Julianna Keyes's Blog - Posts Tagged "team-player"
Teaser Tuesday #2!
Still just $2.99 until release day!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
Teaser Tuesday #3!
Team Player is on sale for $2.99 until release day on March 28, then bumps up to regular price!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
Team Player
Teaser Tuesday!
It's #TeaserTuesday! Just 9 more days until TEAM PLAYER comes out!
It's on sale for a mere $2.99 until March 28, when the price bumps up, and it's still available for request on NetGalley!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
It's on sale for a mere $2.99 until March 28, when the price bumps up, and it's still available for request on NetGalley!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
NetGalley: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/boo...
It's the last #TeaserTuesday!
It's the final #TeaserTuesday post before release day, March 28! If you haven't pre-ordered, there's still time to jump on the $2.99 sale price (bumping up to $4.99 on release day).
If you're not following me on Facebook, consider it! Starting on Friday I'll have a series of release week posts culminating in a giveaway at the end. Come join!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
If you're not following me on Facebook, consider it! Starting on Friday I'll have a series of release week posts culminating in a giveaway at the end. Come join!
AZ: www.amzn.com/dp/B07NDSVLM4/
B&N: https://bit.ly/2Shmuk8
iBooks: https://apple.co/2WPnkD4
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2tb5JYJ
GR: https://bit.ly/2BoVowZ
Website: www.juliannakeyes.com
RELEASE WEEK - POST 1
IT’S GETTING THEME-Y IN HERE
If you know me, you probably know I’m a fan of theme. I’m one of those people who always wants to know why things are the way they are, and one of the things I think about when I’m reading is why the author made the choices they made for the story. Why this job? This setting? This conflict? Sometimes that answer is no more complicated than “because I like it,” but sometimes the answer is related to theme, and that’s my favourite.
The major theme in TEAM PLAYER is, you guessed it, the idea of “teams.” In the story, both Gwen and Ty are at particularly lonely points in their lives. Gwen has lost her only family member and cut herself off from her friends while she grieves, and now has a job she doesn’t really like. Ty has lost his best friend, his team is struggling, and despite being one of the most famous athletes in the world, he feels all alone.
The story is about Gwen and Ty meeting at a point in their lives when they have no one else, and that burgeoning relationship (their own mini team), being the one to encourage and improve the other “teams” in their lives. To say too much more would be spoiler-y, but one non-spoilery reveal is that the Thrashers players have to learn how to come together as a team despite a bunch of off-season upheavals, and one of my favourite things in writing this story was showing their growing camaraderie. I wanted to write locker room talk that was funny and authentic, and made the supporting characters come to life. This was especially important because the baseball season—and its outcome—are central to the story, and a reader’s emotional investment in the team would make the story that much more compelling. (I hope!)
While the title certainly alludes to Ty’s previous off-the-field player antics, what it really references is his journey to being a better team player on the field, and how that influences his life away from it. And that’s the story’s message. It’s about finding your own team—friends, family, a Major League Baseball organization—and finding yourself in the process.
What do you think? Do you pay attention to theme when you’re reading? Does it matter?
image:
If you know me, you probably know I’m a fan of theme. I’m one of those people who always wants to know why things are the way they are, and one of the things I think about when I’m reading is why the author made the choices they made for the story. Why this job? This setting? This conflict? Sometimes that answer is no more complicated than “because I like it,” but sometimes the answer is related to theme, and that’s my favourite.
The major theme in TEAM PLAYER is, you guessed it, the idea of “teams.” In the story, both Gwen and Ty are at particularly lonely points in their lives. Gwen has lost her only family member and cut herself off from her friends while she grieves, and now has a job she doesn’t really like. Ty has lost his best friend, his team is struggling, and despite being one of the most famous athletes in the world, he feels all alone.
The story is about Gwen and Ty meeting at a point in their lives when they have no one else, and that burgeoning relationship (their own mini team), being the one to encourage and improve the other “teams” in their lives. To say too much more would be spoiler-y, but one non-spoilery reveal is that the Thrashers players have to learn how to come together as a team despite a bunch of off-season upheavals, and one of my favourite things in writing this story was showing their growing camaraderie. I wanted to write locker room talk that was funny and authentic, and made the supporting characters come to life. This was especially important because the baseball season—and its outcome—are central to the story, and a reader’s emotional investment in the team would make the story that much more compelling. (I hope!)
While the title certainly alludes to Ty’s previous off-the-field player antics, what it really references is his journey to being a better team player on the field, and how that influences his life away from it. And that’s the story’s message. It’s about finding your own team—friends, family, a Major League Baseball organization—and finding yourself in the process.
What do you think? Do you pay attention to theme when you’re reading? Does it matter?
image:
RELEASE WEEK - POST 2
CAN YOU FEEL THE LOVE TONIGHT
Many of my books are inspired by a place or time in my life that I wanted to capture in words the way I can’t capture in photographs. (I’m a truly garbage photographer.) I wrote JUST ONCE because I’d worked on a dude ranch; I wrote GOING THE DISTANCE because I’d lived in China.
Capturing the “feeling” of something without describing it like a travel brochure is easier said than done. My biggest weakness in writing is description. I never, ever describe settings. Like, ever. I always have to go back during edits and remember that no one can see my imagination if I don’t write it down. (In a writing class in university I wrote a short story about a girl who lived a boring life in a boring apartment. The chief criticism I got from literally everyone was that they did not know what she or the apartment looked like. I remedied this by saying the walls were painted eggshell white, and I genuinely believed that to be sufficient. It wasn’t.)
But describing something is more than just telling people what it looks like. It’s getting them to feel like they’re inside of it, so they can fill in the details of those eggshell white walls with sensory details from their own experience. When writing TEAM PLAYER I really wanted to be mindful of describing the game and the setting in a way that “felt” right. Not everyone loves baseball, and it’s not about convincing them how insane they are, it’s about showing why *I* love it, and I don’t love it because the grass is green and the seats are blue and the chicken strips are $14, I love it because of how it makes me feel. The energy of a Major League baseball stadium is obviously more intense than the feeling of stepping onto a field for a softball game, but I was lucky enough to play some games on fields where they play national championships, with manicured grass and stadium lights and towering bleachers and *that* feeling is what I wanted to get on the page.
I watch a ton of cooking shows, and when someone says they cook with love I always thought, “What on earth does that taste like?” But then I ate at this restaurant where the chef’s love for his work truly came through in every bite, and I finally understood. This week I’ve been proof-reading the paperback version of TEAM PLAYER, and that loving feeling has come through the pages, making me giddy for release day, and the start of the new baseball season. I hope you feel it too!
Many of my books are inspired by a place or time in my life that I wanted to capture in words the way I can’t capture in photographs. (I’m a truly garbage photographer.) I wrote JUST ONCE because I’d worked on a dude ranch; I wrote GOING THE DISTANCE because I’d lived in China.
Capturing the “feeling” of something without describing it like a travel brochure is easier said than done. My biggest weakness in writing is description. I never, ever describe settings. Like, ever. I always have to go back during edits and remember that no one can see my imagination if I don’t write it down. (In a writing class in university I wrote a short story about a girl who lived a boring life in a boring apartment. The chief criticism I got from literally everyone was that they did not know what she or the apartment looked like. I remedied this by saying the walls were painted eggshell white, and I genuinely believed that to be sufficient. It wasn’t.)
But describing something is more than just telling people what it looks like. It’s getting them to feel like they’re inside of it, so they can fill in the details of those eggshell white walls with sensory details from their own experience. When writing TEAM PLAYER I really wanted to be mindful of describing the game and the setting in a way that “felt” right. Not everyone loves baseball, and it’s not about convincing them how insane they are, it’s about showing why *I* love it, and I don’t love it because the grass is green and the seats are blue and the chicken strips are $14, I love it because of how it makes me feel. The energy of a Major League baseball stadium is obviously more intense than the feeling of stepping onto a field for a softball game, but I was lucky enough to play some games on fields where they play national championships, with manicured grass and stadium lights and towering bleachers and *that* feeling is what I wanted to get on the page.
I watch a ton of cooking shows, and when someone says they cook with love I always thought, “What on earth does that taste like?” But then I ate at this restaurant where the chef’s love for his work truly came through in every bite, and I finally understood. This week I’ve been proof-reading the paperback version of TEAM PLAYER, and that loving feeling has come through the pages, making me giddy for release day, and the start of the new baseball season. I hope you feel it too!
RELEASE WEEK POST 3
WHO’S THE BOSS?
With just one exception, all of my books have started with a character first, story second. In this case, I wrote TEAM PLAYER approximately six different times, all from scratch. And they were pretty terrible. Some of the fundamental elements were the same: Ty, Gwen, Strip, and the structure of the season. The rest, however…
It’s a really frustrating process to feel like you have the essential elements right, but still not manage to achieve the outcome you want. And the thing I struggled with most was pacing. I had so much back story in my head about Ty and Gwen’s pasts and too much of it was ending up in the book and holding up the actual plot. While I think it’s important for authors to know their characters and have done their research, sometimes that information doesn’t need to make it onto the page, and I was writing down WAY too much. It wasn’t being written well, either. Just random lumps and clumps that kept interrupting the momentum (what little I could build) and slowing things to a crawl.
In what ended up being the first draft of what ultimately turned into the final product, I still had much more back story than you see in the finished book. It just wasn’t working. And it’s one of those cases where the more you peel away, the more what remains stands out weirdly, so you take out a bit more, then a bit more… In the end, I went with very little back story. I tried to include enough details to give a sense of why and how Ty and Gwen had become who they were, without taking away from the present-day plot, which was already eating up my word count. I figured if I couldn’t work it into the story in a way that felt organic, then it wasn’t meant to be there. So essentially I wrote five books of character sketches, then one actual book. That is not an efficient process!
When I was in school we had to go out and write a piece about a random person. I was so shy about approaching a stranger that I’d rather have just died, but then I finally spotted a guy in a cigar shop, looking incredibly bored. I went in, asked if I could write a piece about him, and he agreed. Except when I tried to ask about himself, he just kept talking about cigars. I kept trying, he kept up the cigar chatter. Eventually I wrote a piece about cigars. (That turned out to be very interesting.)
In the case of TEAM PLAYER, I did a ton of (accidental) character work for Gwen and Ty, but then Baseball, which was intended to have more of a supporting role, showed up and demanded to be one of the leads. I kept trying to shunt it into the background, it kept insisting. Five drafts later, it had a starring role. That’s writing for you!
Heads up: Tomorrow’s the last of the release week posts, and it’s a deleted scene I think is short and sweet and worth the read!
With just one exception, all of my books have started with a character first, story second. In this case, I wrote TEAM PLAYER approximately six different times, all from scratch. And they were pretty terrible. Some of the fundamental elements were the same: Ty, Gwen, Strip, and the structure of the season. The rest, however…
It’s a really frustrating process to feel like you have the essential elements right, but still not manage to achieve the outcome you want. And the thing I struggled with most was pacing. I had so much back story in my head about Ty and Gwen’s pasts and too much of it was ending up in the book and holding up the actual plot. While I think it’s important for authors to know their characters and have done their research, sometimes that information doesn’t need to make it onto the page, and I was writing down WAY too much. It wasn’t being written well, either. Just random lumps and clumps that kept interrupting the momentum (what little I could build) and slowing things to a crawl.
In what ended up being the first draft of what ultimately turned into the final product, I still had much more back story than you see in the finished book. It just wasn’t working. And it’s one of those cases where the more you peel away, the more what remains stands out weirdly, so you take out a bit more, then a bit more… In the end, I went with very little back story. I tried to include enough details to give a sense of why and how Ty and Gwen had become who they were, without taking away from the present-day plot, which was already eating up my word count. I figured if I couldn’t work it into the story in a way that felt organic, then it wasn’t meant to be there. So essentially I wrote five books of character sketches, then one actual book. That is not an efficient process!
When I was in school we had to go out and write a piece about a random person. I was so shy about approaching a stranger that I’d rather have just died, but then I finally spotted a guy in a cigar shop, looking incredibly bored. I went in, asked if I could write a piece about him, and he agreed. Except when I tried to ask about himself, he just kept talking about cigars. I kept trying, he kept up the cigar chatter. Eventually I wrote a piece about cigars. (That turned out to be very interesting.)
In the case of TEAM PLAYER, I did a ton of (accidental) character work for Gwen and Ty, but then Baseball, which was intended to have more of a supporting role, showed up and demanded to be one of the leads. I kept trying to shunt it into the background, it kept insisting. Five drafts later, it had a starring role. That’s writing for you!
Heads up: Tomorrow’s the last of the release week posts, and it’s a deleted scene I think is short and sweet and worth the read!
TEAM PLAYER - DELETED SCENE
RELEASE WEEK – POST 4 – DELETED SCENE (NO SPOILERS)
Here’s a quick scene from one of my earlier drafts. Because I kept starting the story over from scratch, I forgot about this one and when I remembered later, I couldn’t find a way to work it in organically. I still think it’s cute, so I’ll share it here. Enjoy!
* * *
“Come here,” Ty said, tugging open the patio doors. “I want to show you something.”
“Please let it be something scandalous.”
“Nope. But it’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve got. The most vain part of the house.”
“All right,” Gwen said. “I’m interested.”
She was interested no matter what, but once again her expectations were blown out of the water when he led her to a little alcove beneath the stairs and unlocked a nearly invisible door.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
He pulled open the door and flipped on a light switch.
“Whoa,” Gwen breathed. It was a glass case holding approximately thirty baseballs, each in its own clear box, with a neatly typed sign identifying its milestone achievement. First hit. First RBI. First home run. The top row was dedicated to Ty’s firsts. The other three rows were balls marking milestones from some of the sport’s greatest players. They had to be worth a fortune.
“I know I don’t deserve to share space with these guys yet, but it’s the only place I had to display them,” he started.
“This is insane,” Gwen interrupted. “And you’re hardly displaying them, since they’re hidden in a locked room under the stairs.”
He shrugged and studied his feet. “It’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“Why don’t you keep them in your apartment, if you spend the most time there?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want to.”
Gwen nodded at the top row. “Do you remember those hits?”
“Oh, God, yeah.” He smiled sheepishly. “Are you kidding me? I could re-enact them for you right now.”
“Please do.”
He laughed. “No way. I’m not drunk enough.”
“Then tell me about them.”
He stepped close and tapped the ball for his first hit. “I played three innings in my first major league game and didn’t get on base,” he said. “This is from my second game. I got the start at short because the regular guy had a cold. I went 1-4, and didn’t get the hit until my last at bat. Ninth inning, one out, nobody on. We were leading, 8-3. Didn’t really matter what I did, but it felt like everything to me, like I’d never get another shot if I didn’t make this one count. Roy Fowler was pitching relief for the Mariners, and one of the guys told me he’d start me with a fastball right down the middle, because he knew I couldn’t hit it. That guy threw hard, and I wanted to throw up instead of bat, but I walked up to the plate, sent up a prayer to any god that was listening, closed my eyes, and swung as hard as I could at the first pitch.”
“Home run?”
“Lord, no. Bloop single to right. But I didn’t care. Tried to act like it, but you can see me grinning my head off, almost too giddy to stay on the base.”
Gwen laughed. “Do you have the video?”
“I’m going to lie and say no.”
“Why?”
“Because watching it with you is a step too vain, even for me.”
Here’s a quick scene from one of my earlier drafts. Because I kept starting the story over from scratch, I forgot about this one and when I remembered later, I couldn’t find a way to work it in organically. I still think it’s cute, so I’ll share it here. Enjoy!
* * *
“Come here,” Ty said, tugging open the patio doors. “I want to show you something.”
“Please let it be something scandalous.”
“Nope. But it’s probably the most interesting thing I’ve got. The most vain part of the house.”
“All right,” Gwen said. “I’m interested.”
She was interested no matter what, but once again her expectations were blown out of the water when he led her to a little alcove beneath the stairs and unlocked a nearly invisible door.
“Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
He pulled open the door and flipped on a light switch.
“Whoa,” Gwen breathed. It was a glass case holding approximately thirty baseballs, each in its own clear box, with a neatly typed sign identifying its milestone achievement. First hit. First RBI. First home run. The top row was dedicated to Ty’s firsts. The other three rows were balls marking milestones from some of the sport’s greatest players. They had to be worth a fortune.
“I know I don’t deserve to share space with these guys yet, but it’s the only place I had to display them,” he started.
“This is insane,” Gwen interrupted. “And you’re hardly displaying them, since they’re hidden in a locked room under the stairs.”
He shrugged and studied his feet. “It’s the only thing I’ve got.”
“Why don’t you keep them in your apartment, if you spend the most time there?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I don’t want to.”
Gwen nodded at the top row. “Do you remember those hits?”
“Oh, God, yeah.” He smiled sheepishly. “Are you kidding me? I could re-enact them for you right now.”
“Please do.”
He laughed. “No way. I’m not drunk enough.”
“Then tell me about them.”
He stepped close and tapped the ball for his first hit. “I played three innings in my first major league game and didn’t get on base,” he said. “This is from my second game. I got the start at short because the regular guy had a cold. I went 1-4, and didn’t get the hit until my last at bat. Ninth inning, one out, nobody on. We were leading, 8-3. Didn’t really matter what I did, but it felt like everything to me, like I’d never get another shot if I didn’t make this one count. Roy Fowler was pitching relief for the Mariners, and one of the guys told me he’d start me with a fastball right down the middle, because he knew I couldn’t hit it. That guy threw hard, and I wanted to throw up instead of bat, but I walked up to the plate, sent up a prayer to any god that was listening, closed my eyes, and swung as hard as I could at the first pitch.”
“Home run?”
“Lord, no. Bloop single to right. But I didn’t care. Tried to act like it, but you can see me grinning my head off, almost too giddy to stay on the base.”
Gwen laughed. “Do you have the video?”
“I’m going to lie and say no.”
“Why?”
“Because watching it with you is a step too vain, even for me.”
