Lesbian app developers Marie Davis and Margaret Hultz (aka Wickedly Sisters) talk about their multimedia iNovel app and interactive book, Spoon and the Moon. Marie and Margaret have created a wildly imaginative story full of humor, a twinge of tenderness, and a heaping of unexpected turns. It’s a whimsically risqué fairytale which has already won Gold Medal awards. This is an interactive book for adults with clever animations, a hot soundtrack by musicians from Europe and North America, all woven through a magical storyline.
“Editors often ask why our creative partnership works so well.” Margaret Hultz explained. “Usually we laugh and say, ‘Together we have one really good brain!’ Fourteen years working together have led to interesting and hilarious projects that alone, neither of us would have had the twist in our shorts to dare.”
Margaret finished by saying, “We are pioneers in a completely new media and our apps are proudly built by a creative lesbian team. Spoon and the Moon has won three prestigious awards, Best App Ever runner-up, an eLit gold medal, and the IndieReader Discovery Award, who just picked Spoon and the Moon as one of their six books to fall for this season.”
The creative, app building duo met each other one night during Karaoke. Yes, they sang a duet together before they ever said hello. But these women did not start out working in the tech world. Fourteen years ago Margaret joined Marie working on her educational cartoon strip based on multicultural history.
Marie: “Yes, history . . . a topic that caused most people to begin to tune me out when they heard what I did.”
Margaret: “But I told her that I love history! When I first went over to see Marie’s cartoons, I loved them, but I found out pretty fast that her spelling is rotten!”
Marie: “The only problem with spelling is getting all the letters in the right order—very little room for creativity.”
Margaret continued, “Mostly our work was big fun, until I contracted a stubborn staph infection from surgery—and nearly died.”
Marie: “When things get bad, we get laughing! As the preface of our app reads, ‘This story was written so that one very sick woman could laugh herself well. And she did . . .’”
When Margaret was transferred to a nursing home Marie began writing funny vignettes about a psychic spoon, a lactose intolerant cow, a two-fingered hero, a fanciful drag queen, and a lesbian named Lil longing for love.
“Marie would call me every night and read me these stories. I would sit there and laugh and laugh. The laughter, doctors and prayer saved my life.” Margaret recalled.
As Margaret slowly healed those vignettes took on a life of their own, eventually morphing into a novel. Daringly they left their syndicated strip, renamed themselves Wickedly Sisters and began writing fiction, eventually building them into apps fulltime.
“As Christian lesbians we are so happy that our main lesbian character, Lil, is also a church-goer. It is not proposed as something remarkable, but rather part of the special, yet ordinary part of her life. It is wonderful to speak through our story to show others the spiritual side of our community.”
“Church in the Southland is a promise. The gentle aroma of a little old lady dressed in printed cotton with soft, age-spotted arms and gnarled hands from a lifetime of scrubbing everything including Lil’s dirty behind when she was a baby. Church in the Southland is the waddle of a devout bovine, and a constant stream of children who won’t sit still or be quiet. A promise that some things will remain the same—we will all just play changing roles as our lives slide by.” – Spoon and the Moon.
Wickedly Sisters’ app Spoon and the Moon includes lots of interactivity, a fantastic soundtrack written and performed by musicians from North America and Europe, clever animations and illustrations all woven through a magical storyline. Spoon and the Moon is instantly available in the Amazon Appstore for your Android Tablet or Kindle Fire.
Their next app, Civil War Truce—Remarkable Little-Known Story of Sister Lucy will be out soon. It is a non-fiction story about a Catholic Sister and her loving sacrifices during our country’s bloodiest war .
The authors are offering a free Spoon and the Moon app to the first 100 people who email them at spoonandthemoon@yahoo.com. Please put “free app” in the subject line.
——-
A full review of Spoon and the Moon can be found at IndieReader.