Open Letter to the Burke Family

By now, you've probably heard of the loss former Ducks GM Brian Burke and his family suffered last Friday, February 5, 2010.  Burkie's youngest son, Brendan Burke, was killed due to injuries sustained from an automobile accident in Indiana.

Though I have never met Brendan, I admired his courage as so many others did when he came out as a gay man to ESPN's John Buccigross last year.  I recall reading about the challenges he faced as a young, gay athlete in a sport dominated by machisimo -- a sport championed by his rough-and-tough, old-school brand of hockey-preaching father.  I recall being moved by his courage to come out and the emotional chord it struck within me when I read how accepting his family had been.

At twenty-one, Brendan managed to stand as an inspiration to many people, myself included.

To the Burke family,

My deepest sympathies to you as you deal with the tremendous loss of Brendan.  Please know that he has served as an inspiration for so many.  May the legacy of his courage, strength, and joie de vivre live on in the lives of those he touched.

With love from Anaheim,
Girl with a Puck.

goal by Finny at 2:48 PM 0 cheers and jeers  

Note: please remember that the following is a work of fiction.  If you like it, please vote & follow.  You'll get instant access to full story and auto-notified of story updates!  And you'll be helping me out!

***

THE FACEOFF: ME VS. NATHAN'S EX.

The sound of the door slamming in my face jarred me back into the seat.


Note to Self: Do not be so lured in by the scent of a man that you attempt to kiss him as soon as he’s close enough. This could be misinterpreted as creepy behavior.

Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice my faux pas.

I folded my hands in my lap, uncertain what to do with them as Nathan slid into the driver’s seat. He started the car and music streamed through the speakers. I expected either classic rock or hip hop. These two styles, according to A Girl's Guide, were a pro athlete’s favorite type of music.

Instead, country music (complete with twang) played. A song about love and heartache. And beer.

I spent the twenty minute drive answering his questions about what I like to do for fun (bake, read, and play Rock Band), whether I preferred Facebook to MySpace (Facebook all the way), and what I planned to do after I graduated from college next Spring (rule the world. No, apply to graduate school for library science).

“A sexy Rock Band playing librarian.” He nodded thoughtfully, then brightened. “Would you wear the glasses?”

“The black-horned rimmed ones?” I asked, conjuring the stereotypical image of a librarian in my mind. “No.”

“Too bad. I’ve always had a thing for girls with glasses.”

Before I could tell him I used to wear glasses (but my prescription was so appallingly high I opted for Lasik last year), he swung into park and helped me out of the car lest I fall and break my neck.

“Here we are! The best Italian joint in town,” he announced.

The lights strung up over the crowded patio of the mom-and-pop restaurant cast a soft, romantic glow over the patrons. A server carried a tray full of food past and the scent of garlic, tomato, and cheese wafted over to me. My stomach growled in response and I quickly wrapped my free arm across my belly.

Nathan tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow and led me past the waiting line and through the door.

“This place is a team secret,” he whispered.

We were ushered to a corner table immediately. As soon as Nathan sat, a waiter produced a bottle of vino for Nathan’s inspection. He merely waved his hand at it without looking and suddenly, there was an open bottle of red on the table and two half-full glasses in front of us.

I had to admit I was impressed. Was this kind of treatment typical for pro athletes?

I checked myself before I opened my mouth to ask.

Tip #34 from A Girls’ Guide: Accept the perks graciously; don’t question them. Don’t let them mistake you for a golddigger.

“Sarah.” Nathan leaned forward, rested his elbows on the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. “It’s going to sound strange, but I need a favor.”

I sipped the wine, tasted berries.

“Would you mind being my wife?”

***

Any thoughts?  Ideas?  Do you like it, hate it?  Leave me a comment!

goal by Finny at 12:23 PM 0 cheers and jeers  

The Pre-Game Warm-Up: Part 2

The following is a continuation of a fictional blog novel featuring a hockey playing hero and the non-existent California Gladiators hockey team.  If you like the story, please vote for it in the TextNovel/Dorchester contest.


***
Nathan, per the California Gladiators Hockey Club website, stood 6’3” to my 5’4”. He was 228 pounds of corded, sinewy muscle with broad shoulders, ocean blue eyes, and a fat lip.

Oh wait.

“What happened?” I gaped stupidly at his mouth.

“What?”

“Did you get into a fight?”

A lopsided grin stretched across his handsome face. “Yup. Kicked the guy’s ass too.”

He looked so proud of himself, I didn’t have the heart to remind him that violence was not the answer.

“This was a lucky shot,” he said, pointing to his swollen mouth. “But at least I didn’t lose any teeth.”

Teeth?! “Um, that’s… great.”

“Not a fan, eh?” He shrugged. “It’s alright. I know how you California girls are.”

I raised a brow as I stepped over the threshold and locked the door behind me. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, just that you’re everything my mother warned me about.” His eyes glinted with mirth.

I smiled and diligently reminded myself about requirement #2: be cheeky!

“Then I guess you better be afraid.” I leaned over, craning my neck to maintain eye contact. “Be very afraid.”

He chuckled. Then I took his proffered hand and he spun me in a circle. I heeded Amber’s advice and wore black shorts, a bright pink tank that dipped low in the front and twisted into a sport racer back behind me. She’d insisted I show off the elaborate butterfly tattoo between my shoulder blades.

Nathan let out a low whistle. “You look better than I remember.”

I blushed. The last time he’d seen me, we’d been in a crowded local bar toasting Nikki’s husband’s free agent signing with the Lakers. He’d turned to me with that crooked half-grin of his and tapped his shot glass against mine.

“Cheers, cutie,” he’d said. Then he’d grabbed my hand and led a tipsy me to the dance floor where I made a fool of myself. I know because Nikki’s husband howled with laughter and insisted I sign up for basic lessons at Nikki’s studio.

I shook my head of the memory and looked him over. Nathan wore a Lacoste polo that hugged his arms and dark wash jeans that showcased how powerful a hockey player’s legs needed to be. When my gaze settled on his package, I promptly averted my heated face.

“You don’t look so bad yourself.” I cleared my throat. “Split lip or no.”

“Thanks.” He sounded amused, which only served to embarrass me further.

Damn, he probably caught me checking him out.

I turned away and concentrated on walking in four inch boots without taking a nosedive into the pavement. I made it safely to the Yukon Denali, but when I tried to climb aboard, I slipped. Nathan caught me and helped me into the truck. His hands lingered on my body for the barest of moments, his face just inches from mine. I caught a whiff of his scent: clean, fresh, male.

And irresistibly, I leaned forward.

***

Remember: Vote & Follow if you dig it!  Tip: by registering and following the story on www.textnovel.com, you'll be able to read ahead and see what develops between our hockey playing hero and our rule-following heroine!

goal by Finny at 6:33 PM 0 cheers and jeers  

INTRODUCING: TOSSING THE GLOVES -- a [fictional] hockey romance

What follows from here on out is a blovel (blog novel) about a girl finding herself and finding her man.  This story is also entered into the Textnovel.com/Dorchester Publishing contest.  If you like reading it, please do me a favor and click on the link at the bottom of this post and vote for the story & follow me as the author!  (It does require a free sign-up registration, but you can change your email notifications so you don't have a lot of emails).  Incentive: get access to the next installment of the story before it's posted on Girl With a Puck!


It is my hope that you enjoy this story and laugh a little -- or a lot.

***THE PREGAME WARM-UP (part 1)***

According to A Girl’s Guide to Dating a VIP:

If you want to date a hockey player, you must meet the following requirements:

1. Be hot.  I mean, ultra-smoking hot. 
2. Be cheeky.  Every guy likes a girl who can keep up with him in the teasing and flirting department.
3. Be smart.  If you’re dating a hockey player, make sure you can play the game.  No, not hockey.  The dating-a-pro-athlete game.

I, Sarah Marjorie Kent, am none of the above.

Alright, I’m smart.  But I can’t play “the Game”.  I couldn’t even work up the nerve to ask Devin McInnis to the Sadie Hawkins dance.  Instead, I just skipped the ordeal altogether and only went to my senior prom with my quiet band geek boyfriend-at-the-time.  What can I say, we band geeks stuck together.  Cuz, uh, no one else was going to.

But in college, I pursued the everyday ordinary girl American dream.  No, not buying a house and getting hitched and hatching 2.5 kids.  I mean, I wanted to do that whole She’s All That transformation — from geek to chic, from zero to hero, whatever.  Minus getting picked on in front of the whole campus part.

A Girl’s Guide to Dating a VIP is not actually in print.  It’s advice my best friend Amber and I gleaned from observing Amber’s older (uber-hot) sister Nikki's love life.  She met and married her pro-basketball playing man shortly after they met.  He wasn’t her first professional athlete, so we had a lot of opportunities to watch her date around.  We witnessed some of the most epic battles in the history of male/female relationships, as far as we were concerned.

Forget the drama of high school or any of the reality TV crap.  Real life, real drama, and real objects were being flung across the room during some of those matchups of Nikki vs. Insert-Dude’s-Name-Here.

I confess: we took a copious amount of notes (ahem, a Girl’s Guide… you get it).

See, the thing is, Nikki had those three attributes I listed above.  She had been a smoking hot dance team member and captain of the song team (that’s cheerleaders who dance, for those of you who don’t know).  In fact, she went global later and danced her way to some kind of Amazing Dancer title.  Now, she’s on that show Dance With Me where they take famous folks without a dance background and pair them up with the top ten up-and-coming dance choreographers in the country.  The winning couple gets all this cash.  The celebrity donates his/her portion to charity, the choreographer usually opens up their own studio and basks in the glory of being sought-after.

Surprise, surprise.  She met her man on set.

Why does this matter?  Because I’m about to step out the door and into the car of NHLer Nathan Deschanel and despite all the notes I took, I don’t have a single clue how to Date a VIP.

*

VOTE & FOLLOW if you like this story! (part 2 to be posted on FRIDAY, but you can read it now if you vote for the story & follow me as the author on www.textnovel.com!)

goal by Finny at 10:41 AM 0 cheers and jeers  

Announcement: GWAP version 2.0

Hi everyone,

Okay, okay, so I called it quits a few months back, right? Right.

You might be wondering then, why in the world is Finny back on GwaP, posting announcements? Well, the thing is... it's been hard for me to keep my fingers hockey-blog free. I've itched to tell you that I've gone to a couple pre-season games and enjoyed the way the team's looking. So far, I like what I see. I've wanted to tell you that, hey, I don't have season seats this year, but that doesn't mean I won't be keeping tabs and watching the team as they build on their season and work their backsides off to get into the post-season festivities.

But that's not really why I'm back here, posting.

I'm here to announce (drumroll, please...) the reincarnation of Girl With a Puck from hockeyblog to... hockey blovel.

*crickets*

Okay, let me try that again... Girl With a Puck is going from hockeyblog to... HOCKEY BLOVEL!

... No?

Here's the thing. I miss blogging, but I am focused on writing fiction. I've often written hockey heroes into my work because, let's face it, hockey's cool and the (some) boys that play it are hot! I'm not the first person to think this up. Rachel Gibson cranked out See Jane Score in 2003, the first romance novel that I remember (or read) that features a hunky hockey hero. (Tempermental French Canadian Luc "Lucky" Martineau... sigh, so hot). Mind you, 2003 is also the year that I began working on my own hockey romance featuring Katie Ryan (before I knew there was a Bobby Ryan, seeing as back then Bobby was all of 16 years old and not on my NHL map at all), and Connor O'Reilly. I never finished the manuscript because I sent an email to a prominent publisher who told me that professional athletes and movie stars or anyone THAT famous for that matter didn't make a great romantic hero because it's just too... unbelievable. People like that spend their time jet setting across the world, and it wouldn't sell. Discouraged, I put the manuscript aside and didn't return to writing a hockey hero until 2007.

I wonder if that editor ever ate her words? Because during that same year, 2003, Deirdre Martin released her first romance novel featuring a hockey player called Body Check. That book launched a successful series of novels by her centered largely on the fictional NY hockey team, the NY Blades. She's released 8 novels in the Blades series since.

And me? Well, I've dabbled in writing a lot of different heroes and romances (some less romance-y than others) in the last few years myself. Still, hockey heroes are my favorite hero to write about. They're hunky, they're strong, they're gruff, and they've got a lot of personality. They fascinate me! And I'm sure there are plenty of hockey heroes that are romantic too.

And if there are girls out there like me (and I know there are!), you'd probably enjoy a little humorous hockey romance now and again. If you read GwaP before, and you enjoy fiction, I hope you stick around for GwaP version 2.0. If you're not so much into the hockey romance blovel thing, that's okay, you don't have to read it, but please don't write me hate mail. I feel that I must stress the following: This will be a work of fiction, not some ridiculous dreamed-up thing I hope will one day happen to me.

The Reincarnation of GwaP is to present a short, entirely unedited (that's the fun of it, you're getting the first draft) hockey romance novel, in a conversational blog format. It will be an organic thing, open to suggestions, comments, and criticism from the peanut gallery (ahem, that'd be YOU). My goal is to make the hockey blovel a writing exercise. Almost like a daily prompt. As to what it's about... or who? You'll see.

All I know is... hey, this is just another experiment for me... another way for me to expand my horizons and flex my writing muscles! :)

Keep an eye out for the serial work of fiction coming to GwaP 2.0 in October 2009.

Ciao,
Finny

goal by Finny at 3:58 PM 0 cheers and jeers  

Game Over: a fond farewell

Well, this is a long time coming, and we both knew it was inevitable.

Welcome, lovelies, to the end.

(Yes, so dramatic. I know.)

To be honest, this is probably the hardest post I've ever had to write. Girl With a Puck: the blog, is officially closing its doors. I can no longer maintain the pace I have in the past and produce quality work that I feel GwaP is worthy of displaying. As such, I have to admit that the best thing to do is to shut 'er down, lock it up. Oh, the archive will remain. You can relive the Stanley Cup winning year, the funny posts about my Shane O'Brien coughobsessioncough, and all my random fan experiences by searching through the pages here.

I've thoroughly enjoyed these last few years and had so much fun blogging here and guest blogging all over the web. I've made many friends in my time here, but it is time for me to move forward with another project -- writing fiction. Some of it, yes, will be hockey-related. :) I can't simply abandon what's been part of me for so long! I am still a fan of the game. I am still a dedicated Ducks fan. I simply am no longer a Ducks blogger.

Instead, I will pursue what I've intended to pursue for some time now - and that's writing a work of fiction that can (and will) be published. If you're interested, I would appreciate it if you'd follow along on my journey at my other website/blog - christyfinn.com. Your continued support would me so much to me, just as your previous support has been incredible.

If not, no hard feelings. You can always contact me for any reason - even if it's just to say hi - at christy[at]christyfinn.com.

Be well. Love hockey... and love your (wo)man.

Farewell,

FINNY.

goal by Finny at 10:29 AM 2 cheers and jeers  

Open Letter: You Know I Still Love You, Right?

Dear Lovelies, Duckies, and Boos,

I know I've been MIA for the last few weeks, and in fact, this entire series. The thing about it is, I love you, I really do. But things in my "real" life have been exceptionally hectic as of late. I may have been neglecting you, GwaP lovelies, because I simply haven't had time to scribble a whole lot about the games. I have, of course, been keeping a finger on the pulse of our playoff hopes.

I've seen bits and pieces of the games, but not the entire thing. I've been exhausted working in my 'real' life so I can fund things like... oh, feeding myself. So, in light of all that, I haven't had a whole lot of time to re-watch the DVR'd games. I've barely had time to read up on other people's thoughts on this series.

I've only had time for placing a wager. Against my boss's boyfriend that my boys would win over his ultra-beloved Detroit Red Wings. Tomorrow night, we'll know who owes whom dinner!

As for this series... it's as I expected. Long. Hard. With at least one excessively long OT session. Oy.

And to cover some old news, the Nucks were outed by the 'Hawks earlier this week - a game that featured my hockeyheart Shane O'Brien's first playoff goal. On that very same day (Monday), I recieved a response from a fan letter (yes, I shamefully admit I write those from time to time... okay, okay, once a year, jeez) I sent his way. I got one of those standard player autographed cards in response. Sweet, automatic, and (for Shane) a painless process since I'm pretty sure the Canucks have other peeps handling this kind of stuff. Still, my exhausted spirits were buoyed by this. I actually happen to try to collect these things sometimes. I never got one from Tampa Bay when he was there, though I did write. But when Paul Kariya was in Nashville, I got one. And when I was a child, I got one from Teemu Selanne and Paul Kariya (and I still have them!).

So, here's one more for the collection! :)

But, just so we're clear... despite my insanely busy schedule as of late... I hope you know I still love you guys.

Come what may tomorrow at 4pm.

Always busily yours,
Finny.

goal by Finny at 3:29 PM 4 cheers and jeers