Role Model
Now that Role Model is DONE and the cover has been revealed, I thought it might be a good time to tell everyone about it, and a bit about the next book, The Long Game.
Role Model is the fifth book in my Game Changers series, and it stars Troy Barrett, who was a very minor character in both Tough Guy and Common Goal. In those books he was kind of a jerk, playing for Toronto, and the best friend of one of my series villains, Dallas Kent. But I always secretly liked Troy, so I’m excited that I was given the opportunity to tell his story. I absolutely love the cover. When I first opened the image file that Harlequin emailed me I was stunned because, holy smokes, that’s my character! That’s Troy! Staring back at me with his bedroom eyes and plush lips.
This book was going to be a lot darker than it actually ended up being. It was written entirely during the pandemic and I lightened it up because I needed to escape somewhere enjoyable when I was writing. Also, this is a love story above all else, and the most important thing was for it to be romantic and cute and sexy and fun to read. That said, this book is partially about rape culture, which is something I’ve wanted to include in this hockey romance series for awhile now. Toxic masculinity and rape culture, as well as homophobia, obviously, are major things that have always made it, erm, challenging for me to be a fan of men’s hockey.
There’s a tendency in hockey (and, like, everywhere, really) for men to support their friend who has been accused of assault, trash the victim(s), and then pretend the whole thing never happened. I’ve seen it happen many times in the NHL and it fills me with rage every time. Players, management, media and fans are all happy to dismiss sexual assault and rape allegations, and to move on as quickly as possible.
The seed that Role Model grew from is a single question I’ve asked myself for years: what if an NHL player believed and supported his teammate’s victims instead of his teammate?
Here’s the set-up: When several women post anonymous accounts of being raped and sexually assaulted by Dallas Kent online, most of the hockey world dismisses or ignores them. Troy knows in his heart that the stories are real, not because he was a witness, but because he knows his best friend too well. He calls Dallas out during a practice, and that results in Troy getting swiftly traded to Ottawa (the only team who will take him).
I realize that’s a pretty heavy opener, and I will say that all of it, including the fight during practice, happens off page before the book begins. There are no depictions or descriptions of rape or assault in the book, but there will be a content warning at the beginning of the book. Role Model is also a coming out story about a character who is terrified of coming out, but Troy’s story is quite a bit different from Scott Hunter’s in Game Changer. Tonally, I’d say it’s about the same as Tough Guy, in that it goes a little darker than some of the other books, but also has plenty of comedy and romance and sex to balance it (I hope).
Okay, that’s the dark stuff. Here’s what’s fun about this book:
The love interest is a walking ball of sunshine. Harris Drover is the social media manager for the Ottawa Centaurs. He is friends with everyone on the team, loud, cheerful, and openly gay. He grew up on a farm, and he still returns home for dinner most Sundays;
This is a redemption arc story for Troy, who is determined to break the shackles of toxic masculinity that have made him miserable for so long, find the courage to stand up for others, and stop hiding his true self;
The Centaurs have a team puppy—a therapy dog in training—named Chiron. The team loves this puppy, especially Ilya;
Ilya Rozanov and Wyatt Hayes play for Ottawa! It was fun to return to these characters, especially Wyatt because I love him and I don’t get to write him very often. I look forward to writing more scenes with Wyatt (and Ilya, obviously) in The Long Game. There are a lot of cameos in Role Model; every MC from the previous Game Changers books makes an appearance in this book;
Speaking of which, a large chunk of The Long Game will overlap with this book, so you will see some of the events in this book from another POV in the next book;
This is the first book I’ve written that doesn’t have a prologue or an epilogue. Because The Long Game is going to continue some of the story from this book, I didn’t want to write a scene that jumped ahead in time at all.
I’ll admit that my depiction of what being an NHL team’s social media manager’s job actually entails is probably, like, Hallmark movie level. I did as much research as I could. There was a podcast that interviewed the former social media manager for the Colorado Avalanche that was helpful. I probably took a lot of liberties, though, because I needed to keep my two MCs together a lot in a work environment kind of way. Hopefully it’s not too much of a stretch. I mean, I already take a lot of liberties with the job descriptions of my pro hockey players, so.
Anyway, that’s Role Model. I hope you like it. I hope you like Troy especially because there’s a lot of myself in that character (I’m sorry to say). The book will be out on August 10 as both an ebook and audiobook (not sure who the narrator will be but I think it’s going to be Cooper North again, who did a great job with Common Goal, I thought).
I’m in the early stages of writing The Long Game, and it’s been very fun to write so far. For one thing, I love writing Ilya and Shane in general. They really live in my head full time and never shut up, so it’s good to get some of it onto the page. The other reason why this book is fun is that I get to go back and revisit various scenes from previous books in the series and tell them from a different POV. And, of course, I get to give my boys the big happy ending they deserve.
The Long Game will probably be a spring 2022 release. Writing has been really difficult during this pandemic, mostly because of the lack of real life human interactions, but I am determined to meet my deadlines for this one because I know a lot of people are looking forward to it.
Thanks to everyone who has supported the series! I hope you’ll follow me to non-hockey romance after this!