Mahzi Kane, born and raised in North Philadelphia, is the author of Tea Leaves, a self-published novel about the complex and formative relationships between young black women.
Aerin McKenzie: What would you say your biggest challenge is as a writer?
Mahzi Kane: Being consistent and actually writing the book. As much as you want to just have the words flow, that’s realistically not how they always come. Especially after you have the first draft, now you have to look at it with a technical and grammatical eye. Consistently devoting the time to do that is challenging, especially if you self-publish. Then, besides writing a book, there are money-making aspects you have to pay attention to. Remembering you are a writer first, balancing the time to write. Not being a full-time writer. Carving out time to work. Balancing family.
AM: That’s so reassuring. I have trouble with that, too. It’s frustrating when you cut time out to write and still nothing comes. Like, am I doing something wrong?
MK: Yes! You might feel like, “Wait a minute, am I actually good at this? But that’s another wonderful part of it. Writing is a solitary act. But there’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. In moments you feel lonely, you can fill that in with some social interaction whether it’s family, friends, or other authors. Having someone to go through it with you reassures you. Like, I’m not crazy, it doesn’t mean I should burn everything I’ve written and find something else, it’s just part of the process.
AM: How do you know when you’ve written something good?
MK: Usually, it makes me laugh. Or have a visceral reaction as if I’m not the one creating the story. That’s how I know that structurally something is good. Or when I read it out loud it feels conversational, not awkward, or like I’m trying to force words or making something sound too poetic. I have a natural tendency to use alliteration and devices that work well in poetry but don’t necessarily translate to chapter books.
All of my stories fall into three or four different pillars, about sisterhood, Black love and marriage, or culture and being Black. Those were different aspects of storytelling that I wanted to continue. I grew up loving to read, but a lot of the books in the ’80s we read were by white authors. Some of my favorites were Judy Blume and V.C. Andrews.
Going to Girls High School, we read a lot of classics. I loved Shakespeare, Beowulf, and Pride and Prejudice. In the ’90s there was a surge of urban fiction writers. We had Omar Tyree, BB Campbell Moore, Sistah Souljah. It became a Black consciousness thing when we started doing research into Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. I grew up very proud to be Black, understanding what that experience is like here in America. I learned about our history beyond slavery. I was like, I’m going to tell my story, I’m going to make sure I include the experience of being a Black woman, tell it in a way that’s familiar to us. That was another reason I made sure to self-publish.
AM: Is there a big difference between being independent vs. publishing with a company? What made you decide to self-publish?
MK: I started out writing poetry, not novels. With my first book I learned about the differences between independent and traditional publishing. Then, there’s vanity presses, but you want to stay away from them.
With traditional publishing, you get the glitz and the glamour, the money upfront. You don’t have to put the book together, design the cover, or get the edits done. That’s not your job. You review and make suggested changes, which are not really suggestions, because they put the money up and they have the final say.
That traditional publishers do all of the marketing is a misconception. They do the majority of it, and pay for it, but the author still goes on signings, makes appearances, and manages their own social media presence. But you get a check up front. Of course, they recoup some of that in the royalty split, but that goes back to the contract you develop with your agent when you sign a deal.
I chose not to go that route because I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit. When I was younger, I had my own candy store, other different businesses, and partnerships before publishing. I knew I wanted to own my story and control what I said. I was writing with a specific audience in mind.
AM: Are the plot or the characters more important to a story?
MK: When you do it right, the plot is tied to the characters. The character arc is supposed to reflect the plot, so as you progress the story along and different things happen, changes take place within your main and side characters. The way I structure my story, each character has a description. The story has an outline—I know what’s going to happen at the beginning, the middle, and the end. Each character has to go through some kind of transition within the story. I come up with maybe three different scenarios for each character to have to go through to show these different parts of the plot.
They have to work together to make a good story. Plot without fully developed characters can lead readers to stop in the middle and that’s not what you want. Without both, you don’t provide the best quality product to your reader. You want people to read your book, talk to others about it, and share it, building a community. Not just buy it.
AM: The discourse around pop culture is sometimes missing that perspective, that characters are a vehicle to tell a story. Not meant to be interpreted as an author’s confession.
MK: That’s exactly what it is. People in my life tend to think the Tea Leaves characters are real people, but they’re not. They’re different characteristics of my personality that I extrapolated out for them to represent a certain attitude or way of being. From there, I added events that were fake, that I made up, or that happened in real life but I changed everything about it. That was one of the funny things—when my friends knew I was publishing a book, they were reading it trying to figure out who I was talking about. After they all read it, they were like, “There’s no way.”
I was like, “I told y’all, this is not a Best Man situation. This is a made-up story.” There are some things that are true: certain parts of the city, who I lived with at a certain time, but the characters represent ideas more than the author itself. Unless it’s an autobiography. That would take the fun away from it! The best thing about writing characters is that you can go all in. That’s what I liked about the character, Clark, in Tea Leaves. I could be as vicious as I wanted because that’s what the character called for. That’s the role she needed to play in the development of the plot. If you try to make it all about you, it makes for a boring story after a certain point.
I wanted to talk about the beautiful relationships between black women, especially as friends. We hear women have horrible experiences, “I don’t have that many girlfriends, or I get along better with guys.” I feel very fortunate to have very good female relationships throughout my life even if they might have had issues, but that was part of the story I wanted to tell. Sometimes we can be hard on our girlfriends, and not on that man we keep giving fifty thousand gazillion trillion chances.
AM: What are you working on lately?
MK: I’m working on my next book, called Selfish. It’s taking too long to finish, but it won’t be ten years. For a minute, I was focused on creating these other income streams. I had a writing service, I started doing marketing services, selling products, and then I remembered my book. That’s what my business is about, about the book. I want to get it finished.
Selfish is about a cheating woman. It’s probably because there’s always been a conversation that men cheat because they can and women cheat because they’re scorned. One day I got the idea of, “What if all women don’t cheat because they’re scorned? Maybe a woman just cheats because she likes an array of different men.” She’s going to have a selfish aspect of it where she wants both, the variety and the comfort of a steady relationship. Kind of like a man! That’s where the inspiration came from.
You can purchase Tea Leaves here. You can learn more about Mahzi Kane on her website.
Aerin McKenzie is a fourth-year Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major at Drexel University. She currently works in the judiciary branch and intends to pursue her J.D. after graduating. In her spare time, she enjoys stargazing, traveling, and trying new foods.