William Elliott azelgrove's Blog, page 33

Publishers Weekly Review of The Pitcher

While ostensibly a contemporary baseball story, Hazelgrove’s expansive fifth novel also tackles issues of class, immigration law, and inequity. Thirteen-year-old Ricky Hernandez has a 75 mph pitch and dreams of making the freshman baseball team in Jacksonville, Fla., as the first step toward a professional career. He’s dyslexic, of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent, and is ceaselessly taunted by his peers, led by a kid named Eric with an inside track to making the team. While most of Ricky’s teammates can afford sports camp and private lessons, he and his mother are broke due to his abusive father’s lack of financial support and his mother’s mounting medical bills. Despite her deteriorating health, she has loads of attitude, brains, and charm. She singlehandedly persuades their neighbor, “The Pitcher,” who played in the World Series, to set aside his beer, leave his garage, and coach Ricky. Hazelgrove (Rocket Man) measures out a generous sprinkling of American idealism while weaving in legitimate threads of sorrow, employing the oft-usedbaseball metaphor to fresh and moving effect. Adult characters are particularly well-crafted, giving the book crossover potential.

Junior Library Guild Selects The Pitcher

Junior Library Guild Selects William Hazelgrove’s “The Pitcher”


VIRGINIA BEACH — The Junior Library Guild has announced the selection of William Hazelgrove’s The Pitcher to its young adult recommended reading list. The JLG works with thousands of libraries and schools across the United States to bring them high-quality, award-winning titles.

The story is about a teenage Latino high school kid. Ricky Hernandez is a pitcher. He has an arm like a rocket and dreams of making the high school baseball team. His dying mother enlists the broken down World Series pitcher who lives across the street to coach Ricky. He shows Ricky how to achieve his dreams and break through the hell of organized kid sports.

The book releases in September in print and ebook.

9781938467592



DESCRIPTION
“I never knew I had an arm until this guy called out, “Hey you want to try and get a ball in the hole, sonny?” I was only nine, but mom said, “come on, let’s play.” This Carney guy with no teeth and a fuming cigarette hands me five blue rubber balls and says if I throw three in the hole we win a prize. He’s grinning, because he took mom’s five bucks and figures a sucker is born every minute. That really got me, because we didn’t have any money after Fernando took off, and he only comes back to beat up mom and steal our money. So I really wanted to get mom back something, you know, for her five bucks.”

A boy with a golden arm but no money for lessons. A mother who wants to give her son his dream before she dies. A broken down World Series pitcher who cannot go on after the death of his wife. These are the elements of The Pitcher. A story of a man at the end of his dream and a boy whose dream is to make his high school baseball team. You will laugh and you will cry as The Pitcher and Ricky prepare for the ultimate try out of life.
The Pitcher

The Schizophrenic Author

Used to be if you had five books out you thought you were prolific. But the digital age changed that like everything else. Production times have dropped and literally you can put out a book every season. If you self publish then you can put an ebook out every week if not every few days. Sounds crazy but this is what a lot of people are doing. I ran into a woman who said she had "just fourteen books out." Just fourteen. Another person published one hundred books in a year.

So where do you go with all that? You can say that is not my world and I will take my time and truly this is the way to look at it. But there is that ebook world out there that must be fed. I have two of three books going right now and I am waiting to see which way the wind blows to complete them. Maybe it is wrong to do it that way but dropping years on a book now seems a little foolish if not antiquated.

Each of my books took years and years and yes I am faster but I will never hit the hyper speed of a book a week. Not that I would want too but you do sit there in amazement as Amazon logic favors the many published author over the few. So there are a lot of starts and stops now. Three chapters of this or three chapters of that. It is the digital age and attention spans are shrinking. Even authors can make up their mind.

Between promotion and writing it is amazing more authors just don't lose it completely. I am sure a lot have already.

Defining Literary Fiction

Over on the Kindle boards an author asked if anyone could give a definition of Literary Fiction. The answers were varied. Some took a stab and some had no idea. So as an author I will take a shot and give some meat to the poor old bones of Literary Fiction. Once upon a time there was pulp and then there was literary fiction. LF was what people read for enlightenment, information, entertainment, and yes something of the other. Pulp was straight up entertainment.

So lets approach it like this. The author makes the difference. The intent of the author. The Literary author has an idea or an emotion and in this moment there is something of the eternal. Not all that different from the painter. The eternal is the thing you cannot put your finger on that allows you to reread a novel over and over and still enjoy it. Literary fiction has a duty to entertain but also to give us something we did not know until we read it. This is what makes people scream from the rooftops about a book.

It is why John Gardener said a novelist must be moral. He didn't mean it in the literal sense but that the writer of serious fiction cannot be amoral. They cannot have a flawed value system or the book will be flawed. Writers drink and do drugs and do all sorts of morally reproachable things but the point is they must be able to discern right from wrong at a very basic level. F. Scott Fitzgerald said two things that apply here.

One. Behind every novelist is a moralist. And two. All cheap entertainment is immoral. It is heroin of the soul. We can relate in the age of reality television. Entertainment has hit lows we thought not approachable but also we didn't think a democracy of 350 million people could empower people to have buying power on a such a scale. Lest we forget cheap entertainment is all about selling. Selling the product and just about everything else.

So in the digital age this is a bit of a conundrum where everything is on the cheap. In fact my fellow authors look at me sometimes with a funny glaze of what the hell is he talking about. But this is because we operate on the assumption that selling at nanosecond speed trumps all. It doesn't but a lot of people have not been exposed to the other.

But when they hit it when they read. They shake their heads and say...how the hell did he do that?
That is Literary Fiction. Defining the undefinable. The refusal to be commodified or to have a value attached. It is the very essence of why we live. Get that between two covers or on a Kindle and you have something for the ages.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
The Pitcher

Those Five Star Reviews

The advent of the digital revolution has empowered the citizen reviewer. Essentially we are all now reviewers for good or bad. Well New York is cracking down on the pay for review industry that is screwing a lot of people in the restaurant and transportation world. In the article there was no mention of books but authors know what is going on. You are surfing along and you hit a book with a THOUSAND reviews. Not a bestseller. Now you are in awe. You are stupefied. You don't know what to think. And the majority of the reviews if not all of them are five stars.

Because you know how hard it is to get reviewed. I have to fight for every review I get every time a book comes out. I have to make sure I send out all my review copies and then hope and pray the trades and the newspapers and readers take it upon themselves to review my books. Because it is a lot to ask someone to review your book. They have to read it first of all and then they have to sit down and write something about it. It gets really tricky when they didn't really care for the book. I am always amazed when someone writes a really bad review of one of my books. It just seems like so much trouble for their pain.

But suddenly authors were popping up with amazing reviews. And lots and lots of them. When I started out with my first and second novel the internet and amazon were just warming up. Even though the trades reviews were very good there just wernt that many reader reviews. Nine and five I think on the books. But then by about my fourth novel the review boom was in full swing. After four years I ended up with 81 reviews on Rocket Man. Many were not five star. A decent mix of four star and five stars. The Pitcher my latest has the most five star reviews I have ever had and that would still be just over half of the fifty five reviews.

And why is that? Well even if someone loves your book they don't give you the five stars. That is the top of the mountain and the top of mountain is hard to get to. As it should be. So I personally am happy with my mix of four and five stars. I think it allows people to see that there is some honesty in reviewing your book. No one can please everybody.

And if they do...then they probably really didn't.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Latino Book Club Review of The Pitcher

Ricky,
I know you are having trouble. Just remember that you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. Don't worry about me. I will always be there for you. I will always be with you. Just take your breath and listen to what Mr. Langford tells you. Remember I will always love you and that will never change. You are becoming a fine young man and a great baseball player. I couldn't be prouder of you. Now take your breath, find your quiet space and use the gift God gave you. I love you.
Love you forever,
Mom
P.S. Take your breath!"




THE PITCHER is destined to become a classic. It is well-written, funny, heart-warming, engaging, easy to read, romantic and uplifting. On the surface this story may seem to be all about baseball and pitchers, but it’s more than that. THE PITCHER, a Junior Library Guild Selection, is about a loving and determined Hispanic mother who will endure anything and survive everything for the love of her child and his right to fulfill his dreams; it’s about overcoming prejudice and poverty; it’s about second chances; and most of all, it’s about learning to believe in yourself.

Book Summary: 14-year-old Ricky Hernandez is about to enter high school and wants a spot on the school baseball team. The problem is his wild pitching arm. He can throw super fast but he has no control over it. Just like he has no control over his ex-father who continues to barge in and steal what little money they have; nor his grandmother’s fears of deportation; nor the rival pitcher who continually bullies him; nor his mother’s deteriorating ill health. Ricky longs for some helpful tips from another pitcher, like a World Series pitcher and MVP Jack Langford, who just happens to live next door, but Jack wants to be left alone. In fact, all anybody ever sees are his feet at the bottom of the garage door which is always down.

However, Jack doesn’t count on Maria Hernandez. She is a dynamo and will not take no for an answer, even if it means confronting a curmudgeon in his man-cave and forcing him into the light. Yet even with the MLB pitcher finally coaching him, Ricky can’t seem to find his zone. And when his mother’s health takes a turn for the worse nothing seems to matter anymore and certainly not some stupid baseball game. But Maria will not let him quit and from her hospital bed she encourages her son to prove himself and win. There is the obligatory“win this one for the coach” scene, but it rings true. And the ending is inspiring and joyful as any reader could wish.###
The Pitcher

Writers with Writers

I don't often get together with other writers. But sometimes I go to events for writers with writers and it is always a bit disconcerting to see someone just like yourself saying the same things you say day after day. Being in the same room with a bunch of writers is like being in a space capsule with not enough air. All the oxygen gets sucked up. And that is because writers suck in a lot and put out very little. How would you like to be in a house of people looking out the windows with no one opening the door and saying come on in. Matter of fact the door is locked.

And then add to that writers are insecure. Who wouldn't be? Countless days of toil by oneself with very little coming back. Taunted by an Internet that holds up fabulously successful writers hourly and makes scribbling that much harder. And now you emerge and bump into yourself. And you both talk about your books and your writing and you wonder if you sound that stupid. The answer is yes. But you plow on because there might be something to learn and and so you continue blathering reminding yourself to ask what the other person writes. They are a writer after all.

And then there are the moments where you have nothing to say and you both want to go back to your respective garrets and continue on with the real work. But you forge on and gradually after a few drinks the shields come down and slowly everyone becomes people again and the writer leans back and you actually have a good time and learn a few things. And that is about as good as it gets for writers with writers.

And then it is over and you are glad you came. What do you know you think walking for the train. Writers aren't really such bad people after all.

Reading Huckleberry Finn on a Kindle

It doesn't work. Sorry. I tried. But there are some books that have to be read in paper. I read to half and put it down. Of course I have read the book many times but I wanted to dip back in and I had it on the Kindle and nah. Didn't work. And why didn't it work. It is lighter. It is more convenient. Hell I can even read it in the bathtub with the cat swimming around. Of course one false move and so much for the kindle and the cat. But the biggest reason I could not read Twain's classic in a mini computer format was because the story did not fit the form.

And here is where Jeff Bezos meets the road. Literature is an art all rankings aside. There are other considerations than how many units can be moved and all the digital BS in the world will not change the fact that the immutability of art trumps commerce. It always has. Why do billionaires buy paintings and pay millions for them. Not because of the investment...it is because they want to own art. Something that can not be bought. It is the eternal that makes money seem small and art if it is any good is all about the eternal.

And so it is with Huckleberry Finn. You cannot read about Huck and Jim floating down the river on a flickering screen. Twain did not intend it that way nor did history. Those old crackly pulped pages must turn again for you to hear the splash of that raft and Jim musings on the cosmos and Hucks hard headed deliverance. So I turn back against form and go for content.

Style over substance loses out and the pulp litters the water while the cat swims.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Authorial Spammer

Authors are between a rock and a hard place now. They either are called spammers or they are called nothing at all. I just had a man ask if I would please quit spamming. Sure. Point taken. Spam can be defined as advertising anything and certainly advertising a book can be spam. But here is the new authors dilemma. Quietly publish your book and wait for reviews or the Gods to make sure people know about your book or let people know and be accused of laying spam all over the Internet. But first some history.

I came up through traditional publishing. I was given an advance with Bantam and went to New York and had dinner with my agent and publisher and sat back to wait for the two books to come out. I never spammed a thing. I never went online. Yes it was there I just didn't care. I depended on the Gods and publishing to do the work for me. Some would say that was stupid but that was the way it was. Well publishing has changed and if it is for the better remains to be seen but the days of sitting back are way over.

The author today has to all the work. All of it. They have to get out there and push and with the bookstores slowly disappearing there is only one place for this and that is the Internet. Now one might not be comfortable with this. I know I am not. But all you have to do is go online to see thousands of authors screaming from the rooftops; READ MY BOOK. And that would be spam but does it matter? I had a man say to me the other day he didn't know I wrote books. This after a hundred posts about my book on facebook.

So the authorial spammer is here to stay. Some would say no no go out and talk to people and that is the way to do it. Authors only have so much time to chat and so many end up just leaving a calling card as the authorial spammer. You always have a choice. Be the quiet literary author waiting for the Gods or start yelling from the rooftops. I did the first one for years and paid a price.

It's time to get the megaphone out.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Best Years

They go fast. One day you are putting the ball on the T and then the next you are driving home from a high school game that is your sons last. In between are a million games played in dusty hot fields with your son while you as the assistant coach get to go along for the ride. And you don't know that much about baseball but nine years later you know it all. Because you have been there all along as your son learns the game and then became good and then became talented and then finds out that talent has limits too.

And you have gone to McDonald's a hundred times. You have gone to Dairy Queen a hundred times but that is all over now. No longer do you savor the games won and lament the games lost. No longer do you discuss the game with the other dad coaches and replay the dramas as you coach first or second or you call the game from the dugout. No longer are you discussing the game driving home in the twilight or better still finding yourself still there in the parking lot with your son talking it over as the sun rims the trees.

Because he has grown up and college is not far away and baseball games are no longer. You no longer have bats and balls and hats and gloves in the back of your car. You no longer have field dust on your shoes and all over your seats. That now belongs to memories. And occasionally you find yourself driving past the old ball fields. They are empty now and it is getting toward winter. And you slow just a little and feel the old tug.

And you know then...those were the best years.