Dark fiction author Kevin Cowherd is chatting with me about his new comic novel, The Gym.
Bio:
Kevin Cowherd is the New York Times best-selling author of “Hothead” and five other baseball novels for young readers written with Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr. and published by Disney-Hyperion Books.
Cowherd has also written six books of non-fiction. His 2019 book “When the Crowd Didn’t Roar: How Baseball’s Strangest Game Ever Gave a Broken City Hope” was featured as one of the five best new sports books in the Times’ Summer Reading Issue that year.
Cowherd was an award-winning sports columnist and features writer for The Baltimore Sun for 32 years, and has also written for Men’s Health, Parenting and Baseball Digest magazines.
He lives with his wife, Nancy, in Maryland.
Welcome, Kevin. Please tell us about your current release.
Synopsis: Jack Doherty is a walking mid-life crisis. Overweight and lonely, newly-divorced after a spectacular act of infidelity on the part of his wife and close to losing his job as a hotshot newspaper columnist, he joins a gym hoping for an existential do-over, if not washboard abs and bulging biceps. Another shot at romance wouldn’t hurt, either.
One day a mysterious new member shows up: an incredibly-fit octogenarian who seemingly defies the ravages of age. Anthony Maldon does grueling one-handed chin-ups, withering jump-rope routines, amazing cartwheels and backflips — all without breaking a sweat. No one has ever seen anything like this geezer phenom.
But Jack and his new workout buddies soon learn that Tony Maldon harbors a dark secret: 30 years earlier, he committed a horrific crime that earned him national notoriety, a long stretch in the slammer and the singular nickname “Oven Mitts.”
Like Jack, “Oven Mitts” seeks his own form of redemption in this darkly-comic tale. And when the two are thrown together in a high-stakes fitness competition, an unlikely bond forms between the enigmatic ex-con and the struggling journalist, who just might walk away with the biggest story of his career.
What inspired you to write this book?
I’ve been a member of various gyms for many years and I found myself wanting to write about the deep bonds of friendship many of us find there, especially in some of our lowest moments, as well as the oddball characters, outlandish exercise routines and the hope – sometimes fleeting, sometimes enduring — of physical transformation seen at every gym on a daily basis.
Excerpt from The Gym:
From Chapter 1
At a little after 8:30 on a warm evening in September 1980, Alejandro Ramon Maldonado returned home from another long day running the thriving carpet store he owned in Baltimore.
He walked into the kitchen and said hi to Carmen Elena Maldonado, his wife of 16 years. Carmen stood at a counter preparing Alejandro’s dinner; initially, her back was to her husband.
Turning to greet him, she was undoubtedly surprised to see Alejandro wearing a pair of bright red oven mitts. Even more startling was the fact he now brandished a 12-inch cast-iron skillet, which contained the roast, red potatoes and honey-glazed carrots that had been simmering on the stove.
In the next instant, Alejandro raised the skillet high in the air and brought it crashing down on her skull.
Many of us have wondered what flashed through Carmen Maldonado’s mind in the milliseconds she had to absorb that surreal scene.
Bad enough to die in a hail of stringy cooked meat and gravy-flecked vegetables, of course. But to have as your final earthly vision a greasy black saucepan hurtling toward your cranium like a runaway asteroid seemed especially cruel and capricious.
According to the police report, the two Maldonado children, a 16-year-old boy named Joey and a 13-year-old girl named Olivia, were upstairs in their respective bedrooms doing homework at the time of the murder.
Both would later claim to have been wearing headphones and listening to music, and therefore were unaware of any disturbance below. Both would also say they eventually went to sleep without saying good-night to their mother and father – not an unusual occurrence in the Maldonado household.
After a brief period of time – again, this is per the police report – Anthony dragged his wife’s body down to the garage.
He stepped outside and unhurriedly smoked at least one cigarette. (The crushed butt of a Winston, burned all the way down to the filter, was found in the small garden where Carmen Maldonado raised her prize tomatoes.)
What exciting project are you working on next?
Working on my next novel, a sports satire of a high-profile (and unscrupulous) agent set in the present day.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since as far back as I can remember, which is why I went to journalism school and spent 40 years in daily journalism.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
When I’m working on a novel, I try to spend some four or five hours a day on it. Which leads me plenty of time to – you guessed it – go to the gym.