Tag: Olivet Nazarene University

Love on the Big Screen is my first novel, and it tells the story of a college freshman whose understanding of love has been shaped by eighties romantic comedies. The protagonist Zuke is obsessed with movies such as Sixteen Candles, Say Anything, When Harry Met Sally, and The Breakfast Club. Love on the Big Screen is a novel of friendship, the dangers of romanticized love, the complexities of faith and real life, and what happens to one young man as he finds out that life is nothing like the movies he loves.

• Click here to link to Amazon where you can purchase the eBook or paperback.

As someone who grew up in the decade of the eighties and graduated from high school in 1989, the novel was inspired by my own experiences attending college at Olivet Nazarene University and playing on the basketball team.

Click below to listen to the Torg Stories Podcast episode where my sister Anne took over hosting duties and led a discussion about the book:

Discussed on this episode:

• What necessitated the 2nd edition?
• What inspired the story?
• How does real life inspire fiction?
• What’s the process of self publishing a second edition?
• What makes for an effective book cover? My daughter Izzy designed this one for the second edition!
• Why is the price the price of an eBook or paperback?
• Shonda Rimes and other requests by studios and production companies for the book.
• Writing the screenplay and winning the Grand Prize of the Rhode Island International Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
• Memories from college.

Facts of my life that made it into the novel:

1. I really was a member of a group called The Brothers in Pursuit that met weekly on Sunday nights. We dressed in matching boxer shorts, wore helmets, and reported back to each other on the four pursuits.
2. I did like a girl who told me that she was going to break up with her boyfriend but she came back from the meeting engaged. She did not date one of my teammates.
3. People did wear t-shirts at our games that spelled my name T-O-R-G and sometimes there was a “!” at the end.
4. A professor did take me and a small group of English students to a performance of MacBeth which began with naked witches.

Just a few examples of how details from life can become fiction:

1. One of the Brothers in Pursuit was named Chad Zaucha and my buddies and I called him Zuke. I used his name for my main character even though that character is based more on myself than anyone else.
2. In the book, Zuke likes Abby and her boyfriend is nicknamed Cheese, and he’s the star of the college team. Cheese is also a name I took from someone I know. Cheese was a teammate and when he set the record for assists at Olivet Nazarene where I played, the fans really did throw cheese slices on the floor. However, Cheese didn’t date someone I liked, and Cheese was a great teammate. The character in the book is sometimes a less than ideal teammate who has no connection to the guy I knew.
3. Zuke’s high school girl friend is named Colleen. I got that name from when a 3rd grader passed me a note to ask if I wanted to be her boyfriend and I freaked out. So I didn’t go to high school with a girl named Colleen.

College Memory Section

Here are some of the memories I share with Anne on the podcast:

1. What we did in forming the Brothers in Pursuit.
2. Riding rented scooters in Hawaii when the team went the first time.
3. Complaining Sessions With Teammates. We called them something else but we would gather in a room and complain for an hour and then when that was up there was no more complaining for the week.
4. My friend Zuke threw a bunch of CDs out the window because he thought music was consuming his life. Zuke also did not roll down the windows on his new car.
5. TECMO football leagues. Status pro basketball with Cowboy.

Just a few of the people that influenced me at Olivet Nazarene:

1. Joe Bentz. The first person I ever met who was working on a book. I wrote an essay The Royal Castle and he told me that was what I should be writing.
2. Ruth Cook: I took a Shakespeare Class from her. She made it really fun. She told me I was a good writer. She was the one who took us to MacBeth with the naked witches.
3. Judy Whitis: head of the English Department. I asked her for a recommendation letter to get into a creative writing program, and she suggested I might want to teach at Olivet instead. She planted the seed that I could teach at a college.
4. Shirley McGuire. I had her for a few classes, and she was the sponsor for the English Honor Society. The Prof Moore character is based on her mannerisms. I think it’s better for the narrative to take Prof Cook’s taking us to MacBeth and just giving that to Moore.

Thanks for checking out this episode and learning more about the novel Love on the Big Screen!

If you do purchase the novel, it would be a big boost to the project if you would share it with friends and write a review on Amazon. Thank you!