringe. Maybe it's because of her medication or the childhood trauma she’s been holding on to and has repressed these feelings. When her brother dies she rises to the occasion and starts to feel the need to do something.

There was something interesting for me about her relationship with Suzy. That goes beyond the attraction between them and the attraction to life, to being alive and seen and wanted and desired. I think for Danni, Suzy and Wilt had that meaning for her. She wanted to step into what her brother had and perhaps keep that alive.

FB
One of the other things that we were interested in doing was maximizing the setting. We thought Los Angeles would be a good setting because it's very diverse. It’s not in the novel but because we’re turning it into a television show, we needed to get real specific.

TL
One of the choices we made was to make Danni and Wilt biracial. So their mom is Korean and their estranged father, who eventually comes back into their life, is African American. I thought it was really interesting to shine a light on biracial families and the coupling between African American and Koreans, specifically in Los Angeles. We have a large Koreatown in Los Angeles and I thought it would be really interesting to have some of the underworld goings-on happen around there and use that to color in some of Danni’s choices and the places she goes to do her investigating.

FB
After working on the outline and conceptualizing these changes, then it's the writing process. I'm interested in how you brought these choices together when you approached the pilot script.

TL
There were a lot of different evolutions and drafts but the anchor and the primary piece of it has always been Danni and her POV. It’s telling the story through her lens, setting her up as the unreliable narrator and letting us in on her thought process. Being able to see her spying on her neighbors and creating this big story out of nothing. Having her be The Girl Who Cried Wolf one too many times.

FB
You came up with that great scene, which was like a scene from Rear Window, to open up the pilot and it caused a lot of havoc at the apartment complex for her mother and for the neighbor. A detective shows up, who ultimately becomes a love interest to her mom.

TL
There was a lot of that. For me, a lot of what makes a show great is creating characters that people want to spend time with and who people want to root for. If you can create somebody who's lovable, even though they're awkward and weird and strange. Especially if they're awkward and weird and strange, because we all, in some ways, feel that way inside. It makes those aspects of herself feel relatable and accessible.

FB
One of the ways we accentuated the unreliable narrator is that she’s on medication and seeing a therapist. 

TL
Yes. You have her therapist weighing in on her instability and her need to stay on her medication. There is a clear point in the pilot where she flushes all her medication down the toilet and decides to go cold turkey. There's an aspect of the show that deals with mental health. It deals with grief and it deals with growing up in a broken family. It deals with feeling estranged from your own family and making choices about how to get back to a place where you understand each other. There can be an ocean of division and silence and disconnect between family members, as most of us can understand, at one point or another.

Static is about this disconnection that they're trying to bridge through solving Wilt’s murder and through connecting with Wilt now that he's dead and in the Aftermart. Danni wants to do something so his soul can move on and reconnecting with her mother is also a big piece of this. What defines family? What defines that connective tissue between your family members when life has gotten so far away from you and things feel so hard? What are the things we do that bring us back together?

FB
It’s all true in the story. It’s true in the pilot but that's all subtextual. That makes good writing because you need that bubbly, attractive, whimsy of the Aftermart and the absurdity of the phone calls with Danni and Wilt. Danni’s two friends, Lou and Jeremy, who are in high school and find this stuff funny. The dynamic between Suzy, who's lost somebody, and mourning, but wanting to post on Instagram about it. There's a high school coming-of-age angst and comedic element to it. One of the shows that we were referencing in comparison to Static was the Netflix series Sex Education.

TL
It’s not as raunchy as Sex Education but there are certainly similarities with the tone, the humor, and the melodrama between the characters. There's a lightness to the way their friends show up for each other. Despite all the dark stuff that they find out in the clues, it’s her getting excited about finding clues that takes us from episode to episode. Those reveals are fun to do.

FB
How about Wilt somehow helping Danni meet up with Suzy? He’s sort of encouraging it. Of course, she's the most beautiful girl in high school so Lou and Jeremy are shocked when Danny goes and even starts to talk to Suzy. There's a connection between them, an attraction, which is interesting.

TL
Their attraction to each other, both on soul and gender levels, is really relevant now, talking about, “What is attraction? What’s okay?” 

FB
Because they both loved Wilt. 

You could pitch this as a comedy. 

TL
Absolutely. It’s a drama but there’s definitely a lot of whimsical elements to it. Tonally, we were thinking of the movie Ghost. For those of you who don't remember, it starred Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Swayze, and Demi Moore.

FB
You have Shawn, the counselor in the Aftermart, who's very uptight but comedic and trying to control what is uncontrollable. 

TL
Parts of the Aftermart are structured a bit like The Good Place and there's a certain hierarchy and structure that mirrors the bureaucracy in our world. But for the characters, if you think about Ghost and how funny it was when Whoopi Goldberg was going around hearing ghosts and no one believed her, and she just looked like a lunatic. I thought a lot about her while writing Danni. How convinced she is because she really does hear Wilt and she can't believe nobody else does. She's just going for it anyway. That makes her a really lovable character to me.

FB
We’ve spoken to a couple of directors and we've landed on one that we're going to be working with. I haven't gotten the approval from him to talk about him. 

TL
We're excited to have a hot director attached.

FB
He brings a look and feel to the project that I think is really unique, especially in the Aftermart. 

TL
The director referenced the Meow Wolf exhibit in Las Vegas. The Aftermart has a very similar quality where there are corridors that go to nowhere and doors that open to no place and things are sectioned and recategorized.

And, of course in the Aftermart, there are levels and corridors that lead to another level. You see souls check out from the Aftermart and go beyond it. What the afterlife looks like beyond the Aftermart gives us a great way into the second season. The first season works really well and we love the idea of solving murders and resolving deaths from the other side. So the idea for Season Two is that Wilt and his friends in the Aftermart, stabilize a technology that allows them to connect with the living. So with Danni on the side of the living and Wilt on the side of the souls, they start to solve murder cases from both sides. So we're very excited about that direction.

FB
With the pandemic and then the Writers’ and SAG strikes, a lot of projects had been put on hold, including this one, and now people are trying to find their way. This is a young adult novel, therefore, it's a young adult show. I see a lot of those types of shows on Netflix and other networks. We are taking the material with our hot, young, talented director, and we're gonna go out and sell it. Hopefully, the next time we talk about Static, we'll be in pre-production or shooting the show. 

TL
I hope to share some more good news with you guys.

FB
If anybody would like to read the novel, you can pick it up on frankbeddor.com. Thank you, Teresa, for sharing your insight.

TL
Always a pleasure. We love talking about our process. 

FB
It’s always fun to talk about getting from point A to point B and trying to make progress as creatives. I guess I'm gonna have to start a new podcast, All Things Creative with Teresa Lin.

TL
We’ll make sure to keep creating things so we have something to talk about.

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