Question of the Day - 11 December 2018

We put the question to Vegas Golden Knights co-author Deke Castleman, who responded, "How was it possible? A lot of late nights, early mornings, and long days." Then he added, "Yes, it was a major slog, but I loved every minute of it. I'm always happiest when I'm writing a book."

Here's Deke's version of the back story. 

In the summer of 2017, Joe Pane, advantage-player extraordinaire, friend of LVA, and a hockey fan for nearly 60 years, approached Anthony Curtis at a party and asked, "What would you think about me writing a blog on the Golden Knights' inaugural season?"

Though expectations for the Vegas hockey expansion team were low (500-1 to win the Stanley Cup at the time), it was still our town's first major-league presence, so we let Joe take his shot. He dutifully submitted a blog post after every single game of the season, each one full of deep inside knowledge not only of hockey, but also the team (Joe has a VGK media credential, giving him access to the press conferences and locker rooms). 

I edited the posts throughout the season and when it became clear that the Knights were headed to the post-season, I said to Anthony, "Joe's blog could turn into a book."

A.C., a major sports fan himself, said, "Well, they'll have to make a deep run."

The VGK emerged victorious from Rounds 1 and 2 of the playoffs and I started gearing up to put together a book. When they were two games away from winning the Western Conference Championship, I said to my wife Josie, "If they win tonight, I'm'n'a have to write this thing." They did win that game and the following morning, I told Anthony it was game on.

That was on May 19th. 

Of course, I had a huge head start: upwards of 90,000 words from Joe's blog, in addition to the knowledge I'd gained about hockey and everything I'd read about the team throughout the season.

I first went to work turning the blog posts into the four main chapters: The Season (Chapter 3), The Playoffs (Chapter 6), The Cup (Chapter 8), and The Records (Chapter 9).

At the same time, I enlisted LVA.com blogger, QoD contributor, and my friend Andy Uyal, who like hundreds of thousands of Las Vegans was by then a rabid VGK fan, to write player profiles (Chapter 2) and make several other important contributions to the book, not the least of which was his fascinating history of the Stanley Cup itself.

Finally, I compiled the Prologue, Chapters 1 (The Groundwork), 3 (The Preseason), 5 (The Fans), 7 (The Bookmakers), and the Epilogue, finishing the first draft six weeks later, on July 2. 

It took another 12 days to do a complete rewrite; I finished exactly eight weeks after I started, on July 13 (I remember that date, which was a Friday). The second draft went immediately back to Joe to check for accuracy and add a lot more hockey details, and to Anthony for a fast hard edit. Then it moved on to Laurie Cabot, Huntington Press' long-time and highly skilled graphic artist, for layout and production.

In the meantime, Laurie and I were compiling the images for the 16-page photo spread and brainstorming cover images and design. I was also creating the index, another huge job. 

I'd be less than honest if I didn't admit to running pretty low on gas at that point in late July, but Anthony jumped in with a full tank and took the lead for the final two-week push to the printer. 

It was a true collaborative effort by Joe, Andy, Anthony, Laurie, and myself. (The rest of the LVA staff -- Tanya, Brenda, Nicole, and Scotch -- were guarding the fort while the troops were on their expedition.) The fact is, Anthony, Laurie, and I have a combined 85 years of book-production experience, most of them together, so we essentially did what we do -- only at high speed. And that's the only way a 356-page book could've been conceived and written in eight weeks and produced in two more.  

It's getting pretty good reviews, too. Together, we managed to keep the quality up to Huntington Press standards. 

By the way, in case you haven't seen his mug on the home page behind piles of Vegas Golden Knights books, Joe Pane is writing his Knights on Ice blog again this year -- after every game -- and it's definitely worth reading even if you don't follow hockey too closely. You might find, after a few posts, that you're getting interested. 

Thanks for asking -- and I'm pleased you liked the book.