Squeeze Play

Romance and sports don’t mix. That’s the conventional wisdom, anyway. It’s one of those weird rules, hidden and unarticulated, that seem to underly any given genre. It’s a tenet that gets passed down to new writers, not as gospel so much as in the form of a mild warning. It’s not that books about athletes are uninteresting, the wisdom would have it; it’s that they’re unsellable. Readers won’t care about them, so editors won’t buy them.

Unlessyou’re Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Then all bets are off.

Phillips didn’t set out to become a New York Times bestseller. In fact, her whole career was a bit of a fluke. Hers is one of the stories that make new writers, contemplating their filing cabinets full of rejection letters, bitterly envious. A former theatre major with a BFA from Ohio University, Phillips began her professional life as a high-school teacher. She quit her job when her first child was born. Her neighbor, also a stay-at-home mom, was a good friend and reading buddy. They passed so many books between them that they eventually decided to write one. Having no idea what they were doing, and with only half a book under their belts, they phoned an editor to see if there might be any interest. After reading their synopsis, the editor bought the book. It’s the kind of thing that could only have happened in the early 80's, when the Romance genre was growing at light speed from a small, successful sideline into the publishing powerhouse it is today.

The Copeland Bride, published under the pseudonym Justine Cole, came out in 1983. Shortly afterwards, her writing partner moved away. Susan slowly persevered on her own. She sold two more novels. The first was an American Civil War historical, which has since been reworked, renamed, and reissued. The other was Glitter Baby (also recently reissued), which was a substantial success and brought her international attention. She followed that up with three breakout books from Pocket, all of which were contemporary, quirky and different than anything else on the market at the time. In the rising tide of her popularity, no one seemed to notice that the hero of the first (and best-selling) of those, Fancy Pants, was a PGA championship golfer.

After that, she moved to Avon, which really kicked her career into high gear. That was due in part to some savvy planning on Avon’s part. Phillips has never been a speedy writer. Unlike most Romance writers, she delivers a book once every two years, maybe three. When she switched houses, Avon waited until they could deliver three titles to the shelves within an eighteen-month period. Her North American sales soared.

It Had To Be You was the first of these, and with it, Phillips began climbing the bestseller lists. It’s a tremendous story of overcoming predjudice, triumphing over past pain, and learning to live the life you want, rather than the one others want for you. And, because the main characters are a woman who inherits an NFL team and the team’s head coach, it’s also about football.

But it wasn’t really a sports book, said that same conventional ‘wisdom’: it was a relationship book. And the next title, Heaven, Texas, despite being about the team’s quarterback, wasn’t really a sports book, it was a spinoff. But by the time her most recent book, Natural Born Charmer, arrived in 2007, even the most stridently protesting voice had been silenced. Phillips wrote seven books featuring various characters from the Chicago Stars, her fictional NFL team. She wrote about stars, retiring players, and even an agent. She also wrote another book about championship golf. They were all hugely popular. Readers loved them, and editors did too.

So conventional wisdom was wrong. But it was also right: Phillips books aren't really about sports but about relationships. The relationships between women and men; between family members; and yes, occasionally the relationships that we form, however one-sided, with athletes. The sports aspect simply provides a framework for Phillips to use. After all, the nature of professional sports offers a unique set of challenges. Athletes have a finite work life. If age doesn’t get them, injury will. In Phillips’ books, a sport is what a character can do, not what he is. The latter is what her books are about, and why they’re so successful.

It’s a success Phillips earned doing everything wrong. Though ‘wrong’ implies error: say rather that her choices have been ‘untraditional’. And so she remains: writing far more slowly than the market would like; delivering books about athletes - and actors, artists, and politicians - all professions that conventional wisdom would hold are poor choices; blocking every pitch from television producers (and there have been dozens). Phillips is not trying to upset the status quo: she’s just doing what she loves, and doing it brilliantly. She is, to stretch the sports metaphor as much as possible, at the top of her game. And her readers can’t get enough.

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Chris Szego likes football, but only the kind you play without a helmet.

Tags: Chicago , collaboration , football , golf , Justine Cole , Midwest , sports , Susan Elizabeth Phillips