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Baseball Nostalgia and Baseball Fiction
✨THINGS THAT HAVE MOST AFFECTED MY LIFE✨My parents & familyMy husband and kidsHigh school & collegeWorking in baseballBeing a teacherFriendships.✨THINGS THAT HAVE MOST AFFECTED MY STORYTELLING✨Broken lovesGrandmothersLife in baseballRelationships (good & bad)Losing people we loveMaryland’s beauty . BLACKBIRDS PARK is the fictional version of Camden Yards in my novel entitled Baseball Girl. I worked at Old Memorial Stadium and Camden Yards for the Orioles (hence the Cooperstown bear pictured here, a gift from Orioles owner Mrs. Angelos). I’m somebody who can feel romantic about places and about baseball. This novel is loosely based on my life working in baseball, an amalgamation of the people and places I loved over the…
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The Slump: A Short Story in the Absence of Baseball for Fiction Friday
What I’m sharing today, in the absence of Opening Day for Major League Baseball, is a short story I wrote about a ballplayer in a slump. Working in baseball, we saw a lot of slumps, from top-tier players to rookies. I’m not sure when or why this short story popped into my head, but I’m glad it did. I enjoy writing about baseball. It’s the one baseball story that’s included in The Postcard and Other Short Stories & Poetry, and I thought I’d share it during these days of being at home and social distancing due to the coronavirus outbreak. The second book I published, Baseball Girl, is a novel…
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The Real People Who Have Inspired Some of My Characters
I was reading a fellow writer’s blog today, and he wrote a post about people who have inspired him along the way: both those who have encouraged him to write and those who have inspired the characters he has written. It was enlightening to read his thoughts, so I decided to share what has inspired some of my own characters in my novels. We’ll start with three today, one from each book. VIVI IN BENEATH THE MIMOSA TREE Some of you may know that the character of Vivi in Beneath the Mimosa Tree was inspired by my own grandmother, Eleanor, who passed away when I was in my twenties. I…
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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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Baseball Girl Receives Some Hometown Press in Annapolis
Thanks to my friend Tim Thomas, writer Sarah Hainesworth, and photographer Paul Gillespie at The Annapolis Capital for running this great feature story on Baseball Girl in Sunday’s Life section. I’m so happy they were willing to get the word out about my second novel. Thanks for the support! Click here to read the article in The Capital.
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Editing My Novel: “Baseball Girl” Is In Motion
On Friday, I completed the first draft of my second novel, currently titled “Baseball Girl.” This sucker is seriously in motion. So, what does one do now that it’s complete? Well, my friends, now begins the difficult part, the part where you have to be critical of yourself, change things that are not working, and make sure your characters’ voices remain their voices, even if they develop and grow during the course of the novel. As well, it’s time to look at the overall plot and consider any flaws that may be lurking within its pages. As my fictitious love story is about a young woman who works in the…
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The New Thing: Writing About Baseball (And love. And death.)
It’s quite a combination, I know. Taking the subject of baseball and rolling it into a novel women will want to read. Women’s fiction…contemporary romance…and baseball? Who is she kidding? one might ask. Here’s the thing: I’m finally up for the challenge. At about 35,000 words already written for the novel (BENEATH THE MIMOSA TREE was 59,000 words), I am making some serious headway with the main character I like, but who has some issues to overcome. Incidentally, she works in professional baseball. And that’s about all I’ll say right now. It’s taken me years to write a novel with baseball as one of its “characters,” just as New York…
