📚 Getting to Know the Author: A Chat with 'The Dreaming Team' Chris Wallace #AuthorInterview #Interview #AllMyChildren #TheDreamingTeam

Periodically we scour the Internet looking for authors who are willing to talk about their professional lives which would be interesting to other writers and up and coming authors. Today, we welcome Chris Wallace, author of The Dreaming Team.

As an actor, Chris Wallace was a regular on the hit daytime drama, All My Children, created the role of The Half-Percenter in Joe Papp’s production, Mondongo, appeared in countless television programs, including The Incredible Hulk, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour and had a starring role in the holiday horror classic film, New Year’s Evil. As a producer, he put on New York: A Great Place to Live at Lincoln Center which kicked off New York City’s Diamond Jubilee; for Channel Five in New York, he produced the highly acclaimed Harlem Cultural Festival; at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, he produced Uptown Sunday Afternoon, which was hosted by Harry Belafonte and featured Richard Pryor, Bill Withers, and a galaxy of other performers; for the National Organization for Women, he produced A Valentine’s Day Tribute to Woman at New York’s Town Hall; was associate producer of the first Ali-Frazier Heavyweight Championship Fight at Madison Square Garden, and produced the gigantic block party, hosted by Gwen Verdon, which named West 46th Street as Restaurant Row. . He earned the Silver Award at the New York International Film and Television Festival for In the Balance, a film that advocated sustainability and common sense in wildlife management. It was also singled out by the Department of the Interior as one of the best films of its kind. Chris wrote, narrated and wrote the musical score for that film. He performed on several children’s television programs in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Jacksonville, singing his original children’s songs. In Hollywood, he performed them for all denominations of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. He created a musical, A Special Thing to Be, at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum that featured his kids’ songs and the museum’s children’s chorus. He wrote the songs for two children’s theatre productions in Hollywood, Hooray, Here Comes the Circus and Sleeping Beauty; wrote and performed the songs on Strong Kids, Safe Kids, a video produced by Henry Winkler for Paramount that dealt with the protection of children from sexual molestation and exploitation. He created his first musical revue, Greatest Hits, in Hollywood, which played several venues, including Carlos ‘n’ Charlie’s on Sunset Strip and The Backlot in West Hollywood. Upon relocating to Australia, he produced A Helping Hand at the Victorian Arts Centre, a benefit for Quadriplegic Hand Foundation; wrote book, music and lyrics for Nothing to Wear, a musical based on “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” also produced at the Victorian Arts Centre. He created a one-man show, A Thing of Shreds & Patches, for the Melbourne Fringe Festival; created another one-man show, The Mark Twain You Don’t Know, which toured Australia, then Pacific Palisades, California, and played in New York City on the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. He created several cabaret shows for The Butterfly Club in Melbourne, most notable of which was Les Femmes which featured an all female cast. He wrote, produced and performed in Huckleberry: A Musical Adventure which premiered in Melbourne. Which brings us to The Dreaming Team. This is his second book. The first, Hollywood Mosaic is written under the pen name, Pete Joseph. You can visit his website at www.olentangymusic.com.

Welcome to The Writer's Life, Chris. Can we begin by telling us how you started your writing career?

Chris: How much time do you have? Just kidding. I have always written. I never had to think about it. I just did it. I wrote plays in fourth grade. I won an American Legion Essay Contest in high school. With an irony that is cosmic, however, I flunked two courses in college, both of which were writing courses. A couple of years back, I decided to get a tat and opted to have the word λογια tattooed on my lower back. It's a Greek word that means "words."

Is it a full-time job or do you write as a hobby?

Chris: Since a lot of what I've done professionally has required writing as a foundation, I guess you could say it's more or less full-time.

Not only do you write, but you were an once an actor on the hit daytime drama, All My Children. What was the name of your character and how did you get the part?

Chris: This is a good story. The character's name was Mel Jacobi. He and Phil Brent were the whole Pine Valley police department. Nick Benedict played Phil Brent. I was knocking around New York as a struggling actor. One day, I had an audition for an ad in midtown and walked from there from my apartment on the upper Westside. On the way home, I started to develop a blister on my heel. The shoes were new and not broken in yet. I stopped at a drugstore at Columbus Circle to buy a bandaid and ran into a guy I'd known from my television days. He was now a writer for a soap opera, All My Children. I'd never heard of it, but I sent him a picture and resume the next day. A short time later, Susan Scudder, who was the casting director for All My Children called me and told me they wanted me to play Sgt. Jacobi. It turns out that the day of the blister was Nick Benedict's birthday.

Interesting story! At some point, you became a producer. Would you like to tell us a little about that?

Chris: I started in television writing and producing on-air promotion at WNBC-TV, Channel 4 in New York. Just as an aside, it was there that with the guy I shared an office with, we organized the Writers Guild for promotion writers at NBC. Anyway, I got hired away from Channel 4 by Metromedia, which was just beginning to make a splash as the leading independent TV station in New York, WNEW-TV, Channel 5. I did the same job there for a couple of years. Then the new program director (who coincidentally had been the director of a kids' show I guested on in Philly) asked me if I wanted to start producing at Channel 5. My answer was a resounding, DUH!

What I also found interesting was that you performed on several children's television programs in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Jacksonville, singing your original children's songs. Can you elaborate?

Chris: That really started by accident. I had always been musical. I sang, played the French horn in the high school concert band and snare drum in the marching band. But I never had an instrument that would make chords until my mom bought me a baritone ukulele for Christmas one year, when I was a travelling salesman in St. Louis (that’s another whole story, but it’ll keep). I learned to play the uke pretty well and began finding chord progressions that I liked. Pretty soon, I’d make up a melody and some words. And, voila!, a song. A lot of the songs I wrote at that time were funny and I seemed to have an aptitude for kids’ songs. I never did anything with them until I got to New York. Then opportunities seemed to present themselves and I had accumulated all these songs. Singing them was the fun part.

How long have you been living in Australia and what made you decide you wanted to live there?

Chris: I’ve been living in Australia for almost 30 years. I came here because of a woman (we only lasted for a year and change) but stayed because in the first year I was here, a musical I’d written was produced at the Victorian Arts Centre (like Lincoln Center). That got me started. Other things followed, including acting, producing et. al. Also, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kind of like being “exotic” here as a Yank Down Under.

Your latest book is The Dreaming Team. Would you say that your illustrious background helped you in one way or another when it came time to write your book?

Chris: The only thing in my background that would have had any bearing on writing The Dreaming Team was the fact that I wasn’t intimidated by the idea of writing it. I’m the first to acknowledge that it requires a certain amount of chutzpah to write a story about an Aboriginal Australian cricket team in the 1860s that was the first Aussie team to play at the cricket Mecca of Lords in England. I had known about the story for a few years and recognized its greatness. Imagine an unlikely group of otherwise marginalized Black guys who defied all odds to achieve greatness. No one else had had any success bringing it to the public, so I gave it a shot.

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?

Chris: Only this. Of the people who’ve read The Dreaming Team already, it’s about evenly split between Aussies and Americans, men and women. It doesn’t seem to matter. This true story is so strong that ultimately it’s about people. And who doesn’t like a good story about people?