Meet Zenobia Neil

So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed making up stories and writing. I grew up in a Victorian house in Echo Park and was always curious about the past. My mom told me a lot of Greek myths when I was a kid and they really resonated with me. I wrote my first two novels in high school. (One was horrible, one was okay.)

For college, I went to Evergreen in Olympia, Washington. I studied African, Greek and world mythology and literature as well as writing and voodoo—I obviously had no idea what I wanted to do after college. I had always been drawn to magic and history, but I had no idea how to translate my interests into a job. The funny thing is that right now, one of my biggest regrets is not studying Ancient Greek—something that seemed completely crazy back then. I wrote a novel at Evergreen called Stoners in a Stoneyland about a group of college kids who float out on the Puget Sound in a VW bus. It was not a terrible third novel, but I definitely wasn’t taking my writing seriously.

After living in San Francisco, Monterey, California and Japan, I returned to Los Angeles and got a job teaching. Over the summers, I took a couple of writing classes in Europe. The first class was in Montpelier, France through the University of New Orleans. I figured I’d be the only person over twenty-two and the only Californian, but the first day I met Lisa and not only was she an adult, but she also lived in LA! We started a writing group when we got back from France, and it’s still going strong.

I wrote a full-length erotic fairytale about a fantasy world that was a metaphor for LA’s Echo Park, Silverlake, and Los Feliz. I really worked hard and sent it out to agents. It was the early 2000s, and the Internet existed but was nothing like it is today. I had to send self-addressed-stamped envelopes to agents and wait six weeks to get a rejection. But it made going to the mailbox very exciting. The possibility of publication was out there, and I loved writing.

Through the writing group, I met a very witty guy. We ended up falling in love, getting married, and moving to Atwater Village. My writing group kept meeting, but I didn’t think my fiction would ever be published. My husband and I got a dog. I co-wrote a nonfiction book and basically put my fiction writing aside. When my second child was about 18 months old, I stumbled upon “The Queen of Warriors,” a short story I had written about a Spartan woman warrior and her Persian bed slave. It was a sort of Xena: Warrior Princess/Mary Renault mash up. I had given it to my writing group years before, and one of my friends had said he thought it was the best thing I had written.

I thought I’d “just” turn my short story into a novel, and that’s how I began my career as a historical fiction writer. (Hint: There’s no “just” in turning a short story into a novel. I do not recommend it.) One of my mom’s friends suggested I join the Romance Writers of America, and I went to my first LA Romance Author’s meeting. The guest speakers were the founder and editor of a small press. They sounded perfect for me, and they were just starting an erotic line called Eros. I figured I had nothing to lose by sending an erotic retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth that I had been working on while writing The Queen of Warriors. They liked it, and I ended up winning a publishing contract!