Candee Fick Blog Post and Giveaway

Candee is graciously giving away a copy of Catch of a Lifetime to one lucky winner. To enter answer Candee's question below and include contact information. If we don't know how to contact you or who you are, you will be disqualified. 

Why I Wrote About Football

There’s a saying among authors to write what you know. This means to start with a subject or emotion you know well enough to communicate clearly to readers. Personally, I know about a lot of things and one of them is football.

Not only did I grow up playing football with the boys at recess and then my dad and brothers while waiting for the Thanksgiving turkey to finish roasting, I am married to a high school coach and our oldest son plays the game.

So when I first felt God’s nudge to write a book, football and faith were my top two ideas. I immediately saw a number of parallels between life and the game of football including two teams in a struggle, wearing armor-like protection from life’s hits, and following a playbook. Originally published in 2007,  Pigskin Parables: Exploring Faith and Football  (http://candeefick.com/books/pigskin-parables-exploring-faith-and-football/) has since been re-formatted and republished as an 11-week devotional journey along with a shorter collection of devotional blog posts to complement the  non-fiction side of writing about football.

But my dream was to write fiction.

I wanted to craft the types of stories that captured my own imagination and create characters that lived beyond the pages. In the collection of story ideas flitting around in my head and on scraps of paper for years, the characters ranged from a Regency kitchen servant to a pioneer school teacher to a formerly Amish young woman to a diner waitress to a dinner theater actress … to a college student who hated football but had to work with the athletes.

Some of these ideas grew into full length manuscripts while others fell to the wayside (at least for now). But the story nugget revolving around football kept niggling at the corners of my mind until I finally figured out why someone would hate football. Not just apathy or confusion. Hatred. Loathing. Disgust. Rooted in deep pain.

Then, what reason would be big enough to keep them locked into a situation where they had to be around football players every day?

And better still, what kind of a hero would it take to change her mind?

As I thought about these two characters, they had to be in a college football setting. Beyond the intense on-field preparation, conflicts, and pressure to win, my hero was so passionate about football that his players pitied the hypothetical girl would have to compete with a game. When I added in the athletic stereotypes (only so I could bust them to pieces!), what other sport is known for self-absorbed, I’m-king-of-the-mountain-because-I-play-football egos? And what about the whole fraternization between staff and students angle? Built in conflict to make this writer’s job easier!

Yes, there are quite a few football-related scenes in Catch Of A Lifetime and not just because of the setting and the secondary characters. My hero is a coach and football is all he thinks about. It wouldn’t have been realistic to have his mind consumed with sappy, romantic thoughts about the heroine when surrounded by game action with his future job on the line. And while I toned down the technical stuff I hear over dinner conversations nightly, I couldn’t have the hero describe a slot receiver as “that guy who catches the ball” and still maintain credibility.

But in case you’re worried there might be too much football, several of my endorsers and beta readers are NOT football fans and loved the story. In fact the amazing Laura Hilton said Catch Of A Lifetime “is sure to score a touchdown with football fans and romance readers alike.”

Just what I wanted to hear when I set out to write a story about football.

What about you? Do you know about football or not? Would reading a story set around a college football team excite you or turn you off? Why? If you were to write a book, what do you know that would find its way onto the pages?

As a bonus, I recorded this fun video a few weeks ago for my book launch party in order to explain the basics of the game from a woman’s perspective.

Football Explained Video: https://youtu.be/CVrzXdYv520