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Sex: The Topic to End All Topics - Page 2

© Robert Powers

In calling fiction a mirror device, Mazza said she finds out about her characters "as I play and live with" them. "Afterwards this 'message' is contained in the reader's similar experience 'living alongside' and watching the characters." Mazza said the mirror device occurs in different degrees to different people. Reactions range from embarrassed laughter to indignant rejection. She said one reader complained, "These people are lunatics."

None of Mazza's books reached bestseller status. "Dog People" was published as a trade paperback by the small Coffee House Press in Minneapolis. "The reading public doesn't know how to hear about new books published by independent literary presses," she observes. Mazza feels certain there's a market for literary works and "the biggest publishers need to stop assuming they are the only experts on what people want to read."

Mazza has no ambition to write popular fiction, no aspirations to become the next Jackie Collins or a female John Grisham. "The Chicago Symphony doesn't attempt to enter the world of rock music and doesn't compete with rock music for listeners. That doesn't mean the Chicago Symphony shouldn't have a recording contract."

What's next for this prolific author? "I have begun to explore other lives, other experiences," she said. "I've branched out from my own experience. I have a novel manuscript about a wildlife biologist who fears he may be a sex killer waiting to happen. And I'm working on a novel about a woman who takes her father out of a rest home and they go live in the canyons of Southern California as neighbors to the migrant workers who live in illegal camps."

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