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Today, I have the pleasure of conversing with Kristin J. Johnson and Samuel DiMatteo, with special guest, Sami DeMani—the hero of THE HIGH-TECH GOOSENECK PUTTER.

KAREN:  I’d like to start out this interview by reading this press release, which is full of great praise about my guests, Samuel DiMatteo and Kristin Johnson.

Golf, Geese, Love: The High-Tech Gooseneck Putter Published by Outskirts Press

Children’s authors Samuel DiMatteo and Kristin Johnson have teamed up with illustrator James Borgett to create this heartwarming and inspirational tale about the power of golf to boost self-esteem, change lives and bring a community together.

River Grove, IL, June 02, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Authors Samuel DiMatteo and Kristin Johnson announced today the release of The High-Tech Gooseneck Putter, published by Outskirts Press. The authors’ charming new juvenile fiction work features a Canada gander who’s been a legendary golfer, but who now must learn a powerful lesson about sportsmanship, perseverance and love and about what really matters in life.

Sami DeMani is a Canada gander with a renowned golf game and he’s on track to win the prestigious Waterfowl Tour. Not only does it look like he’ll win the trophy, but he’ll also put his nemesis, the ruthless Pete Swan Lake, in his place, once and for all.

Just as Sami gets ready to take his critical swing, though, a surprise scare changes everything. The shot is ruined, Sami ends up in the hospital and his chances for the ultimate golf glory are dashed.

No longer able to play golf himself, Sami designs a special Gooseneck Putter, a breakthrough club that has the power to change everything -- even the confidence of the golf prodigy who uses it. Sami starts training his nephew, Myles, with the innovative device and with an eye on winning the next tournament, but no one is prepared for what happens when the Gooseneck Putter is first introduced on the course, nor does anyone expect how many feathers will eventually be ruffled by these two golfing geese.

The High-Tech Gooseneck Putter is an inspirational tale for juvenile readers which uses the love of golf, sportsmanship and a couple of delightful ganders to offer valuable lessons about love and about building a sense of community.

The High-Tech Gooseneck Putter is available on-line in paperback through Amazon and Barnes and Noble and at http://www.outskirtspress.com/bookstore

Amazon.com link: http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Gooseneck-Putter-Samuel-DiMatteo/dp/1432764500

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By Anatoly Liberman

Before we embark on the etymology of golf, something should be said about the pronunciation of the word.  Golf does not rhyme with wolf (because long ago w changed the vowel following it), but in the speech of some people it rhymes with oaf, and “goafers” despises everyone who would allow l to creep in between o and f.  Here is part of a letter to the editor dated November 1893: “Among the old players of the game it is called goff.  ‘Caddies’ at St. Andrew’s and such places call it gowff.  I have heard respectable individuals call it goaf (like loaf).  Golf (the l being sounded) is unknown in Scotland.  What boots it that one old gentleman of Blackheath renown should say golf (sounding the l)?  He is simply wrong.”  Nothing is more important than knowing the ultimate truth.  (St. Andrew’s is the Royal & Ancient Golf Club St. Andrew’s, founded in 1754.  It occupies a most imposing building.  If my never-to-be-fulfilled dream to organize a center for English etymology came true, I would be overjoyed to have a fiftieth part of such an edifice at my disposal.  Blackheath, 1608, is the seat of the oldest golf club in England.)  As far as etymology is concerned, the rift between the two schools boots not at all.  Scots golf, though unrecorded, must have preceded gowf or goff.   In English, including its northernmost varieties, l was lost between a vowel and a consonant, as in folk, walk, talk, chalk, half, calf, rather early (oaf itself is derived from Olaf, a doublet of alf “elf”) but inconsistently.  Dutch has gone much further along this path.  Since in Scotland people played golf before it became a favorite sport in England, we may assume that golf is the bookish (spelling) pronunciation, while goff ~ gouf(f) reflects the popular norm.

Some old ideas on the origin of golf should be disregarded.  According to one of them, the etymon of golf is Swedish golv “floor.”  But why should a lawn game that has never been played on the floor, and in medieval Sweden not played at all, be called “floor”?  And the Swedish for “golf” is golf, not golv!  There are only two viable possibilities: the word is either Dutch or Scots.  The Dutch hypothesis has a strong foundation, whereas in Scots we have only gouf(f) “to strike,” an onomatopoeia, a “sound gesture” accompanying a blow, unless (which is more likely) it was coined on analogy with the noun golf.  Middle Dutch kolv meant “club, bat.”  Calling a game by its main implement is possible.  Evidently, this happened in the history of cricket (compare Flemish cricke(e) “stick”).  The lack of consensus about the origin of golf stems from Oxford’s negative (or, let us say, extremely cautious) attitude toward the word’s Dutch descent.  This is what the OED says: “[N]one of the Dutch games have been convincingly identified with golf, nor is it certain that kolv was ever used to denote the game as well as the implement, though the game was and is called kolven (the infinitive of the derived v[er]b).  Additional difficulty is caused by the absence of any Scottish forms with initial c or k and by the fact that golf is mentioned much earlier than any of the Dutch sports.”  Few people are prepared to contest the OED.  Yet in light of the latest research there is no need to doubt the Dutch or Flemish origin of golf.  The chronological diffic

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I attended a book signing where an author, Marianne Smith, shared some of her thoughts on “coming of age” during the Hitler Regime…At the local golf course I met up with a good number of mud turtles and three or four alligators that were about four feet in length. My golf balls seem to be attracted to ponds and sand traps. I visit them frequently. There were no warnings posted about alligators being loose on the course. Of course, the alligators were only interested in sunning themselves, not tasting a northerner…On the way home, we saw what looked like a collapsed tan box on the middle of the highway. As we came closer and closer to this brown miniature pyramid, we suddenly realized that it was a large deer sitting in the sun. I thought it was dead. It wasn’t moving. I couldn’t look at its face. As soon as we passed it, Marilyn screamed, “It’s alive!” I guess it was on Prozac because I never saw it move in my rearview mirror…I played 15 games of golf on four different courses…I ate more fish than usual. I think that I have developed a few scales on my legs…We made new friends, Phyllis and George, who live fulltime across from the beach house we rented. They became our tour guides for Oak Island and beyond. They taught us about photography, golf, and friendship…While we were down there, we had a snowstorm.  I have photos of the snowstorm… “Excuse me, I am not fibbing!” 
Photos can be seen here: http://www.consideration.org/sottile/photos/2010mar/last-seen.html

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As much as we love spending all day reading the OUPBlog we recognize that there is other great content out there.  For example the Ryder Cup Greats on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  From the 19th to 21st of September golfers from the United States and Europe battle it out for the Ryder Cup, the sport’s most prestigious team competition. The cup is named after Samuel Ryder, an English seed merchant and passionate amateur player, who funded an international match between British and American professionals in 1926 and sponsored a regular tournament from the following year.

To mark this year’s contest the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has picked two teams of Ryder Cup greats active from the 1930s to the present day, and drawn from the Oxford DNB, American National Biography, and Who’s Who.  Check it out!

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My goal is to post more often, and I thought of posting earlier in the week, but of course, you can see how THAT went...so now that it has been a full week, I'm doing it first thing in the morning to be sure it gets done.

1. I didn't get to play, but I rode around with my husband and six-year old grandson in a Father's Day golf tournament last Saturday. O really enjoyed it and they came in third (out of four). He was the youngest kid there by four years. Now I am waiting for them to have a adult-kid tournament I can play in. O probably won't be as happy with that, though, because I won't get as many pars as his papa and he did.
2. I have decided to try a new way (for me) of revising. I have been having trouble jumping from my first draft and finding what I want, then putting it into my revision draft, so I shrunk the whole story, put it into columns, and now will cut it apart and rearrange it. I have read about this several times, but most recently on Kate Messner's blog.

3. I have been busy with marketing activities this week, too. Had good news from the local paper and a national magazine, who are going to do reviews of KNOWING JOSEPH between now and September. Also I have followed up on a few suggestions that Cynthia Lord has given me about bookstores that deal with only books about special needs, among other things. Thanks, Cindy. In addition, I have connected to Joanna Keating-Velasco and Julie Shore to discuss marketing strategies for books about autism...both of them have excellent books about autism that have come out recently.

4. There are a couple of rhyming poetry contests going on right now...one over at Dori Chaconis's blog about cheese, and another at Kay Pluta's blog about rabbits. Would LOVE the prizes of both, but first I need to write the poems.

5. Just found out that my daughter-in-law and two grandkids will be coming next Thursday for a week. They are here for the summer from Germany, but spending most of their time in Georgia...my son could not make the trip...he is in Iraq.

Hope you all have a good week.

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Aug. 9th, 2007 at 9:17 PM
Finally! I have completed the first draft of my WIP and am ready to begin the editing process. Fortunately, I have had many good critiques on the book, so it should be easier for me the second time through than it was for me to finish it the first draft, even though I already know I'm going to be making some pretty significant changes.

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Made it through JOSEPH for the second time today, and have an additional whole page of edits... simple things like a missing word and and extra words, etc. Now I will wait until I get it home, print it out and go through it one more time. Sometimes I think it is easier to read the hard copy than to read things on the computer.

Working on a little marketing, too. I sent a couple of brochures to Matthew's teacher, and she seemed really excited about the books, saying they were really needed to make people more aware of autism. She thinks they need to be in classrooms and libraries...figured she knows the people around here, so sent her a whole bunch of the brochures to share with all those people she thinks need the books. Not all that many, in the overall scheme of things, but if I find enough enthusiastic people to share their thoughts about the books, it can only help get them out to where they will do some good.

Quiet day today, for the most part...took the kids to WalMart after we went out to dinner, to spend some of their own money, and miracle of miracles...WalMart HAD the computer game that Matthew has been obsessing about for the last three days. Jay was happy to find the one he wanted too, so things were REALLY quiet when we returned.

Golf was good today, in that it was good weather (not too hot) and the course was nice. A little different than most courses in Florida...it looked more like a ski field filled with hills and lots of moguls...not very many flat places at all. Scored poorly on the front, but at my handicap on the back

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