While at the neighbor’s farm, Jimmy and Billy encounter the shock of their young adult lives. Later on, the boys discuss the risk of allowing T.J. to play ball against the ultra- racist likes of Jonas and his team. It’s either replace their friend T.J. or call off the game all together.
Browsing Tag
team
Tom McGee’s punishment for the twins really threw a wrench into their much needed daily baseball practice with the team. Still, this hindrance didn’t preoccupy Billy enough to keep him from slipping into a deep daydream about his one true goal in life: to fly for the United States Air Force.
In the midst of my lumbering through these chapter summaries I recognized a major opportunity area at the beginning of Chapter 10 when the boys kidnap Slave from “the mob” (their opposing team). I won’t go into any depth here since that would only eradicate the juiciness and suspense. I just wanted to share with everyone how eye-opening and a bit saddening it was to realize and area of Book 1 still needs further development. So onward I go with adding a new piece to Book 1 (The Diamond Thieves) and I apologize to the fans who’ve already completed Book 1 and will miss out on the additional drama between Jimmy & Billy’s team and “the mob.”
This hot summer day is about to become a scorcher as Jonas and his band of neighborhood troublemakers show up at the baseball diamond with one goal: they want the diamond for themselves. Jimmy, Billy and all their friends have been playing ball there for years and they aren’t about to give it up to the likes of Jonas and his mob. The settle the score, the two teams challenge each other to a baseball game where he winning team will get full reign over the baseball diamond once and for all.
Teenage TWIN brothers Jimmy and Billy McGee are fictional characters, from a fictional town in Eugene, Mississippi. The story begins on their 13th birthday in their attic bedroom of their parents home. I was nineteen years old when I began writing Extra Innings. The plot begins with the twins and their friends confronted by the neighborhood bad boys threatening to take full possession of the school’s baseball diamond. A dispute of this gravity can only be settled but one way … the boys would have to play for it. Whichever team wins the game will claim dominion of the baseball diamond forever.
After the game, I took a few years off to focus on college. Then I moved to Massachusetts to start the Rock ‘n Roll band that was intended to launch my musical stardom! I had one particular semi-successful run before our brotherhood fell apart after which I escaped to NYC for a brief blink of an eye until the tragedy of 9/11 overhauled my perspective on the importance of family and I moved to Ohio to be with my parents, sister, brother-in-law and newborn nephew Brevan.
I was broke, living back with my parents and heavy-hearted from a soul searching quest for my identity. Finally, I landed a decent paying job. . That’s when my creativity got squashed by small-corporate America and I began craving a therapeutic outlet from the Real World. Being a few years older and more mature, I felt ready to tackle the heavier subject matter of the latter half of the twin’s teen years and finally, Extra Innings, the book, was completed in 2008.
Most authors probably don’t require ten years to write a modest 600 + page novel … but maybe they do. I loved the story and the characters but the storytelling did not meet my vernacular standards for a “smooth and easy read.” I wanted a piece of work that readers would breeze through without feeling any sort of burden from its length. Many sentences and paragraphs were awkward and clumsy. Perhaps this is from my lack of experience as a reader. I’ve only ready maybe 10 or less books in my entire life (including all school literature reading assignments as most of them I didn’t actually read … shhh! – don’t tell anyone) so, as a result, revising Extra Innings to make it more reader friendly took years!
The book is now being edited. I can’t wait for everyone to read a finished copy!