It's a slow week, so why not read a book?
This week marks a rare quiet period in the jam-packed NFL calendar. The Super Bowl happened eight days ago; the Scouting Combine begins soon. And while there will be NFL news in the next week — there always is — this is the unofficial opportunity to regroup, take a breath, and prepare for the rollercoaster ride that goes from Indy to free agency to the draft to offseason workouts to a month or so of down time before the 2024 season gets going.
That's a long windup for this pitch: Read a book this week. More specifically, read a book I wrote. You can go with Playmakers, a collection of NFL essays that was published two years ago by PublicAffairs. Or you can opt to enter a made-up world or two, with Father of Mine or On Our Way Home.
Father of Mine, if you didn't already know (or if you did), is a mob story set in 1973. It was inspired by the real-life outfit that ran the small town where I grew up, 60 miles from Pittsburgh. My dad was a bookie tied to the local crew. How connected was he? I never knew for sure. I assume he was on the fringes of the operation, but I have some lingering questions that will go permanently unanswered because he died in 1998.
Regardless, I picked up enough in my formative years to know enough to create just enough of a background for a completely concocted story aimed at using the mob activities as the launching point for a compelling story driven by realistic and memorable characters. You can get the paperback version for $14.99. And the ebook is only $3.99. (As someone who buys and reads a lot of older ebooks — most recently, Marathon Man and North Dallas Forty for $11.99 each — $3.99 is a steal and I should probably revisit my pricing strategies.)
On Our Way Home is a officially a Christmas story. Since it's not December, consider it a ghost story. It's also $3.99 for the ebook (because I'm a dumbass) and $9.99 for the print version. Before going to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, I wrote a check for $5,000 to the Humane Society of Harrison County, West Virginia (I rounded up a little bit) to reflect my gross post-Bezos-beak-wetting proceeds from the November and December 2023 sales.
I'll pick a different charity for the sales in November and December 2024. I don't know which one yet. (If you have any ideas, let me know.) There's one caveat, however; although I prefer most of the various aspects of having full and complete control over everything about my books — content, cover, pricing, etc. — there's still value in being in every bookstore, because there are still plenty of bookstores out there. Based on the feedback I've gotten, I feel like that's where On Our Way Home needs to be during the 2024 holiday season. And the 2025 holiday season. And so on.
The non-playing season provides time to focus on some of the other projects that are anywhere from ready to go to first draft. Currently, I'm ripping through a re-write to the Father of Mine sequel. I've also been tinkering with a cautionary tale about pro football and gambling that might find a home, sooner than later.
I've got something in final form that reimagines the aftermath of a mass prison breakout from the West Virginia Penitentiary that happened in 1979; it's basically Stand By Me on meth. I've got a murder mystery involving the star of a popular sitcom that unfolds 17 years after his killing was supposedly solved. I've got a western about a father looking for his daughter who walked away from home and never came back, and who becomes a part-time bounty hunter to help pay for his search. I've got yet another one that might be on the wrong side of outside-the-box and just fuckin' nutty. And I've got two or three other ideas that I plan to hammer out this offseason, once I have time.
Why do any of this? Great question, even if you didn't ask it. Easy answer: I've written millions of words over the last 23 years about football. Everything I write about the NFL has a very short shelf life. I wanted to make something that possibly will be read and potentially will be enjoyed a little longer than a day. After two decades of copy-paste-snarky-comment-lather-rinse-repeat-repeat-repeat-repeat, I can work fast and create a lot of content and hopefully you'll use this week of semi-down time to give one of the available books a try.
The overriding goal is pretty simple. If I write enough of these, eventually one of them has a chance to be not crap. Even if I have a feeling that the best one will probably be the one that I most regard as drivel.
Maybe they're all drivel. That's not for me to decide. I just like writing them. Some of you like reading them. This is a great week to give one of them a try, for as little as only $3.99.
$3.99. You know, I really am a dumbass.
