Being a semi-good marketer, I should let you know that the book I’m talking about here is currently available in a very fun, very exclusive “Escape 2026 StoryBundle,” along with 14 other very cool books, all of them crammed full of escapist time travel, alternate histories, and great stories. I love being involved with StoryBundles because it lets readers get a lot of great work while also limiting cost and supporting great charities. Check it out here: https://storybundle.com/timetravel
Anyway…on with the post!
Sometimes life is a real jokester. This wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t celebrate the fact by laughing maniacally at you as it whizzes past on its way right-on down the road. I can say this because it was about this time last month that I was discussing The Man Who Wears the Star, another in the Cruise Brothers series that I was working diligently on. I was having a blast and expected to be finished by the end of April.
Of course, things intervened.
In this case, a good thing: an email from a colleague, asking if I had a book to fit a slot in an upcoming StoryBundle. It had to be an alternate-history/time-travel thing.
I grimaced as I read the query. I did, indeed, have something that would fit. The problem was that it was like a Car Guy’s old Dodge, sitting half-finished in my backyard, parts strewn everywhere. I started it some time back, then set it aside when the difficulties that derailed me for a while hit. The deadline was close, and it was going to take considerable work. I told her I would pull it off the shelf and kick the tires for a day, and if I thought it could be finished, I’d adjust my schedule.
You know where this is going.
Let me introduce you to For the Heart of the Game, which is a weird mash-up of Science Fiction, Baseball, Science Fiction, Alt-History, and Time Travel with touches of Fantasy in the form of all-encompassing baseball magic. Completing it took an intense three weeks of effort, three weeks filled with equal parts challenge, frustration, and an amazing amount of fun (*). Also three months of doing almost nothing else (which means I’ve spent the last couple of days catching up on all the other things I Really Should Have Been Doing. When it was done, though, I looked back at it and decided that, yes, verily, it was good. Quite good. That I got a bit choked up as the thing came to its end makes me very happy.
(*) I need to give a special assist in the scorebook to my world-class copyeditor, who also happens to be my sweetie and partner for all time, who totally turned two in smashing my natural propensity for typos and other such weirdness.
Here’s the cover, and the back-cover description:
For the Heart of the Game
An Epic Baseball Battle Through Space and Time
Thread-worn sportswriter Casey Neal has seen things that would make a quantum physicist reach for the whiskey bottle. He’s crossed timelines, faced down crime lords, and saved baseball more times than his therapist will ever know. But when his old friend Don-o drags him through a wormhole into a world where baseball’s stats are disappearing and managers are vanishing without a trace, Casey finds himself chasing something bigger than any story he’s ever written.
Someone is stealing the heart of the game itself.
From the neon-lit sports bars of 2061 to the ivy-covered walls of Wrigley Field in 1961, Casey, Don-o, and Denise, the sharp-witted waitress, must unravel a conspiracy that threatens not just one league, but every version of baseball across space and time.
Because without the game, nothing else matters.
If that sounds interesting, I’m certain you’ll enjoy the read. This is the third book in the multidimensional world of Casey and Don-o, the first two being See the PEBA On $25 a Day and Chasing the Setting Sun.
What I Want to Talk About Here, However …
Is the whole thing about what it means to be an Independent artist, and what it means to—as I’ve highlighted in other areas—to write for Freedom.
There is a very good argument that says I should have declined the offer and stuck to my guns in finishing the Cruise Brothers thing first. I was on a roll after all, and it would be a good thing to get the next three books in this series out there and able to create whatever revenue that might create. If I were writing for either Fame of Fortune (the other three things on that simplified list of why writers write), a declination would probably have been the right move.
But …
Here’s the thing.
This is a cool book. It’s a LOT of fun. Silly at times, humorous at times, and deadly serious at others. In other words, it’s quite the ride.
And here’s another thing.
As soon as I started to seriously consider getting back to it, my writer brain might well have been hit with a triple dose of adrenaline with a cocaine chaser. I mean. As soon as I started to think about finishing this book, my fingers got to itching. The gate had been opened. And there was a deadline, too—a hard and fast moment that the thing Had To Be Done, which, if you know me, is a very, very hard thing for me to turn down.
So of course I was going to do it.
Thank the powers I’m an Indie.
It turned out to be absolutely the right decision. When I wrote back that I could make it, I strapped in and went on that ride along with the characters. It required me to do historical research in the midst of the process, which also got my brain firing. I love it when a book becomes all-consuming, like this one literally had to be. It’s amazing what you can get done when you’re motivated, too (and, as I noted about Lisa, when you have the right help aligned at the right times).
I hope you love the book. I’m sure I’ll have more to say in a week or so when it’s available.
But what I want to say right now is that this is a beautiful thing about being an independently published writer. Opportunities come, and your decisions are my own. Was it a mistake to say “yes?” Not at all. Who knows what the future will bring, after all. Even though I think it might have been financially stronger to stick with the “business/production plan” and charge forward, doesn’t mean that it was. And the choice got me a really fun book that mish-mashes genres and tropes up in ways that make me happy.
These books will find their audience. Whoever they are.
And that audience will love it as much as I do.
As my daughter has coached me: the whole gig is to make cool stuff, then show that cool stuff to other people who will think it’s cool, too.
So, yeah. If you think you like weird mash-ups of Science Fiction, Baseball, Science Fiction, Alt-History, and Time Travel with touches of Fantasy in the form of all-encompassing baseball magic, I can’t wait to hear from you.
I am a human. Not an AI. You can tell because keep a Patreon page where I talk about writing and being a writer (among other things). In other words, I post there first. I also share occasional work in progress for Patrons only. If you’d like to support me–or just this blog–you can do so there.
