EXCERPTS FOR AN IN-PROGRESS ROMANCE FICTION
A season with season. Take Me Out is a spicy tale of romance, redemption, and retribution.
Cancelled culinary influencer Bernie Bridges retreats from the public eye and lines up an exclusive and reclusive gig as a private chef for the aloof Toronto Yorkies pitcher Logan Cullen. Without her usual distractions in play, Bernie focuses on the daily adjusting and fluctuating schedules of Logan and his family in their sheltered North York neighbourhood.
Professionally, she’s unshakeable and is putting into the work to rehab her career. Personally, she’s battling panic attacks and shaking ghosts from her past trying to draw her back into her scandalous tendencies. Her new program is tested when troubled Yorkies infielder, Andy Lamb, steps into the Cullens’ kitchen.
Andy has never shied from the bright lights, but he didn’t consider the edge being under those lights gave him. His previous season with the Yorkies was an undeniable career low point. His off season was quiet and he needs something to remind people of the player he was. When he meets Bernie, he thinks she might be for a fun distraction from his inevitable destruction. Suddenly that distraction has him playing the best he has in years.
As the season continues Bernie discovers, despite the bad edits, she can never be somebody’s secret, and for Andy, to secure his next contract, that’s the last thing he wants her to be.
Take Me Out, is a delicious romance between two people who are their own worst enemies but maybe they are the perfect pairing for each other.
"The next morning Lina made pancakes. She had found a recipe from some power food site and the small brown pancakes reminded her of Casey’s puffy nipples. So she took a picture of them and thought it would be funny to post it but then thought it wouldn't really be funny at all. And then she put syrup on them and thought about the way Casey's back arched when she played with them and then she became very confused about what to do. She knew at that point she should stop letting everything whirl around her mind. It would be easier if she said something, just anything but she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t seem to be a part of this at all so what could she say?"
Bernie Bridges (32f) shouldn't be waiting by her phone. She shouldn't be sitting half naked on the counter of her small apartment waiting for the call to connect. Then his scratchy hello came into her ear and she was done. She heard his breath, his aching stutter and she shivered like his stubble was running down her body. Over the last week, her body disobeyed, her hands shook, and nothing seemed to make sense until he appeared on her small phone screen. Dragging his hoodie over his head in his dark hotel room, crawling across the crisp sheets and leaning into the camera. She felt her body and mind ease into the easy answer right in front of them.
Andy Lamb (35m) would be back in Toronto in less than three days. The last week on the road had felt like one of the longest of his lengthy career. His teammates eyes were on him since he was late for the bus. The interest picked up after their last home game. As he stood on deck the cameras saw the woman in the expensive seats behind home plate. The cameras found the woman that he kept turning around to check was actually there and then had asked why she was there and that was caught on camera too.
It was more than a soft launch. The little breadcrumbs of their triste had been made a meal of by online commentators. Their pasts dragged up. Their worst moments unearthed. But... heck... they looked really, really good together. They felt really good together.
A hard launch. Andy was ready for it, he was just waiting for Bernie to say, Take Me Out.
Take Me Out is a story that leaps off the page and into the stands. Bernie and Andy are seductive, empathetic, and often hilarious leading romantic characters looking for redemption and finding romance. The novel weaves through fanfic, romance tropes and the thrill of online voyeurism to highlight the construction and consumption of small screen identities in this provocative season with season.
Take Me Out, (pages ##s), is a sexy summer baseball fiction set over a season of professional baseball and following the public and personal lives of an aging baseball player and a cancelled culinary influencer. It is for fans of charismatic black cat romances and steamy sports based tales.The novel finds direction from contemporary, complicated, and darkly humorous women-led narratives such as Blue Sisters by Coco Mellor, All Fours by Miranda July, and Conversation with Friends by Sally Rooney and plays with celebrity online gossip and stan viral culture as an exciting and illicit narrative tool. Readers will be locked-in to the dramatic world surrounding the fictional Toronto Yorkies Baseball Club.
It ain’t over till it’s over – Yogi Berra, New York Yankees
Bernie Bridges needs a win. After a spectacular crash out, the culinary influencer is fired, cancelled and her pages are crashed with her private images by online vigilants. Quietly, her rebuild begins by embedding herself in the kitchen of Toronto Yorkies ball club's big off-season acquisition, Logan Cullen, as his private chef.
[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart...– A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise: Americans and Their Games
Starting pitcher, Logan Cullen, and his wife, Krissy, moved their small family to Toronto in the offseason and have spent every minute of the adjustment battling each other instead of celebrating his biggest contract and the next five years securely laid out in front of them. Krissy, a former college soccer star, is tired of silver in her own home as she finds herself bored, lonely and stuck in the monotony of the wives suite while Logan lives out his dreams on the mound.
How can you not be romantic about baseball? – Billy Beane, Moneyball & Oakland Athletics
Andy Lamb is having a hard time finding romance in the game since the humiliating end of the previous season. He is stepping into the last year of his contract and needs a slump buster to get him off the bench and back into the spotlight. It’s already a bleak start to his final season when one night he finds himself facing off against the Cullens’ private chef over the kitchen island.
Neither have time for the distraction but neither can play through the attraction. Last season’s struggles disappear as Andy finds himself on a hot streak on and off the field. Bernie locks in to her new role and life in the Cullens’ household after heated extra innings with the veteran infielder. And with her close knit girl gang she is helping Krissy return to the starting line up. The Yorkies with Logan leading the charge are playing +500 ball and a post season run looks inevitable.
Take Me Out is a story that leaps off the page and into the stands. The writing creates seductive, empathetic, and often hilarious IRL connections between its characters as they battle desire against their public personas, old demons and best intentions. The novel weaves through fanfic, romance tropes and the thrill of online voyeurism to highlight the construction and consumption of small screen identities in this provocative season with season.
After years of buzzing through algorithms the chef and culinary influencer has finally, and spectacularly, crashed out.
She is fired and then doxed as old intimate images flood her pages.
Stories of her toxicity become part of the discourse as the trolls come for her. Her critics are seated for her downfall. The agitators deep dive into her past transgressions. Her life becomes an online cautionary tale.
Withdrawing from the dopamine hits deployed by small screen relevance she quietly restarts her career by becoming a private chef for Logan Cullen, the Toronto Yorkies’ baseball club’s big off-season acquisition.
The starting pitcher has signed the biggest contract of his career. He knows he has the stuff but worries about the adjustments he and his family now face. New team, new city and new country have Logan and his wife, Krissy, on opposing sides of family discussions and now their new private chef has barricaded herself between them in their new house. Bernie skulks around the sheltered Toronto property unsure of her identity without clicks or likes or spectacle and even more concerned about her emotional wellbeing with them. But shameless habits are hard to kick, and the threat of a comeback appears when Logan’s teammates arrive for an unplanned dinner.
Yorkies veteran infielder Andy Lamb has started the season as the scapegoat for the struggling ball club. His last season was a disaster. His slumping career coinciding with his deteriorating personal life. On the last year of his contract with the Yorkies he can’t quite accept that he might not be a big leaguer after this season. Sullen and self-destructive Bernie sees someone that might need a night to silence all the outside noises more than she does.
As the season continues the pair can’t ignore their chemistry, but the elements are uncontrollable under bright lights. They are soft launched after they are spotted on a co-walk of shame. Their exposed encounter is latched on to by social media commentators. Their continued public encounters breadcrumb parasocial shippers and online gossip sites devoted to decoding if the couple is the real thing or is it just a publicity ploy by the messy influencer and dramatic ball player in a calculated campaign to divert their brands away from their past indiscretions.
Bats heat up.
But is it just a hot streak?
Tongues wag
Have they been given the green light or blowing past the stop sign?
Take Me Out, is a steamy romance that swings for the fences. Bernie and Andy are their own worst enemies maybe they are the perfect pairing for each other.
