When it comes to sports, what I love most is a good story. That’s no surprise, I suppose, given what I do for a living.
And the best sporting event for good stories is, of course, the Olympics. Even though coverage of this year’s Olympics is different (for reasons I’m not going into here), you can still find stories about the athletes.
There’s Shaun White’s last Olympics. Nathan Chen’s hope for redemption. Maame Biney’s race for gold.
And then there’s an athlete whose story I’m more personally invested in: my cousin Sean Doherty, a biathlete in his third Olympics.
The biathlon is a fascinating event. It’s highly competitive. It requires not only incredible endurance but also incredible accuracy. No American biathlete has ever won an Olympic medal—yet—but not because they aren’t awesome athletes.
So, I think my cousin and his teammates deserve a bit more attention. If you want to read more about Sean and the team, click here and here.
And if the Olympics isn’t your style, but you still want to read some good sports stories, naturally, we have you covered. Check out Fiction River: Risk Takers, edited by Dean Wesley Smith (a former professional athlete).
Here’s the synopsis:
Money, business, sports, love: All involve risk—and skill. The skilled authors in this volume masterfully exhibit both. Buckle in while a locomotive engineer uses magic in a race to avoid extinction, a game developer must outmaneuver an alien for Earth’s fate, and an exterminator risks everything to go after some really big rats.
Crossing genre lines through science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical, and mainstream, these adrenaline-pumping stories about taking risks offer nothing but reward.
Includes:
“Play the Man” by Dan C. Duval
“The F Factor” by Chrissy Wissler
“No Free Lunch” by Anthea Sharp
“Winning the Ocean Pearl” by T. D. Edge
“China Moll” by Cindie Geddes
“A Tale of Good Whiskey, Bad Coffee, and One Devious Woman” by Annie Reed
“Bucking the Tiger” by John Helfers & Kerrie Hughes
“The Messiah Business” by Robert T. Jeschonek
“Muggins Rules” by Russ Crossley
“Cost and Conscience” by Christy Fifield
“Side Baiting” by Phaedra Weldon
“Gambler’s Fallacy” by Brigid Collins
“The Man Who Decided” by Dean Wesley Smith
“Rats” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
“Driving the Line” by Dan C. Duval
“Side Bet” by Lee Allred
One of my favorite stories in Risk Takers is “The F Factor,” which marked Chrissy Wissler’s first (but certainly not last) appearance in Fiction River. Chrissy is also a former professional athlete, and this window into the sacrifice required to play at that level makes for one hell of a powerful story.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.