The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Judgement Day, The Prequel to The Devil’s Advocate by Andrew Neiderman & V.C. Andrews Books

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

Judgement Day, The Prequel to The Devil’s Advocate by Andrew Neiderman & V.C. Andrews Books A cop investigating a suspicious suicide uncovers a satanic plot in this thrilling prequel to The Devil’s Advocate. After a promising young attorney plummets twenty stories to his death just outside his posh Manhattan apartment, the police wish to label the incident a suicide. But the detective assigned to the case, Lt. Matthew Blake, is troubled by the evidence. He senses something far more sinister about the attorney’s demise, and as he investigates, he discovers the unbelievable truth . . . Meanwhile, charming defense attorney John Milton has an appointment at the law firm of Simon & James. He is all too eager to take on the caseload of their late employee. Although the firm is happy to have Blake on board, they have no idea just what their new hire is capable of doing in order to win . . .

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. And welcome.

We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. Today, we have the amazing author of a massive amount of books. In fact, he's the one who wrote the original book, The Devil's Advocate, that turned into a massively explosive and very popular movie. One of my favorite movies of all times, actually. And, of course, I'm a big Al Pacino fan and everything else. Andrew Neiderman is on the show with us today. And is it Neiderman or Niederman?

It's Neiderman. But my family, when they moved to Philadelphia, for some reason, they went for Niederman. There you go. People in New York all know me as Andrew Niederman, yeah. Okay, sounds good then. Andrew Niederman is on the show with us today, and he's going to be talking about his latest book,

and this is kind of exciting, Judgment Day. It's a prequel to The Devil's Advocate. So now I'm even more excited. I want to see this movie come out. So if it gets turned into a movie, which I'm sure it probably will, I don't know, we'll see. We'll talk to him and find out what's going on with his life. But he is an amazing author of over 46 thrillers.

He's been the author of V.C. Andrews for over 35 years. Besides The Devil's Advocate, he's had dozens of his books and V.C. Andrews novels adapted to film. The Cutler series is now being produced for Lifetime to air July 2023. Most recently, the biography he wrote of V.C. Andrews, The Woman Beyond the Addict was nominated for an Edgar Award. Welcome to the show, Andrew. How are you? I'm great. I mean, it's an exciting time and whoever thought it would you know, it would come at this point in my life, but it's just a wonderful horse to ride and you know, being nominated for the Edgar Award for the biography of Virginia Andrews

was one of the most exciting moments that I could remember. And then April 27th is the award dinner and meet a lot of the people. And that'll be fun just in and of itself. A lot of the other nominees, a lot of the people from other categories, it's just a wonderful Haven for all writers and TV people will be there and I'm looking forward to it. There you go.

Oh, well, I mean, geez, how many books have you written in total? I've published at this moment about 151. Holy crap. We have four VT Anderson novels coming out in the next year and a half.

So, yeah, I've been busy. I don't know how you get into films. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. I don't know if you realize it, because what happened a year and a half ago was I engineered the sale of the V.C. Andrews franchise to A&E Studios. And they had been producing some V.C. Andrews movies. And since then, I've done 19.

And we have 11 to 12 right now in the development can. So there'll be quite a few to see. This is going to be awesome. I mean, you pretty much have the V.C. Andrews series started in 1987. There are approximately 26 million copies worldwide. And today, there are over 108 million. That's pretty prolific. Yeah. I started it in 87, but it had started, of course, Virginia started it before that. She had written eight titles,

and to me, the most exciting thing was to be able to carry it on and to help to grow it. See, at this moment, there is a V.C. Andrews title in every country in the world that has a publisher, including mainland China. Oh, wow. It's quite a thing with the V.C. Andrews franchise. There you go.

Eden's Children went on sale earlier this year in January. Little Paula went on sale February 23. The Woman Beyond the Attic went on sale in February. And you've been nominated for the awards banquet. And then we're talking about this newest book, Judgment Day, that came out August 2, 2022. So let's see here. What should we start with first to talk about?

And we should get a.com so that we can get people to take a look at wherever they want to find you on the interwebs. Well, one of them is Neidermann.com. Just Neidermann.com. And then I have a number of Facebook pages. There is an official VC Andrews Facebook page.

And I have a page under Andrew Neidermann author. I have a personal page Andrew Neidman, author. I have a personal page, Andrew Neidman. There are a lot of pages, but we have a big following on the V.C. Andrews official V.C. Andrews page. A lot of fans have started the pages on their own different pages, but there is an official V.C. Andrews page. And that gets all the news first. So that's a good place for anybody to go if they want to know what's coming up

what's happening Judgment Day of course I advertised on Andrew Neidman Facebook page and on LinkedIn and other internet sites and Judgment Day is how Satan came into New York

and took over the law firm and how a district attorney in New York gradually realizes there's something weird about this new lawyer and starts to pursue him. And he has a biblical background himself, so it becomes a very interesting conflict in the book. Did you ever write a sequel to uh the devil's advocate not as such but i have written i did write a book called the dark which is about satan taking over the firm of a psychiatrist he goes to the psychiatrist sat Satan himself, and asks for help because he has a compulsion

to cause people to do evil things. The psychiatrist, of course, is thinking this guy is a little wacky or whatever until he describes one of the recent events and he finds out it's true and now he begins to worry about the patient that's called the dark there you go easily picked up on amazon or any of the book sites so the judgment day uh prequel the devil's advocate um was that was it hard to form this out after you know i mean sometimes i mean i don't know, but I can imagine that sometimes, you know, taking such a great story and trying to do a prequel to it and make it equally as great might be challenging. It is challenging. But it was exciting and fun to do because I was able to bring so much from The Devil's Advocate into the prequel and of course uh he's got to establish himself as charming

just as he is in the in the movie and uh we established where the conflicts would occur and who he's going after and how he takes over the firm it opens up with one of the members of the firm uh basically looks like he's committing suicide, but somebody's actually killing him under Satan's orders. And Satan moves right into that spot and starts to take over the firm. And all kinds of things happen. And this detective gets involved with it because there's criminal cases. And he has, as I said, a biblical background.

And he begins to realize something is going on here. And it's such a great, like we were talking in the green room, one of my favorite scenes of the, and anytime I see vanity or some sort of egotistical thing in media or whatever, I always love that scene. Vanity, it's my favorite sin And there's the Rolling Stones Oh yeah Slide over in the character

And it's such a great Part for Al Pacino Which I am a huge fan I thought what was kind of interesting was The mixture of You know John Milton John Steinbeck East of Eden And

What's the other thing I'm looking at? East of Eden and Paradise Lost. Yeah, and the whole way that blends in and just really kind of creates the whole story, which is, I just love how, you know, just the complexity of that. Yeah, well, you have to remember that, let's go back for a minute. I was a school teacher, English department chairman, at a high school in upstate New York, Fallsburg High School.

And I had a great background in literature, obviously. I had a master's degree in English. And I was impressed by many of these early works. And Paradise Lost was always a favorite one of mine. You know, view of the devil. You know, you can make a heaven of hell or hell of heaven. I'd rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. I mean, there's some great stuff there to build on.

And then you always have Shakespeare and his view of the devil and uh being a teacher I was able to weave all these things together into my story be inspired by them and that's why I think it's a bigger story than uh just a simple thriller it has so much that people can read into it uh this you know the son of the devil I imply a lot of things that the screenwriter then built on in the movie, which was great. I thought it was wonderful. And for those who have read the book, they know that at the end of the novel,

after Kevin, the lawyer, kills Satan with a gunshot, he goes to prison. And when he's in prison, he ends up being terrorized by the other prisoners to do their appeals. And the ending of the book is he goes to the library forced to do him. And who is the librarian but John Milton? So we realize that Satan let him do this in order to help him get his people out so to speak.

It was quite a dramatic ending. They all loved it but they said well the problem in the movies is the main character is defeated so badly that we fear we'd lose box orders. So then we worked on trying to find another ending for it.

And it took six writers. Wow. Until Tony Guilford came along and he came up with that, you know, that mirror scene and then we're going back and then the ending. And the ending, of course, when Satan says, Vanity, my favorite sin. But the reason he's saying it is because even though it looks like the lawyer has become a moral person, we realize at that last moment that Vanity is going to overtake him again, and Satan was defeated,

but he's never killed. So that was a great way to launch it in that regard oh yeah i mean it sets up almost developed as a stage musical is it really a stage musical too it will be yeah wow i've been working on that with a dramatist in london and a composer dramatist julian wilford who's done a lot of shows, a lot of plays and Richard John, the music director who's the composer and we are now finishing up our deal with

Poland to open there in 2024 and there's a big bite from South Korea so you may say why are you going there? Well that's the way you get musicals on over, I mean getting going. You should go to smaller venues first, musicals on and over. I mean, getting going. You should go to smaller venues first, build it up,

and then find your way to Broadway. There you go. I was just going to ask you. It will be a musical. Yeah. Well, that would be interesting. I mean, it's such a powerful movie. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. And, of course, as I mentioned, I'm an Al Pacino fan.

And the Matrix gentleman, i forget his name uh d keanu reeves he was so great in that part as was the female world yeah it was it was uh it was powerful um and it just such a great plot twist such a you know you're you you you kind of feel the horror of of what he starts to figure out. I remember the play that Pacino does so beautifully where he tells the guys who try to mug him in the subway, he's like, if you go home, he's talking in a language. It's just pure, wonderful evil. Was it hard to put that into current terms

and pick lawyers as the vehicle of the current day devil? I mean, it seems kind of appropriate if you think about it. That was the easy part, you know. Last August, I did the Harry Melber show on MSNBC, and we talked about the difference in what is immorality. What used to be good and evil, the lawyers have turned to win or lose. That's what worked its way into politics. So it's no longer whether you're going to do good things. The main thing is, can I win?

Can I be reelected? And that's more important than, you know, doing the good thing. So I think there's a heavy emphasis on winning and losing. And I think that, in fact, there's a great line in The Devil's Advocate when Keanu Reeves is yelling back and forth with Al Pacino. And he says, I'm a lawyer. We win. That's what we do.

And basically, that's what it's become. And, you know, the reason I guess I chose lawyers is because they start off, when you think about it, they never really ask the client, are you guilty? Because once they do that, they're officers of the court. And it's a different story. So the purpose that they'll always tell you is I've got to give somebody a good defense going to the Constitution. So I'm not going to ask him if he's guilty. I'm going to find out how to make him not guilty or, if he's guilty, how to make it less severe. so that you know you go to a doctor he doesn't look at your illness and say okay how can I make this person not guilty

I think in today's world it's like how much money can I charge this guy it lends itself to it maybe you should make insurance health insurance companies the next oh yeah yeah yeah yeah well uh you know the funny part when you talk about it is i once i was once i remember i was at a restaurant in france in nice i think it was and somebody

introduced said to do a whole restaurant you ought to the devil's advocate is here and a man raised his hand in the back he said i'm a lawyer and i said what kind of lawyer and he said criminal attorney i said that that's a oxymoron if you're a criminal your attorney the place the way i really did well there's three and uh i had a lot of fun with lawyers after that yeah i'll, I'll bet It's interesting how they It's interesting how they do their work Everyone deserves a thing

But like it portrays in the movie Sometimes you can get a guy off on a technicality And he goes and does something even more heinous Well, actually I got two stories for you. One is while we were developing The Devil's Advocate, the O.J. Simpson case was on. Oh, geez. So I would be running up.

I remember running up to Warner Brothers a number of times and saying, what are you guys doing? The Devil's Advocate is on television. Why don't we get moving here? Why don't we stop rewriting and doing all these notes you know yeah yeah if it doesn't fit it was quite a thing to see but uh this is a true story i was i was on a plane going to again i was going, it seems like I go there all the time, but I was going to France and I got to a conversation with a man across the aisle, like you're often doing. He asked me, what do I do for a living? And I told him, writer. And he said, what? You're right. And then I said, well, you probably know the devil's advocate. And he said, my God,

you changed my life. And I said, what what do you mean wow he says i was a criminal attorney i represented a man who killed a child oh i got him off i saw your movie the man killed another child jesus i quit being a lawyer and i bought a hotel in Ed's. That's a true story. I have chills for the whole rest of this trip. It's giving me chills. That's extraordinary. I would have trouble with the guilt of it as well.

I just think it's interesting. There's certain people I couldn't... I love the attorney business and i like the the whole feel of law and the aspects of it and constitution and stuff like that but i don't think i could ever be a criminal attorney at least not one for defense well you know to be fair you got to go to uh to kill a mockingbird look at gregory peck that's the kind of attorney that we

love you know you know they're kind of an attorney and perry mason stories and all that so i don't mean to say that all attorneys are the satan it's just that there's a tendency or a leaning a leaning that allows them to shave it a bit more than maybe other professions and you see that in judgment day when he takes over the firm and and the detective realizes there's something going on here you know the something going on in the cases that's a little bit supernatural and so that gets us back into the devil's advocate yeah yeah and in the whole you know the play on the seven was it the seven deadly sins you know vanity and and all the other stuff,

gluttony and everything else. You know, it's interesting how we struggle with that as human beings, our own vanity, our own egotism. I mean, I clearly suffer from a lot of it. Well, you all have it. It's good. In some ways, it's very good to have it. You got to have it. Have self-respect.

Yeah. At what point does it become egomania you know yeah well we all know i have egomania uh let's let's get a plug in for your other books here uh you've got the woman beyond the addict uh which uh is coming out in june on paperback it came out last year uh and it's winning awards uh let's get a plug in for that as well well yeah this is i mean i'm nominated for the Edgar Award, and I'm so pleased for so many reasons. After 40 years of Flowers in the Act was 40 years out,

so V.C. Andrews was actually 40 years old, the whole franchise. I thought it was time to write her biography, and I was fortunate because there were some elderly members of her family who had one of them particular Mary Andrews position law he she had all of Virginia's paperwork I'm talking now about personal letters about notes on writing notes on books notes on everything there is. And I was able to get into all of that. And then there was, this was phenomenal, there was an aunt who's still alive,

who was working in Walmarts at 104 years old. Wow. And she was there for Virginia's family, her father. She had a lot of details, real details, that I could intertwine in writing the biography. But the big challenge for me, of course, because Flowers in the Attic is such a gigantic bestseller worldwide, we're talking in the tens of millions of copies,

was all of the mysteries in the tens of millions of copies, was all of the mysteries in the book that readers have been trying to solve for decades. And I was able, through getting into her biography, be able to track where anecdotes in her real life showed up in Flowers in the Attic. And in fact, I discovered that she was a very sick woman in the sense that she had a terrible handicap and was basically homebound for just most of her life. Up to the point when she was a young teenager. And then she ended up in wheelchairs and operations and homebound. And the first case when she was in the hospital, when she was very young, she was very beautiful in her youth, even at an old age and even six, she was very beautiful.

A doctor came to see her who was infatuated with her and said, I heard you want to be a writer. And he said, let me tell you my life story. Maybe you make a story of it. And he told her the story of him and his siblings being locked in an attic in Richmond, Virginia. Wow. She never forgot the story, but she didn't really write it. This is what was phenomenal about her.

She persevered in her work, but she didn't really write it or flesh it out until she was 55 years old. At 55, she became a world phenomenon. This was a woman who had been housebound all that time, and suddenly everybody in the world wanted to meet Virginia Andrews. So the story is quite fascinating. The Woman Beyond the Attic, it's on Simon & Schuster, and in June it will come out in paperback, and we're hoping to get it into a movie

about her life story, too. That'll be really interesting. So, on Eden's Children, which went on sale in January, and Little Paul, you're writing those? Yeah, I wrote Eden's Children and then Little Paul. You know, the thing about VCM is that it's kind of unique. It's always about family in some way or another, but there's always some kind of a weird twist, some kind of strange thing. Nothing weirder probably than Flowers in the Attic, with a mother who poisons her own children with the scene of incest that we have.

And then the background of all the family. The Flowers in the Attic was so powerful that I was able to develop six more novels out of it. Wow. Out of it. Out of the book itself. And I've written a stage play that just came out, updated to download for anybody, the stage play of The Flowers in the Attic. But then Eden's Children, my most recent VC Andrews

series, the premise is about a mother, a woman, who's married and has no children, who goes shopping in orphanages for when i say make a new family it it's it's a double meaning oh wow she had intended for them the two she had adopted to become parents for her grandchild and her husband doesn't realize it it It's quite an intricate family story. I mean, Eden's children, and then what happens is there is a baby, and that baby becomes little Paul. Wow. So there's quite a bit to go on that one, yeah.

And so you're going to continue publishing this series or being the writer for this series from here on out? Well, I'm working on the new series, which is the S for this series from here on out well i'm working on the new series which is the sutherland series okay and the first book on that one will be out in fall of next uh fall of next year no i'm sorry it's going to be out in february of next year called losing spring and that starts uh the sutherland series and the second book's already written and that'll be out in the fall and that's called searching for endless summer so this is a very similar in structure to flowers in the attic but it's much more modern in its themes and in its plot

challenges there you go what what what helps you be so prolific? What do you think is the core of why you're able to just write so many books and do different screenplays and things of that nature? What do you think is the catalyst for that? What unlocked that for you? Well, I grew up in uh an encouraging household uh i had my maternal grandmother live with us she was from hungary and she uh she would tell me at night stories about gypsies and all the magic and things and i was just a little kid boy

you know but i was fascinated with just listening to her. My father was kind of a storyteller. My mother was like a poet. And my sister wrote poetry, too. But it just was inbred, I guess. But I often say to people, I'm not sure if it's a curse or a blessing because, I mean, it's not impossible for me to go out and see things happening and not have, which I call the main driver for all stories, is the what if question. So I'm always challenged by that. Let me give you a real concrete example. I was reading an article about an experiment in Oxford where they were taking human brain cells and putting them into the brains of monkeys to see if they could raise the intelligence of the monkeys. And it was, you know, an experiment they were doing.

And I went in my head and I said, what if they did that with a German shepherd, supposedly the most intelligent dog used for war and police, and it escapes into population? So I wrote Night Howl from that what if question. See, so behind all my books, there's this curiosity that just comes and then the the big thing for a writer is it's great to have a premise like that but you need a character you have to develop a strong character when i say a strong character the right the character should take over the story if you have a good character he or she will take it over the story he or she will not do things not in accordance with his character or character and that drives the plot so you have to really concentrate on the person the character that you're developing

and work the premise in that way and that's what I tell young writers. That's brilliant. Get a what-if question and get a great character. The what-if element. Do you ever get writer's block? 150 books plus, do you ever get writer's block? No. I don't know what that is really. I heard many writers talk about it,

but I have so many things backed up that I need to get to. Because I'm writing the third book in the Sutherland series. And there are four or five other concepts that I wish I could get to. But I have to do what I'm doing first. And then I get challenged by the movies because I have to be the consultant on movie scripts and make sure that we're staying within the V.C. Andrews world. So I do that with the Lifetime Network.

And I work with other people trying to get films made. And then I write the script for, I mean, I write the play Flowers in the Ag. So I just keep busy. I don't have that writer's block. That's maybe the key is to just keep, and, you know, asking questions like what if and things like that to just keep on going. Do you have a set schedule you keep every day where you write, or do you just write because it pours out of you?

No, I don't believe in that. You know, people say I write when I get in the mood kind of thing. That's not a professional writer. A professional writer is like any other person working. You get up in the morning and you start. I always like to start, and I always tell writers, never end a chapter. Always write to the middle of the next chapter and then when you start again the next day rewrite everything you can up to that point and it's like a relay run of passing

the baton wow you just keep going from there but if you end the chapter you're going to have a hard time starting i was like you know it's a hard time starting up you stop running you have a hard time starting up. It's like, you know, it's a hard time starting up. You stop running, you have a hard time starting up. And you're running, you can run fast, you know. That would make sense. Yeah, so basically that's my technique. And I tell that to other writers, people trying to be writers, you know. Challenge yourself every morning. And don't sit there and say, well, I don't have the mood or something.

Go back and be your character. My family, my kids are always telling stories about how I would start talking about characters at dinner as if they were people they knew. It would drive them crazy, you know. Who is that? Did we meet that person? Do we know this person?

Are we related? Yeah, yeah. It's just, to me, they're always alive. So I'll just say. And then, I don't know, the other day I remember saying, I was writing in this new Settlement series, and there's a grandfather in it, and he's like a billionaire businessman.

He's got his own attitudes about everything. And I realized something I was saying, and I said, oh, wait a minute. That's what grandfather said. And what are you talking about? Grandfather. In the book I'm writing, he just said that. It was like, what do you mean you just said it? You wrote it, didn't you?

No, he just said it. To me, he just said that. It was like, what do you mean he just said it? You wrote it, didn't you? No. No, he just said it. To me, he just said it. Yeah. Well, you know, we've had a lot of prolific authors like yourself on that have written lots of books. And it's interesting to me how they're always able to weave the story and develop the characters. And those characters, you know, like you say, take on a living, breathing sort of sense. And do you ever get feedback from your readers where they go,

hey, you know, did you notice this character has these sort of issues and give you a bit of an epiphany? You ever had that before? Oh, yeah, I got a lot of feedback, especially with Lucien Desloyne, you know. I give his hundreds of thousands of fans, you know. Everybody's got opinions. I think it's nice. And yeah, they challenge some things, you know, and I try to

explain them, but yeah, it's good. To me, if you stir people up where they care enough about what they're reading, you've succeeded. There you go. You made it something of a living. And if when somebody reads something, you know,

that's it, you know, they don't care to think about it anymore. You know, that's a failure. So how odd it might sound, but if somebody comes back and says yeah your character should have been this it should have done that i'm thinking you're thinking about the character

you know there you go to you it's a living thing so yeah you're telling you're criticizing me but basically you're telling me i succeeded it's kind of like uh maybe it's kind of like uh you know songs and lyrics and stuff and songs like people always take their own interpretation, you know, like Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. You know, people have some sort of, all sorts of different interpretations that they place on it. You know, it's really. That's the key thing in Flowers in the Attic, why I wrote the biography of Women Beyond the Attic. Because in the biography, a lot of the readers' questions about the story, you know, their opinions and what this means, it gets solved for them. Because it's a wait, wait, here's where it was.

This is what actually did happen. And here's how V.C. Andrews incorporated it in the story. And we can see all that now. And the other reason what made it interesting or challenging to write this biography was V.C. Andrews deliberately put out misinformation about herself. And the reason she did that was, one, she wanted to be a mystery. But when she went to London after she had become such a success, a reporter described her in a very ugly way as a handicapped, crippled woman. Wow. Made up things, in fact.

It was like an inquirer story. And she never forgave the media for that. So if they'd ask her questions, she deliberately to and to just to drive people crazy sometimes and um it was fun discerning the truth from that and and uh a challenge for me is the biographer to get into the truth of the matter through the family and through paperwork so it's fascinating yeah Yeah. And I imagine her fans really loved it, right? Because they got a chance to see behind

the scenes. Yeah, I had a lot of great responses to it. And a lot of people still don't know it exists. You know, it's hard today to get people to know what exists and what doesn't up there. But it's still selling. And you can find anything on Amazon, but it's a Simon and you can find anything on Amazon

but it's a Simon & Schuster book so it's going to be out again in June as a paperback and I think the Edgar Award nomination helped it quite a bit. There you go. Well congratulations on the award.

I mean certainly you know you work hard. Achievements are good and give recognition and, you know, give recognition to your future work even more. You know, anything more you can do to amplify it to the next level and get more readers. I mean, it's an awesome feat. Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting, too. Actually, what happened to me, we were in Hawaii're you're a couple hours behind the well five hours behind

new york i think so i just picked up uh i don't know what i was on the internet and i see i'm being congratulated i think what the heck what am i being congratulated for i totally get notified of the nomination for the Edgar Award. It was a fun way to wake up. That's one way to do it. I've had that happen with the awards that we've gotten with the Chris Foss and the Chris Foss Show. I woke up two years in a row and people are like, hey, have you read Forbes yet? Have you seen the Forbes Award?

And you're like, well, I don't know. I just woke up and I'm hungover. And yeah, it is a nice way to wake up but congratulations on all that uh anything more we want to plug coming down the pipe in the future well i just say and uh and next year we'll have the new vc andrews series the southern series we have the movie. The movie's coming out in July based on the Cutler series. The first book is Dawn, which when I wrote that series, that was a complete series that I wrote on my own. And Dawn outsold Flowers in the Attic in initial sale. It's a very popular series with the fan base and actually everyone so uh that will be an exciting summer

um we are going as you i don't know if you knew it but we did do a limited series on flowers in the attic called flowers in the attic the origins one lifetime and it was based on the first novel i wrote garden of shadows and it got the biggest limited series audience lifetimes ever had wow so it will be continued and that's going to be a very exciting uh event when that when that happens and there'll be more movies coming as I said, they've already made 19 and They're already have another 11 in development. Yeah, so it's going to be a pretty exciting period for movies and books and the VC Andrews franchise no question and devil's advocate coming out as a musical is so exciting for us and The hills are alive with the devil

Well Satan sings well in this and uh the hills are alive with the devil well andrew or uh al pacino you know he did such a he's just such a bomb such a bombastic job uh he's been accused of overacting i think he's a great one of the greatest actors he was great it was great to watch him i was on the set of that big scene that office scene oh yeah and uh uh I kept saying to Taylor Hackford, that was great. And he said, wait a minute. He's going to want to do it again. Well, he did it 14 times. Really? Yeah.

Wow. 14 different takes. And I was like, I said, well, every one of them were great for me, you know, but he's a perfectionist. Yeah. That's probably why he's a great actor. It was wonderful to be on that set.

We had a lot of great New York actors in that movie, by the way. Yeah. You know, Ruben Santiago Hudson, who's been in a lot of television. He was the devil's man, so to speak.

And he won Tony awards. There were a lot of them from the New York's theater scene in the movie. It was made in New York and in downtown LA in a studio. It was made in the Centennial Building in New York. Warner Brothers took over two floors for that. Such a beautiful movie, visually. And yeah, I mean, so I would love to see the prequel. I'd love to see a sequel.

I don't know if, you know, there's one of those things where it's such a great movie. It's hard to beat it. But, you know, what the hell? Sometimes it's fun to go down those roads. I'm still a fan of Godfather 2. And I like Godfather 3. it's hard to beat it, but you know, what the hell, you know, sometimes it's fun to go down those roads. You know, I,

I'm still a fan of Godfather two and I like Godfather three. Um, you know, you can kind of see a little bit of repetition in the storyline of Godfather three, but you know, Hey, I'm such a big fan of the original Godfather. And so,

you know, you can take great movies and, and spin them off a little bit and, uh, they come out pretty well. So hopefully I'll, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it's going to happen. You remind me, I'm going to have to go back and rewatch the movie for old times. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I watched it like 50 trillion times.

Yeah, people do. And Vanity, my favorite sin. Hopefully you'll be there for the musical. There you go. I can see that. We'll get a little closer to you, maybe. Will you be able to do the rolling stones bit that's uh you know the oh i love that when they we every time we went to the rolling

stones concert when they sang that we just had chills because that's always that's wrong you know taylor was very good with picking the music for the movie taylor hackford yeah you know he's married to helen mirren greatest actress in the world. Oh, wow. Yeah. In fact, when I met Taylor, I said, I like meeting you, but I'd rather meet your wife. We had a lot of fun. It was great. And my son, the pilot,

actually flew Taylor and Helen on a flight. And they ran. And Taylor said, I mean, Helen said, he should do the musical in Italy because Taylor's more famous in Italy than I am. Yeah. The opening line for, I believe it's Pain of Black by the Rolling Stones, right?

The opening guitar lick. To me, Pain of Black is one of the all-time best songs. Of course, there's the Devil's What's the Devil's song? I forget It's their famous song Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name

You know Such great music to play on So that makes such great movies Anyway, thank you very much, for coming on. Congratulations on the award. Thank you so much. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. Okay, so I am knightman.com if they want to see titles of books.

The official VC Andrews page on Facebook is the big spot where they hear the news pretty quickly. We're on Twitter. We're on LinkedIn, too. I mean, I get into LinkedIn, too. So we're on all the same places,

and we look forward to getting more news out to everybody and exciting times ahead. There you go. There you go. Well, I'll be excited to see the new works coming out. Continue to assist my friend. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. And thanks to my audience for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Foss, and all those places across the internet. Pick up the newest books in a series of the V.C. Andrews series, Eden's Children. And also, I don't have the second book up. Looks like I lost track of it, Judgment Day, there you go, there you go, Little Paula, on sale February 7th, 2023, thanks so much for tuning in,

be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time, and that should have a sound, Grant.