To millions of people, advice columns provide a place to go to seek guidance for their problems.
But to first-time author Steven Ryniak, they’re a source of endless humor.
Ryniak, 27, is the writer of Dear Alice: Rejected Letters to Advice Columns from Completely Insane Idiots, a clever new book that pokes fun at the whole business of Dear Abby.
The basic premise is simple: the more outrageous the problem, the better.
Ryniak began working on Dear Alice about six years ago, when he was still a student at Towson University in Maryland. Initially, he began writing the letters as a way to pass time during lectures.
“My friends and I started writing letters as if insane people were writing in to advice columns like Dear Abby and Ann Landers — we passed them back and forth to each other in class, mainly to amuse ourselves and fight off the insipid boredom which usually accompanies most college classes,” he said.
What started out as a hobby soon turned into a full-time pursuit.
“I came up with the idea to try to make a book out of the letters, kind of like an R-rated version of the Deep Thoughts books that had come out not too much earlier from then,” he said. “I started writing the letters all night, every night in bed before I went to sleep, and then oversleeping through my morning classes the next day.”
After about eight months Ryniak’s efforts started to pay off, as he had completed over 50 letters.
The next step was to find a publisher for his work, which proved to be a difficult task. Ryniak started out by sending a query letter with ten samples from Dear Alice to “well over 150 agents and publishers,” only to be turned down time and time again.
However, the rejections didn’t deter Ryniak.
He used his time wisely, adding and continuing to edit and revise Dear Alice until he had approximately 75 letters (in early drafts the book initially included some of the letters written by his friends, but Ryniak later cut those out).
“The whole time I was sending the query letters out I was constantly adding to the manuscript, rewriting it and editing it and going over and over it,” he said. “In a way it was good that I didn't find a publisher right away, because (the book) became much better from re-editing and reworking it than it originally was.”
While many would have given up during this tedious process, Ryniak never dreamed of abandoning Dear Alice.
“I always had faith that the book was good enough to get published — I never cared what anyone else really said or thought about it,” he explained. “I have a collection of over 100 rejection letters that I've kept, and some of them are really funny in their own right. I accidentally sent the query to some publishers who only publish things like encyclopedias and religious books, and they actually took the time to compose some pretty original rejection letters.”
Confident that slow and steady would win the race, Ryniak plodded along.
“I knew I would eventually find one, because I really believed that the book was as funny or funnier than any humor book out there on the bookstore shelves,” he said.
He added, “Eventually I just basically sat down and said I'm going to send the query letter to five or so agents or publishers every week until I find one, and I don't care how long it takes, even if it takes ten years.”
It wound up taking five.
After a half a decade of persistence, Ryniak finally saw his dream of publication realized, when the Madison, Wis. based MPC Press and Muse World Media accepted the book. Ryniak enjoyed having his book picked up by a small publisher, where he was able to be heavily involved in the decision-making process.
“I had tattoo artists from near where I live in Maryland and Pennsylvania do the front and back cover art, and I wrote almost all of the back cover text — the publisher added the quotes and some additional text,” he said.
For now, Ryniak is “unhappily employed” at a bank, and hopes to one day earn enough money to be able to support himself writing. He is currently working on a children's book tentatively titled Bobby M. Shahoney's Totally Craze-Wacky Nutty Super Secret Silly Summer Adventure, which he described as “a Harry Potter-type adventure book for youngsters.”
If Dear Alice continues to gain popularity (the book is on its second press run, having sold out the first one) Ryniak has ample material for a sequel.
He’s also tooling around with a screenplay for an action movie, as well as scripting some sketch comedy for television.
Ryniak said he doesn’t know where his inspiration comes from.
“Sometimes people ask if the letters were based on anyone I know or on any real letters from newspapers, but I tell them no, not really, they all just came from my tiny brain,” he said.
For those aspiring authors, Ryniak offered some sage advice: “You just have to believe in yourself and be very persistent, and know that you're in it for the long haul — even if it takes ten or twenty years to get where you want to be, especially in the world of writing and publishing, where time is measured in months and years.”
