A Passion for Writing
By Marty Adler

When people say, "Don't give up your day job," it's often a polite way of saying, "This is nice work for an amateur, but stick to what you do best." But for two Fellows who are accomplished authors, it was simply recognition that actuaries are paid better than writers. Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood have written a recently published novel, Iokaste: The Novel of the Mother-Wife of Oedipus.

This is not, however, their first published fiction. Entering separately, they had once tied for first place in the Actuarial Speculative Fiction contest, which was looking for speculative short stories involving actuaries. Alice's story, "Mec Life," is about robots ("mecs") somewhat in the Asimovian vein. On one level it's about an actuary analyzing a new "mec life" insurance product, but the substrate is the classic SF question: at what point should a robot be considered sapient? The actuary in the story begins to question whether robots should be treated more like people and less like machines, but the robot behavior that gets him thinking that way isn't all that pretty. Vicky's story, "It Will Be Partly Cloudy Tomorrow," is about an actuary who gets fired when the weather becomes perfectly predictable. It's about insurance, the weather, world power, and what aliens will do for sex. Vicky has also written a series of articles on writing historical fiction, written for magazines, has had a play performed, and has written a number of published short stories, two of which were printed in Contingencies.

Alice has loved stories and writing as long as she can remember. As a preschooler she would make up stories and tell them to her dad, who typed them out with just a sentence or two per page so she could illustrate them like the published children's books she was reading. She continued writing through her school years and edited her high school literary magazine. In college her focus on mathematics pulled her away, but she turned to writing and the classics oncemore as an escape from mathematics when she got to grad school.

At age seven Vicky decided she was going to be a poet. Later she realized she didn't like reading poetry that much but really enjoyed fiction, so she decided to become a storyteller instead. At Dartmouth she majored in English Literature and Creative Writing, which might make one wonder how she became an actuary. Nevertheless, she had more credits in science and math than in English.

Alice and Vicky met in Zurich, Switzerland when they were in a four-member study group for part 10, all of whom passed. They clicked particularly well and discovered that they had an incredible knack for getting things done together while having fun. After Alice quickly finished one more exam, they both had a lot more time. Accustomed to using that time in a disciplined way because of the examination procedures, they collaborated on several articles for The Actuarial Review and wrote a refereed and prize-winning paper for the Journal of Actuarial Practice ("Recognizing Actuarial Assumptions").

They also discovered that they were both intrigued by the story of Iokaste. Since age 14, Vicky has had the idea that the Oedipus story was being told from the wrong point of view. Alice has always been fascinated with the ancient world in general and Greek mythology in particular. Historical fiction is one of her two favorite genres (alongside science fiction) and she has admired the work of writers like Mary Renault and Robert Graves since her preteen years. During her college and graduate studies in mathematics, coursework in classics provided balance and "helped keep me sane." She has also been consistently curious about the lives of women in ancient times. "It so often seems that we only hear the guys' sides of the stories, and I want to hear the gals' tales too." When she discovered that Vicky was also intrigued by the story of Iokaste, it seemed that the Fates had put them together.

But it took them a while to decide to write it together because of very different artistic visions of the story. During one CAS Spring Meeting they took a couple of hours off, plotted it out, and then set about writing the first draft. The first draft was "ghastly," but somehow they worked together and got through the problems. Vicky says, "I was actually surprised; I did not expect us to make it, but Alice is very disciplined. As for me, I am just obsessed."

They discovered that they have complementary skills. Vicky has the knack for plotting and keeping the narrative rhythm and tension, so she tends to write the first draft. Alice is more of a visual thinker, and has spent more time studying the historical and archaeological data, enabling her to fill in Vicky's plot with description and detail. She also has a remarkable vocabulary. Vicky has also learned to enjoy the archaeological research. Once they get started on the drafts, they communicate mostly by e-mail, as Alice lives in New York and Vicky spends most of her time in Switzerland.

They are delighted with the readers' responses, many of which may be viewed on amazon.com. Most of the readers discover that once they have picked it up, they truly can't put it down. College faculty and high school teachers have expressed interest in using it in their classes. Their publisher has arranged for a translation into Greek with one of the top Greek publishing firms. For Alice the most gratifying thing about the responses is that each person has told her that a different part of the story, or a different character, especially spoke to them. One reader really liked the character of Iokaste's brother Kreon. Another found the action scenes compelling. A third saw Iokaste's father Menoeceus as a man of great integrity and faith. Other people have commented on the way they handled the Sphinx or the Tiresias. This variety of reactions has really made the authors feel that they did their job right—that they created a multifaceted world with living, breathing characters.

Ideally Alice would like to spend about eight hours a week on her writing—half a day one weekend day, and the other four hours spread across the other six days. But of course it's hard to find that time. Business travel helps; some of her best opportunities for writing come in planes, trains, and hotel rooms—after she's finished the exhibits for her next meeting, of course. Currently Vicky is taking time off from her actuarial career to enjoy her husband's sabbatical—he has invitations to speak at conferences around the world so she is devoting a lot of time to writing. But when they stop traveling, she expects her writing schedule to be similar to Alice's.

Alice thinks of her writing time as time spent with "friends"—the characters—in an exotic and exciting place. She wouldn't characterize actuarial work exactly the same way. But there is certainly a huge sense of satisfaction with getting an analysis done right, on time, and communicated effectively—not to mention the other sort of satisfaction that comes with getting paid! Writing is just not a very lucrative field.

In both writing and actuarial work there's a "flow state" that is great—when she is just so in the moment that she has no sense of time passing. There could be a herd of elephants thundering past behind her and she'd hardly notice. And in both writing and actuarial work there are awful moments where you just get stuck and frustrated and don't know where to go next. One nice thing about fiction is that if she doesn't have enough data to go on, she can just make it up.
As long as the reader finds her assumptions plausible, that's OK.

Vicky finds both important. If she goes too long without one or the other she starts to feel out of sync with herself. Writing is generally a solitary pursuit, although having Alice around makes a big difference. She actually finds actuarial work much easier and far more relaxing, at least in scope, and it has the advantage of paying the bills.

Vicky and Alice are hard at work on a prequel. As they wrote Iokaste, they uncovered a mass murder that has gone unnoticed for the past 3,000 years.

In their actuarial lives, Alice Underwood is senior vice president of Guy Carpenter & Company, Inc. and Victoria Grossack's last position was with Zurich Financial Services.