Interview: Zane, Writer of “Addicted”

Zane is the pseudonym of the author of steamy novels and founder of two publishing imprints. “Addicted,” which opens on Friday, is based on her novel about a woman who risks her loving marriage with three affairs due to sexual addiction rooted in past trauma. It was a pleasure to speak to Zane, whose warmth, creativity, and empathy are immediately apparent.

What does addiction mean to you?

I wanted to write a story about a woman who had it all like a lot of women do but still it wasn’t enough. Outside of just being promiscuous, she actually has a sexual addiction that stems from a traumatic childhood that she hasn’t addressed.

So the difference between addiction and a lack of self-control is the compulsion?

It’s just like with any kind of addiction, similar to whether somebody’s an alcoholic or a drug addict or they’re a gambling addict anything like that, they want to be able to stop. They want to be able to control themselves but it’s a true addiction. Just going out and just doing things you want to do is one thing, but this is a woman who actually truly loves her husband, truly loves her career, truly loves her children, but yet everything spirals out of control because she is unable to control what she’s doing. It was really just examining the fact that most of our actions are a direct reflection of something. They usually symptoms of a much bigger underlying problem. So the idea is to address that underlying problem which is what she does by going to see a psychiatrist.

A lot of addictions, whether you’re talking about shopping or gambling or drugs, are a way of numbing yourself.

Absolutely.

The film has some of the most attractive actors working today as the main characters. Is this how you imagined your characters looking, to be so gorgeous?

Absolutely, we do have a very beautiful cast. And more importantly, a very talented cast. I’m very excited about it. I’ve had two Cinemax series so this is not the first time I’ve actually seen that, but being on the big screen is amazing and I hope that this is a beginning of a long-term relationship.

In your writing, there’s a lusciousness in your description of all kinds of sensual things whether it’s the weather outside or the food, so tell me a little bit about how you evoke the senses in your writing.

Even as a child I had a very vivid imagination and it really stems from that, not when it comes to sensuality, all of the elements that come into play in real life. When someone is making love or just having sex, there’re all these different things and a lot of times in books those things aren’t examined; I’d like to set up the whole vision, the whole picture of it.

What in your life experience has made you so sympathetic to the kind of pain you write about?

I actually was raised by two parents who taught all of us not to be judgmental about other people, and at the same type exposed us to a lot of different cultures and a lot of different people. My father for example, grew up in a shack literally in the mountains of North Carolina but got his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. SHe taught at the University of Argentina, at Oxford in England. So they always taught us to embrace the differences in people instead of fearing them. I’ve always had an open mind about stuff. So I listen to people, I observe people, and I do it without judging them because I understand that everybody is just a culmination of everything they’ve ever been taught, experienced, or witnessed.

I know you have some very passionate fans. What are some of the questions and stories that they bring to you?

I get hundreds of advice emails every single week and while most of them have nothing to do with sex, some of them do. Most of them really have to do with relationship issues or parenting issues, they run the gamut. But the whole thing is sex is simply a part of their lives; it is one aspect of it. In all these years, no one else has ever had my password for my account so I actually do read every email. There’s some people I’ve been dealing with for several years (actually one young lady for a decade now) and so I would never want them to feel like “Oh, someone else is reading the e-mail” or get a generic response.

Do you have a favorite character in Addicted? Do you have one that is especially dear to you?

It would have to be the main character, Zoe, because everything centers around her. She owns a art business. She’s very successful at what she does. She has two children, a husband who’s an architect, she’s very close to her mother (her mother actually lives with them in the film), and she always had a very good upbringing and everything but it’s one of those situations where she did something that she has not addressed that she needed to address. And that has caused her to do things that she would never do under normal circumstances. But she tries to be open and communicate with her husband. Some people have marriages where one person may think the marriage is wonderful, they have great communication, they have everything anyone could want, and the other person sees the marriage totally differently. So one thing I hope that people walk away from with this is the importance of communicating when something was wrong and also for the person at the other side to actually hear when their mate is trying to tell them something. In this film, he’s intentionally avoiding the subject, he didn’t. He tries to avoid accepting that there’s really something wrong.

What challenges did you face in turning this book into a film?

Addicted was totally from the perspective of Zoe. What we had to do is take a 95,000-word book and cut it down to a screenplay that was about a fifth of that. We did have to lose some things from the book, but at the same time what we did effectively is we kept the overall message, the saying, which was what was most important to me.

Were you very involved with the adaptation?

The director called me all the time. Unfortunately, I was not able to be on set for this particular movie, I was on set for my TV shows all day every day though, but the filming on this got pushed back from the original date until it fell into a time when I was on a 28-city 35-day book tour.

What would you say is the message of the film?

It is about healing and forgiveness. The soundtrack features Conqueror by Estelle and the reason that was chosen is to show that you can conquer things if you decide that you truly want to do that and put in the time and effort to do it.