Last week the h20boro library blog listed book deals mentioned in Publishers Lunch. The one that caught my eye was a biography of Branch Rickey, by Roger Kahn, due spring 2007.

Rickey was an innovative baseball executive who, among other things, created the framework to the modern minor league system. In 1947, as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, he helped break baseball's color barrier by bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues.

When I think of Branch Rickey I always think of his quotes:

"Luck is the residue of design."

I can't say whether Rickey ever explained what he meant, but I've always taken it he was referring to how those who plan and work diligently tend to get "lucky" more often than those who don't.

There are few endeavors where luck plays a greater role than it does in the writing profession and there are too many writers who never quite succeed depite their best efforts. Nevertheless, it's remarkable how the author who pens a single novel and then sits around waiting for lightning to strike ends up bitter and unpublished, grumbling about the people who get all the breaks, who were all working on seventh or eigth or tenth book when the breaks finally arrived.

Which is maybe my way of reminding myself I'm supposed to be revising the mystery novel today.

Writing books