Over the course of his life, Darrell Brock has been a baseball player, a coach, a teacher and a principal, and he can now add author to his résumé. 

His book, The Life and Times of Tom Hayes Book One: The Legend of the Horn-a-Corn, centers around a former baseball player named Tom Hayes. Hayes is about to embark on living his dream of playing major league baseball when he is hit in the face by a pitch, shattering his cheekbone and his dream. After his injury, he slips into a drinking binge and his marriage falls apart. 

Hayes finds redemption and a second chance when he is hired as an assistant baseball coach at a small college in Southern Louisiana called St. Bernard. He arrives in Louisiana right before Hurricane Katrina hits the state, and helps with rescue efforts in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward. 

After his experiences in New Orleans, Hayes gets treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and meets veterans of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, and the book deals with a lot of the issues that veterans face, Brock said. 

The book also includes the beginnings of a murder mystery that is set up for Book 2 in the series, and has also been described as a love story, Brock said. 

“It deals with a lot of stuff,” he said. 

If the name of the college sounds familiar, it’s because Brock based it on Cullman’s St. Bernard Preparatory School. He attended the school from 1969-1971, and used the campus as the setting for his story. 

Other than the St. Bernard connection, there are no other intentional connections to Cullman, but there may be unintentional similarities 

Brock said the book and its characters are works of fiction, but there may be some people in Cullman who think they recognize certain characters. 

“If they want to know if they’re in the book, they’ll have to buy it and read it,” he said. 

Brock said he had always wanted to write a book, and his retirement gave him the opportunity to do so, but he wasn’t able to spend all of his time working on it. 

“I only worked on it in the winter,” he said. “When I couldn’t go out and do things.” 

After spending two winters writing the book, it took another two years for the editing process. 

Reba Ponder Weiss, Brock’s cousin and an author who has written two books of her own, acted as the editor for the book and provided a lot of help with the writing process and development of the characters, he said. 

The biggest part of editing came early on in the process, as Brock found he had written too much for a single book. 

The book he originally submitted would have been more than 900 pages in a novel format, so Brock was told he needed to split it into two books. The first draft of the book featured an intertwining narrative between two main characters and a murder mystery, so the murder mystery was moved to the sequel. 

Brock said he almost gave up when he was told that he needed to split the book into two parts, but the help and encouragement from Weiss kept him on the right track. 

“She was invaluable in that,” he said. “I would never have done it without her, probably.” 

After the long process of writing, editing and getting the book published, Brock said he still had worries about how the book would be received by readers and critics.

“You’re always apprehensive,” he said. “Because you just don’t know how it will be received.” 

So far, however, the reception has been positive, and Brock’s brother surprised him by saying he had written a great romance, he said. 

Brock said his book is currently available on Amazon and in a few places around Cullman, including Johnny’s BBQ, Berkeley Bob’s Coffee House and Karma’s Coffee House. A Kindle edition of the book is also in the works, but is not yet available. 

Brock said he has already finished the second book in the series, which still needs to be edited, and has also begun work on a third book, which focuses on events in Winston County during the Civil War.  

As for The Life and Times of Tom Hayes, Brock said he believes there could still be a nice ending for the characters, despite the heavy topics that have been introduced. 

“Eventually, I hope there’s a happy ending,” he said. 

Tyler Hanes can be reached at 256-734-2131 ext. 138.