Interview About Cracks in the Ice

 

1. Benny Caldwell has been a side character in three of the five Bethesda Barracudas Hockey books. At what point did you realize he had a story in him?

 

Ryan:  Benny had a story from the time he appeared in Fire in the Ice, going to the penalty box for cross-checking an opposing player. Later in the book, he tries to set Tyler Jensen up with his (Benny’s) brother-in-law, and we see him as a stubborn but good-natured guy who cares about his teammates.

Josh:   Benny didn’t know Tyler was having a secret relationship with Kevin Moore.

Ryan:  If he had, he’d probably have been encouraging them to go public, reassuring them that nobody on the team would care.

Josh:   By the time Ice Angels rolled around, we put Benny on our list for a potential main character. We knew we’d have to come up with something special because Benny was married to a woman, but since when has a romance writer let something like that stand in their way?

Ryan:  We didn’t want to treat his marriage lightly or with disrespect. When we started the new series, Mohegan U Hockey, we knew it was Benny’s turn. He got his own story.

Josh:   I think we treated his former marriage and wife with a great deal of respect. She’s already dead at the beginning of Cracks in the Ice, and she was a huge part of making Benny the man he is. Although she was gone, she played a pivotal role in his developing relationship with Cole. She was a hero.

Ryan:  Hence Benny’s story. We hope you’ll agree it’s a great one.

 

 

2. Was Cole Dawson’s character inspired by anyone?

 

Josh:   Cole has some traits belonging to two of our friends. One of them has a long history of relationships gone bad, and he gave us some interesting perspectives on shaping Cole’s character.

Ryan:  I also have to say, with Josh’s permission, that there’s some of his personality in Cole.

Josh:   Just as there’s some of Ryan in Benny.

Ryan:  It’s impossible to write character-driven stories like ours and not channel a little of yourself into some characters.

Josh:   The trick is not to model a character after any one person. A character written like that doesn’t ring true. If you’re smart, you listen to the guy as you write and let him go his own way. We tried hard to do that with Cole and Benny.

 

 

3. Mohegan University—real or made up for the series?

 

Ryan: Obviously, there is no Mohegan University. A friend who knew we were trying to come up with a fictional college name suggested Mohegan. We liked the sound of it, so it stuck.

Josh:   The Mohegan we write about is a composite of three real universities plus a lot of imagination. We need some reality to give Mohegan a believable identity, but Mohegan is its own completely imaginary place.

Ryan:  There’s no real university like Mohegan anywhere near Buffalo, New York, and the town of Winscombe doesn’t exist.

 

 

4. Speaking of Winscombe, how did it come about?

 

Josh:   We wanted Mohegan to be in a college town, not a big city. There are major universities in charming little towns that would hardly exist if the school wasn’t there.

Ryan:  We also wanted a change. Since our other books have been set in larger cities, we wanted to write about a town we could mold to our stories instead of the other way around.

 

 

5. Without giving too much away, is there anything you can tell us about the upcoming books in this new series?

 

Ryan:  There will still be hockey and hockey players, but this series is going a different way from the previous one.

Josh:   For one thing, the stories will involve college hockey, whereas the previous series was about professional players and teams.

Ryan:  The stories are fundamentally different. Bethesda Barracudas Hockey focused on pro hockey players coming out and how everyone dealt with it. As we write this, there is still no out-and-proud active player in the NHL, so those were timely stories.

Josh:   Mohegan U Hockey will focus more on other kinds of problems. Coming out will always be part of the queer way of life, but we want to write about overcoming past hurts and shadows.

Ryan:  Safe to say, there’ll be more angst.

Josh:   And a lot of happiness to follow it!