Ralph Hickok Welcomes You
Welcome to Ralph-Hickok.com.
Yeah, I know. It's shamelessly vain and egotistical to have a website that's all about me
But that's not quite accurate. This website is mostly about my writing, which is not the same thing. >Of course, to discuss my writing, I have to include quite a lot about me and how my life has shaped my career and my writing.
The next page, I Am a Writer, sums up my writing career very briefly. Growing Up in Green Bay was very important me because it created the interest in and knowledge of sports that led to my becoming a sports historian with a particular emphasis on pro football.
A Very Irregular Education traces my formal education, from kindergarten through Harvard, with an emphasis on my reading, since reading helps to shape any writer's output. In Jobs-Odd & Otherwise, you'll discover that almost all my jobs have involved working with words, though there are a few amusing exceptions.
Accidental Sports Historian chronicles my unplanned and unexpected evolution from a writer interested in sports into a sports historian, with some notes on the weird ways of the publishing industry.
Love, Sex and Other Calamities is the title of my latest book, a collection of short stories and one poem with a common then (guess what). That page links to pages containing one-line synopses and excerpts from each of the stories, in the hope that you'll be enticed to buy the book.
Johnny Blood is the subject of my biography, Vagabond Halfback: The Saga of Johnny Blood McNally, and this page tells some of the stories behind the book.
I started editing when I was 14, the same age at which I first got paid for writing, and I've edited a lot more words than I've written during the last 20 years. In Advice From an Editor, I focus on the most common problems I've seen. Most of them are easily correctable with a little attention and practice.
Finally, there are two little collections. Twice Told Tales is a mélange, potpourri, hodgepodge, mishmash, medley, and salmagundi (thank you, Dr. Roget) of some of my writing, published and unpublished. A couple of the pieces originally appeared on my old blog, "Hickok Sportsthoughts." Other People's Stories is a small selection of funny, real-life stories that I heard from people I knew. Since those people are no longer with us, I consider it my duty to pass them along.