Writing on whim, single mom finds steamy niche

It was a November night and her two kids were in bed. The single, 30-something mom was bored.

At her home in Kannapolis, the computer beckoned. On an impulse, she started typing and let her imagination run wild.

She called the steamy story "First Night" and e-mailed it to friends. Who e-mailed it to their friends. Who e-mailed it to others.

Who asked for more.

Under the cloak of a pen name, "Zane," she began writing several stories a day, then novels.

Today, 10 years later, Zane has more than 2.7 million copies of her books in print in the United States. She regularly hits best-seller lists. One news story credited her with introducing a new genre of fiction: "post-feminist African-American erotica."

Her books are edgy, with sexually explicit language. But Zane insists they open important conversations about taboo topics.

The hardest part of her new career was telling her father, a Ph.D. theologian, and her mother, a retired elementary school teacher. Not to mention 89-year-old Aunt Rose in Kannapolis.

Taboo topics

This weekend, Zane, 40, who now lives in Maryland, planned to be in North Carolina for a family reunion. At 3 p.m. today, she's booked at the Charlotte Literary Festival to speak at an adults-only event.

In a recent interview, Zane said she didn't set out to write erotica in 1997. She didn't even know exactly what erotica might be.

The author never reveals her real name to protect her family's privacy.

"I've always had a vivid imagination. And it took off. Writing was the most natural thing I've ever done."

Her graphic books are written in a vernacular that's characteristically African-American, which used to be rare in fiction, says Malaika Adero, her editor at Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

"Addicted" tells the story of a successful African-American woman, an arts dealer, who has an addiction. When she finally seeks counseling, she discovers a secret about her past.

"The Heat Seekers," a book about two couples, looks at the effects of an unplanned pregnancy.

Zane's anthology, "Breaking the Cycle," discusses domestic abuse.

She says the sex scenes are so secondary, she writes them last. "I write in big red letters, 'Insert Sex Scene Here.' "

A book a day

She was raised in a family of readers.

Her father, Zane says, grew up in Spindale. He attended Johnson C. Smith University and earned a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He has taught at Duke, Yale and Oxford. Now 80, he's a published scholar.

Her mother, born and raised in Kannapolis, is 79. She taught elementary school.

Married for 54 years, they met at an AME Zion church in Landis. They raised their family -- Zane is the youngest of three girls -- in Washington.

"As a child growing up," Zane said, "we had a second basement called the library. My mother had me take speed-reading in third grade. By sixth grade, I was reading a book a day."

At Howard University, she majored in chemical engineering and graduated in 1988. She went into sales, selling everything from life insurance to paper.

With roots in Kannapolis, Zane's family often returned to the former mill town for reunions. In 1996, when she says she wanted a change from Washington, Zane settled there.

Life in Kannapolis

She had a 3-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son. She first lived with relatives.

"I expected it would be like family reunion time, and my cousins and I would do stuff," she said. "But I got down here and got the shock of my life. My cousins went to work and came home and went to bed."