Speaker 1: Good morning, Gary. How are you doing today, Hey, Errol.
Speaker 2: I'm doing great, wonderful day here in the Southeast. I
hear you're in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: I am in Charlotte. How many times you've been here?
Speaker 2: Well, I've been in Charlotte. Oh gosh. I live in Atlanta,
North Atlanta, so Charlotte is a is a regular place
to either pass through or go to visit.
Speaker 1: What is it with you dirty birds down there in
Atlanta with those Falcons? Because we've always had this big
battle with you guys down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, the Falcons have been so bad for
so long that to call anything a rivalry, they get
beat so often. And I hate to say that about
the Falcons, but it's true. It's hard to call anything
a rivalry because does it once team need to win
every now and again for it to be a rivalry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but can you imagine if your book, the Playbook,
really was about let's say, the Atlanta Falcons or even
the Carolina Panthers having a female coach. I just think
that would change the game in such a positive way.
Speaker 2: Well, you know that's sort of as I look at that.
And I started writing this couple of years and I
wanted to reflect something different, you know, because football stories
can be cliches pretty quickly. Yeah, and and and there
are a lot of great football stories. But I didn't
want a football story that came out as tried or cliche.
And I thought, well, what's the what's the easiest way
for it not to be? And at that time we
had in the culture there was you know, the female
kicker at Vanderbilt and pick an extra point? And I thought, well,
what if there was someone who played football attleve they
become a coach. And that's how that idea kind of concept.
Speaker 1: Came along as a writer. Don't you love those moments
when concepts like that come into your into your heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just it's like a burst of sunrise into
and you and you look at it and go, okay, wow,
I can I can do something nobody else has done,
tell the story from a different angle and from a
different emotional point. And that's that's what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: What's so fascinating about this is that this is a
book for all people. It's not just a y a book,
it's not just for women. I mean, there's so many
different things that happened inside this story that everybody will
be entertained.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a story that I describe it as you know,
football is the canvas on which the story is written.
But the characters and the color and the paint of
the characters and the emotions and the events or what
bring it to life. So football is the backdrop, it's
the canvas. It's like you think of The blind Side,
and that's a football story in one way. But millions
and millions and millions of people saw it as a
movie and it was a book, and so it's a
football story, but it's really more a story about people
and how they deal with adversity and how they deal
with struggle.
Speaker 1: Dealing with those struggles and the changes that are always
on the campuses of these schools. I mean, one of
the things that you weren't afraid of was to bring
social changes inside the storyline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because not only do you have a female head
coach in a small town, her starting quarterback is an
African American who finds out he's got bone answer in
the first week he gets the job, and the backup
quarterback is a white kid new in town with a
mom in rehab with a learning disability. He loves music,
more than football. So you've got, Yeah, you've got a
female coach, an African American starter who's got cancer, and
a white kid with all kinds of problems off the field,
and the three of them come together trying to do
something good and they grow out of that, the town
grows out of that, and of course they get a
chance to maybe play for a championship working together that way.
Speaker 1: See. I love small town stories like this because I'm
originally from Montana, where we are surrounded by these small towns.
But when it comes to high school football, oh my god,
they play like the big leagues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's the old saying in small towns? It's god,
family and football. Yes, and sometimes you can get the
argument that football should be listed first.
Speaker 1: Chelsea Deal is very innovative, and the one thing about
what I love about it is the fact that she
has that passion not just for the game, but for
the people around her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a character who she loves football for a
lot of reasons, and her backstory is really powerful and
I think readers will really really be touched by that.
But she also she cares about the players, and she
makes that clear at the very beginning, and she takes
the job that she wants them to know that as
important as football is, they are equally, if not more,
important to her, and she shows it all through the book.
And that's one of the kind of the running things
of the story is how she proves what she said
was true, that the players are as important to her
as the football is.
Speaker 1: How are you able to make each one of these
characters so real? Did you set up chop at a
like a Starbucks and just sit there and people watch
for a while.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, that's always a great question, But well, Chelsea,
I think I've made her very real because I have
a strong wife, intelligence Sharma. I have two daughters who
played sports, soccer and basketball, and so I pulled from
that dynamic of knowing strong willed women and highly capable women,
and then the other guys. I played football myself a
long time ago, and I've known people like them, I
played with people like them, and so I think it
all comes as a composite of the people and the
experiences that you've had, and then that gets put on
the page.
Speaker 1: I love that kind of a feeling where you're taking
something that happened in your life, maybe ten fifteen twenty
years ago, and all of a sudden, it is in
your presence of now, and it's almost like, well, that's
the reason why I went through that storm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, if you have. It's not that you have
to have felt every emotion someone else has felt, because
obviously I'm male trying to write a female story, so
I haven't felt every emotion that this woman might have felt.
But you've felt something close to it, whether that's loss,
or whether that's fear, or whether that's and you just
take those emotions and put them in the situation of
that character and that's when it comes alive.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have one of those moments while writing
a story where you just kind of sit back from
the computer and go, whoa, WHOA. Hold on, I'm really
emotional into this story right now.
Speaker 2: There is a scene near the end of the story
where you find out Chelsea's backstory. Why does she love
football like she does? Why is she in a small
town coaching football? She was at one time a big
city lawyer, and that plays through the story, and her
antagonist starts digging around in the past to say, why
is she here? Why does she still let that law
firm making big bucks? Now she's in a small town
making little or nothing as a high school coach. And
so the moment when she tells the team why she's
there and what motivates her as a coach, that is
the moment where I felt, you know, yeah, if I
could have I'll just say it. You know, it's very
It's a strong, strong scene, and it's kind of the
high point of the movie is when she finally reveals
while she's there.
Speaker 1: Wow. So would you like this to be turned in
into a binge watch on Netflix or Hulu? Because I mean,
this is the kind of stuff that people really get
addicted to.
Speaker 2: Well. I actually wrote this as a feature film first
Wow during COVID, and then I wrote it as a
sixth episode limited series with the idea that this could
be more like a Friday night life. Yep. So I
have that available, and I have an agent that I'm
working in LA and but you put me in contact
with the right person and we'll cut you in on
the deal. How's that?
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you?
Speaker 2: My website is Gary E. Parker dot com, just my
name with dot com Gary Parker dot com, and of
course the books available Amazon all the normal places, Bunch
and Noble, normal places where you would go to get
your books.
Speaker 1: Wow, if you ever make it up here to Charlotte,
we got to have a face to face man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to grab coffee and sit down
and have a chit chat. That's great. I love people
who are who love writing and write and I'm always
ready for that conversation.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, you met you take care of