Holly West (HW ): What was the first romance novel you ever read? Kelly Zekas (KZ): I was thinking about this and I realized it’s kind of crazy. You know the Berenstain Bears books? There was one about Brother Bear being in a Romeo and Juliet play with a girl bear whose family was feuding with his father. And I was obsessed with this book. I read it, like, twenty times. I have no idea. I don’t remember anything about it except that they were in Romeo and Juliet and they had to kiss and he would blush every time. So I’m pretty sure that was the first romance novel I ever read.
Tarun Shanker (TS): Is that where you started liking Shakespeare from?
KZ: I think I already liked Shakespeare, so that it was even more amazing.
TS: I don’t have as good a story as that. I can’t even remember. I just read weird-ass books as a kid. So I think the first romance was probably Jane
Eyre in high school, and I didn’t even like it, and now it’s one of my favorite books, weirdly.
HW: Do you have an OTP (One True Pairing)? Like your favorite fictional couple?
TS: Yes. I don’t know if this is going to last for a while, but this happened while we were in between edits. Have you ever read Sarah Waters? She wrote Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet. She writes lesbian Victorian fiction. I read Fingersmith and the two girls in that, Sue and Maud . . . I had to put the book down because they’re amazing. Hopefully in a year I’ll still like them just as much. I don’t know if it’s because I just read it. The other one is probably Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. That stands the test of time.
KZ: I have both fiction in general and young adult. Fiction in general: Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. They are my heart and soul. And at least for right now I’d say Eleanor and Park. I love them so much. They’re so great and they make me so happy. That book ruined me for weeks. I’m not the same person I was before I read it.
HW: This one is one of my favorite questions and is also very valid for These Vicious Masks. If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be?
TS: Telekinesis, just because I’ve thought about this way too much and I can do so many things with it. I can make myself fly or freak people out, or, if I really wanted to throw fire at people, I could just carry fire around, too. It’s all-encompassing.
KZ: I took this one a little differently. Like, not which one would I want, but which one would I have. I think my superpower would be matchmaking. Being able to see who someone’s soul mate is. I have paired so many people together. I feel like it’s my secret talent. I kind of want to be a matchmaker for a living.
TS: That sounds like a good novel idea. A superhero with that ability.
KZ: Right?! Spinoff.
HW: Do you have any hobbies other than writing? Because writing no longer counts as a hobby. Once you’re being paid for it, it doesn’t count.
KZ: Well, I act as well as write. So I work in New York in a bunch of theater companies. And no one really pays me, so I think it could still be called a hobby. Also I’m the world’s worst crocheter. Like, truly, truly bad.
TS: You made a scarf. You made lots of scarves.
KZ: I did. And they were very, very bad.
“The Writing Life”
HW: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
TS: Probably tenth grade when I took a film class in high school. I was always movie-obsessed, but it kind of made me think, “Oh, I can actually do this seriously. And people will actually take me seriously.” So I was reviewing movies, and then when that got annoying, I realized I should try writing myself, and that’s just kind of turned from screenplays to novels.
KZ: Mine was much, much later. Tarun and I went to school together and we were in college, and he was talking to me about writing a young adult novel because he knew I loved young adult novels, and it was something he thought he might want to try his hand at. And I did not consider myself a writer of any kind, but I was a voracious reader and definitely knew the YA world and markets and things like that, so I said I would totally help. At first it was more like he would write, or we came up with the concepts together, but then he was writing and I was kind of more editing. And then somewhere along the way it just started kind of evolving into us both writing and kind of writing over each other and over each other so we don’t even know who wrote what. Although we do like to argue about who wrote what sometimes.
TS: Yeah, because I like to keep in my head what amazing lines I came up with.
KZ: The other day I said, “This sounds like a great line that I wrote,” and he said, “No, that was me.”
HW: What’s it like working so closely with each other writing the same book?
KZ: Great.