Patrick E. Douglas’s Game Seven

By Tine Roycroft

Game Seven author Patrick E. Douglas has created a killer that will leave the reader nervous, on edge, and suspicious of the quiet person working in the cubicle next door.

Paul Crispin, a hard-working journalist who is loyal to the printed word, might strike the casual on-looker as nothing more than mild-mannered. He doesn’t stand up for himself when a co-worker rams into his car. When his female boss plays a completely inappropriate and unprofessional joke on him, he does not seek legal action. He appears fine as long as he gets to watch his favorite hockey team and drink a beer or two.

But still waters run deep.

Paul, everyone’s favorite doormat, is boiling mad and each day it is getting harder and harder for him to deal with what’s in his mind. As the females is in his life seem to be out to ruin him and his job appears to be getting worse and worse, Paul’s drinking increases ~ as do his violent and incoherent thoughts.

When a stranger yells the words “Game Seven” to Paul, the true madness begins and reality’s horizon keeps inching further away. While viewing a hockey game at a bar with all of his co-workers, Paul witnesses their brutal murders when a gunman enters the establishment. Paul is shot as he stands at the bar ~ and dies. He is finally put out of his misery

Until he wakes up and experiences the blood-soaked madness once again.

Douglas, 34 and a Montana boy, knows his way around a newsroom, working as a professional journalist since 1994 and having numerous credits to his name. But despite the presence of hockey in Game Seven, the author’s first love was not hockey.

“I didn’t know much about hockey,” Douglas admitted. “I covered it locally for newspapers but during 2000 when I was working on the book, I really enjoyed the game and I wanted the main character to be really involved in sports.”

According to the journalist, the concept for the novel came to him in a dream.

“I wanted to write a book but I didn’t know where to start,” he said, “and then I had a dream in which I was sitting in a bar and a guy comes in and shoots up the bar. The scene then repeated, but this time it changed and revolver that the guy used was now on the bar. I woke up with every intention of developing the story, but it really created itself.”

Douglas paints a very bleak picture of the average newsroom in Game Seven ~ swearing, disrespect, care only for deadlines. But according to this author, that’s not always the case in real life.
“It’s not 100% based on my experience,” he said. “But in any office you find people who are angry and bitter. I’ve seen the people with the ‘tunnel vision’ ~ the ones who are basically married to their jobs.”

As much as Douglas passionately enjoys writing, his true love is cinema.

“I’m a movie guy so I picture movie scenes as I write. I’ve been writing movie reviews since 1997 ~ that’s 600 movie reviews and I’ve watched many more than that.”

At this time, Douglas is shopping the novel around to publishers. With a certain Stephen King flair to it, the book promises to fill the reader with Paul’s residual anger and fevered confusion.

Game Seven is available at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com and www.xlibris.com. You can also e-mail gameseven@thecultureshock.com to order signed copies for $15 each.