Authorpreneur Dashboard – Kate Preston
A Vintage Year
Literature & Fiction
Harris Tucker is a former number one tennis star, retired for the past eight years and living a lavish life in Santa Barbara, California. Suddenly homeless, friendless and penniless, he finds himself resigned to working as a farmhand on a vineyard in the Santa Barbara hills -- which he is clearly too good for and makes sure everyone knows it. But it is through his interactions with the family employing him, especially the two young children and their neurotic, divorced mother, that he begins to grow-up, and discover that there really can be life after tennis.
Book Bubbles from A Vintage Year
Thank goodness for WebMD!
My main character needed to have a bad reaction -- a hallucination effect -- to an anti-inflammatory in order to get him into the trouble that starts the story. A few searches took me to WebMD. There, I found a medicine that has a rare side effect of producing hallucinations in some individuals.
What happens to athletes after they retire?
I started writing this story with the question in mind: what happens to professional athletes after they retire? I chose a sport I'm passionate about -- tennis, and, since I was driving through Santa Barbara wine country when I was coming up with story, chose that beautiful, breathtaking setting for it to unfold. We first get a glimpse into Harris Tucker's life at a charity tennis event, 8 years into his retirement at the ripe old age of 40. While he's still young(ish) and energetic(ish), his knees and rotator cuff aren't keeping up with him, and that's when he gets into trouble. This incident is the kick-off to the story and sets Harris off on a path of self-discovery whether he's ready or not.
