Jumping into the Snake Pit, only, I'm not sure there are snakes in Syracuse

Okay lads, lasses, and all manner of trans, I will delight or repulse you all in a moment with installment one of The Season, baseball novel in progress, but first I need to you all to understand something.

I’ve been writing fiction, for fun and serious, for a while now. I’m used to sharing it with friends and in appropriate classes, and I can appreciate good constructive criticism without being discouraged.

However, sharing it with people that, for the most part, I’ve known two months or less, or complete strangers is a new step for me. I am asking you to please respect that.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about doing this. I am. I started this blog on a dare and I figured if it didn’t work, it’d fizzle out like so many other internet ventures I’ve tried, no harm done. Fiction writing is so different, though.

Fiction writing is a huge part of who I am, and by sharing this, I feel like I’m baring a bit of my soul.

So, uh…please, if you want to criticize, by all means, go ahead, but keep the ‘you sucks’ and the ‘go take and English courses’ to yourself, kah-peesh?

Anyway, that said, here’s some background information that may or may not be of interest to you:

This story is an accident.

I came up with an idea—the saga of a manager, from his kid dreams to professional playing days, to the last year of his contract—while getting ready for bed one night in August.

The next day, I began to start writing, just as an exercise, to see what would come out, and then it hit me: why not write the story of an entire team? Rotate the viewpoints through the different players and coaches, and basically paint a portrait of a season.

That night, while eating Chinese food for dinner, I took a piece of computer paper and scribbled out a baseball diamond and began to come up with names for players. Many are random, but some have a certain significance. As random examples, Cory Daniels is named after two of my closest friends at Syracuse, while Leo Castiglione has the odd last name only because I was reading The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione at the time.

It’s taken on a life for which I wasn’t really prepared, but every time I sit down to write a little bit, I find it hard to stop….which means either it’s really good or I’m in need of a much better way to spend my time. I’m counting on you lot to tell me which.