bio
Georgia Routsis Savas (nicknamed “Gigi” after the movie of the same name) was born in Paterson, New Jersey to a Greek family who wanted nothing more than to be “American”. The youngest of three girls, Gigi’s father was a milkman (and as the only family member with blue eyes, she’s heard the joke a million times) and her mother a housewife who made sure her daughters were well-fed. She succeeded admirably.
In the mid-1960s, the family fled the city to suburban Totowa, a mere 7 mile in distance but worlds away in terms of the all-American dream. Tract houses with attached garages, highway strip malls and riding a genuine yellow school bus brought Gigi one step closer to living the high life á la The Brady Bunch.
Gigi’s interest in divination started early. She’d spin a globe to determine where she would meet her husband or in which country she would gain fame. Later on, Gigi discovered the newspaper’s daily horoscopes, got a free Libra mug in a Shell gas station giveaway promotion and borrowed astrology books from the library. Many overdue notices were sent to the Routsis home as the library’s esoteric book section drastically shrunk in size.
Her teenage years were spent foretelling events using a variety of divining methods. In the playing card game, the kings would be lined up in a row, each representing Gigi’s boy crushes. Questions would be posed (“Who will I make out with?”, “Who is secretly in love with me?”, “Which guy will I move to Colorado with?”,) and then a card flipped under each of the kings. A “Yes” answer was achieved when the flipped card matched the suit of the king above it.
Another way of looking into the future involved using a digital clock. Gigi and her friends would chant the alphabet in rounds and when the number on the clock flipped over (this was during the technologically advanced 1970s), the letter on each girl’s lips at that moment predicted the initial of her next boyfriend. Naturally, these techniques were honed during school hours. A favorite method involved writing the astro signs on a piece of paper. Then Gigi and her classmates would take turns tossing a coin. Which sign the coin landed on foretold which dude was digging on them.
Upon graduating high school, Gigi decided it was time to shed her French poodle nickname so, overnight, Gigi became the more sophisticated Georgia. That summer she met Damon, the man who would one day be her husband (though this event would take place 16 years later than her mother would have liked), attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City (which was, not so coincidentally, where Damon lived and where Georgia would move to later that year) and graduated with a degree in Advertising and Communications.
Georgia’s first real job was in the Advertising Department at Ms. Magazine, assisting the sales reps. It was here that her communication skills, as well as her talent for using the copy machine to piece together fake photos of herself with celebrities, were perfected. Georgia then climbed the ladder to become the magazine’s first mail order advertising sales rep. She soon grew tired of hearing her own sales bullshit and left Ms. to take on a succession of jobs including (in no particular order) fashion stylist assistant, proofreader, NYC guidebook sales rep, nanny, jewelry assembler, public relations aide and office administrator, to name a few. Blame it on her mercurial Gemini moon.
A few years later, she returned to Ms. to work at the magazine’s nonprofit foundation where she befriended some staff members at Sassy, the controversial new teen magazine that shared space in the same building. When the Sassy girls asked the astrology-savvy Georgia what she thought of the magazine’s horoscope column, she told them it sucked. They agreed and one of the editors suggested that Georgia try her hand at writing the column. Georgia did just that, thus starting her illustrious career as a freelance horoscope columnist, spending three years at Sassy and writing columns for the New York Daily News Sunday Magazine and Child Magazine (until they 86’d the column due to complaints from fundamentalist parents about the magazine’s “satanism” column—aka the horoscope page.)
Georgia’s horizons broadened when she joined CNN-New York to work on Style With Elsa Klensch, a weekly television show that focused on the worlds of fashion, beauty and decorating. Georgia was hired to fill in as Unit Manager with the promise of writing scripts when the Unit Manager returned from maternity leave. Lots of Virgo in Georgia’s chart meant she had a skill for organizing akin to that of a Swiss headmistress and when the original Unit Manager decided to be a stay-at-home mom and several replacements didn’t work out, the powers that be made it very difficult for Georgia to continue on as a writer. She left the Style show for the calmer waters of the News Department. From there she wrote, edited and produced the short-lived Living In The ‘90s With Christie Brinkley, assisted the Bureau Chief, was in charge of hiring interns, supervised the make-up artists and spent a good chunk of the day socializing, ordering lunch and setting up coworkers’ birthday and retirement parties.
At this point, Georgia and Damon (who finally became her husband in 1992—“It’s about time,” exclaimed Georgia’s mother) decided they wanted a simpler life, so they left Manhattan and embarked on a road trip down the Eastern coast of the country. They packed up their stuff and moved to a primitive barrier island in Southeastern North Carolina, a place where fishing trailers and cement bunkers were the norm.
While in the process of building their dream home, Georgia and Damon drove up North to visit their Yankee friends and relatives. It was during this trip that Georgia had dinner with an old colleague who was heading up a new magazine entitled InStyle. That colleague asked Georgia to write a mock horoscope column, which she immediately sent up to InStyle’s New York City offices. A month passed, and then another, and still there was no word from the magazine. Finally, four months later, on the day their building contractor arrived with their certificate of occupancy, the phone rang announcing that Georgia had the InStyle gig (just in time, as the contractor had, on that very day, presented them with his final bill). So began a relationship with the magazine that would span almost 10 years—a lifetime in the magazine world.
During what’s referred to as “The InStyle Years”, other jobs cropped up: Writing scripts for local commercials, doing voice-overs for those very commercials, working part-time at an independent bookstore/cafe. Then a book project was pitched to Georgia—a last-minute, fill-in gig to write an astrology book for Seventeen Magazine entitled Seventeen Total Astrology: Your Guide to Life and Love. The book, which Georgia had a blast writing, ended up as a “Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers” for the Young Adult Service Association, a division of the American Library Association. In Georgia’s eyes, this meant true success: The bad kids who snuck cigarettes in the bathroom—the ones who didn’t even read the back of cereal boxes—these ne’er do wells were her fans.
Then Simon & Schuster came a-calling, telling Georgia they loved her InStyle column and wanted her to write a book for them. “An astrology book—sure”, said Georgia. “Nope”, replied the S & S editor. “More like bibliomancy. Are you familiar with it?” Sure enough, Georgia had not only heard the term, she’d been practicing it since she was a bratty kid.
The Oracle Book: Answers to Life’s Questions, was published in the US, as well as in a whole slew of other countries (Australia, Korea, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Holland, Russia, Brazil, China, Taiwan, Greece, Sweden and Japan, where it was a bestseller).
As a love-obsessed Libra, it was only natural that Georgia’s third book, The Oracle of Love: Answers to Questions of the Heart, came about a few years later.
Georgia currently does private astrological readings, teaches yoga and absorbs books.
What’s next for Georgia? That depends on which oracle you query!
