Z.S.Adani (Sophy) was born in Budapest, where she grew up on salami and fairy tales. She came to America in the mid seventies.

From her father's bookshelves she discovered SF, first  through the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Alexei Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, and then later John Varley, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and Larry Niven. There was no stopping after that. Much later, while raising two daughters, she decided to write her own fiction. Books such as Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Fantasy and Science Fiction, Ben Bova's The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells, and James Gunn's The Science of Science-Fiction Writing proved invaluable.