Sometimes when you’re finishing a novel it’s tough because you keep getting ideas for other stories you want to start, like, right now! This bout of inspiration for a novel I’ve tentatively titled Beisbol Libre came hard and fast — and a little high and inside. I went ahead and sketched out a rough outline, something I rarely do, drafted the first two chapters, with the 3rd rattling in my brain, and I even came up with a working concept for the cover! Yes, that’s right, the dreaded cover that gives me fits, it came too, just as hard and fast. Now I really have to write this thing.

Oh, what’s the story about? Hernando Ornedo is a Cuban baseball player who was about to defect when he busted his pitching arm. Depressed and dejected, he met a gal who happened to work for the CIA. She used his state of mind and the way Cuban baseball tossed him aside to recruit him. Now working for a Cuban intelligence agency, he’s watching his baby brother come into his own as a baseball player. When his brother tells him he wants to leave Cuba, Hernando will do whatever it takes to make it happen. What follows is a long journey of family separation, surgery to repair an ailing shoulder and a few escapades with Mexican Cartel operatives who want to make a little extra cash holding baseball talent for ransom.

Yeah, I know. I need to polish that blurb and then some.