The Ultimate Wilderness with Nadine Slavinski
What happens when an archaeologist sets sail across three oceans with her family in search of story and discovery?
In this episode of The Adventure Fiction Podcast, I'm Joined by Nadine Slavinski, a woman who’s excavated ancient temples by land and sailed vast, unpredictable waters by sea. Her four-year sailing odyssey from the Mediterranean to Australia is more than a trip—it’s the kind of lived experience most adventure writers only imagine.
Silver Spider by Nadine Slavinski
Inspired by Nadine Slavinski’s real-life voyage across three oceans, Silver Spider plunges readers into a time-spanning adventure of hidden treasure, pirate secrets, and perilous clues.
From a Spanish soldier’s 1667 discovery to a modern-day sailing couple entangled in a dangerous mystery, this gripping novel weaves together the intrigue of plotting pirates, scheming cartels, and a silver spider with secrets of its own.
Got a Story Idea?
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Transcript
The boundless ocean with unpredictable moods and hidden depths has long been fertile ground for adventure writers.
Speaker A:Few understand this better than Nadine Slavinsky, who penned an adventure story inspired by a four year sailing odyssey across three oceans.
Speaker A:Hey, I'm Luke.
Speaker A:I'm an author of archaeological adventure novels.
Speaker A:I travel the world looking for stories to put into my books and to share with you right here on the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:It's fair to say that when it comes to adventure stories, Nadine Slavinski has a unique perspective.
Speaker A:She's excavated ancient sites in Peru, Costa Rica and Germany, and has sailed with her family for over four years from the Mediterranean to Australia.
Speaker A:Nadine, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker B:Thank you for inviting me, Luke, as.
Speaker A:This is the Adventure Story podcast, then, and you're very, very qualified to answer this, what makes the ocean such a compelling setting for adventure stories?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think number one has got to be that sense of the unknown waiting for you just over the horizon.
Speaker B:And I think every person's imagination can fill in that unknown with something different.
Speaker B:So the author might have one thing in mind, but the reader will have a different.
Speaker B:And so you always have that sense of surprise, maybe for both of you.
Speaker B:Neither of you or the characters also don't really know what's waiting for them over the horizons.
Speaker B:Another thing, I love being out in the ocean, but what I really love is islands.
Speaker B:Discovering small islands.
Speaker B:And I guess there's something evocative about islands like an idyllic atoll or treasure island type of thing.
Speaker B:The next thing that I would say is there's all the different boats and different people out there.
Speaker B:They are also there's just so much fodder for a great storytelling in the people you meet.
Speaker B:And even the boats, like some people say dogs and people mirror each other.
Speaker B:The dog and their owner and a boat, a ship and its owner kind of do that as well.
Speaker A:Oh, interesting.
Speaker A:So you would know that and you'd see a, a boat coming and you think, oh, I wonder what's going on here?
Speaker A:What's the story behind that craft that's approaching?
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:And oh my God, once I was, I needed.
Speaker B:I had a villain in mind, but I couldn't quite get his physical look like, figure out what I wanted him to look like.
Speaker B:And I thought, oh, I know, I'll just go to the bar, you know, the bar by the waterfront.
Speaker B:And it was just filled with great characters, like, okay, that's the one.
Speaker B:He's my villain.
Speaker B:That guy right over there.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:And I think that reminds Me of the introduction to oh, what's the story?
Speaker A:I think it might be Treasure.
Speaker A:That starts off in a bar in Bristol, of all places.
Speaker A:I think it's based on the bar in Bristol.
Speaker A:And he meets what turns out to be Long John Silver there as this, as this very enigmatic character sort of propping up the bar and drinking ale.
Speaker A:Perhaps that's part of the adventure as well, I guess.
Speaker B:Definitely.
Speaker B:And you know what just popped into my mind?
Speaker B:One more thing.
Speaker B:What makes the ocean such a compelling setting?
Speaker B:There's no one to help you.
Speaker B:And this is true of, very true for sailors in a real life sense.
Speaker B:Like when you set out, you have to be really self sufficient and whatever you need or whatever breaks, you have to take care of it.
Speaker B:Now imagine you're writing a story about a bad guy stalking you.
Speaker B:And if that's at home, now turn it around, you have bad guys stalking you and you're on the open ocean or you're on a desert island.
Speaker B:So boom, right away the stakes go up.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:That's true, isn't it?
Speaker A:And I think as adventure writers we work hard to get that no one's coming to help you thing in a different way, don't we?
Speaker A:Whether there's a storm or it's in a desert or there's a power cut or some other device we use to do that.
Speaker A:But putting it on an island or on a ship or whatever just instantly creates that aloneness that you need.
Speaker B:That's right, that's right.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:The ocean's also a really mysterious place though, isn't it?
Speaker A:And I read a fact that we've explored more of the moon than, than the seabed or some of the deepest oceans at least.
Speaker A:How does this play in its appeal for adventure stories?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think again, it's kind of a blank canvas for the fertile imagination, be that an author or a reader.
Speaker B:And I guess as a reader you want the unexpected and the unknown and you want that, you want to be entertained.
Speaker B:And at the same time, as little as people know about the oceans.
Speaker B:It's amazing how much the average person, including me before I went sailing, you just don't know what life is like when just living on a boat, living on a boat at all.
Speaker B:Living on a boat on the open ocean.
Speaker B:Living on a boat on the open ocean or in far away places.
Speaker B:So you can kind of play on that as an author or it can.
Speaker B:It just keeps driving the story forward and you can almost do world building in the same way that a fantasy author might, you know, create what about dragons and different kind of, you know, JRR Tolkien kind of world.
Speaker B:You can do that just because the ocean is so unknown and it has just so endless possibilities, whether it's, you know, tropical islands or, you know, rocky shores or underwater or whatever it may be.
Speaker A:Oh, that's fantastic.
Speaker A:And also, I suppose it's what lurks beneath.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Some of these oceans are so incredibly deep that we just don't.
Speaker A:We just don't know.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:There's so much unknown down there, too.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:And people don't know.
Speaker B:I've made presentations, for example, at the schools I've taught in.
Speaker B:When you cross an ocean, you're in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker B:It's several miles deep.
Speaker B:Unless you're there, why would you think about it?
Speaker B:But it's not like you can throw the anchor in and just stop for the night.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You're going 24 hours.
Speaker B:So my husband and I would be taking a watch of four hours and this whole pattern.
Speaker B:But again, you can kind of play with that in an adventure story, in putting the reader into this totally different and very adventurous world.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And you've talked about it there.
Speaker A:You've alluded to your life aboard the ship.
Speaker A:Tell me about that.
Speaker A:What drew you to that lifestyle?
Speaker A:Because I know you had a young family at the time as well, which may have made it even more challenging.
Speaker A:What drew you to that lifestyle, and what was that like?
Speaker B:Yeah, I guess what drew me is my father was a big inspiration.
Speaker B:He was a sailor.
Speaker B:He was also.
Speaker B:He was born in Czechoslovakia, or he grew up in Czechoslovakia in Communist times.
Speaker B:And he escaped as a young man.
Speaker B:So for him, the sense of.
Speaker B:And he went to America, where I grew up, where I was born, I grew up.
Speaker B:So he.
Speaker B:For him, the sense of that people like you and I, we just take for granted someday I could go there, whether I have the money or the opportunity.
Speaker B:Right now, there's a moot point, but I could, in theory, go there.
Speaker B:He didn't grow up with that, so he was very much excited about Distant Horizons.
Speaker B:We had a subscription to National Geographic magazine that did a lot.
Speaker B:There was.
Speaker B:I'm old enough.
Speaker B:I don't know if.
Speaker B:Do you know Thor Heyerdahl?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker B:He's one of my great heroes.
Speaker B:He's a Norwegian explorer.
Speaker B:I think he died in the 90s.
Speaker B:I'm not sure he did.
Speaker B:Incredible.
Speaker B:He was kind of a pseudoarchaeologist.
Speaker B:He was fascinated by ancient cultures and saw Egyptians had depictions of ships, and he actually built ships in that style and proved that you can change across an ocean.
Speaker B:Turns out he was completely wrong in the theory.
Speaker B:The Egyptians didn't do that, but it was still.
Speaker B:It's really inspiring.
Speaker B:So that was all an inspiration.
Speaker B:And then, frankly, lots of people have dreams.
Speaker B:It's easy to put them off.
Speaker B:Sadly for my family, my dad, when I was in 10th grade, he died of cancer, and he never made it to retirement.
Speaker B:And when he said, I'm going to go out sailing and see the world, and that one of the effects that will have on a person is the effect it had on me was if I have a dream, I better get out there and go accomplish it.
Speaker B:So for all the scariness of heading out into the ocean and I am scared at times, the greater fear of not accomplishing what I dreamed of, it really kind of gave me more of a ticking clock than I think your average person does.
Speaker B:And luckily, I was able to convince my husband this is a good idea, and we took off.
Speaker B:Our son was.
Speaker B:He did second, third, and fourth grade on the sailboat when we crossed the Pacific.
Speaker B:Basically.
Speaker A:How much experience did you have from setting foot on the boat to just setting off?
Speaker A:From setting off across an ocean?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think we had a fair amount of experience.
Speaker B:So I, you know, starting small, working my way up, just coastal kind of sailing, and then we helped deliver boats so we could get out of sight of land.
Speaker B:And, you know, for a week at a time, we took a couple of sailing courses, and we kind of just.
Speaker B:You take one step bigger, one step bigger.
Speaker B:But nothing really prepares you for crossing an ocean except for crossing an ocean, you know, like, and to do it on your own, like, not by myself, but on your own.
Speaker B:In other words, myself, my husband, and our very young son.
Speaker B:Like, there's nothing, you know, you could do 24 hours at sea.
Speaker B:You can do 48 hours at sea, you can do six days at sea.
Speaker B:But when you're looking across the vastness of the Pacific, you're still a beginner every time.
Speaker B:But I guess that's the exciting part.
Speaker B:Scary and exciting.
Speaker A:I love what you've said there about looking at nature and it being you being a beginner once, first time, you know, every time you come to it, it's slightly different or something.
Speaker A:Something has changed slightly.
Speaker A:And it's always the way, isn't it, that weather and nature plays a crucial role in sea adventures and narratives that take place involving oceans.
Speaker A:Why is this true?
Speaker A:Why do you think that's the case in our.
Speaker A:In our storytelling and in real life?
Speaker A:Why is weather and nature such a thing?
Speaker A:Both.
Speaker A:Both friend and foe, I suppose.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:It's such a like.
Speaker B:And again, what you said before, that what's lurking under the surface, both in the sense of the water and you can look up and see a sunny day, but it can change in a heartbeat.
Speaker B:Yeah, I.
Speaker B:I guess for all the technology in the world, we're still at the mercy of the elements and living on land you kind of lose.
Speaker B:You lose that sense.
Speaker B:But living on a boat, you don't.
Speaker B:And no forecast and no amount will help you get over the fact that you're on a very, very small boat in a very, very big ocean.
Speaker B:And I guess when we want to link it back to storytelling, I think that makes for a fascinating angle to take with your stories because the characters have this insight.
Speaker B:For all the action that I love to see in a story, to see the emotions, you can have raw emotions and you can have vulnerability even from a heroic type of character, you know, that's questioning their life decisions when they find themselves on a tiny boat in a very big ocean.
Speaker B:And I guess there's nothing like the ocean to make you, to put you in your place and to realize that you're just an insignificant little speck.
Speaker B:And it's a beautiful thing and it's kind of awe inspiring in a scary sense sometimes too.
Speaker A:I think you're right.
Speaker A:I think you're right and I've experienced that myself in different ways, always with nature, you know, looking at mountains and deserts and oceans, thinking, you know, I'm so small in the.
Speaker A:In comparison to this thing.
Speaker A:You mentioned there briefly the idea of technology and that no technology can counter the weather or I suppose maybe we're better at predicting it now than in previous years.
Speaker A:But how has technology changed the nature of oceans both in real life and in I suppose your fiction?
Speaker A:Do you use technology in your fiction to allow.
Speaker A:Yours is set some time ago, isn't it?
Speaker A:So I suppose it's not.
Speaker A:What's the.
Speaker A:How do you.
Speaker A:How's that changed adventures?
Speaker A:Or does that change adventures?
Speaker A:Or really does it make no difference because you're still following the sun from day to day or however you navigate?
Speaker B:It's an excellent question because I guess, I mean my true heroes are the people who are sailing.
Speaker B:You know, pre GPS, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago, the Hiscox and other famous names in sailing.
Speaker B:And I feel like I'm setting out on a great adventure, but it's nothing compared to what they did.
Speaker B:But I guess the cushier our lives become, the less it takes to feel like you have a big adventure.
Speaker B:And, you know, as our confidence and our experience increase, we got more and more off the beaten path.
Speaker B:But there's definitely, you know, with Advent, especially of gps, there are more people out there.
Speaker B:There's a sense of, you know, faraway islands getting more and more crowded sometimes by people who you.
Speaker B:How do I say this diplomatically?
Speaker B:You wonder how they got there in one piece, you know, and whether they even one.
Speaker B:So for sure, you know, the world is getting to be a tamer place in one sense, but nothing's going to change that vulnerability that again, that small speck on a big ocean, you know, the hubris humans have.
Speaker B:We all have it.
Speaker B:You know, I've done this, let's say, you know, I always do this, and the outcome has always been this.
Speaker B:You know, every time I do this, I've always been safe doing this.
Speaker B:Until the day you aren't.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And when things go downhill in a boat, they go downhill fast.
Speaker B:And suddenly it's not just one thing that went wrong, it's 20 things that are.
Speaker B:And that goes into fiction.
Speaker B:So in fiction, it's a very realistic way again of upping the stakes and making for a great story.
Speaker B:In addition to that, having more people out there, frankly, it opens the possibilities for more intrigue.
Speaker B:Right, because if you want a good story needs conflict, and there's no better source of conflict than human beings.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Unfortunately.
Speaker B:I mean, I'm laughing, but let's.
Speaker B:Yeah, in a serious sense and in a fun sense.
Speaker B:So in one sense, that's good.
Speaker B:You have.
Speaker B:There's technology, there are more people out there, but that just kind of increases the cast of characters, so to speak.
Speaker B:1.
Speaker B:One small thing is I.
Speaker B: got back from our big trip in: Speaker B:Radio waves bounce off the atmosphere and you could talk to people halfway around the world.
Speaker B:We were in the middle of the Pacific talking to a friend on the sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic.
Speaker B:Just amazing.
Speaker B:Low tech, low power.
Speaker B:And what, as a storytelling device, you can use this tech, for example.
Speaker B:You know, it's a good device in a story where you have a hero or heroine.
Speaker B:They don't know everything.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And it's kind of good to have an outside source of information.
Speaker B:Especially a story would actually be a very boring story if it was just one person on one boat in the middle of the ocean.
Speaker B:So by putting the elements together is what is a recipe for a good story.
Speaker B:And for example, having open communications like that, your hero or heroine could call in and suddenly overhear something that they didn't know.
Speaker B: the Spanish treasure chain in: Speaker B:And Bing, your character and your readers can have a moment of what is that?
Speaker B:And the pieces of the puzzle falling into place.
Speaker B:So I guess technology can play both roles.
Speaker A:I think with my fiction, I try to stop the technology becoming an issue.
Speaker A:And I'm sure you probably had that yourself as a fiction writer.
Speaker A:You think, oh, it's just too easy if they can always have a tracker on that thing or always where that person is.
Speaker A:And actually the challenge now writing in the 21st century is how do I stop that working?
Speaker A:How do I bring them back to basics so that they have to do the work absolutely right.
Speaker B:But you could also easily twist it.
Speaker B:Because I am so old school that I don't trust technology.
Speaker B:I'm ready for it to go wrong at any time.
Speaker B:And it can fail you.
Speaker B:Or you can put too much trust.
Speaker B:GPS will often we've been in Anchorages where we're safely anchored, but the GPS shows us on land, like anchored on the middle of an island.
Speaker B:So, like, that's the safe way, but the other way could, you know, if we had been trusting us, trusting it to put us in open water, you know, you have to be really careful about that.
Speaker A:I see.
Speaker A:So you do have to.
Speaker A:Well, it's the same when you're driving, isn't it?
Speaker A:It tells you to go down road that you have no business driving down.
Speaker B:Something you mentioned earlier is actually like how unknown the ocean is.
Speaker B:You'd be amazed how many parts of the ocean and island groups.
Speaker B:For example, I remember the whole west side of Fiji is uncharted.
Speaker B:So you're kind of going by feel or going by visuals or information that other sailors have passed on to you.
Speaker A:Oh, wow, that's fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker A:The idea of sailors passing it on to others in these taverns on the shore.
Speaker A:Watch out for that or go and see this person in the next place.
Speaker B:That's right.
Speaker B:That's right, exactly.
Speaker B:Or absolutely do not attempt it in these conditions.
Speaker B:But you can attempt it in those conditions and then you can play that into a story because they don't have the good conditions, but they absolutely need to get in there.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So boom, up spikes, attention.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Never go there in the fog.
Speaker A:And then all of a sudden the fog appears.
Speaker A:I love that.
Speaker A:Talking of that, talking of phenomena, are there any specific phenomena, any specific weather conditions that you've experienced firsthand that you were like, must put that in a book, definitely.
Speaker B:But I think more to create this, you know, put the reader in that world for the world building, you know, a compelling story.
Speaker B:What you need an inciting incident.
Speaker B:You know, everything was fine until something happens, right?
Speaker B:You need suspense.
Speaker B:You need rising tension.
Speaker B:You need some kind of malevolent force.
Speaker B:And the ocean can be that malevolent force.
Speaker B:But, you know, bad guys are usually my malevolent force.
Speaker B:So those ocean phenomena can just set the stage.
Speaker B:They could also, you know, tip the scales from, like I said, a small problem turning into a big problem.
Speaker B:But for me, I think I kind of.
Speaker B:I have such, I guess, a sense of wonder and amazement at some of the natural phenomena that I kind of.
Speaker B:I hope this.
Speaker B:It's okay to say.
Speaker B:Like, I have respect for it, and I kind of don't want to play on it too hard in a fiction story.
Speaker B:Like, it can speak for itself.
Speaker B:Like, I don't need to play it up.
Speaker B:And some examples are being in the middle of the Atlantic, and we were becalmed, and a whale kept.
Speaker B:He just.
Speaker B:I was on night watch.
Speaker B:So I'm sitting in the cockpit.
Speaker B:We're not going anywhere.
Speaker B:And next to me, just like a few.
Speaker B:Few meters away is all of a sudden, like.
Speaker B:And a little bit of splash, and it's a whale coming up.
Speaker B:And he stayed with us for almost 24 hours.
Speaker B:And when the sun came up, he was still there.
Speaker B:And he would swim up alongside us.
Speaker B:And you could see his giant eye, or her giant eye eyeing our boat as it went by, going sideways like, is this a whale?
Speaker B:What is this?
Speaker B:And he or she would go ahead and make a big circle, disappear and then reappear behind us.
Speaker B:He would circle us and come from another pass and another pass, and it was just so magical and absolutely no sense of danger at all.
Speaker B:That's the beautiful thing, too.
Speaker B:There's a huge creature that could potentially inflict damage.
Speaker B:I would hate to write a whale story where the whale attacked my boat.
Speaker B:I guess it has happened, but I would throw that into a story just for the amazing feel of the moment.
Speaker B:But I don't think I would make it one of my set pieces in terms of the action.
Speaker B:And another one just to throw in would be, we were sailing from Anegada in the Caribbean to the Spanish Virgin Islands.
Speaker B:And by chance, it's one of the few times we.
Speaker B:No, it's not true.
Speaker B:Actually, in that trip it was a few times we sailed directly west, east to west, so the moon rose behind us.
Speaker B:And as over the course of the night, you're up, you're sailing all night, the moon slowly arcs overhead and then moves ahead of you.
Speaker B:And also we notice our speed was ticking up just incrementally because now the moon, the moon actually has a gravitational force, right.
Speaker B:And it pulls the ocean and it pulls the tides with it.
Speaker B:So the ocean that we were riding in the beginning when the moon was behind us, we were getting pulled back without feeling it.
Speaker B:But now, you know, hours later, we're getting pulled forward and you know, it was the only time in my life that I had this sense of I can feel the moon working on me.
Speaker B:You know, I'm sure it does in small ways, but.
Speaker B:And it's just such an amazing thing.
Speaker B:I'm not sure how I could work that into a story because it's so amazing in itself.
Speaker A:Yeah, I really like that.
Speaker A:I love that both those stories.
Speaker A:And I can imagine that I've pictured that and it's something that I'm slightly, yeah, slightly envious of.
Speaker A:I'd love to experience that myself at some point to switch gears slightly.
Speaker A:I can't have an archaeologist on the show without talking about that, even though that's not really the subject of our conversation today.
Speaker A:But your archaeological work has taken you all over the world, all sorts of countries.
Speaker A:Tell me a little bit about that.
Speaker A:Where did you go and what were you looking into?
Speaker A:What were you finding?
Speaker B:Yeah, you know, growing up, inspired by Thor Hardahl, who's it turns out to the young innocent me, I found out in college he's not a good role model because he was a very pseudo scientific kind of, you know, kind of combining legends with reality.
Speaker B:But that really inspired me to want to be an archaeologist.
Speaker B:So when I went to college and studied archaeology, dose of reality with the professors, day one, say like, okay, Indiana Jones and all the exciting things stuff, throw it out the window right now because that's not what this is.
Speaker B:But nevertheless, it was a great course of study.
Speaker B:I had the opportunity to work in Peru one summer.
Speaker B:The site is called Tucum.
Speaker B:It's a step pyramid but made out of clay so it looks like a melted ice cream cone after hundreds of years later I worked in Germany on a Roman site, including bath, Roman baths.
Speaker B:They have their own indoor plumbing hot water heating system and a little bit in Costa Rica as well.
Speaker B:But I very quickly, I mean, I have to admit, I realized quickly that I was not going to live.
Speaker B:Archaeology was not going to give me that life of Indiana Jones life, maybe in a good way.
Speaker B:Do I really want to be shot at by poison arrows?
Speaker B:And I didn't want to spend my life writing grant proposals to support my archeology.
Speaker B:So I thought, you know, I had always rebelled against being a teacher because my mom and other people in my family were teachers.
Speaker B:And then I thought, you know, teaching maybe not that bad a job and I could do archaeology in the summer.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So I eventually shifted over.
Speaker B:But that trip to Peru was very much.
Speaker B:That particularly really inspired me because I got, you know, you're an insider, right?
Speaker B:You're working at a dig.
Speaker B:And we went to the dig next door, so to speak.
Speaker B:That's the site of Sipan in Peru, which is a very famous site.
Speaker B:It was a big discovery made there in the late 80s of a big tomb with all this treasure and silver ornaments, gold ornaments, I should say.
Speaker B:And we got to visit and because my head professor was friends with the guy in charge of Sipan, Walter Alva, who's very famous archaeologist in South America, we got to go into his lockbox and he took out the treasures that are on the COVID of National Geographic, which is amazing.
Speaker B:And he's like, here.
Speaker B:And I got to hold it.
Speaker B:That was amazing.
Speaker B:And one of the pieces for real was this ancient, pre Inca way, pre Inca civilization, kind of fist size or maybe compass size.
Speaker B:Golden spider is like a.
Speaker B:It's a human face on a spider.
Speaker B:So it's kind of grotesque.
Speaker B:It's kind of concentric circles with the legs spreading over the concentric circles, the legs of the spider and in the middle is kind of this little basic human face.
Speaker B:And there was a whole necklace made of this that had been buried with this chief or that they had discovered there in Sipan.
Speaker B:So, A, it was amazing to actually hold this in my hand.
Speaker B:B, when I wanted.
Speaker B:When I was then sailing in Panama and I wanted to make a story, my head started putting together little historical things I knew as an archaeologist or that I knew as a sailor.
Speaker B:I went bing.
Speaker B:And I pulled that out and I'm like, I'm writing a story about the silver spider.
Speaker B:I changed the gold spider to a silver spider.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So archaeology, it makes it easy, right?
Speaker B:You're surrounded by items and treasures that you could easily turn into a real story that's legitimate.
Speaker A:When I talk to people who've got a background in archaeology, they half sort of dislike it.
Speaker A:At the Indiana Jones idea, they half sort of look at it cynically.
Speaker A:And half sort of go, well, it's what got me into it in the first place.
Speaker A:Or it's what drew my interest in the first place.
Speaker A:So there's a real love hate relationship with it there.
Speaker A:I sort of see.
Speaker A:Oh, that's so fantastic.
Speaker A:That's fantastic.
Speaker A:Now you've talked about this a little bit, but I'm going to ask you the question anyway.
Speaker A:As the last question on the podcast, I ask this to everyone looking back, what adventure stories, whether they're books, whether they're movies, whether they're legends, Indiana could get another mention, sparked your imagination and made you want to both see the world and write about it in your stories.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:So, yeah, Indiana Jones, of course, you know, and going back my dad's own adventure stories of escaping, you know, real life, escaping from behind the Iron Curtain and literally, you know, at night kind of, you know, climbing in remote areas and people with rifles after you, this kind of thing.
Speaker B:But in terms of storytelling, Thor Heyerdahl, REAL Life Guy in fact, a lot of my inspirations are real life people because they just lived such exceptional lives.
Speaker B:So Thor Heyerdahl, who did these many, crossed many oceans on very primitive craft.
Speaker B:Tanya Abbey is a young woman who at the time in the 80s, was the first woman to youngest woman to sail around the world alone.
Speaker B:She wrote a book called Maiden Voyage and that was very much a model for me that A, you can go out and have an adventure like this and B, you can write about it because she wrote beautifully in her book about it.
Speaker B:So I guess those were some of my biggest inspirations.
Speaker B:And if you want a hilarious real life sailing adventure book, Jack London wrote he bought a big boat, a schooner, I think, and he crossed the Pacific and he wrote a book about it called this Cruise of the Snark.
Speaker B:And it is hilarious and it's a lot of fun.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:What I particularly love there is you referenced your dad's escape from behind the Iron Curtain.
Speaker A:No one said that before on the podcast, so I really appreciate that.
Speaker A:Nadine, that is fantastic.
Speaker A:It's so inspiring to talk to you, tell people where they can find you and your books and all the things that might interest them about what you do.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Yeah, I have a website, n slavinsky.com I'll say it again, n slavinsky.com the silver spider is my big work of my novel, combining treasure hunting in Panama with buildings of Panama Canal.
Speaker B:Three parallel storylines going on and going back to that Francis Drake ambush of the Spanish treasure convoy.
Speaker B:And I also write books about have Pacific Crossing Notes is one book to help sailors and some books for parents on the sea with their with their children.
Speaker B:I'm not sure that's your niche on.
Speaker A:This podcast, but you never know.
Speaker A:You never know.
Speaker A:Nadine, thank you so much.
Speaker A:I hope to talk to you again.
Speaker A:This is the Adventure Story podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for hanging out with me today.
Speaker A:It's been great to spend some time with you.
Speaker A:If you've enjoyed the show, please subscribe.
Speaker A:Please like and please share.
Speaker A:It'll take you just seconds, but really helps me spread the word about this show.
Speaker A:If you have a story you'd like me to explore, let me know in the comments or on email.
Speaker A:Helloukerichardsonauthor.com and if you need more adventure in your life, and let's be honest, who doesn't?
Speaker A:You might like to join the Adventure Society.
Speaker A:This weekly newsletter is your ticket to travel with me to share real world adventure adventures.
Speaker A:And to find out first when a new story or a new season of this podcast drops, head to lukerichardsonauthor.com Adventuresociety and you'll find everything there.
Speaker A:And of course, if you're a fan of adventure stories like the one we talked about today, check out my books@lukerichardsonauthor.com Bon voyage.
Speaker A:Enjoy the adventure and I'll see you next time.
