Author Michael Buckley compares the heroines of his long-running book series “The Sisters Grimm” — the younger Daphne and big sis Sabrina — to FBI agents Mulder and Scully of “The X-Files.”

“Daphne is the optimist, and Sabrina is the skeptic,” Buckley says during a recent video interview. “But Sabrina’s made sacrifices. She’s had to grow up really fast so that Daphne can maintain that optimistic point of view.”

Buckley lives in Brooklyn, New York, but he was raised in Akron and eventually graduated, in 1996, from Ohio University in Athens. He’s on our computer screen this late afternoon to discuss the TV series adaptation of “The Sisters Grimm.”

Like the books, the animated show is set in the town of Ferryport Landing. It is there that Sabrina (voiced by Ariel Winter) and Daphne (Leah Newman), after having bounced around the foster care system, are taken in by their supposed grandmother, Relda (Laraine Newman, no relation to Leah). She works to convince them — well, mainly to convince Sabrina — that they are descendants of famed German folklore giants the Brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, and that their parents were no strangers to the magical Everafters, a race of magical beings residing in Ferryport Landing.

All six first-season episodes of “The Sisters Grimm” debut on Oct. 3 on Apple TV+, this initial collection being based on 2005’s “The Fairy-Tale Detectives” — not only the first of several novels in the series but the prolific children’s book author’s first work in the genre.

In a conversation edited for length and clarity, Buckley discusses his unlikely path to becoming a writer — he wrote “Detectives” after trying his hand at stand-up comedy — and the process of adapting “The Sisters Grimm” for television.

Q: We’re wondering how your childhood may have helped shape you as a creative person. On your website, it says that you write for kids who don’t like to read because you were one of them. Therefore, we should not imagine a Summit County bedroom overstuffed with books?

A: Not at all, really. My father was a high school dropout. My mom was kind of a stay-at-home mom, and she read a lot of stuff, and it lay around the house. It was mostly a lot of, like, Harlequin romance novels and a humorist that not too many people remember, named Erma Bombeck, who wrote a lot of books like “The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank.” She was a bit of a humorist about being a suburban mom. Those were most of the experiences I had with books.

For years, I had undiagnosed (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). And, in fact, in elementary school, I was in remedial reading classes. I once had a teacher tell me I’d never be a writer because I didn’t know how to spell. And so it wasn’t one of those things where I woke up one day and was on the path to being an author. The fact that it has happened is as much of a surprise to me as it is to anybody.

Q: Well, were you an English major at OU? Was the plan by that time “children’s author”?

A: I was in a punk rock band in Akron until I was 23, and I put off college until then. And then I went to Ohio University down south and studied journalism and a few other things. And when I graduated, I got an internship for the “Late Show with David Letterman.” I was one of Dave’s interns, and I moved to New York and just stayed. I felt like there was something calling me here. I came here to be a comedian, and I did stand-up in clubs all over the city. But after a while, I don’t know, I found that I was enjoying writing jokes more than I was performing them.

Q: Well, where did the idea for “The Sisters Grimm” series come from?

A: I was reading a book called “The Annotated Brothers Grimm,” just kind of flipping through it. And in one of the notes, it mentioned that the brothers had lots of siblings. And you don’t really think about the Brothers Grimm’s other brothers and sisters, but they had a lot of them. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about the Sisters Grimm and what their lives might have been like having such creepy older brothers. I decided, well, maybe that would be a good book. I started researching, trying to find if somebody had ever written a book called “The Sisters Grimm,” and it turned out nobody had. And those kinds of ideas — like, the obvious things — don’t happen very often, so I hurried as quickly as I could to put it together.

But at the same time, I didn’t even think I could write a book. I mean, the (ADHD) was pretty profound. And, like I said, I had people who discouraged it when I was young. So when I sat down to write it, it was a battle of confidence. But I had people around me who made great cheerleaders … and they helped me learn how to write a book. I wrote the first one, and then there were nine more. I’ve written another series, and now I’ve written about 20 — yeah, 23 books.

Q: With “The Sisters Grimm,” are there aspects of it that have resonated with fans that you’ve really appreciated, and are there themes that you enjoy revisiting?

A: I think the thing that the fans who’ve stuck with it for as long as they have is that Sabrina is a complicated main character and not typical of a lot of other children’s books or television shows. She’s not particularly likable. She doesn’t trust people. She kind of starts conversations with her fists clenched. But she’s on a path to learn how to trust. I think this is something a lot of people can relate to — it’s hard to let other people love you. And that’s what Sabrina’s trying to figure out: how to trust, how to engage, how to see the world through other people’s eyes (and to have) compassion. Those are challenging things for her.

And it’s a theme I think I come back to a lot. It seems to resonate, especially right now in the world that we’re living in, where compassion is almost seen as a weakness. There are a lot of people in the world who seem to get paid to be bullies, but the truth is, down deep, we’re all the same. We all kind of want the same things, and we just have different ways of getting those things. And Sabrina is going to have to walk in the shoes of a lot of other people before she becomes a healthy adult. That’s really what the series is about.

Q: Had you been wanting to see it adapted for a while? How did this TV project come together?

A: Well, it’s been … in development for almost 20 years at various places. As soon as the option would expire with some group, another one would pop up. And there were varying levels of success with those things — a lot of disappointments. I didn’t really feel like I ever had the right team until now.

What I would say was so important to me that actually happened is that all the people (involved understood it). Like, it’s a very specific kind of story and with a very specific kind of characters. And I was worried that Apple might want to come in and water down Sabrina’s edge or make the other characters a little more happy and joyful. And I’m really thrilled to say that Apple didn’t meddle and let us make the show that we hoped we would make. But, yeah, it was a long road to get here.

Q: You have an executive producer credit on it. Does that mean that you were pretty hands-on, that you had a real voice in the room, that you weren’t, well, nudged aside?

A: I think my opinions were sought after and valued. But when you’re making a TV show, it’s a collaborative effort, and everybody’s say has to matter. (Showrunner Amy Higgins’) philosophy in the production meetings was always that the best idea wins, and I believe that always worked. So, you know, sometimes people would say, ”What if we tried it like this?” And that might divert from the book, but that’s OK. I didn’t write the Dead Sea Scrolls. You can change this if you need to. But it’s very true to what I wrote, and I think that the little changes that we made make it a lot better.

Q: How has the experience compared with other efforts to adapt your work?

A: The experience with Apple has been nothing short of joyful. Everybody is supportive and excited and interested. The cast is remarkably talented. Ariel Winter is playing our Sabrina, and she’s from “Modern Family.” She’s a genius, really a gifted comedian. Laraine Newman, one of the original (“Saturday Night Live”) cast members, plays Granny Relda. Hearing the line readings is really surreal and amazing. But I would say the process has been great.

I (co-created) a show years ago at Cartoon Network that ran for a year called “Robotomy,” and that was not as lovely. It was really challenging at times because the team we had assembled had different goals, and you could see it, and the show suffered for it. So I think people who have read the (“Sisters Grimm”) books, maybe when they were 9 years old and now they’re reading them to their kids, or kids who are finding the books now, I think they’re going to watch the show and they’re going to recognize it. That’s because we put together the best team.

Q: Also, there have been attempts to adapt your “N.E.R.D.S.” series that have never gotten off the ground, correct?

A: Yeah, it’s still optioned. There’s a great team behind that, and I’m hopeful. I have another series called “The Weirdies” — that book just came out a little while ago — but that’s also in development. So I’ve got some fun things in the hopper, yeah.

Q: Lastly, you also have a few books for an older audience — or at least an older young audience — correct?

A: Yeah, I wrote a series, a (young adult) series called “Undertow” that is for teens. It’s about a community of mermaid-type people walking up out of the beach on Coney Island and setting up a tent city. And then, three years later, the racism has just exploded in Coney Island, and the kids of the mer people are forced to send their children to the public school. And, you know, it’s a little bit ahead of its time considering how things are with immigration right now. Some of the stuff in the book is sort of playing out on the news. I wish I didn’t have that kind of future-telling, but that seems to be what’s happening.

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