by Dame Toni
“My life changed one day while I was sitting on the toilet.”
If you’ve been to my website, you’ve seen that line. Okay, so I wrote it to be funny. But it’s true.
Unlike the other Dames, I didn’t always write fiction. My plan, from as early as I can remember, was to be a musical actress. I sang before I spoke–my first discernable words were, according to my grandmother, the lyrics to a Nat King Cole beer commercial, which I sang before I could sit up on my own.
But I lacked discipline. Like writing, acting is a profession that has, at any given time, something like 95% unemployment. In college I studied acting, directing stagecraft, voice, and dance but, once I got out, I didn’t have the stones to move to New York or Los Angeles. Instead, I did non-union plays (the last one I was in paid $35 per performance) and worked as a waitress or a bartender to pay the rent. I sang with bands that imploded after a few performances (Have you seen The Commitments?) and picked up more shifts at the bar.
Then, one day, I prepared for my final acting role. I went to the local Goodwill and bought three skirts, two jackets, and a pair of sensible pumps, and wrote my first work of fiction: A résumé that included a degree in accounting and a shitload of work experience. I gave a series of brilliant performances—at job interviews for companies that had insurance, benefits and paid days off.
Eighteen years later (still on the strength of that fictitious resume, arguably my most successful writing work) I was earning a huge salary as a Business Analyst. I had a fabulous wardrobe, shoes to make Imelda Marcos jealous, a Blackberry, a Bluetooth, and platinum frequent flyer cards on three airlines.
I’d relocated from Southern California to Miami, and the boyfriend I’d left behind decided to follow me. When he arrived, he found out that high tech jobs in the greater Miami area were a bit thin on the ground. He started talking about a career change. Teaching, maybe, or doing something with his pilot’s license. Always a voracious reader, I went down to the local Borders and bought a stack of books like What Color is Your Parachute and Be What You Are. I presented them to him, thinking that he would use them to make a decision. I don’t think he ever opened any of them, and they eventually made their way into my “reading room.”
So, one morning, I was reading one of those books (with my underwear around my ankles), and I came to an end-of-chapter summary, in the form of four questions. Here they are, more or less,with my answers on that day.
Q: Do you like your job? A. Well, sure. It’s a great job.
Q: Would you do it if they didn’t pay you? A: Hahahahahahaha. I don’t like it that much.
Q. If money wasn’t a consideration, what would you do? A: Well, I always thought I’d like to write a book.
And, then, the killer fourth question:
Q. Is there any reason you can’t start now?
Now, I ‘d heard questions like this before, but for some reason, it was exactly the right question at exactly the right time. I suddenly knew–absolutely knew–that this time I could do it. I could write a book. And, I could write a good book–one that people would want to read. At that moment, I saw myself as an author. No more suits, no more Blackberry, no more day job.
I started writing my first novel that day. It was January of 2004.
I didn’t quit my job that afternoon–I understood that I didn’t know how to write a book or, once I’d written one, how to get it onto bookstore shelves. I had a vague notion that lots of people wrote books and never got them published. I had no intention of becoming one of those people.
But, I had an advantage that other would be writers didn’t have. I was a Business Analyst (BA). What I did for a living was figure out how to get there from here. So, using the same methodology, tools, charts and software that I used in my day job, I did a Business Analysis and started on a Project Plan for my writing career!
BAs don’t have to be an expert in the field about which they are doing an analysis. They use Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who have the actual skills to perform the tasks. I needed SMEs, and I needed them fast.
I had no idea how to structure a book. But I had a story idea, and I was pretty sure it was a romance. I went back to Borders in search of an SME. I picked up a book that still sits on the shelf above my desk: Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies by Leslie Wainger.
I knew nothing about getting published. Leslie’s book suggested I join an organization called Romance Writers of America (RWA). I went online, learned there was a chapter that met about 45 miles away, in Ft. Lauderdale. And they were meeting that Saturday. WHAM! An entire room full of SMEs.
From my newly acquired expert friends, I learned that career writers had to have a good literary agent. I started researching agents, and targeted a few based on what they were selling, and to whom. I went to their websites and found out what conferences they would be attending. Then I proceeded to stalk them.
In the meantime, I’d finished my first manuscript and moved on to my second. At one of the agent-stalking conferences I was attending, I signed up to pitch to an editor I thought might be interested in my fantasy romance but, when I arrived, I’d been paired up with an editor who didn’t acquire books in that genre. Rather than waste the appointment, I sat down and pitched an idea that had been rattling around in my head, about a woman with unusual paranormal abilities. It was called Mercy Killing, and I had no more than a half page outline and a few rough pages of a first chapter.
The editor was so excited about the idea that I (gulp) told her that I had a completed draft, and was working on revisions. I went home and wrote the entire book in under a month, and sent it off to the editor.
While waiting to hear from her, I finished up that second manuscript, a medieval paranormal erotic romance called Witch’s Knight, and entered it in every writing contest I could find. It won or placed in twelve contests (I’d been paying attention to Leslie’s book and those writing workshops) and I got several offers from small publishers. At that time, the only publisher that was doing any volume in erotic romance was Ellora’s Cave. Raelene Gorlinsky, EC’s senior publisher, had judged one of the contests and awarded the book first place, but had not made an offer.
I went online and got the phone number for the main office at Jasmine-Jade Enterprises, the parent company for Ellora’s Cave. I called them up and, somehow, talked my way through several people until someone put Raelene on the phone. And then, in the spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained, I told her about all of the offers and asked her why she hadn’t offered me a contract. She told me it was because the book didn’t have enough explicit sex in it.
I laughed and asked, “Is that all? How much more sex would you like?”
I signed my first book contract, with Ellora’s Cave Publishing, on August 17th, 2005.
I was still stalking agents and, with that in mind, I went to the New Jersey Romance Writers conference in October 2005 with the hope of meeting Miriam Kriss. When I spotted her in the lobby, I went up and introduced myself. We were chatting when a strange, smelly, man came up and started hitting on me. Miriam smirked at me over his shoulder as he oozed his sleazy version of “charm” all over me. Then, he turned to Miriam and asked if she was a writer, too. As soon as he found out she was an agent (he was an aspiring writer) I became invisible and she became the object of his attention. It was my turn to smirk and, by the time he walked away, we both needed a drink. We sat in the bar and drank martinis and, eventually, she asked me about my work. I agreed to send her some samples.
A week later, she called me. She’d read Mercy Killing, the book I’d written in a month, and wanted to represent it. I did the happy dance in my apartment and said “yes” without a second thought. By far, the best decision I’d yet made in my career.
Witch’s Knight was published by Ellora’s Cave in November of 2005. My project plan had given me two years to have a book published; I made it with six weeks to spare.
Then, in early December 2005, Miriam called to tell me she’d sold Mercy Killing in a three-book deal to Mira Books, to an editor named Leslie Wainger – the author of Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies!
In October of 2006, I quit my day job, divested myself of 75% of my wardrobe and the Blackberry, and moved to the cottage where I spent childhood summers in rural Connecticut.
Beg for Mercy (formerly Mercy Killing) was released in September 2007. By then, I’d published another book with Ellora’s Cave, Beastmistress, and that first romance manuscript, massively revised, was released under the title Men in Chains. It’s full of mistakes, but I still get fan mail.
Do I miss my high powered job? Well, maybe the frequent flyer miles and regular paychecks. But the thing is, I now have a new answer to that second question from that chapter summary in that nameless self-help book.
Q: Would you do it if they didn’t pay you? A: Hell, yeah!
