Hotfoot!

By Tom Richards

GERRY LARKIN (12) aspires to be a football star. His only problem: he stinks. 

His co-ordination is zip; he can't dribble, can't shoot, can't play defense. In short, he can't play. He's the lad that's always chosen last when teams are picked after school. And the team that gets him always considers it a handicap when forced to use Ger

• Language: English
• Publisher: Authors Innovation LLC
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960753205

Tom Richards

ABOUT TOM RICHARDS With the publication of this novel, Tom Richards is considered to be an 'accomplished writer' of novels and screenplays. Including Feature Films and Films for Television, Unbaptized is his sixteenth novel or screenplay to be delivered to audiences across the world. Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1955, Tom's father, Bill Richards, was a pilot for United Airlines. Due to his father's career, Tom has lived in many US states as well as a wide number of locations in Ireland, and has travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Indian sub-Continent. Currently, he lives in Eyeries, County Cork, Ireland with his puppy Bluebell and cat Sasha in a house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. He has no plans to move again. "I've moved at least twenty-four times and I'm done moving. All I want to do now is write."Richards is currently working on a number of other novels and screenplays. He has also started his first stage play based on the Irish and Scottish folktale, the Selkie. He plans to finish a new novel provisionally entitled, Annie's Joy, as well as the stage play in a few months.Tom has had a diversified career which includes journalism, marketing, teaching, and has worked at a variety of jobs during his college years. He's the first to encourage new novelists to sit down and write and also provides free video tutorials for those working on their first novel and/or screenplay on TikTok. He can be found at @tomrichardsdolphin2021

Book preview

hotfoot!

Tom Richards

Copyright © 2023 by Tom Richrads

ISBN 978-1-960753-19-9 (softcover)

ISBN 978-1-960753-20-5 (ebook)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America.

Authors Innovation

1 Ivy Lane Wallington NJ

Wallington NJ. 070577

Contents

Synopsis 5

Dedication 8

Chapter One 9

Chapter Two 23

Chapter Three 26

Chapter Four 33

Chapter Five 45

Chapter Six 55

Chapter Seven 61

Chapter Eight 71

Chapter Nine 81

Chapter Ten 88

Chapter Eleven 93

Chapter Twelve 99

Chapter Thirteen 104

Chapter Fourteen 113

Synopsis

GERRY LARKIN (12) aspires to be a football star. His only problem: he stinks. His co-ordination is zip; he can’t dribble, can’t shoot, can’t play defense. In short, he can’t play. He’s the lad that’s always chosen last when teams are picked after school. And the team that gets him always considers it a handicap when forced to use Gerry, because Gerry invariably loses the game for them. That said, he does have a couple of friends who have much the same problem: guys and girls who love the sport but simply can’t play . . .

There’s FRAN CURTAIN, keeper and team captain and the brains behind the team (if, indeed, any brains can be found); BIG JIMMY, a sloshing ton of lard who can steamroll over anyone on the field; the BRIGHT BROTHERS—ALMOST and NOT QUITE—twins who are definitely not the brightest of people; HAROLD SMITH, the small cowardly back who hates any kind of confrontation; and TOMMY REYNOLDS, whose Coke-bottle thick glasses spell disaster on the field when he loses them. This inept group of individuals come together to form . . .

The kids will play against just about anyone who will take them on. The result, of course, is embarrassing. Scores of 27–nil are not uncommon. Hotshot team members sliding into goalposts, taking out referees in blindside tackles, wiping out opposing parental visitors in co-ordinated offensive strikes are all par for the course. The result: they becomes the butt of the country.

Until LUCKY LUCY (Beelzebub disguised as a talent scout) visits them. Lucky insists that with just a little of his special coaching, the Hotshots will become the most successful team in history. The cost: a lot of sweat and work, of course. And one more item: the souls of each of the team players. After a little hesitation, and despite protests from Gerry, the team signs Lucky’s Temporary Contract. Little do they know that the end result will be an eternity of low-paid coal carrying in a hot little place due south . . .

And so, each team member gains a particular talent. Gerry is chosen as the Striker and is given a leg which has never before been seen in the annals of professional football. His hotfoot is accurate and incredibly powerful—so powerful that it can deflate balls, destroy defenders and rip through even the strongest goal netting with a single WHAP!

The team competes against teams taken completely by surprise. Enlisted at last by the manager of the country’s International Squad, Gerry, Fran and the rest of The Hotshots play with their famous international adult counterparts and end up trouncing team after team as they glide onward to victory.

But on the eve of the World Cup Final—the most famous game in international soccer—The Hotshots have to make a choice: to sign Lucky’s Eternal Contract which will sacrifice their souls for all eternity, or to achieve an incredible win which they’ve all dreamed of so obsessively.

Fortunately, however, IGNATIUS—Angelic Problem Wish Assistant First Class—has a plan on how to beat Lucky Lucy at his own game, stop the team members from signing the final contract with the dastardly fellow, and get his kids’ souls back. Without permission from MICHAEL (archangel and Iggy’s boss), Ignatius risks everything and swooshes to the kids’ rescue. Earthside, he confronts Lucky in an out-of-this world fight where both feathers and pitch-forks go flying.

Needless to say, and despite the odds, Ignatius beats Lucky, confining him once again to his Pit of Pestilence. And despite the hellish odds, Ignatius inadvertantly manages to let the kids taste the fruits of international victory.

HOTFOOT is a simple story about choices that kids have to make. It is about good guys and bad guys. A topsy-turvey, zanny and fun combination of MIGHTY DUCKS and DAMNED YANKEES set in what is the world’s most popular sport—football.

DID YOU LIKE HOTFOOT ONE? LOOK OUT FOR HOTFOOT TWO!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto the soccer pitch, along comes Larkin’s Lot with another outrageous fantasy story. This time, Gerry Larkin, Fran and all the rest of Larkin’s Lot learn that the Irish International Soccer Squad has been kidnapped by Lucky Lucy! Follow our group of inept soccer players as they venture to hell to play against an absolutely ghoulish football squad in the match of their lives!

So you want to be a professional football player, do you? So do a lot of people. But one thing: don’t sell your soul for it. Because that’s what one guy did, and all that he got was a…

Dedication

To Kristin, Cathy & Jonathan, my personal Superstars, and to

Sam, Jack, Alye, Dylan, and Toby

the Next Generation of Creative Superplayers!

Chapter One

Earth has over five billion people bouncing around like lemmings all over its surface. Five billion of them! All of them wanting things. All of them hoping, wishing, praying—even stealing! (and we heartily disapprove of that, by the way)—all of the stuff that they dream about.

Of those five billion souls, almost one thousand, two hundred and fifty million of them are thirteen years old and younger. These people wish for things, too, of course. And in my job, that’s a lot of wishes. And the things that they wish for! Bikes top the list, followed by CD players, concert tickets, televisions and ghetto blasters. All of these wishes get shot into space—great blue bolts of wishes zooming way up beyond the stratosphere. Once they get up here, a gang of angels—new recruits, you know, just out of their skins and serving their apprenticeship—catch all these wishes in giant wish containers, sort them into different categories by age, sex and variety, and hand them over to the senior staff who organise this rainbow of dreams into some kind of recognisable list.

The worst time is Christmas. We get absolutely snowed up here at Christmastime; you wouldn’t believe the avalanche of wishes that we get. But that’s another story, and I’d better stick with the one I came to tell.

Now, about wishes . . . most of the time, we do what we can. Senior staff will have a word in the appropriate ear, usually a parent or a grandparent, an aunt or uncle, or even a teacher, if we think they might do anything about it. The senior types sort of put a thought here, a niggling suggestion there. And it usually works out. As I say, that’s their job. And when they can make a dream come true—well, it’s sort of satisfying, isn’t it?

But then, there are those other wishes. Those ones that are almost impossible to make come true. When they come blowing up here out of the stratosphere, the apprentices aren’t really sure what to do with them. They get categorised into Problem Wishes—and then they pass them on to me. Because that’s what I do. I work on problem wishes and try to sort things out. A problem wish may be something simple: for instance, a boy really wants a dog and the parents hate dogs. Or a girl may want to be transformed into a pop star—someone like Madonna, for instance. Of course, there already is a Madonna, so that’s kind of impossible to make come true. Know what I mean?

But the all-time impossible wishes are from the kids who want to become professional soccer players. You wouldn’t believe how many kids want to spend an entire lifetime kicking a little white ball around a grass-covered field. To me, it sounds a little crazy. I mean, what kind of proper job is that?

Despite my own opinions, I do what I can, of course. And every now and then I get lucky, and a kid goes on to become a mega-star with Liverpool or Team America or—what’s that other one?—oh, yes, of course: Manchester United. But you just wouldn’t believe how many young people want to become soccer heroes! And now, even some of the girls have this at the top of their all-time wish list. And soccer clubs aren’t even signing girls.

Needless to say, I can’t help everyone. There just aren’t enough places to fill all the wishes. And if I get a soccer wish from someone who just can’t play—well, what’s an angel to do, for gosh sakes?

Unfortunately, there are other ways to have your wishes granted. Bad and evil ways. Ways which I don’t even want to talk about, really. A couple of people you might have heard about tried making their wishes come true this way, and it didn’t work. People like Adolph Hitler and Jesse James and that Roman emperor Nero. That’s a few of them. They didn’t get an answer quick enough, I guess. Wouldn’t use the usual channels and wait for their wishes