People ask us all the time how we meet, what made us decide to become writing partners, and how long we've been writing individually and as partners, so we thought we share.
Z: In the eighties sitting just west of Jackson Hole, Wyoming in the grassy foothills at the base of the Grand Tetons, looking across the Snake River at a bull moose I began to read a piece I had just written in my journal out loud for the moose to hear. Yup, did it! I learned the moose was not my audience as he meandered deeper into the high grass but I was not discouraged and continued at the top of my speaking voice. About seven feet from me sat a molting coyote engrossed in my presentation. Its eyes held me as if a pup or its suckling mother and I felt one with that energy. Stunned that it did not run, amazed at its calmness in the face of my presence I continued. When I was done, the canine rose, walked next to me, rubbed its matted fur on my arm, passed, and it was lost to the high grass. It left upon me its musk, telling me I was one of its pack. In the capture of that moment in time, I felt validated as a writer. Years later, sitting over coffee, talking about writing, I felt that same validation again, and that person was Angelica Hart. I understood destiny.
A: Everyone has felt that thing that has been called the click, and the ease at which Zi and I purported from the first instant was astonishing. There was an immediate synergy that told me that one and one equaled three. I read his work, was moved. We lamestormed which is our practice of presenting ideas and deeming them lame or not. Of twenty ideas, ten from each, not one idea had merit. Our potential partnership stalled before it started. Then in an email, Zi sent me a touching fantasy love story, where a Mage stole a young man's heart so the woman he loved could soar. He gave it willingly. I cried. I understood destiny.
A/Z: As for our writing together and apart: I was at an Evelyn Woods Speed Reading Class and the instructor said, "We are the sum of all our experiences." There it was a truth that stood above simple truths. As I began to write I recognized that I had very limited experiences upon which to pull. My early work was unquestionably shallow. So I began a quest to discover, in the name of wanting to be a better writer? No! I realized I was shallow.
Initially every submission sent to publishers was returned or ignored. I recall a critique suggesting I needed more depth in both the way I dealt with the subject and the technical writing style. As time ate at my life I waited as I worked. Wrote daily. How much life is lost to wait? That is an apt question, but my wait was filled with discovery. I became a student of people. Discovery. Examined other styles and broke them down mechanically and technically. Discovery. Tried to create more complexity. Discovery. Expanded my vocabulary. Discovery. Read...read...read. Discovery. Wrote...re-wrote...re-re-wrote. That wait was not shallow but an aggressive tutorial for my growth. I continued to submit work. And slowly pieces were accepted.
So the question is who am I? Angelica or Zi? Ironically, we took the same path and had the same challenges and failures. We met as more mature adults prepared to be writers and for a significant amount of time, we have written daily as writing partners. We found a synergy in our styles and complexity in what we wanted to create. Are we good? We don't know. Have we found that depth needed to portray characters as real people? Hope we have. Have we found enough intrigue in our
plot and our words to keep readers interested? You tell us. As Jacob Bronowski, a mathematician, well-spoken and a celebrity of the BBC show The Ascent of Man and was the inspiration of Carl Sagan to make the Cosmos wrote, "The world is full of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show." If runners up is what we are, we're proud, for our journey has been wonderful.
Zi believes, "Be the best you can be by growing every day." Having said that, goodness, that was something (our hard work) we doubt we'd forget. And you'll notice propriety has kept us from attaching dates, though, long is long and it has been a long time. You can smell the posies on our lapels, none are planned to be lilies soon.
We'd love to hear from anyone interested in what we do. Anyone who writes us at angeliahartandzi@yahoo.com and leaves an s-mail address, we will send you a gift and add you to any future mailings.
Angelica Hart and Zi
KILLER DOLLS ~ SNAKE DANCE ~ CHASING YESTERDAY
www.champagnebooks.com
STEEL EMBRACE by Vixen Bright and Zachary Zane
August 2011 http://www.carnalpassions.com/
THE FABLE OF SIN-SIN CINDERELLA Series
angelicahartandzi.com
No comments:
Post a Comment