In Throw Like a Woman, which came out in 2015, the protagonist, Brenda, gets discovered as a pitcher when someone takes a video of her throwing smoke at a test-your-speed pitching game at a Cleveland Indians game. It seemed like a plausible if slightly improbable scenario. Lo and behind, I saw a list of the Best MLB Stories of 2019 and there was the story of a guy named Nathan Patterson, who threw 96 mph in a speed pitch challenge and ended up signing a contract with the Oakland A’s. Go figure.

So there’s your life imitating art moment. And sometimes art imitates life. Or we turn life into art, which is the case with the upcoming The Heebie-Jeebie Girl, which is based on some real family history. The story is set in 1977 Youngstown and revolves around a little girl with a talent for picking the daily lottery number. When her grandmother is robbed of her lottery winnings by two men who come to her house pretending to be from the water department, the little girl and her great uncle decide to try and find the perps on their own. Most of that synopsis is true. Years and years ago, one of my cousins really did go through a several-month period where she picked a lot of winning lottery numbers. And two guys pretending to be from the water department really did come to my grandmother’s house and rob her. Those events were the little seed that grew into a novel that I’ve described as ‘Crime and Punishment set in 1977 Youngstown, only with jokes and magic.’

If you come to a book talk for The Heebie-Jeebie Girl, you can hear more about the process of deciding how to turn these real life events into fiction. Or you can read it and try to guess what’s real and what is imagined. Hope to see you at an upcoming event!

Don’t forget to pre-order The Heebie-Jeebie Girl
or add it to your “to-read” list!