August Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Intimidating Adversity

Time Setting: 2016

Genre: Sports/Life Fiction

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: March–September

Locations: Kannapolis, North Carolina

Main Character: Lane Sheenan

Background Information: Born the only child of a union which was his mother's second and father's third, Lane did not have the most stable childhood.

His parents divorced when he was three, and he has rarely seen his father since — in part because his father lives in British Columbia, and in part because his father really has no need for him, as he already has an heir to his profitable fish processing company from his second marriage — his mother then moving to the Calgary area and marrying a nice farmer.

Unfortunately, their union was also short-lived — as most all of his mother's unions have been, due to the fact that she spends far beyond her means and will not stop — but Lane hasn't stopped having things to do with the farmer, who is responsible for his career.

It was his first stepfather who began teaching him to play baseball, and got him enrolled with a local team, and it is his stepfather who has been his greatest source of encouragement throughout his slowly blossoming career.

Despite the divorce, he kept up baseball when his mom moved back to BC to marry her fourth husband, where he really developed his pitching ability and decided he wanted to be a pitcher in the MLB, and even when she left that husband and moved back to her home province of Manitoba.

He was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the MLB draft, and thus played for their Rookie affiliate, the Great Falls Voyagers, in Montana last year — not much more than a five-hour drive from where his first stepfather lives.

This season, however, he's been promoted to play for the White Sox's A affiliate, the Kannapolis Intimidators, who aren't at all close to any family or friends he knows. He's not sure why, though, being as he ended his season in Great Falls abysmally with seven straight blowout losses that helped cost the Voyagers their playoff hopes, but he hopes to do his best and figure out what they saw in him to promote him so quickly — he's also glad to have an excuse to not attend his mother's third wedding in his lifetime, this time to a chef in Ontario.

The novel begins on August 1.