It is four years after baseball writer Lauren Day covered the biggest story of her career, and we find her still on 'The Beat' reporting on the Nationals Double-A club, The Hunters, now writing for 'The Trenton Truth.'
Jumping ship at The Trenton Daily and joining the rival paper, she also made a move to New York City where she hoped to find new professional challenges, clean up her personal life, and get over a nasty secret nagging her about her new job.
The season looms large from the start with two of the Nationals top prospects vying for attention. One, a first round pick, with the national spotlight fixed on his expected major league debut later that summer. The other, a less certain prospect with fight in him to get noticed and get his shot at the big leagues.
Along the way, we meet other players, wives, scouts, and coaches with their own story, some of them directly affected by the unfolding lives of those two young men.
Looking into the daily life of minor league baseball, players, and the people that report on them, 'The Truth' is about desire, competition, major league dreams, and one woman's struggle and triumph to do what she loves and have a life she is proud of.
None of that is achieved without facing hard truths about ourselves and our dreams.
The truth is, there's more of the truth in this story, than in 'The Beat.'
Getting past fear, hesitation, and uncertainty is important to developing as a writer, particularly in fiction. If you're going to make it real, you have to...ok, get real. That was hokey, but it's also the reality.
Adding elements that I'd never worked with before, including veering into the romantic, and, yes, sexual area wasn't easy. But I wanted readers to see more of Lauren, to see more of her inner life and personal struggles as a woman in a very aggressive, competitive, male-dominated industry. That life can be lonely and for many women in this business, fraught with personal and professional conflict.
I won't say what's true or what characters are based on, because much of what happens and many of the people are about as close to the truth as I've gotten. Some situations are exactly as they happened. That was scary, but in telling stories of players I've covered, reporters I've known, and, even revealing parts of myself, I feel I've gone the distance as a writer. For lack of a better term, I went for it.
And there's this. This will be curtains for the character of Lauren Day. There will be one more story, but that one will be a pre-quel, focusing on one of the other characters in both books. I'll keep that secret for now.
The publication date of this story is coming soon. It will once again be published on Smashwords and available for download on Amazon and other online sellers.
Thank you!
Update The release date is November 30th.
