PSA for the PBBC, September 17, 2021

The PBBC is pleased to welcome our first-ever romance novel, courtesy of our first-ever romance novelist, KD Casey. Unwritten Rules also happens to be her first-ever romance novel. Carina Press is Harlequin’s digital-first fiction imprint.

What’s your book about?
It’s a baseball romance novel about a struggling Jewish catcher who unexpectedly reunites with his ex-teammate—who’s also his ex-boyfriend—when the two are selected to play in the All-Star Classic. (For trademark reasons I could not use the real names of MLB-related locations, teams or events.)

Are people who buy romance novels interested in baseball? Are people who buy baseball books interested in romance novels?
Yes! Romance novels are a billion-dollar industry and make up from 20 to 30 percent of the fiction book market. Romance is estimated to be the largest single genre of books sold in the US.

To be a romance, a book must have three general characteristics: A central love story, a happy ending and an optimistic ending. The distinction between the latter two items is that the main couple/relationship must end up together, and that their success (and that of the other protagonists) is assured. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the protagonists are morally good, only that their goals are accomplished.

Romance encompasses a multiplicity of sometimes overlapping subgenres, including contemporary, historical and paranormal. Sports romances are a healthy subgenre of contemporary romance, though I’ve read historical baseball romance as well, and have actually written paranormal baseball romance (and other paranormal baseball stories, one of which was featured this summer in The Twin Bill).

All of which is to say that romance is a major industry, and romance readers have a variety of interests and expertise. Two books I wanted to mention for their baseball accuracy are Keira Andrews’ Reading the Signs, which has a fairly thorough discussion of catcher sign encoding, and Nicole Falls’ The Changeup, which is the only romance I know of about a female baseball player who takes part in tournaments similar to the Women’s Baseball World Cup. Generally, baseball people like reading about baseball from people who know quite a lot about baseball, and the level of accuracy in most baseball romances I’ve read is fairly high.

Why this book? Why now?
In my other life (and under my real name, which I openly associate with my pen name), I write occasionally for Baseball Prospectus and other baseball analytics sites about a variety of topics, though I have been increasingly focused on pitching. (Here’s a piece I wrote before the 2021 season on one-pitch pitchers.)

I wanted to write a romance novel because it’s the genre I most engage with, and I wanted it to be about baseball because it’s the sport I most engage with. I also knew from being involved in the baseball community that some people are romance readers and baseball enthusiasts.

I wrote my first novel just before the pandemic; querying agents in March 2020 was not great timing and the book never sold. As a palate cleanser, I wrote a short story/character study. I turned it into a draft in about six weeks (only a few sentences made it into the final copy), and then into a saleable book with six months of hard editing. What resulted was a book that was vastly different in scope than what I started with, but I’m very satisfied with the results.

What’s one noteworthy thing you learned during the writing process?
Because I couldn’t use any trademarked names, I had a really good time researching and naming alternative teams. I came up with 30 of them, with my main focus being on the Oakland Elephants, the Miami Swordfish and the New York Gothams.

I wanted the teams to give nods to historical ballclubs (the Gothams, the Cleveland Spiders, the Seattle Pilots), include inside-baseball jokes (the Anaheim team is the Los Angeles Californians of Anaheim) and puns (the Toronto Jacks are named for the Canadian whiskey jack bird and home runs being “jacks”).
Did you receive any notable outside help in pulling the manuscript together?
Yes! I have a wonderful second-reader/book midwife who held my hand each step of the way. I also have an agent and editors who improved the copy. I did reach out to a few reporters and baseball-analytics friends with specific research questions, mainly related to some of the finer points of scouting, contracts and catcher defensive metrics. The book opens with a Ben Lindbergh quote from an article about pitch framing that he was gracious enough to let me use.

What’s something readers should know before reading the book?
Probably that it has a relatively high heat level. 🙂 It’s a romance, so its backbone is a love story, both with the central pairing but also between the main character and baseball itself. I chose the title Unwritten Rules for two reasons. One, my agent gently said that my working title—Pitch Framing and Other Lies—was perhaps not the most accessible for readers less familiar with baseball. Two, the book became, in part, about how these rules can suffocate people’s intrinsic love for the game. So a major story arc became about how the main character falls out of love and then back in love with baseball in a way that mirrors his relationship.

I’ve written a bit about the difference between little-b baseball, which I think is perfect, and capital-B Baseball, the institution, and its modern incarnation in MLB, which is frequently imperfect. I wanted to write about some of the conflict that arises from seeking the joy of the former in the reality of the latter, and how to eventually reconcile the two.

Order Unwritten Rules here.

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We ran this item last week, and queued up the website and everything, but then some numbnut who might be under unrelated deadline pressure forgot to hit publish, so it sat there idle for days and days. Well, we’ve hit publish now, so here you go. Again.

NOW UP AT PBBCLUB.COM
The Bronx Zoom: Inside the New York Yankees’ Most Bizarre Season

2020 was the most bizarre baseball season ever, and no city was hit harder by the pandemic than New York. In The Bronx Zoom, Yankees insider Bryan Hoch chronicles the oddities, struggles and victories of the Yankees’ journey. He’s here in conversation with Mark C. Healey, author of Gotham Baseball.

Watch it here.

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WHAT ELSE WE’RE DOING
Robert Whiting wrote about Shohei Ohtani for Nikkei Asia.

Lincoln Mitchell wrote about the California recall for CNN.

Jason Turbow wrote about a lesser-discussed aspect of baseball retaliation and the Yankees-Mets whistle imbroglio for The Baseball Codes blog.

Eric Nusbaum wrote about a fascinating, speedboat-racing heiress for Sports Stories.

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WHERE WE’VE BEEN
David Krell was interviewed by Frank Morano on his WABC 770 AM show, The Other Side of Midnight.

Lincoln Mitchell went on WNHN radio to discuss his experience on Sep. 11 in NY and the impact of that event on the US. (His segment begins at minute 31.)

E. Ethelbert Miller participated in the 1455 Author Series, discussing his new poetry collection, When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery.