Championship preview and quick update

Christine Sinclair's thank you poster signed by everyone at her last regular season game

My dream scenario—however far-fetched—was to see a final NWSL championship game between the Portland Thorns and the KC Current at their home stadium this weekend. It would have been legendary, but it required too many surprise wins and losses in two weeks of playoff matches to actually happen.

Instead, this Saturday night the Washington Spirit go up against the Orlando Pride and it's the #1 team versus the #2 team and that's usually the best way for playoffs to go for a championship that pits the two strongest teams against one another. Personally, I'll be pulling slightly more for the Spirit as it'd be fun to watch them win another title, but Orlando has been unstoppable all season and I wouldn't be surprised if they took the win as well.

We bought tickets when they went on sale a couple months ago and we're planning to have a great time in KC with friends. One thing I'm wondering about is that there's a train horn and fireworks and light show that goes off any time KC scores a goal, but as a neutral site will they do it for every goal for both teams? Or none? We'll have to wait and see.

Good news, everyone!

Here's some good book news: even though my plans to finish the book before the end of summer have long since passed, I have finished writing all the chapters as of this week. Most of the book is completely edited and laid out in a ebook publishing app while I wait for the final suggestions from my editor on the last few chapters.

My hope is to get the final versions of the text into every ebook store just after Thanksgiving, so that even though it's too late to help with 2024 stadium trip plans, it can still be a nice little holiday gift for soccer fans in your life. I'm still aiming to sell the ebook for around $10.

I'm also working with a printer and a designer to create a full color paperback travel sized printed book version, but that will add another month or two of test prints and layout tweaks and my hope is to have a print version for sale after January for $20-25.

So stay tuned, and I promise I'll shout it from the rooftops once it's finally ready to buy and read. I worked for the past six months on it and I'm really happy with how it turned out and can't wait to get copies into people's hands.