36 Facts About Unwritten Rules
The main character (it's single POV) Zach Glasser is a Jewish catcher from outside Baltimore who plays for the Oakland Elephants baseball team.
Zach is also Hard of Hearing and wears a hearing aid in one ear. I based some of his experiences on Curtis Pride's (who was a Deaf major leaguer), as well as on the book Deaf Players in Major League Baseball, which is a great history.
The working title was "Pitch Framing and Other Lies," which was based on, in part, the Foolish Baseball video where Bailey says "Pitch framing... or lying to umpires." It was gently suggested to me that most people aren't familiar with framing.
The book takes place in Arizona, Oakland, Baltimore, New York, and Miami, and the phrase "at least it's a dry heat" gets used. A lot.
The structure jumps from three years in the past to the present in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards and I'd never actually written anything with that kind of structure so of course thought... why not for my first professionally published book.
Eugenio Morales, who's Zach's love interest, is not named after Eugenio Suárez (who plays for the Reds), but was named by Laura (my critique partner) separately.
A lot of the book is structured around them getting together, breaking up, and then getting back together. Because I am like... I haven't written a real bleak moment before (third act breakups in romance novels), so why not ... structure a book around them.
Eugenio starts the book as an "old" rookie (he's 28, lol) and then becomes a superstar player. I based this around Willson Contreras learning to frame better - there's a lot written about this.
He's traded to the Elephants from the Seattle Pilots and then later to the New York Gothams (this happens before the beginning of the book so no spoilers), and let me tell you, I had a blast coming up with fake team names.
My absolute favorite fake team name did not make the book, and was not my invention, but instead a friend from Canada naming the "Toronto Jacks" because Jack is another name for a jay (as in the Blue Jays) and also a pun for home runs.
Eugenio is from Indiana and his parents are professors at a small Christian college there that's definitely not based on Goshen College. He is raised going to an ecumenical church and is not particularly religious.
His family immigrated from Venezuela, and Zach's from Russia and this book has some big child/grandchild of immigrants themes/feelings.
There is a lot of cooking in the book, including a thematically relevant babka. If you are only familiar with babka from GBBO, please do not judge it based on that.
Zach likes comic books and has pictures of Hawkeye (because hearing aid) and Bobby Drake (because gay and Jewish) in his apartment.
There is a modest amount of Yiddish in the book including the discussion of the Miami Swordfish stadium as being "farkakte." Opinions of the characters do not match the author's since I had a great time when I was in Miami.
Zach's bff in the book is the Elephants strength and conditioning coach, who is herself a baseball player (pitcher) and whose I based a little on Ayami Sato (particularly the curveball).
There is a good amount of discussion of the Women's Baseball World Cup, which is a baseball tournament held every so many years and is currently slated for this fall/winter (it was postponed due to 'rona).
There are a lot of scenes that take place by the beach/ocean, particularly Rehoboth in Delaware, probably because I want to go to the beach fairly desperately.
I edited the word "guys" out from where it occurred approximately 10,000 times in 300 pages.
There are several secret background parings in the book that I hope get their own sequels/books.
The only active MLB player named in the book is Juan Soto, because I couldn't imagine an alternate universe without him.
There is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a lot of kissing in this book.
Expressing heat levels in romance novels is difficult, so I'll go with "a slider, but a hard slider.” No, I don't know what this means either.
I very much try not to have the same opinions about minor details as my characters, but Zach also thinks IPAs taste like soap and flowers. We are split on if chili on spaghetti seems like a good idea.
There's a part at the beginning where I was describing (briefly) pitch types and I may have likened it to the part at the beginning of Babysitters' Club books where Ann M Martin introduces the members of the club.
I think of this being set in a universe like our but subtly different, like that episode of Sliders (the show) where the Golden Gate Bridge is blue. So in this universe the Golden Gate Bridge is blue.
Zach's parents sign all their text messages to him as "Love, Mom and Dad" and that's definitely not based on every Jewish parent over the age of 50.
There is an aside in the book about how baseball players never know what day of the week it is. Because they apparently don't.
There is an aloe plant that gets frequent mention. It's based on the plant that a friend left a cutting of on my porch and I've had to repot it like five times because it keeps growing.
Despite being set in Oakland, I did not once spell "Coliseum" correctly without autocorrect in writing the book and also in writing this. Also, Cincinnati.
This book may contain some "Houston is stealing opposing team's signs" jokes. The Houston team is never named, but in my head, they're the Houston Problems.
I wrote the first draft of this entirely in Google Docs. All 95,000 words. (It’s now around 105k but a quick 105k.)
I have a short story (~10k) that's in the same "Elephants" universe called "The Koufax Curse" that will be published at some point in 2021. I am reasonably certain it is the world's only Tu Bishvat-themed queer baseball story.
I also wrote a prequel to UNWRITTEN RULES that's currently in the edits.
Sex scenes are much easier to write than baseball scenes because batting order matters a lot less and you don't have to keep track of the number of strikes. Usually.
I cannot wait for y'all to read this!