Guest Post: Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson

GUEST POST – “The Familiars” by Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson

ADAM JAY EPSTEIN spent his childhood in Great Neck, New York, while ANDREW JACOBSON grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the two met in a parking garage out in Los Angeles. They have been writing for film and television together ever since. The Familiars is their first book.

One day, Adam asked Andrew, “Are you familiar with what a familiar is?” And from that simple question, Vastia was born, a fantastical world filled with the authors’ shared love of animals and magic. They wrote every word, sentence, and page together, sitting opposite each other.

Adam Jay Epstein lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jane, their daughters, Penny and Olive, and a black-and-white alley cat who hangs out in their backyard. Andrew Jacobson lives with his wife, Ashley, and their dog, Elvis, four traffic lights away.

THE FAMILIARS will be produced for film by Sam Raimi and Sony Animation.

“5 Music Albums that Inspire Us To Write”

Music is a creative aphrodisiac. Especially music that is inspiring to you or activates your imagination. If Andrew is going to work-out, he’ll be more motivated listening to the Rocky4soundtrack. If he is going to brainstorm ideas or write, his imagination will flow more readily with some Postal Service or Peter Gabriel. Music sets a mood for your state of mind, and can be a powerful ally in the idea generating process. This is not a list of our favorite music – we’ll post that some other day – rather, it’s a few of the albums that we enjoy writing to (hence the lack of lyrically based music).

5. “Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too” by the New Radicals

“You Gotta Get What You Give” is an early anthem of our writing together. It is conceivable that we listened to this song over a hundred times in a row while cranking out one of our first scripts together. It was not just creatively rewarding, but had a rhythmic base beat that kept us energized through long stretches of typing and talking.

4. “Bachbusters” by Bach

The music of Johann Sebastian Bach realized by Don Dorsey on digital and authentic period synthesizers. One of the very first CDs that Adam owned and amazingly transcendent. The Italian Concerto in F Major still makes Adam think of reading “The Hobbit” for the first time, and instantly brings him to the Shire. That transportive music is interconnected with those words for him and if ever I need to go to a fantasy place, just hitting the play button on that compact disc takes him there.

3. “The Passion” by Peter Gabriel

This instrumental score doesn’t remind us at all of the Martin Scorsese film “The Last Temptation of Christ” in which it was used but rather hours behind the computer, writing together. There’s something hopeful and inspirational in its haunting, almost classical sound.

2. “The Orbs Adventures Beyond the Ultra-World” by the Orb

When Adam writes his science fiction opus, this will be the album he has on constant repeat. It’s both at times otherworldly and almost ambient. It samples movie vocals and even a clip from Flash Gordon and the constant repetitive nature to its melodies launches his imagination into overdrive.

1. The music of John Williams

Whether it’s Star Wars, Harry Potter, or ET, it’s hard not to be creatively inspired by the scores of Williams. When the film adaptation of “The Familiars” is complete, we could only dream of having the master of motion picture music compose its score.

You can learn more about “The Familiars” at www.thefamiliars.com. If you want to hear some sample tracks from the music that inspires us to write, come visit our blog,thefamiliars.blogspot.com.