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Writing About Baseball: The Slump from The Postcard & Other Short Stories
I’ll always have a little bit of baseball in my soul, even all these years later after having worked for the Orioles. The truth is, I grew up in baseball. I did. From the age of 19 through my early 30s, I learned so much from working for the Baltimore Orioles organization. That experience molded me and helped me in the careers I have chosen now. It also gave me some pretty remarkable friendships (and I also got a husband and two great kids out of the deal). One of those careers I have today is that of a writer of novels and short stories. Today, I decided to share…
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Thoughts on Missing Working in Baseball
It’s a question I get asked a lot. “Do you miss working in baseball?” Students ask me this often; then they ask what it was like to work in baseball, in sports, for a Major League baseball team. I have often blogged about how working in baseball changed my life in so many ways. I became a serious student when I got my job with the Orioles as a sophomore in college. I learned how to budget my time and work long hours. I loved every minute of it. I even roped my best friend and college roommate into working there during my second year when I supervised a small…
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Back at Camden Yards, Pangs of Nostalgia and Thankfulness
* This morning I took a ride to Camden Yards. It was surreal—like going back in time to the commute I did for many years from 1992 through 1998 when I was a full-time employee of the ballclub. (Prior to that, beginning in 1985, I commuted to old Memorial Stadium). I had to pick up something from our friend Mark at the Orioles offices for my son’s birthday. On my drive in, as I am often capable of doing, I became nostalgic remembering old times. I also got to thinking about how that job of working for the Orioles completely transformed my life. And I don’t write that lightly. It…
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Writing the Follow-Up to “Beneath the Mimosa Tree”
Last weekend when I was in Miami and “Beneath the Mimosa Tree” won a bronze for contemporary romance fiction in the Readers Favorite contest, I was in a bit of shock. I couldn’t believe it. Contemporary Romance. Bronze Medal. It was my first book, but it was a long, long time in the making. I felt a little bit like Jeannette Walls when she admitted she wrote the first draft of “The Glass Castle” twenty years ago. The same holds true for me. I drafted “Beneath the Mimosa Tree” as a short story prior to it becoming a novel. However, all I kept thinking to myself was: I’ve got a…
