As the author of the wildly popular* Trip to the Quiet Room, a story about loss, time travel, the life of a hockey player, a little bit of magic, and Worcester, Massachusetts, I’m really happy to see that Worcester is getting a minor league hockey team back. I’m even happier to see that the owner is investing so much in the hockey culture in and around the downtown area in Worcester.

“I’m kind of smitten with Worcester. It’s an unpolished gem,” he said. “It’s affordable, it’s smack in the middle of commerce. It’s got a lot of potential.”

I remember going to see Worcester Ice Cats in their inaugural season in 1994 with some of the gang at the seafood restaurant I worked at. The AHL was such a different beast than the NHL… that bit sloppier, scrappier, and perfectly suited to a town like Worcester. It made such an impression that even nearly twenty years later, when I started to write what would become Trip to the Quiet Room I thought that the stories of those guys, particularly when their professional hockey life was done, would make for a great character. And the line, the theme I had rattling around my head while I was writing was from fellow Worcester-ite (and Vassar-ite) Liz Bishop‘s opening lines of “In the Waiting Room“:

In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist’s waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early.

So it’s very nice to see hockey on its way back into Worcester to fill those dark winter nights and encouraging to see such a commitment to one of my favorite cities, that rough gem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Warning: May not actually be popular. Contains sucralose, which has been shown to give rats and dogs a real headache when taken in quantity. Do not spray on crops.

Boy, let me tell you, sending queries and receiving responses (or, more often than not, not receiving responses) is wearying work.

The scoreboard is up-to-date (and in the hockey version the empty void of the agents’ penalty box is filling up) and, yes, that is an even, round number of 50 between agent rejections and just simply no responses.

So if you’re an agent, it will make a great story, if you do sign me and we become New York Times Best Sellers… “The writer who was overlooked by 50 agents before finally landing the winner!”

 

 

 

Right?

 

Thanks to @GaryDzen we have this clip of Jack Edwards singing a Christmas Carol during the Tyler Randell/Ryan Reaves fight during the Bruins game the other night.

Relevant, of course, because William Murphy, protagonist of Trip to the Quiet Room, was a pugilist on the ice, and probably would have appreciated Jack Edwards singing a little bit during his bouts.

If you want to listen to a little more of one of my personal favorite announcers, have a listen to the best of Jack.

“…[F]ighting the good fight is not only the right thing to do, but it can be a heck of a lot of fun. And who has more fun than us?”

There was a great article on the front page of the New York Times Sports section about the rise of concussions in the women’s game as its professional league begins to take off, “Women’s Hockey Grows Bigger, Faster and Dire”.

Which would have been a great time to plug my book, which deals with an ex-pro hockey player dealing with a history of concussions (and his wife’s misfiring time machine and a gang of blacksmiths from Old Sturbridge Village, amongst other things). Except it’s not published yet.

So whenever it finally gets published, keep in mind all this great context that’s been coming out in the years prior to it actually being something you can hold in your hand and read.

By order of her majesty, Queen Taylor of Swift, all artistic endeavors henceforth shall carry the title “1989.” It is highly recommended, in the decree, that the works either repeat, verbatim, Her Royal Highness Swift’s lyrics from the inaugural 1989 work or at the very least follow a similar story arc.

Luckily, my novel (formerly titled “William Murphy’s Trip to the Quiet Room“, which was formerly titled “Butterfly“) happens to involve the year 1989 in a significant way.
Laura Murphy, wife of the ex-hockey player, is a plumber, and the demonstration of a work-in-progress project at their home results in an explosion that sends her, her daughter, and her best friend, Eli Whitney (great great granddaughter of the inventor of the cotton gin) hurtling back to 1989 while William and a blacksmith (I can explain, I swear) have to sift through the rubble of William’s life to try and get the family back together again.

Which I think it’s safe to say is sort of the subtext of Taylor Swift’s 1989 album.