Plot Monkeys

Some of you may not know this, so I’m going to tell right up front that Tori is a pseudonym for the dynamic husband & wife writing team of Tony and Lori Karayianni. I can’t remember when I first met T&L, but I can tell you that it was a magical day. I probably laughed until my stomach hurt. I might have smelled of cigarettes after hanging out with them outside. I certainly made two friends that I (and all the Plotmonkeys) cherish dearly!

Lori is a member of the 65′ers and Tony is just a hoot. Both are brilliant writers and amazing people. And they wrote the Bad Girls Club books with me and Leslie, so they’re cool.

Today, they’re here to share their hard-earned wisdom regarding this writing gig we’ve all got going on. They’re going to stop by for comments, so if you have any questions, please ask…they’ll answer!

Welcome, T&L!!!
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The Road Well-Traveled…
By Lori & Tony Karayianni aka Tori Carrington

I think most of us are familiar with the quote from the movie Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come.” In a writer’s case, the phrase might be, “Write it and they will buy it.” Are these expressions reserved solely for Hollywood movies? We see Kathleen Turner as Joan Wilder writing a guaranteed bestselling romance in her Manhattan apartment, rejection letters and agent hunts and revisions so not a part of her life. Or how about Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As It Gets? Again we see a novelist in an expensive Manhattan apartment, only this time he’s a person no one can stand — including his publisher. And then there’s Bonnie Hunt in Cheaper by the Dozen where she’s swept off to NYC, all expenses paid by her publisher, to do talk shows and sign books.

Do any of these portrayals represent reality for us or for the majority of writers? No, wait. Don’t answer that. I’m (Lori) currently in dream mode and yearn for the day when feather boas and bonbons and an airy Manhattan apartment are reality. (Tony’s boa will be red and he’ll hog the bonbons.)

Did I hear a few snorts out there? How crass of me to mention writing and money in the same sentence! If this is your reaction, then you may want to stop reading this post here. Frankly we’re tired of defending ourselves to the “better dead than well-read,” crowd. Writing is like breathing to us and we can’t imagine wanting to do anything else. And the feather boas and bonbons and airy Manhattan apartment will be the ultimate proof of our being professional writers. Successful writers. So take your catty remarks elsewhere because we don’t have time for them. We’re too busy writing and striving to make sure writing is something we’re privileged enough to do for the rest of our lives.

For those of you still here…hello. Refill your coffee or tea cup, or fix yourself a frappe, curl your feet under you on the couch or office chair and let’s talk.

So what’s your take? Do you think, perhaps, that it’s because we fiction writers lead such isolated existences and have such vivid imaginations that we’re so thoroughly able to entertain thoughts of our latest book being bought for megabucks, hitting the NYT bestseller list, being made into a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Angelina Jolie, and maybe even being nominated for a Nobel Prize for literature? And why not? It’s all possible, isn’t it? (I was going to refer to the story of the 19-year old Harvard sophomore who got a half million dollar advance for her first two books, hit the NYT bestseller list and was featured on national talk shows, but, unfortunately, while her story was indicative of the possibility of all of us doing the same, it turned out that she didn’t write her books, rather she paraphrased passages from someone else’s books. Phhhht!)

While achieving this dream list of items is possible, well, it is also improbable. Do we know the ultimate in writing success is not going to happen to you? No. But we can perhaps ready you for the likelihood that it probably won’t. And help you find joy in being a professional writer anyway…while still holding onto The Dream.

Scene: Main city library, the head of 18 branches. Theatre seating for over 250. Teleconferencing equipment set up connecting us to another library branch including a 25-foot screen showing that meeting room. Tony and I in this type of environment for the first time to speak on publishing topics, shaking our heads. Probably twenty people will show up. Which means we’ll be in our element because it will allow for a more intimate give and take.

Instead a steady stream of people file in, nearly filling the theatre and the remote location. All attendees writers who don’t belong to either of the two writers groups in town (we asked), who had been up until they saw the coverage for our speech writing in a vacuum, completely unconnected to other writers around them. And we realized this couldn’t be all of them. That’s when a statistic I’d heard early on in our own writing career came back to me: that of only 1 in 10,000 manuscripts being bought from new writers in a year. Back then I remember thinking it couldn’t be true. But in that one moment at the McMaster Center, I came full circle and knew that it was.

And as we took the podium to speak, we paused for a heartbeat, looking into the countless hopeful faces looking back at us. Seeing hope. Glimpsing The Dream. We were them; they were us. Overwhelmed comes close to describing how we felt, but humbled closer. So much so that Tony cleared his throat and quietly asked that I speak first because he could not.

What can you possibly say to so many? Do you give them facts? Tell them it took us thirteen and half years to sell our first book and that we still have 27 unsold manuscripts in the attic? Or do we let them know that in the past nine years we’ve contracted for over forty books – one of the latest available the third title in our hardcover SOFIE METROPOLIS series – and that writing is now happily our day job and has been for years? Do we share the countless rejection letters and the horrific editor and agent appointments we’ve survived? Or affectionately relate that we love our Forge and Harlequin editors, and adore our agent, who is truly a god among men?

Then I began, and we both went ahead with our prepared speeches, digressing often (like in this post), trying to tailor the talk to them, hand them the wisdom we’ve accumulated over the past twenty-three years we’ve been writing within the space of an hour.

And after we’d both given to the point of emotional exhaustion, hoping we’d accomplished our objective, we opened the floor to questions. The first one was, “Where can I find an agent?”

It’s then I realized that it isn’t a writer’s isolation that allows The Dream to flourish. Rather it’s the mere act of being on the road itself. One traveled by countless others before us. And the products of the Hollywood Dream Factory? While the depictions might not be our reality – yet! – they are someone else’s (Nora Roberts, Dan Brown and Danielle Steele come to mind). Kathleen Turner’s character? Maybe that book she wrote tanked. Jack Nicholson’s novelist? Perhaps it took him a decade to sell his first title. Bonnie Hunt’s portrayal…well, okay, this one we can point a finger at and laugh. While fluke-like occurrences like this can and do happen, they come with their own unique challenges. But we’ll let someone who’s gone that route communicate that angle (can you imagine what second-book syndrome is like for them? Yikes).

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to convey is, that day we came to understand that no matter what we say, The Dream is alive and well in the hearts of every writer. And we believe the world is the better for it.

So let’s talk. About how we’re all connected as we stroll, race, or otherwise stumble our way down a road well traveled, yet a path distinctively our own. About how it truly is about the journey, yet not at the sacrifice of the destination. And perhaps help each other avoid a few of the potholes and deadends and crazymakers in our shared quest of making The Dream a little more of a reality…

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RT Career Achievement Award winners and two-time Rita nominated authors Lori and Tony Karayianni write as Tori Carrington. The third title in their Sofie Metropolis series, FOUL PLAY, is available now, along with their latest Blaze Extreme DANGEROUS, and their contribution to the mystery anthology QUEENS NOIR. They believe the greatest gift they can give fellow writers is friendship, understanding and encouragement. For more info on the authors and their books, visit www.toricarrington.net and www.sofiemetro.com.