I’m in kind of a weird in-between place with writing (working on a WIP but nowhere near done, unable to actually concentrate on it for longer than a few minutes at a time, nothing on the horizon officially) and consumed by the Horrors, so in my constant efforts to distract myself, I thought this might be a fun way to occupy my time. And maybe your time. So: here it is, a Q&A. These questions were submitted either by Substack note or Instagram. Here goes!
i. book/character questions
What’s the deal with Bee and Sakari?
I think I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but originally, book one of this series was Bee and Sakari’s story. I will never finish it for a variety of reasons (it’s very hard for me to write m/f because of dysphoria stuff! I am not sure if I am really the right person to write the story that this ended up becoming! etc). But there are about 50,000 words of this story written and it is plotted through basically to the end.
Sakari is from a very small town in the very north of Finland where the main industries are destination weddings where you can stay in an ice hotel and have reindeer in your wedding photos. His family have lived there for centuries. He is a stone cold weirdo, or basically the sort of person who was destined to be a goalie and talks regularly to his posts, and he left home pretty young to go to Kärpät to play professionally. He was drafted by the Cons and has spent his whole career there, although by the time the book starts, he’s had many, many terrible seasons with a terrible team in front of him, and he’s losing some of his love for the game and debating whether he wants to continue, or go home to actually spend time with his family and see if he enjoys life beyond hockey. He’s 25 turning 26 at the time the book starts.
Bee is from Côte-des-Neiges in Montreal. She grew up with two horrible older brothers and very early on developed the mindset that anything they could do, she was going to do better, just so they’d shut up. And so she did. She was one of the first women drafted by a QMJHL team (in my notes I had her playing for the Remparts but in the actual books I couldn’t use real league or team names) and actually had significant playing time for them (there are now a few girls who’ve been drafted into the CHL but I’m not sure how many of them have actually played regularly). She had pretty amazing stats, although based on her gender and concerns about her durability, she didn’t get drafted her first year of eligibility and was drafted by the Cons in the fifth round in her second. At the time, it was seen as a bit of a publicity stunt because the team was SO bad, they really had nothing to lose, and it made headlines, at least. She’s about 21 at the time the book starts.
He’s fascinated with her from the beginning, because she’s so different from what he’s used to, but she’s also so similar to him. They’re both super intense, super serious, not very talkative people, and the first time they really bond is when one of their teammates trashes Bee’s hotel room. While she’s on her way down to the front desk and trying to figure out what to do, she comes across Sakari, who is sick in the bathroom of his own room after trying to eat a puck and absorb its powers (this was based on a Reddit post I found years ago and have never, ever forgotten). He helps her with the room and dealing with the front desk people, but she ends up sharing his room because she doesn’t want to be charged for a new one on her ELC and doesn’t want to get in more trouble with the team. And guess what… There’s only one bed (nothing happens but they’re both Aware Of The Attraction). They grow closer throughout the season, culminating with a kiss after a casino night charity event that sparks the physical aspect of their relationship.
It wasn’t an easy relationship to write because they are both very serious and interior/reserved characters who take themselves their work very seriously. The main tensions between them were Sakari’s ambivalence about continuing with hockey, and Bee’s fears that her relationship with him would ruin her career, when she has so much to lose. But of course, they couldn’t stay away from each other.
The external conflict was Bee being bullied by the same teammate who trashed her hotel room—he was the number two draft pick that year, and was jealous that she was getting so much playing time when he wasn’t. Bee had dealt with similar stuff before in juniors and based on how that had gone, she was very hesitant to trust anyone with the truth of what was happening and basically suffered in silence. But eventually, she shared with Mike and Sakari, and between the three of them, with the help of Nate and Zach, they managed to get evidence of what had happened, which Bee then presented to the coaches at a video review session. Ultimately, that teammate ended up being traded, and the team kept Bee.
Still, even with all of this, Bee ended up breaking up with Sakari because she was afraid that their relationship was a distraction that would end up hurting her, especially after everything that had gone down that season. Of course this had the opposite effect. Although the Cons make the playoffs for the first time in many seasons, the two of them are so miserable and off their games that it’s a quick first round exit. Sakari is about to go home to his parents, half intending to request that the team waive him for purposes of contract termination. But after talking with Mike, Bee realizes how important Sakari is to her and how her own fears are holding her back. Why can’t she have hockey and a relationship too? That culminates in the grand gesture where she tries to stop him at the airport, but he’s already through the security gate. So she has to buy a ticket in order to get to him and admit her feelings and at that point he’s just like, well, why don’t you come home with me and meet my parents? And she does. And that’s what happened the year and the summer before Game Misconduct starts.
They do end up getting married after the Cup win, and Sakari retires a bit earlier than she does. They have offseason residences in Montreal and Saariselkä. They’re a pretty boring couple in a lot of aspects, since they are both fond of routines, working hard, and not big on partying. They have a lot of comfortable silences between them.
Does Mike ever finish college? What does he do after hockey?
Mike does finish college! He ends up doing two years remote at Philadelphia Community College, and then transfers to the College of New Jersey, which is closer to home in Princeton. It does take him longer than four years to complete all of the classes because it’s harder to get there in person during the season, but he does a lot of summer courses in an attempt to make up for it.
He’s (probably a bit ironically?) an English major. There’s a few little throwaway lines in What a Wedding Date, a story that takes place five years after Home Ice Advantage and about seven years after Game Misconduct, where you find out that Mike has written a book. It’s a young adult, semi-autobiographical novel about his experiences growing up playing hockey and being involved in the hardcore (hardcore as in the subgenre of punk, just to clarify) scene as a closeted gay kid, and some of the things he went through as a result. I really like the idea of him starting Game Misconduct not even really being able to articulate what emotions he’s experiencing to being able to share his story with other kids in similar situations. I like to think he keeps writing, although I’m not sure how many hockey books he’s got in him, haha.
I also think both Mike and Danny do a lot of work with youth mental health initiatives. I could also see him being involved—similar to Wayne Simmonds is with the Flyers—with the Cons’ youth hockey programs. To be honest, I don’t think he’s as crazy about having a career or a specific “purpose” after hockey as some of my guys are. He saw how it tore Danny up worrying about it, and he’s kind of learned to…go with the flow a little. As weird as that might sound for him! He’s happy being with Danny and joking about being a house husband, taking care of the cats (he pretended he hated them at first but the cats love him), working with the kids, playing the drums again for the first time in years (I think he might have started a garage band with a few other retired hockey players), and writing his books.
Does Danny ever relapse? How does Mike deal with it? What about Danny’s long-term health?
He does, although it goes differently than it probably would have if he hadn’t had Mike in his life. There’s a rough time where Mike is in one of his later seasons and on the road a lot, and Danny’s dad is diagnosed with cancer (they’re still living in Detroit, so he’s far away, too), and the Scouts are in a playoff push, and it’s just a lot for him and it all sort of builds up. Mike is able to take a personal leave of absence from the team to be closer to him during the worst of it. They get through it together.
I don’t want to look too far into the future for them, because I do think romance should have a happy ending, and…well, Danny’s suffered a lot of concussions over the years. It’s not unreasonable to assume that eventually, it won’t be a happy ending. I think part of the reason that Danny and Mike do end up getting married eventually is partially because of their concerns about this, when I think otherwise they probably would’ve been happy just leaving things as they were. And I will say, that with the amount of work Mike has done on himself since meeting Danny, I do think he would be equipped to be a supportive partner even during difficult times. He’s Philly in a nutshell—he’s a bit rough around the edges and not always the nicest person, but he’s got the biggest heart and once you’re his person, you’re his forever, no matter what.
How does it feel when real life hockey players/coaches imitate your fiction?
Honestly it’s one of the greatest small pleasures of my life. I read so many autobiographies and interviews and I try so hard to get my head into their headspace that when the small details align or I somehow, accidentally, write a piece of dialogue several weeks before I see that someone’s actually said it or something really similar, it’s a thrill that’s almost like gender euphoria (weird thing to say maybe but uhhh…here we are).
Any real life inspirations for characters?
So I like to say there’s always some real life inspiration for guys but they’re never one for one—it’s a pick and choose kind of deal, a bit of a patchwork. I drew a lot on enforcers in general for Game Misconduct (and there are a lot of books written by and about them) but particularly Derek Boogaard for Danny’s whole story, and Quinn Hughes’ height and weight and eventual play style model for Mike (obviously he’s not as good, but just the mobility and skating).
Zach has a bit of Tyler Seguin’s backstory (missing team breakfast! getting traded for being messy!) and a lot of Nate’s stuff came from real life stories about how shitty the press is about players who are Larger (Pat Maroon, Phil Kessel, Josh Roy, and Jacob Fowler all came to mind).
Eric has a lot of Alexandre Burrows and Brad Marchand in him (he’s a pest and he BITES) and a bit of Mathieu Schneider (he is NOT taking any shit from people in the ice for being Jewish). Obviously Ryan has a lot of Marty St-Louis’ story (Hall of Famer coaching peewee before getting the call to the big leagues) but I looked to a lot of writing about and interviews with other beloved coaches for him, including Jon Cooper, Paul Maurice, and Rod Brind’Amour.
Aiden was inspired by pretty much any goalie you’d care to read about, although there are a ton of them who have talked candidly about their anxiety and their OCD, and some of his mantras I borrowed from Braden Holtby and Devin Cooley. Matt was inspired by a conglomeration of steady, reliable, kind captains who are Aware of the responsibility and weight of the position, from Patrice Bergeron, Shea Weber, and Nick Suzuki onward, and looking backward to the history of Montreal and guys who really just Got It and were Montreal like Jean Beliveau.
ii. publishing process questions
What’s querying like?
So this is going to be more about the general process rather than practical query writing advice since there’s tons of that out there already! As anyone will tell you, querying is miserable. You essentially have to summarize your book in 250 words in a way that makes it exciting and palatable for an agent, who then ideally requests either a full or partial manuscript (some agents will let you send the first 10 pages/first three chapters/etc along with a query, and in that case, you also want to make sure that they are as polished as can be).
There are tons of great resources for querying, from Publisher’s Marketplace (you can search contact information and see recent sales), the Query Tracker website (you can see who represents who, how long it takes them to respond to queries, etc) the Absolute Write forums (writing advice and query critiques from fellow writers, although you have to take all of that with a grain of salt since everyone’s got different opinions and stages in their own publishing journeys), to Writer Beware (great to read up and educate yourself about potential scam agents/publisher and how to look out for them), to the late, great Janet Reid’s Query Shark blog, which is some of the best practical query writing advice on the internet, and which I highly recommend reading in its entirety if this is your first time querying. Or even if it’s not.
Each time I queried, I would make a little spreadsheet of all of the agents I was interested in, where they worked, what genres they represented (I was especially interested in agents that did both fantasy AND romance), and any clients and recent sales that I felt were useful comps. Sometimes it’s worth personalizing with those, sometimes it doesn’t really matter. Then you send out the letters (either by email or now more frequently through a website called Query Manager, and wait. And wait. And update your spreadsheet with all of the “no’s” or “CNR’s” (closed, no response) you get.
I haven’t queried in a bit and my most recent experience was a bit different since it was a referral from an author friend, but the main thing that’s so hard about it is that you don’t even always get a clear response. That’s also why it’s super useful to check and see if agents have listed “no response means no” in their information so you can set a date upon which you feel comfortable CNR’ing the query. I used to send them out in batches of 5-10 queries at a time, because sometimes you’d get feedback you could use either in your next queries or in editing your manuscript, but I’m not sure how useful that is anymore since it seems like the wait times have gone up and general response rates have gone down as publishing has slowed and agents have gotten more and more swamped.
At a certain point, you either get an offer of representation, or run out of agents you’re interested in, and at that point, you have to decide if a) it’s worth revising the book and trying again later, or b) moving on to the next project. I think most people probably don’t wait as long in between projects as I did, but I found the whole process really demoralizing and did almost quit a few times.
Was your first book published the first one you queried?
It wasn’t the first one I queried at all, which I don’t think is very unusual in the business. I’ve been writing my whole life, but only sporadically attempted tradpub. My first was in 2012 with a historical fantasy/romance set in a secondary world that was loosely based on Victorian England. It did not get me an agent and I am not very surprised because it honestly wasn’t very good.
I queried again in 2017, with a historical fantasy/dark romance set in London during the 1970s punk scene. That didn’t get me an agent either! And that book recently died on sub with my current agent, so now I will put it back in the drawer where it’s been waiting. Maybe I’ll self publish it one day but it definitely needs a developmental editor to hack and slash at it a bit.
And then in June 2022, I was referred to my current agent, sent her my query letter and the manuscript, and that was that.
What’s going on sub like?
It’s a lot of hurry up and wait, in short. In more detail it goes like this. You finish writing the manuscript, and send it to your agent. Your agent reads the manuscript and sends you back any notes they have or things they’d like you to change. Sometimes you agree with them, sometimes you don’t, and you either come to an agreement, or get outvoted and have to revise. When the manuscript is finally in shape to send out, you provide your agent with a pitch that’s similar to a query letter, and a bio.
Once that’s all done, your agent will have a list of editors they’re planning to send the submission package to, based on their expressed interests/what they’re currently acquiring/what their imprint tends to publish. And then the agent does the work of sending it off. And after that, it’s just a waiting game. A very long waiting game, usually, unless you’re one of those lucky ones who get picked up in a preempt or auction or what have you (we can all dream of this, I know I certainly do).
The successful project I sold on sub was a bit anticlimactic, since Deidre had Carina in mind for Game Misconduct from the beginning, reached out to the acquiring editor, and everything sort of fell into place within a week or two. Which is also not the norm. Similar to querying, you don’t always get a response, or a rejection with any kind of feedback. Drowning Men died on sub, like I mentioned earlier, but I got some amazingly kind rejections that I actually have printed out and hung on my wall for motivation.
iii. writing questions
What’s your writing process like?
I’m not sure if it’s like this for everyone, but I usually start with a concept, and that’s often based on one of my special interests. When I’m fascinated with something my brain starts playing around with the kinds of stories I could tell using that framework. Drowning Men came from my fascination with 1970s punk (it was a way that I could utilize my detailed timeline of every single show and where and when it was played throughout that decade), and the historical fantasy I queried in 2012 came from the interest I had with the development of Metropolitan police force in Victorian London. The Penalty Box series obviously grew from my love of hockey. Once I have a Concept, I come up with the characters, then I think about the characters—what do they want, why can’t they get it, etc. and the plots usually come from there. Sometimes I do research beforehand but a lot of times, I’m writing about something I’ve already researched extensively, because it’s a special interest.
I usually go into a book knowing basically the beginning, midpoint, and end of the book, and then everything else I’m outlining is filling in the spaces between those things. My outlines aren’t super detailed compared to some, but I try to jot down scenes I think would be fun to write and approximately where they will go, otherwise I forget. I’m not exactly a pantser, but the outlines are a suggestion rather than a rigid guide, because sometimes the story isn’t working for whatever reason and you have to abandon your plan.
The actual day to day writing is just sitting down and forcing myself to do it whenever I have time. It’s hard, because my day job involves a lot of writing, then I come home and have to cook dinner and clean up and take care of my kid, and her bedtimes take forever, so by the time she is asleep, I’m usually too wiped out to do anything except get in bed and doomscroll and go to sleep. I used to get an hour or two on the weekends when my spouse would take her out, but I don’t often get that anymore. So I sort of end up trying to panic cram in writing whenever I can, and I usually shoot for like 2-3k a session because it’s so rare I’m able to do it anymore and if I didn’t do that I would never finish a MS again. I try not to agonize too much about quality as I’m writing because I’d never be able to finish like that, either.
How do you come up with characters?
This is going to sound kind of awful because it’s not necessarily replicable advice, but they sort of show up as fully formed people with their personalities and histories intact. I don’t understand why my brain works this way, but that’s how almost every main character has come to me.
How do you write dialogue and inner thoughts of the characters? (Bullet points and write based off that, or write out all the dialogue and then fill in after?)
Honestly, I’ve always felt that my dialogue is my weak point because I am so bad at talking to people in real life, so I’m not sure if you really want my advice here! I’m awful at holding conversations and it’s really stressful for me to have to plan ahead what I’m going to say and remind myself that you need to ask questions at certain points, but not too many questions, wait for people to finish speaking etc. So writing dialogue doesn’t come naturally to me. But I always think of book dialogue as not being like real life conversations, sort of the way book sex isn’t always like real sex. It’s just like any other scene—you’re trying to show something about how the characters interact, or move the plot forward, and the way they communicate with each other (or don’t) is a really good way to do that. So I usually have that in the back of my mind when I’m working on a conversation.
Inner thoughts are just…I try to think like the character would and it just sort of comes from there? It’s a bit easier because I really only write in third person, not first, so even though it’s usually quite a close perspective, it’s not quite the same as a running inner dialogue. I think this just gets easier the more you write. It kind of goes hand in hand with the way I come up with characters though…I just know what they would be thinking. Although obviously you can’t write down everything so it has to either be a) plot related, b) gives you a better understanding of the character, c) funny. I have no idea if I accomplish these things honestly. Sometimes when I am writing it just honestly feels like being possessed—I don’t really think about it, I just put it down on the paper.
I don’t use bullet points in a draft (sometimes I do if I’m making notes for an outline) or write the dialogue first, I find it’s harder to go back and fill it in later. I usually write everything in order and try not to skip too much because it really is so tough to flesh things out later on and still have it sound cohesive and read well. I wrote Delay of Game out of order and had to fill in a bunch of scenes, and I think the book really suffered as a result.
Do you try to follow the “romance beats structure” or is it more organic?
I’ve read Romancing the Beat but honestly…I’m not that good at consciously following it. Also a lot of my books aren’t straight up romances, they’re sort of genre mashups. I guess you could call the plotting organic, although a lot of necessary story elements do line up with general story beats no matter what you do. If you want an idea of what my Scrivener sidebars look like, my most recent WIP is broken up into three major parts, and then broken up into chapters.
Are you going to continue writing sports romance, or romance in general after the series wraps up?
I won’t completely close the door on hockey romances in the future (I still have a few short stories to write and I still have book ideas) but I’m eager to take a break from them for a while. Unfortunately hockey is the only sport I’d ever be able to write about just based on the level of reading and watching and understanding I feel like I’d need to be able to write about a sport (there are a few storylines with the Eagles that I would love someone else to write a novel based on, haha). And I wouldn’t be opposed to writing more contemporary romance! I actually wrote a romance about lawyers, but I don’t think I can publish it because I don’t want to get in trouble at my day job. 😅
Mainly what I think I am going to be working on for the foreseeable future are fantasy novels, although all of them have strong romantic elements. I know there’s a debate about exactly what constitutes fantasy with romance vs. romance in a fantasy setting vs. romantasy but the thing I’m working on right now I’m pretty sure is the closest to the romantasy definition out of all of the things on my list of future works.
Whew! That was a lot. Thank you all for asking the questions, I wasn’t sure if I’d get enough to make a decent post, and this was really fun to consider.
And as always, thanks for reading!
— Ari 🧡
I really enjoyed the Bee & Sakari story summary, thank you!!
thank you so much for answering all of my questions! it was fascinating to read! you're very generous with your answers, and it's really interesting to read about your process.