I love hockey. Always have. Something about the speed of the game and the beautiful sheer brutality of the sport has always just done it for me.

Now this by itself isn’t that odd. Lots of people like hockey. Yes, even girls like hockey. But you may be asking yourself how a girl in Southern California who have never lived in a cold environment managed to find the wintery sport? Well, it does help having parents who hailed from the East Coast. So when the Rochester, NY and Philadelphia, PA natives came out to America’s Finest City, they brought along their love of the game and passed it onto their kids.

Did I mention that I’m a fan of the Calgary Flames too? Yeah, I’m quite the odd duck.

During the recent Stanley Cup finals, while keeping my eyes on the puck from the safety of my living room couch, I took a moment and actually listened to the commentators. Normally, hubby and I spend our time laughing at the crazy things they say. We’re all familiar with the phrases, “Ooh, he’s gonna feel that hit in the morning” and those sort of things. But it was the way the game was being described that caught my attention.

The author in me immediately grabbed by notebook and started jotting down words as fast as the puck flew across the ice.

Fired. Ricocheted. Slithered.

Shuffled. Hoisted. Kicked.

Bounced. Feathered. Lobbed.

Rattled. Floated. Spiked.

So much action and so fitting for the game.

It got me thinking about my own writing. The verb is the thing, that visceral active response to the world around us. A phenomenally wonderful and intelligent fellow author friend gave a workshop about amping up your writing and for him, it was all about the verb. Life happens in the action. We talk, we fight, we love. Our thoughts, our senses, our dreams and desires. All of it screams action.

As I work on completing the fourth book in my Guardians series, I find myself rereading what I’ve got, searching for the action, and deciding if I need more punch. So with my hockey verbs by my side, I look forward to submitting a story chock full of doing.

And maybe readers will feel the hits in the morning, too.