Meet Harry and Norma Mazer, married 56 years, and experts at finishing each other's sentences.

When not finishing, they're at least critiquing, revising or rewriting. It's all in a day's work for the two internationally acclaimed authors of children's and young adult books who moved to Montpelier from New York two years ago. They're a handsome couple who look the way writers are supposed to look.

The Mazers have been writing books full time — separately and collaboratively — since the early 1970s. Each has published around 30 titles. Their writing careers began much earlier, however. It's a story that reads like pulp fiction. The title could have been: "Hungry Young Couple Beats Odds, Make a Living as Writers!"

"From the time I was 12 or 13 years old, I wanted to be a writer," says Norma, 75, who was born in New York City and raised in Glens Falls. When she was 15 and visiting her older sister in Schenectady, she met Harry. Twenty-one years old, he was an Army Air Corps veteran who had been shot down over Czechoslovakia on his 26th bombing mission and had been a prisoner of war during the final months of the war. Harry, smitten, offered to drive Norma back to her parents' home.

"Her mother, when she saw me bringing her daughter home for the first time … her nose turned green," Harry says with a hearty laugh.

The two met again when Norma was 17, dated, and married the following year while Norma was attending Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

"I was born in New York City, and I grew up in the Bronx," Harry says with an accent that proves his pedigree. "I always loved to read. I think my favorite book of all time was 'Robinson Crusoe.' And I've replicated that book at least twice. And I think I'm about to do it again. I love the survival stories." (Indeed, what might be his most-read book, "Snow Bound" published in 1973, is a tale about survival.)

The newly married couple moved to New York City, where Norma worked as a secretary ("for three or four engineers who never asked me to do anything. I read my way through my job. I remember reading 'An American Tragedy' on that job") and as a punch-press operator at a mica factory ("a really interesting experience, and I wrote a couple of short stories around that experience").

Harry, meanwhile, worked a variety of jobs, including driving a bus. "One time, I must have been painting, my hands were covered with red paint. And I was sitting on the subway, and I look across the aisle, and I think I see Theodore Dreiser. And I think he's thinking about writing 'An American Tragedy.' And there I am with my hands bloody. I wasn't a writer, but I was thinking like a writer. I was getting ready," he says.

In fact, they were both getting ready. Norma remembers, vividly, the "great conversation" that opened the door to their writing careers.

"You told me you were very unhappy," she says to him. "And I asked, 'What would you do if you could do anything you want?' He finally said, 'I'd write the great American novel.' We both talked about the fact that we really wanted to both be writers, and we had really never really talked about that before. I had been hanging on to this thought for 14 years. I was 28 at the time."

The Mazers began their writing careers in earnest by writing a half an hour each evening at the dining room table, after putting their four kids to bed. That half hour then became an hour. And the words flowed.

Harry sold his first article, a historical piece, "Boatload of Brides," to one of the men's magazines that were flourishing in during the 1950s.

Norma sold her first piece, a from-the-mouths-of-babes-type entry (inspired by her toddler son who wanted to know "if little stones grew up to be big rocks") to Parents magazine. She received a check for $1.50.

Then came the pulps.

The Mazers read an article by a woman who had put her kids through college by writing articles for pulp magazines such as "True Detective" and "True Romance."

"We became pulp fiction writers, and I would say that was the big change in our lives. We taught ourselves how to write a story," says Norma.

To make a living as full-time writers, each had to produce a 5,000-word story each week. They worked seven days a week, discussing story ideas, rewriting, critiquing each other's work.

"We were writing for 'The New Yorker,' even the though we were writing pulp fiction," jokes Harry. "We got to be the best pulp fiction writers in the country."

"We probably made more women cry than any other writing couple," says Norma. "It was great training. You couldn't go off into literary flights of fancy. It was very basic."

Although the pulps paid the bills, the Mazers had their sights set on writing books. "We never told anybody we were doing confessions; we got an agent, and she said the children's market was hot," says Norma.

And hot it was. And still is. Since the early '70s, the Mazers have become masters of the young-adult and youth genre, and there's no sign of them letting up.

Harry, although tight-lipped about an upcoming book on Lincoln, leaks out that has to do with Lincoln's sister.

Norma, whose most recent book, "What I Believe," was published last fall, says she has three new projects in the works. "Three editors are waiting for books from me."

As for the future of writing and reading? Says Norma: "I think we have a need as human beings to have stories. We've got to have stories. That's the way we learn things."



Patrick Timothy Mullikin is a regular contributor to Vermont Sunday Magazine.