Mindy Klasky is joining us today with her novel Perfect Pitch. Here’s the publisher’s description.
A hot, contemporary short novel by best-selling author Mindy Klasky.
Reigning beauty queen Samantha Winger is launching her pet project, a music program for kids. All she has to do is follow the pageant’s rules—no smoking, drinking, or “cavorting” in public.
That’s fine, until D.J. Thomas—God’s gift to baseball—throws her a wild pitch. He slams her in an interview, and the video goes viral. Sam’s no shrinking violet. She parlays D.J.’s apology into a national T.V. appearance—and a very unexpected, very public kiss.
Soon, paparazzi catch the couple in a steamy make-out session, and Sam’s music program is on the block. The blazing hot relationship is threatened even more when D.J.’s son begs to trade in Little League for music class.
Can Sam and D.J. sizzle past the sour notes and find their perfect pitch?
What’s Mindy’s favorite bit?
MINDY KLASKY
My favorite bit of Perfect Pitch, my hot, contemporary romance novel, is the locker room.
Okay, not the room itself, which is smelly, crowded, and hot (and not in a tingly way). My favorite bit is actually the guys who workin the locker room, the baseball players who hang out, talking frankly about the women they love, the game they play, and the day-to-day hell of a grueling season that lasts nine long months (if they’re lucky enough to make it to the playoffs.)
Believe me: I’m the last person in the world anyone thought would be writing with fondness about locker rooms.
Growing up, I dreaded them. I hated everything: the cold cinderblock walls, the dented lockers, the smelly showers… Most of all, I hated the despair that swamped me every time I walked into a school gym and had to confront the immutable fact that I was an absolute failure at sports.
I was the last person chosen for every team in every phys ed class in every school I attended. I regularly scored in the bottom quintile of all students nationwide in the dread Presidential Physical Fitness Award. I loathedeverything about gym class from the horrible polyester uniformsto the cruel taunts from bullies. The locker room was a daily reminder that I was a total and complete incompetent. (I actually psyched myself into crippling stomach aches, attacks that were ultimately treated with placebo pills—medication approved by my parents but kept secret from me for years.)
So what the hell am I doing writing the Diamond Brides Series, about the baseball players on the (imaginary) Raleigh Rockets and the women who love them?
Ultimately, I fell in love with a man who eats, drinks, and breathes baseball. (I’ll spare you the long, rambling story about my conversion to being a fan of this one sport, among all the other sports out there.)
As I learned about baseball, I realized that the men on the major-league roster are the 750 most skilled men in the entire world at what they do. As a group, they’re young, dedicated, determined, physically fit, (and wealthy!)
And by those terms, they started to sound like awfully intriguing heroes for romance novels.
Prior to writing the Diamond Brides Series, I wrote eighteen other novels, from traditional fantasy to humorous paranormal to middle grade fantasy. About 90% of those books were written from a female point of view. With the Diamond Brides, I’ve been “forced” to write half of each novel from the hero’s perspective.
And I love playing with that voice. My heroes have a completely different worldview from my own. Their athletic prowess is as magical as any spell I ever created for a fantasy novel. They’re as alien to me as creatures in my science fiction stories.
My baseball players are confident in their physical bodies. They view their athletic achievement as a reasonable, expected result from a predictable, improvable process. These men befriend each other, they goad each other, they joke around in language a lot cruder than I usually use around the house.
And all of that happens in the locker room.
Through my Raleigh Rockets baseball players, I’ve exorcised some of the ghosts of my non-athletic past. And for that reason, my players’ locker room has become my favorite bit of Perfect Pitch and all the Diamond Brides Series.
LINKS:
http://www.mindyklasky.com/
BIO:
Mindy Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her she could travel anywhere in the world through stories. She never forgot that advice.
Mindy’s travels took her through multiple careers – from litigator to librarian to full-time writer. Mindy’s travels have also taken her through various literary genres for readers of all ages – from traditional fantasy to paranormal chick-lit to category romance, from middle-grade to young adult to adult.
In her spare time, Mindy knits, quilts, and tries to tame her endless to-be-read shelf. Her husband and cats do their best to fill the left-over minutes.
