The Writer’s Warning goes something like this: “When you take on any project, the problems of its characters become your own, so you’d better like solving them.”
Shadow Moon, the protagonist in Neil Gaiman’s best-selling novel American Gods, which we had the privilege of adapting for Starz, has plenty of problems, all under the umbrella of one larger one: his labored religious awakening.
The story suited us well.
Charting the character’s peak-to-valley odyssey of doubt and faith would require us to reconsider — then re-reconsider — our own religious fealties. After all, we do not always worship what we think we do. We might selfdefine as a lapsed but admiring Catholic or a Conservative Jew, but when we consider our actions, our praxis, our sacrifices and allegiances, especially over the…
